Dairy's place in WHO's definition of healthy diets

Agrifood producers are facing pressures to support healthy diets while protecting and restoring the environment at the same time – but what does ‘heathy diet’ mean?

The lack of a singular definition of the term is hampering food producers’ efforts towards ending global hunger and malnutrition, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

This is why WHO, alongside the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), has released detailed guidelines to help food producers and consumers make sense of what healthy diet means.

What makes a diet ‘healthy’?

According to the guidelines, to be considered healthy, diets should be:

• adequate (provide enough essential nutrients);
• balanced (in both energy intake and sources, e.g. fats but also carbs and proteins);
• moderate (regarding the intake of sodium, sugar, red meat, and ultra-processed foods),
• and diverse (include a variety of nutritious foods).

For example, to be ‘adequate’, a diet must provide sufficient nutrients relative to a person’s age, gender, body size and composition, activity levels and overall health.

This is especially important for very young children (0-23 months) with WHO recommending that in addition to continued breastfeeding, caregivers should incorporate daily consumption of animal-source foods such as unprocessed meat, fish or eggs.

A healthy diet should also provide balance across the three main sources of energy – protein, fats and carbohydrates – with WHO recommending up to 10-15% of adults’ daily energy to come from protein intake; 15-30% - from fats; and 45-75% - from carbohydrates including free sugars. Too much protein in the diet could affect kidney function, for example; while a lack of vitamins and minerals could result in blood glucose changes.

Healthy diets should also limit the intake of free sugars, sodium, ultra-processed foods (UPFs), and red meat including processed red meat that ‘even at low levels may have negative health consequences’, according to the guidelines.

While debate about the impact of UPFs rages on, WHO says that evidence suggests that this food group’s negative effects on healthy ‘go beyond their fat, sodium and sugar content’. However, the body notes: “An acceptable level of UPF consumption has not yet been defined, and further research is needed to understand the relationships between UPF intakes and disease outcomes.”

In some contexts, swapping animal-based with plant-based food sources (e.g., nuts, legumes, whole grains, or olive oil instead of processed red meat) may also be beneficial, WHO and FAO note, referring to scientific research​. 

How much protein is too much?

With high-protein diets being on-trend today – and dairy brands responding to this trend with growing ranges of high-protein dairy products​ - how much protein is ‘too much’?

WHO calculates the recommended level of daily protein intake based on body weight. For adults, the ‘safe’ level of protein is considered to be 0.83g per kg of body weight per day.

E.g. if someone weighs 60kg (9.45st), they should not exceed 50g of protein per day; or 66g if they weigh 80kg (12.6st).

For adolescents, young children and infants, there are different ratios defining safe levels of protein consumption. For boys aged 15-18, this is 0.87g/kg per day; and for girls of the same age, the ratio is 0.84g/kg/day.

This means teenage boys that weigh 66.5kg should consume no more than 57.9g of protein per day, while girls that weigh 56.4kg should consume around 47.4g per day.

As for when excessive protein consumption becomes a problem, WHO says that consuming twice the recommended daily intake isn’t associated with any health risks; but consuming 3 to 4 times more ‘cannot be assumed to be risk-free’.

Dairy’s role

Across the 22-page guidelines, WHO and FAO make several references to dairy products. For example, the guidelines state that any transfats ‘should come exclusively from meat and dairy from ruminant animals’ since industrially-produced transfats are not considered ‘healthy’.

WHO also refers to the 10 food groups that comprise the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women as an example of dietary diversity; with dairy being one of these food groups, which also include nuts, green leafy vegetables, pulses, and grains among others.

Consuming reduced-fat dairy can also aid in moderating fat intake; though full-fat dairy, such as plain yogurt, has also been associated with fullness and satiety, which can in turn support weight regulation.

Functional dairy, such as kefir or fortified yogurt beverages, can bolster gut health while delivering essential vitamins and minerals.

As outlined earlier in this article, the WHO continues to recommend animal-source foods to be incorporated within the diets of very young children thanks to being 'a good source of high-quality protein and bioavailable key vitamins and minerals'.

Healthy diets and the environment​

Besides supporting health and well-being, healthy diets have a role to play in the agrifood system’s sustainable transition, WHO/FAO note:

“Dietary patterns are…impacted and shaped by agrifood systems that, in many contexts, are constrained to provide enough nutritious food for all because of the overuse of natural resources compounded by antimicrobial resistance, zoonoses, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution and other issues.

“Shifts to healthy dietary patterns must therefore be an important pillar of agrifood systems’ transformation and can contribute to overcoming the current inequities in access to healthy diets.

“We urge all governments to develop (or update) and use dietary guidelines developed with an agrifood systems’ lens to inform policies and programmes that promote and enable healthy dietary patterns from sustainable agrifood systems for all.”

Source:

What are healthy diets? Joint statement by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations and the World Health Organization. Geneva: World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations; 2024. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd2223en