The USDA gives new guidelines this week for the food you put on your plate. The focus is less about specific foods and more about the ingredients inside the foods that make up a meal, especially sodium.
The recommendations encourage Americans to not only focus on what they eat, but on how they eat as well. The USDA says people need to cut back on salt, sugar and fat, trim their portion sizes and limit alcohol to one drink a day for women and two for men.
The guidelines, which are updated every five years, recommend that people over age 51, African-Americans and people with a history of hypertension, diabetes or kidney problems limit their daily salt intake to a little over a half a teaspoon. For everyone else, the daily recommendation remains at 2,300 milligrams - about one teaspoon of salt. But that could be tough. A cup of spaghetti and meatballs has approximately 1,000 milligrams of salt in it, and an average frozen meal can have 500 to 1,500 milligrams in just one serving.
Today on American Morning, chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains the new guidance on sodium and how the food industry will handle the recommendations.
How will you make the new guidelines work for your family's meals?