Dietary Guidelines Alliance
The Dietary Guidelines Alliance is a partnership among leading health organizations, the government and the food industry, to provide consumers with concrete, practical advice on how to apply the Dietary Guidelines to their lives. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are released every five years by the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The purpose of the Guidelines is to promote healthful eating habits which will reduce the risk of chronic diseases.
The mission of the Alliance is to provide positive, simple and consistent messages to help consumers achieve healthy, active lifestyles. In 1996, the Dietary Guidelines Alliance launched the It's All About You campaign in order to build nutrition message platforms that consumers could understand and use to positively affect their health. Five core messages were developed after extensive qualitative research conducted with consumers. The purpose of these messages is to motivate Americans into rethinking and changing their eating and activity routines. Each message is accompanied by simple, action-oriented tips, which provide easy and manageable ways for consumers to change their behaviors.
In 1999, the Alliance introduced the It's All About You Nutrition Communicator's Tool Kit, which builds its impact on the nutrition message platforms developed by the Alliance's original It's All About You campaign. The Tool Kit provides nutrition communicators with a powerful teaching tool that helps them convey positive, simple, and consistent nutrition and health messages to consumers. The components of the Tool Kit were extensively tested with health professionals and consumers.
The Tool Kit contains several significant elements:
· The first ever "Owner's Manual for Your Body" reproducible handbook on nutrition and health
· A "Leader's Guide" for nutrition communicators with information on how to use the Tool Kit with individual clients and in large group settings;
· A high-energy consumer video that brings the campaign concepts to life and shows consumers how they can adopt healthful lifestyles.