The Department of Health and Social Services and the Department of Agriculture will issue guidelines for 2020 that provide evidence-based recommendations for pregnant women, infants and young children. (Photo: Getty Images)

For almost 40 years, the Ministry of Health and Social Services and the US Department of Agriculture have issued dietary guidelines for the general public.

Now in the midst of an epidemic of childhood obesity in which Harvard researchers are predicting Today, 57% of children will be obese by the age of 35 and evidence suggests that it could begin as early as age 2, a group is gathered to write guidelines specifically for pregnant women, infants and young children.

The group that drafted the new guidelines met recently for a two-day meeting in Washington, DC, according to the Washington Post.

Future dietary guidelines in 2020 will specifically concern infants, children and pregnant women. (Photo: Getty Images)

Lorrene Ritchie, nutrition and nutrition policy specialist in Berkeley, Calif., Said the guidelines that will be published in 2020 could not come soon enough.

"There was a time when we did not consider the 0 to 2 score as a target for the prevention of obesity," Ritchie said. "We felt that young children were much more able to self-regulate.Obsence is the spearhead of the mine for health.It's a bit like the climate change of the public health."

"Life sentence" if obese before the age of 5

The guidelines will be the first time that there will be this type of federal recommendation based on evidence. It is too early to say what guidelines the group will recommend. But for decades, diet recommendations were not about babies, children and expectant mothers.

A non-profit organization based in Washington called 1,000 Days believes that the health of pregnant women and children would have been better served.

Lucy Sullivan, founder of the nonprofit, quoted the medical journal The Lancet, which revealed in 2008 that from conception to 24 months, malnutrition was linked to a predisposition to obesity, heart disease and to other health problems.

"Newspapers have changed our perception of hunger and nutrition," Sullivan told the Post. The association works to improve the health of the pregnant woman and the child until her second birthday. "We thought that if we focus on the first 1,000 days, we have this window of opportunity."

Missing that chance can have irreversible and lasting consequences, Sullivan said.

"And if a child is overweight before the age of 5, he is very likely to suffer from obesity all his life," she said. "It can be a life sentence."

The guidelines will determine the foods served in the national school meal program, the Special Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and other public and private programs, Sullivan added. .

In 2018, 8.8 million women, babies and children were enrolled in the WIC program.

HHS and the Ministry of Agriculture have been issuing nutritional recommendations every five years since 1980.

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