Digging into the 2020-2025 USDA Dietary Guidelines

Today, the USDA released their 2020-2025 guidelines, which offer advice on dietary patterns to promote health and reduce risk of chronic disease, and meet nutrient needs.

For the first time, the dietary guidelines include infants, while also touting the importance of introducing allergenic foods early.

The guidelines state that potentially allergenic foods (e.g., peanuts, egg, cow milk products, tree nuts, wheat, crustacean shellfish, fish, and soy) should be introduced into an infant's diet around 6 months. They also note that "introducing peanut-containing foods in the first year reduces the risk that an infant will develop a food allergy to peanuts." and that "there is no evidence that delaying introduction of allergenic foods, beyond when other complementary foods are introduced, helps to prevent food allergy."

"We have known since around 2008 that feeding allergenic foods to infants is safe." said Dr. Ron Sunog, pediatrician and medical advisor to Puffworks. "The LEAP study demonstrated that feeding peanut to infants [in a safe form to avoid choking] can reduce their risk of developing peanut allergy, so as a pediatrician it's encouraging to see more guidance headed in this direction." 

The guidelines also outline the following:

Added sugars—Less than 10 percent of calories per day starting at age 2. Avoid foods and beverages with added sugars for those younger than age 2.

Saturated fat—Less than 10 percent of calories per day starting at age 2. 

Sodium—Less than 2,300 milligrams per day—and even less for children younger than age 14.

Fortunately, our Puffworks baby puffs are a great option to introduce peanuts early - with no added sugar and only 20mg of sodium (<1% of the recommended mg per day). 

For babies/kids older than two years-of-age our Original Puffs are a great no-added sugar snack, portioned out in a single-serve bag size to prevent them them from over-eating. Plus, our Original Puffs have half the amount of sodium or 6% of the suggested mg per day compared to traditional puffed snacks - like cheese puffs, while also offering 5g of plant-based protein per serving.