2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Data Analysis: Reports and Supplements

Reports and Supplements | Data Analysis Plan | WWEIA and NHANES Data | COVID-19 | Federal Data Analysis Team

Data analysis is one of three approaches that the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee used to review the current scientific evidence.  

Cover and page of the scientific report of the dietary guidelines 2025-2030

The federal data analysis team supported the Committee with statistical methods to analyze national datasets to describe the current health and dietary intakes in the United States. This approach helped the Committee ensure that its recommendations are practical, relevant, and achievable.

The Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (Scientific Report) provides more detail about the data analysis methodology and summarizes the findings from the Committee’s work along with its advice and recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

This page provides information about the data analysis results in the Scientific Report along with supplementary reports and supporting documents. It also includes the federal staff-led data analysis plan, an overview of the Federal data sources used, and the evidence scan exploring available evidence on dietary intakes during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) pandemic.

Data Analysis Results

Data analysis to address the scientific questions listed in the table below and summarized its findings in its Scientific Report.

Data Analysis Questions:

Scientific Report Chapter
What are the current patterns of food and beverage intake? Part D. Chapter 1
What are the current intakes of food groups, nutrients, and dietary components? Part D. Chapter 1
What is the current prevalence of nutrition-related chronic health conditions? Part D. Chapter 1
Which nutrients and/or dietary components present a substantial public health concern because of underconsumption or overconsumption? Part D. Chapter 1

Data Analysis Reports and Supplements

The federal data analysis team prepared the following data analysis reports and supplements for the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to support its scientific review. The reports summarize analytic results for the topics examined in the data analysis questions, along with the methodology for each question. The supplements contain analytic results or methodologies completed by interagency partners and federal contractors.

Data Analysis Supplements

Data Analysis Plan

To support the Commitee in answering prioritized scientific questions, the federal data analysis team developed the following plan prior to the Committee’s review of the analyses to describe the data analysis process, strategy, and analyses. The plan also cites the methodology for each data source, including data collection, preparation, and analysis. 

Date Posted

Topic

Status

Download
July 18, 2023 Data analysis plan Updated
December 10, 2024
small download icon

The “date posted” column shows when the plan was originally posted to this website and the “status” column shows when the plan was most recently updated

Federal Data Sources

The Committee examined a collection of analyses to inform the Scientific Report. The data analysis team and interagency partners prepared these analyses for the Committee to review, synthesize, and evaluate. Each of the data sources is described below.

Data Source

Supporting Agencies

Description of Data Sources
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Food Surveys Research Group (FSRG)

 NHANES is a federal program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of children and adults residing in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The nationally representative survey includes interviews (e.g., 24-hour dietary recall), questionnaires (e.g., demographics, food security, income), laboratory data (e.g., folate status or other biochemical markers of public health relevance), and physical examinations (e.g., height, weight, blood pressure), that measure dietary intakes and diet-related chronic disease rates in the U.S. population. 
What We Eat in America, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (WWEIA, NHANES) USDA, ARS, FSRG The dietary component of NHANES, called WWEIA, is the only nationally representative survey of total food and beverage consumption that captures intakes across life stages on a population level in the United States. The dietary data are collected using the gold standard for dietary assessment: a multiple pass, 24-hour dietary recall.
USDA Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS)   USDA, ARS, FSRG FNDDS is a database that provides the energy and nutrient values for foods and beverages reported in WWEIA, NHANES. Data are available for energy and 64 nutrients for ~7,000 foods and beverages. The data can be used to examine nutrient intakes from foods and beverages reported by participants in WWEIA, NHANES and assess adherence to Dietary Reference Intakes.

USDA Food Pattern Equivalents Database (FPED)

 USDA, ARS, FSRG FPED converts foods and beverages from FNDDS into 37 USDA Food Patterns components. It can be used to examine food group intakes (e.g., whole fruit, total Vegetables, added sugars) from foods and beverages reported by participants in WWEIA, NHANES and assess adherence to Dietary Guidelines food group recommendations.
WWEIA Food Categories USDA, ARS, FSRG WWEIA Food Categories provide an application to analyze the foods and beverages reported by participants in WWEIA, NHANES. Each food and beverage are placed in one of 167 mutually exclusive food categories, where similar items are grouped together based on their typical use and nutrient content (e.g., mixed dishes – Asian, savory snacks, cooked cereals).
National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) HHS, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics   NHIS is a health survey conducted using in-person, confidential household interviews. It provides data on the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population residing in the 50 states and District of Columbia for analyzing public health trends, assessing prevalence of health conditions, and tracking progress toward achieving national health objectives.
Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) HHS, NIH, National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences The SEER Program is the authoritative source for cancer statistics in the U.S. population. SEER collects and publishes cancer incidence and survival data from population-based cancer registries. The 22 geographic areas of data collection from the U.S. states and American Indian/Alaskan Native communities are representative of the demographics of the U.S. population. 
National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) HHS, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics   NVSS collects and disseminates the most complete data on U.S. births and deaths from vital registration systems across 50 states, 2 cities (District of Columbia and New York City), and 5 territories. 
National Immunization Surveys (NIS) HHS, CDC, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases NIS are a group of telephone surveys that provide current, population-based, state and local area estimates of vaccination coverage among children ages 19 through 35 months and adolescents ages 13 through 17 years. The surveys collect data through telephone interviews with parents or guardians in all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and some U.S. territories (U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam).
Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) HHS, CDC, Division of Reproductive Health  PRAMS is a population-based surveillance system that collects data on maternal health and behaviors before, during, and immediately after pregnancy from 46 states, 2 cities (District of Columbia and New York City), and 2 territories (Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico).  

Using WWEIA, NHANES Data to Understand Current Intakes

The strengths and challenges of self-reported dietary assessments are well-recognized.1 Self-reported dietary data are valuable for providing population-level information on dietary intakes and sources of foods and beverages, describing dietary patterns, and assessing diet quality. Established statistical approaches accounting for day-to-day variability and energy adjustment are used to help reduce potential bias in describing dietary intakes at a population level.

Prioritized sociodemographic variables included age/life stage, sex, race and/or ethnicity, poverty to income ratio, household food security category, current household participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Analyses did not test for statistical significance between groups and analyses by SNAP eligibility and WIC participation were not statistically designed to assess the impact of these programs. Therefore, conclusions cannot be drawn from these analyses regarding difference between groups or the relationship between WIC or SNAP participation and dietary intakes.

Impact of COVID-19 on Data Collection

The COVID-19 pandemic led to data collection disruptions for key federal surveys that provide nutrition-related data, including WWEIA and NHANES.  To ensure that data analysis methodologies captured the most updated and relevant data possible, including data that represented potential changes in dietary intake due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal data analysis team conducted an evidence scan. The evidence scan, which is linked below, explored the research question: “What evidence has been published on the patterns of food and beverage intake from March 2020 to December 2022, including potential changes in dietary intake due to COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019)?”  Few studies examined dietary intakes from March 2020 to December 2022, suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted federal and non-federal data collection.

Date Posted

Topic

Status

Download
February 6, 2024 Dietary Intake Datasets in the United States from March 2020 to December 2022: An Evidence Scan Added
February 6, 2024
small download icon

Federal Data Analysis Team and Interagency Partners

The federal data analysis team and interagency partners supported the work of the Committee by analyzing data on specific topics and questions. The federal team and partners included expert scientists with advanced degrees in nutrition, statistics, and epidemiology from the following Departments and agencies:

United States Department of Health and Human Services

  • Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health
  • National Cancer Institute; National Institutes of Health
  • National Center for Health Statistics; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

United States Department of Agriculture

  • Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion; Food and Nutrition Service; Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services
  • Agricultural Research Service; Research, Education, and Economics
     

1 U.S Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. Choosing An Approach: Principles Underlying Recommendations. Dietary Assessment Primer. Accessed September 18, 2024. https://dietassessmentprimer.cancer.gov/approach/principles.html