Professor helps deliver scientific report to drive new American dietary guidelines
Christopher Taylor, PhD, RDN, has spent years exploring how behavior and food choices impact health, especially when it comes to obesity and chronic diseases. As a professor of medical dietetics and family medicine in The Ohio State University School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, he has experience uncovering personal and cultural factors that impact disease. Dr. Taylor joined 19 other academic researchers serving on the United States Department of Health and Human Services and United States Department of Agriculture’s 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. As chair of the Food Pattern Modeling subcommittee, he’s joined a dedicated team, spending months compiling independent, science-based evidence and dietary recommendations to be considered in the development of the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
To create Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Dr. Taylor says the committee used three different approaches to examine the evidence; data analysis, systematic reviews and food pattern modeling, which looks at dietary patterns and allows the researcher to examine the overall combination of foods a person eats, rather than just individual nutrients ingested into the body.
“Food pattern modeling looks at food selection patterns that can be altered to improve meeting nutrient goals to improve health outcomes,” Dr. Taylor says. “It allows a deeper understanding on how dietary habits as a whole relate to disease risk and provides a more comprehensive picture of potential health impacts which can lead to more effective interventions focused on modifying entire eating patterns instead of single food items.”
Key findings in the report include statistics that show the rates of chronic health conditions, such as obesity impacted by poor nutrition, range as high as 73% among U.S. adults ages 20 and older, presenting a prevalent and pressing public health challenge. The report also identifies significant disparities in the prevalence of nutrition-related chronic health conditions through a health equity lens, which was an overarching theme of the committee’s work.
Dr. Taylor says the committee considered health equity as a guiding principle as well as using multiple sources of evidence to inform comprehensive, actionable recommendations. Recommendations include not only recommended amounts and types of foods but also achievable strategies to effectively promote healthy dietary patterns across the lifetime.
“This recognizes that achieving a healthy dietary pattern involves a combination of dietary/feeding strategies and behavioral modifications,” Dr. Taylor says. “This way food, drinks, exercise and genetics work together to meet nutritional needs and improve health and well-being.”
The HHS and USDA departments will use this report and other parallel work to develop the official Dietary Guidelines for American that will be released in 2025.
