The Healthy Eating Index (HEI) is a measure of diet quality in terms of conformance with federal dietary guidance. Publication of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010 prompted an interagency working group to update the HEI. The HEI-2010 retains several features of the 2005 version: (1) it has 12 components, many unchanged, including 9 adequacy and 3 moderation components; (2) it uses a density approach to set standards, e.g., per 1000 calories or as a percent of calories; and (3) it employs least-restrictive standards, i.e., those that are easiest to achieve among recommendations that vary by energy level, sex, and/or age. Changes to the index include: (1) Greens and Beans replaces Dark Green and Orange Vegetables and Legumes; (2) Seafood and Plant Proteins has been added to capture specific choices from the protein group; (3) Fatty Acids, a ratio of poly- and mono-unsaturated to saturated fatty acids, replaces Oils and Saturated Fat to acknowledge the recommendation to replace saturated fat with mono-and polyunsaturated fatty acids; and (4) a moderation component, Refined Grains, replaces the adequacy component, Total Grains, to assess over-consumption. The HEI-2010 captures the key recommendations of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines and, like earlier versions, will be used to assess the diet quality of the U.S. population and subpopulations, in evaluating interventions, in dietary patterns research, and to evaluate various aspects of the food environment.

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Background Previous research has estimated that wasted food in the United States contains between 1,249 and 1,400 kcal per capita per day, but little is known about amounts of other nutrients embedded in the 31% to 40% of food that is wasted.Objective This research aimed to calculate the nutritional value of food wasted at the retail and consumer levels in the US food supply, and contextualize the amount of nutrient loss in terms of gaps between current and recommended intakes and estimated food recovery potential.Design Data from the National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference were used to calculate the nutritional value of retail-and consumer-level waste of 213 commodities in the US Department of Agriculture Loss-Adjusted Food Availability data series for 27 nutrients in 2012.Results Food wasted at the retail and consumer levels of the US food supply in 2012 contained 1,217 kcal, 33 g protein, 5.9 g dietary fiber, 1.7 mg vitamin D, 286 mg calcium, and 880 mg potassium per capita per day. Using dietary fiber as an example, 5.9 g dietary fiber is 23% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance for women. This is equivalent to the fiber Recommended Dietary Allowance for 74 million adult women. Adult women in 2012 underconsumed dietary fiber by 8.9 g/day, and the amount of wasted fiber is equivalent to this gap for 206.6 million adult women.Conclusions This was the first study to document the loss of nutrients from wasted food in the US food supply, to our knowledge. Although only a portion of discarded food can realistically be made available for human consumption, efforts to redistribute surplus foods where appropriate and prevent food waste in the first place could increase the availability of nutrients for Americans, while saving money and natural resources.J Acad Nutr Diet. 2017;117:1031-1040 I N THE UNITED STATES, BETWEEN 31% AND 40% OF THE food supply is wasted before it reaches consumers. 1,2 Policies and interventions to reduce waste and redirect surplus food can reduce food costs, benefit the environment, and improve food security. [3][4][5][6] As described in a recent report from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, nutrition and dietetics practitioners have an important role to play in addressing this waste while advancing nutrition, such as promoting consumer behavior change through nutrition education. 7 In this article, "nutrient loss" refers to the nutrient content embedded within food loss and waste. Although the terms "food loss," "food waste" and "wasted food" are sometimes used interchangeably, in this article "wasted food" is primarily used.* Tracking Caloric and Nutrient LossesMost research efforts to quantify wasted food have focused on food weight or economic value, or on waste as a proportion of available food by supply chain level. [8][9][10][11] The few studies examining nutritional value have focused primarily on calories. For example, Buzby and colleagues 1 linked US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data with underlying loss assumptions, estimating that retail-and consumer-l...

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The HEI-2005 has 12 components: Total Fruit; Whole Fruit (forms other than juice); Total Vegetables; Dark Green and Orange Vegetables and Legumes (dry peas and beans)*; Total Grains; Whole Grains; Milk (all milk products and soy beverages); Meat and Beans* (meat, poultry, fish, eggs, soybean products other than beverages, nuts, and seeds); Oils (nonhydrogenated vegetable oils and oils in fish, nuts, and seeds); Saturated Fat; Sodium; and Calories from Solid Fats, Alcoholic beverages, and Added Sugars (SoFAAS) (Guenther et al., 2006). For most components, higher intakes result in higher scores. Note, however, that for three components, Saturated Fat, Sodium, and Calories from SoFAAS, lower intake levels result in higher scores because lower intakes are more desirable. The HEI-2005 assesses dietary intakes on a per calorie basis rather than on the basis of absolute amounts of foods consumed; thus, the HEI-2005 assesses the quality of the relative proportions of foods consumed rather than the quantity of foods consumed. Details on the standards for scoring diets and on the rationale, development, evaluation, and history of the HEI-2005 have been reported (Guenther, Reedy, Krebs-Smith, Reeve, & Basiotis, 2007).This Nutrition Insight provides HEI-2005 scores for the total U.S. population estimated from national surveys conducted in 1994-96 and in 2001-02. These estimates, therefore, can serve as baseline data that reflect the quality of the American diet prior to the implementation of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines. The Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) will continue to estimate these scores in the future. MethodsThe HEI-2005 scores were estimated using 1 day of dietary intake data provided by 15,011 participants in the USDA

SS appropriately assigns scoring credit to moderate and vigorous activities. However, assumptions made for mixed moderate and vigorous activities may misclassify active individuals.