Abstract
Promoting sustainable eating patterns is an approach to limiting the environmental impact of resource-intensive food production. Incorporating the concept of sustainable eating patterns into the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) would be congruent with established federal policy goals, but societal, economic, and agricultural impacts also need to be considered. The healthy eating patterns established in the 2015-2020 DGA are not markedly different than the proposed sustainable eating patterns. Introducing sustainable eating patterns in the DGA would be a convenient and efficient strategy to align US nutrition policy with related global and national food and agriculture policies. The DGA is an appropriate medium for introducing sustainable eating patterns into US nutrition policy to create awareness that consumers' food purchasing behaviors affect the environment.