Eating Smart and Avoiding Food Fraud in ‘25

Barely a month into the 2025, the hard-working folks at USDA’s Food and Nutrition Center (FNIC) are already online at Nutrition.gov with updated guidelines to help you make smart food choices and avoid the flood of misinformation.

And they are placing new emphasis on how to avoid the flood of misinformation when it comes to food, diets and supplements.

One obvious guideline: when browsing the internet for info, websites should be from credible web addresses ending in .edu (an educational institution), .gov (government agency), or .org (non-profit). Any web pages that end in .com (commercial) or .net (networks) should be reviewed with caution.

Step One: Learn who’s who. Doctors use the letters M.D. to make sure you know you know the person is are an accredited Medical Doctor; RD stands for a Registered Dietitian and LD for a Licensed Dietician. The latter two signify a person has a specialized degree in dietetics, nutrition, public health, or related sciences from an accredited university.

Step Two: Take manufacturers’ claims with a grain of salt (but not more than the recommended daily allowance of 2,300 mg per day for a healthy adult). Unlike drugs, supplements are not certified by any government agency but the independent National Science Foundation does testify to some facts–such as making sure what’s on the label is in the bottle to ensure the product contains no undeclared ingredients or unacceptable levels of contaminants

Step Three: Avoid food fads and fad diets. No matter what it says online, a diet limited to one or two magic foods is definitely not one you wish to follow even if it promises it will trim women down to model size or allow guys to develop bulging biceps. Check out USDA’s guidelines to avoid fraud and misinformation at https://www.nutrition.gov/nutrition-misinformation-and-fraud

Step Four: Personalize your meal plan. If three meals a day works for you, that’s fine, but there are other ways to schedule food. One possible alternative is intermittent fasting which means not eating for a specific period time each day or week. For example, you might follow a normal 3-a-day schedule on Monday but have just one small meal on Tuesday and then back to 3-a-day on Wednesday. Or you might eat only within a certain period of time, say an 8-hour window that skips breakfast but opens for lunch around Noon and for dinner at 8 p.m. Which plan pleases you will work so long as you get sufficient calories and nutrients. Some research suggests that intermittent fasting may be more beneficial than other diets for reducing inflammation while improving blood pressure readings and resting heart rates. A number of studies say it also boosts working memory for animals and verbal memory for humans. Animal athletic performance also benefits: Mice fed on alternate days showed better endurance in running and less tissue damage after surgery. Johns Hopkins neuroscientist Mark Mattson isn’t surprised. He explains that in prehistoric times, before humans learned to farm, they were hunters and gatherers who evolved to survive—and thrive—for long periods without eating. But before leaping on the train, do check with your doctor to make sure this agrees with your own body.

Step Five: Honor your individual limits which means avoiding foods to which you’re allergic or which consistently upset your stomach.

After that, relax but not necessarily with a glass of the vino. Emerging studies appear to say that despite all those years of one glass a day for a woman, two for a man, it seems that the safest amount of alcohol is None. The nation’s top doctor, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said earlier this month that there is a direct link between alcohol consumption and increased risk for cancer, including cancers of the breast, esophagus, liver and several others and for some forms of cancer, the risk could start with as few as one drink a day. He’s pushing for new warning labels on alcoholic beverages that acknowledge the link while pushing for new alcohol consumption guidelines that factor in the cancer risk too. But it is still a long way from the labels being slapped on your favorite beer, whiskey or wine.

But even advocacy groups supportive of the move acknowledged Friday that it would face serious hurdles before ever making it to store shelves. Clearly there’s more to come on this one.

Check out USDA’s guidelines to avoid fraud and misinformation at https://www.nutrition.gov/nutrition-misinformation-and-fraud