I tend to think of each column as a gift I give to you, and something about that mindset is certainly true. The more valuable I deem the gift, the more difficult it is to find the right wrapping paper.

For instance, take the topic of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), which contain noteworthy changes from the 2010 version. Unfortunately, what's most important hides inside the monstrous document (I printed 79 pages of a PDF and don't have it all) about which dozens of articles have been penned.So which elements should be presented to you? Which expert's opinion gets to the essence of the matter?I spent as much time ruminating as reading, struggled to get started writing, - and understood the irony of why. There was so much here I valued that my brain kept me from writing for fear of omitting any of it.So I pushed DGA printouts aside, forgot about the matter, and sought out the sort of topic that would allow me to meet my deadline. While doing so, I came across a quotation from Valter Longo, the director of the University of Southern California's Longevity Institute, on the importance of diet to health.In a prior Time magazine article titled "It's the Little Things," Longo says, "Diet is by far the most powerful intervention to delay aging and age-related diseases. If you look at all the interventions that have ever been tried, diet has been proven superior to anything else."Suddenly, a declaration in the DGA that first struck me as painfully obvious gained gravitas: "All food and beverage choices matter."Historically, the DGA has been criticized for kowtowing to the food industry, especially when it comes to recommending an elimination or drastic reduction of a specific food or food group. In 2015, the DGA suggested limits on red and processed meats, refined grains, added sugars, and sodium and allows for food "variety" in an "adaptable framework" to meet "personal and cultural preferences."Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, Dean of Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy, and editor-in-chief of the Tufts Health & Nutrition Newsletter, finds fault with that. In the April 2016 issue of the Tufts Health & Nutrition Newsletter he writes, "Such limits . . . [allow] food companies to market any product under the assumption that the rest of the diet is OK - which it is not."But by also declaring that "all food and beverage choices matter," the DGA is contradicting the everything-in-moderation crutch that too often makes food a dietary foe rather than a medical ally.To illustrate why eating questionable foods in moderation is not OK, Mozaffarian offers this analogy: "Few parents I know would purposefully remove their own seat belt, or take their children out of their carseats, once a week or once a day. While the risk associated with these single acts is tiny, it adds up, over months to years, into a large and entirely preventable risk."My take: If you eat the cake every time a co-worker celebrates a birthday, you'll never attain optimal health. If you take a break from healthy eating every Sunday to eat whatever, your diet won't effectively delay aging and age-related diseases.Do either if you want, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you're improving yourself by eating that way. Realize that all you're doing is keeping the status quo in tow.So what good can the 2105 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and this discussion of them do you? Motivate you to review your relationship with food by recognizing that, to some degree, "all food and beverage choices matter."Food provides all sorts of things to all sorts of people. But what does it provide you?A way to dissociate from a disturbing day? While there's nothing wrong with the concept of comfort foods, wouldn't they be even more of a comfort if you knew they were aiding rather than obstructing your long-term health plan?Especially now that you now know that even a middle-of-the-road governmental document like the DGA believes that "all food and beverage choices matter."And everything you eat matters for an even more immediate reason than the delaying of aging and age-related diseases that Longo cites in the aforementioned Time magazine article.What you eat this very morning affects how you feel and perform in the next few hours. A breakfast packed with protein and complex carbs could be just what you need to feel good during this morning's much-needed yard work and get the whole task done ahead of time. Or a cappuccino complemented with a cream-filled doughnut could leave you so short of energy midway through this morning that you need to stop and start again on Sunday.Before you choose the foods you eat today, tomorrow, and every day, do yourself a favor and keep the DGA declaration that "all food and beverage choices matter" in mind.Contact Kevin Kolodziejski at

kolo@ptd.net