Since the early 1900s, the Federal Government has provided food and nutrition guidance to people living in the United States. The ERS report, America's Eating Habits: Changes and Consequences, discusses the history of Federal dietary recommendations, public awareness of the recommendations, and how information channels like advertising and health claims influence dietary outcomes.
Since 1980, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans has provided science-based guidance on what people in the United States can consume to have a healthy and active life. Published every 5 years in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the most recent version was released in 2026.
Dietary recommendations can lead to improvements in diet quality by encouraging consumers to make different food choices and through supply-side changes as food manufacturers adjust their offerings to align with recommendations.
For example, the recommendation specifying that at least half of all grains should be whole, first published in the 2005 Dietary Guidelines, led to an increase in whole-grain bread purchases (Mancino, L. and F. Kuchler. 2012. "Demand for Whole-Grain Bread Before and After the Release of the Dietary Guidelines," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 34(1), 76−101). Higher-income households responded directly to the recommendations, while lower-income households responded to lower prices for whole-grain breads due to the increased supply as manufacturers prepared for greater demand following the release of the 2005 Guidelines.
An ERS report examined how diet quality relates to consumers' use of the Nutrition Facts Label (NFL). The study found that over the 2017 to March 2020 period, nearly 8 in 10 adults reported using the NFL sometimes, most of the time, or always (i.e., they regularly used it) when buying packaged food products. Adults who regularly used the NFL were found to have significantly lower daily intakes of calories, fat, saturated fat, alcohol, sugars, and sodium compared with adults who were not regularly using it.