In an effort to improve American diets, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Thursday released a new definition of what it means for a food to qualify as “healthy.”

Products like fruit-flavored yogurt, fortified white bread and sweetened energy bars will no longer be allowed to label themselves as healthy if they exceed certain limits on saturated fat, sodium and added sugars.

At the same time, foods like salmon, almonds and even water will qualify as healthy for the first time.

The new definition reflects the advice offered in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are produced by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services. The hope is that consumers who consider health claims on packaged foods while filling their grocery carts will be steered toward a more nutritious eating pattern, the FDA said.

There’s no question that Americans can use some help with their diets. For example, less than half of U.S. adults eat a piece of fruit on any given day, and only 12% consume the recommended 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit per day, according to national surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Americans are even further off the mark with vegetables, with only 10% meeting the target of 2 to 3 cups per day.

On the other hand, 90% of us eat too much sodium, 75% eat too much saturated fat and 63% eat too many added sugars, the FDA said.

The new definition of healthy foods aims to turn that around by excluding foods with excess sodium, saturated fat and added sugars even if they also contain valuable nutrients like protein and whole grains.

The specific limits vary depending on food groups. The limits will also depend on whether a product is an individual food (like cheese), a “mixed product” (like trail mix) or a complete meal (like a frozen dinner).

For instance, in order for a dairy product such as yogurt to qualify as healthy, a single 2/3-cup serving can’t have more than 5% of the recommended daily amount of added sugars, 10% of the recommended daily amount of sodium or 10% of the recommended daily amount of saturated fat.

Those limits translate to 2.5 grams of added sugars, 230 milligrams of sodium and 2 grams of saturated fat. A single serving of Chobani strawberry Greek yogurt would miss the mark because it contains 9 grams of added sugars. So would Chobani’s “less sugar” variety, which has 5 grams of added sugars.

Sugar, salt and fat are only part of the new criteria. To meet the new definition of healthy, foods must contain a minimum amount of protein, whole grains, fruit, vegetables or fat-free or low-fat dairy, the FDA said.

Whole foods like eggs, beans, seafood and nuts will automatically qualify as healthy if they are sold with no added ingredients (except for water). That makes foods like avocados, olive oil and higher-fat fish like salmon eligible to be labeled as healthy for the first time. Fruits, vegetables and fish can make the cut if they are fresh, frozen or canned, making them accessible to people on a range of budgets, the agency said.

However, products like fortified breads, cereals, fruit snacks, granola bars and fruit punch will lose the label unless they are reformulated to meet the new definition.

Nancy Brown, chief executive of the American Heart Assn., said the new definition was long overdue and hopes it will improve Americans’ diets by motivating food manufacturers to create healthier products. However, she added that it would be more meaningful to require products to carry a nutrition label on the front of their packages, which she believes would make it easier for consumers to identify and select healthier options.

The previous definition of healthy foods, which was issued in 1994, focused more on total fat and cholesterol. Since then, nutrition scientists have recognized that not all fats should be treated the same, and that unsaturated fats found in nuts, seeds, fish and certain vegetable oils can lower disease risk.

The old definition also required foods to provide at least 10% of the recommended daily amount of vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, protein or fiber. The FDA said it is shifting its focus from specific nutrients to larger food groups in order to help consumers build a healthy dietary pattern.

Poor diet is a risk factor for many of the leading causes of death in the U.S., including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer.

Food manufacturers will have three years to conform to the new definition, the FDA said, though those that meet the new criteria don’t have to wait that long to start using the “healthy” label.

This summer an old high school friend of mine decided to quit drinking entirely. She didn’t want to, but she felt she had no choice.

“All of a sudden my body decided that alcohol is poison,” she told me recently over a bitter grapefruit mocktail at an Italian restaurant. “I can have as little as one drink, and I have a hangover.”

Like me, my high school friend was never a heavy drinker. She enjoyed having a glass of wine with dinner and a craft cocktail or two at a bar or restaurant with friends. If she had several drinks in a night she would expect to feel sluggish in the morning, but one or two was never a problem. Then, sometime in her mid-40s, her ability to tolerate alcohol plummeted.

“It’s that feeling of regret,” she said when I asked her about her post-drinking symptoms. “Headache, fatigue, I don’t know how to name that feeling in your stomach.”

The last time she had a margarita she felt so terrible that she ended up canceling her plans the following evening.

It’s a story I’ve been hearing from a growing number of my female friends since we entered our mid-40s a few years ago. Molly finds drinking wreaks havoc with her digestive system and her sleep. Alexis loads up on water and Motrin even if all she’s had was a half-glass of wine. Naama, who still makes the world’s most delicious batch cocktails, stopped drinking a few years ago after getting the sweats and a splitting headache halfway through a vodka soda.

I’ve experienced it as well. After even one drink, I find myself waking up at 3 in the morning with a dull ache in my stomach, wishing I’d made a different choice. Now, each opportunity to grab a beer at a barbecue, enjoy a cocktail at a restaurant or sip a glass of wine at a dinner party requires a cost-benefit analysis: How much do I want a drink now versus but how much am I willing to pay for it later?

To understand why my friends and I are finding alcohol more difficult to tolerate as we age, I reached out to George F. Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Koob pointed to studies that show that women are more sensitive to the toxic effects of alcohol — developing alcohol-related liver disease and high blood pressure due to drinking at higher rates than men — but added that scientists are still working out why that seems to be the case.

“This is a new area of research,” he said.

While Koob wasn’t aware of studies that looked specifically at how a woman’s ability to metabolize alcohol changes in middle age, he said any changes may be due in part to the natural and inevitable fact that our lean muscle mass decreases and our body fat increases as we get older.

Alcohol is drawn to water, Koob explained, and lean muscle mass has a higher percentage of water than fat does. Lean muscle mass, then, gives alcohol more space to dissipate throughout the body, making for less of it in the bloodstream, and a lower blood alcohol concentration. But as we age and lose lean muscle mass and gain fat, a higher concentration of alcohol winds up in our bloodstream. That makes for worse hangovers and extended recovery time.

“You might drink the same amount of alcohol that you used to drink, but now that one drink is more like having one and a half or two drinks, because the alcohol is hanging out in the bloodstream,” he said.

If it makes you feel any better, men also lose lean muscle mass and gain fat as they age, but men’s bodies have a higher concentration of water (55% to 65%) compared with women (45% to 50%) to begin with, so the effects may not be as obvious as they are for us.

Koob supports finding alternatives to drinking — “If you feel better when you don’t drink, then listen to your body,” he said. If you are going to drink, he offered that eating a snack beforehand can slow down the body’s absorption of alcohol and help blunt the irritation to the stomach that can cause the icky feeling I know so well. He also advised against using ibuprofen immediately after drinking, because it can also irritate the stomach. Drinking extra water will help dilute the alcohol, but ultimately, it’s the amount of alcohol you drink that will affect how you feel, not how much water you drink.

Because my friends and I are also firmly in the perimenopausal phase of our lives, I called up Dr. Monica Christmas, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago and associate medical director of the Menopause Society, to see if our new challenges with alcohol might be related to hormonal changes as well.

The answer was a resounding yes.

She explained that alcohol triggers or exacerbates many of the symptoms of both menopause and “the menopause transition,” which can begin seven to 10 years before a woman’s period actually stops.

For example, 40% of women report mood instability during the menopause transition, which can include increased anxiety, depression, or not being motivated to do the things they once did.

“Alcohol exacerbates those things,” Dr. Christmas said. “So if you’re already experiencing mood instability, you’re only going to feel that much worse when you drink alcohol.”

I haven’t noticed my anxiety skyrocketing after having a drink or two, but my high school friend said that sounded familiar.

“There was an evil loop I was in, where I was like, I’m really anxious, maybe I’ll have another drink,” she said. “My husband was like, how’s that working out for you?”

To be clear, not all my friends feel this way. Some who have always consumed alcohol more regularly looked at me quizzically when I asked if they find it harder to drink these days. It’s possible they have developed a physiological tolerance to alcohol or may just be more used to hangovers, said MacKenzie Peltier, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine who studies sex differences in alcohol abuse disorders. It might also be that their experiences of the menopausal transition or aging are different. “But that’s complete speculation,” she said.

As for the rest of my friend group, we’re all handling this frankly unwelcome change in different ways. My high school friend has become a mocktail connoisseur. Molly hasn’t cut out alcohol completely, but she does do dry months to give her body a break. Alexis recently decided not to drink during the week anymore, but weekends are still up for debate. Naama is always on the hunt for a fancy nonalcoholic drink with low sugar content to sip at celebratory occasions.

“The only time I miss it is when we’re out with friends and the only option is Diet Coke,” she said. “And God forbid if that option is only Diet Pepsi. Then I’m really screwed.”

As for me, I’m trying to minimize the temptation to consume alcohol. Not only are pre-dinner cocktails expensive from a financial standpoint, they’re costly from a health perspective, too.

I do still love to have a drink at my Italian social club, however, and if that means a couple of rough nights a month in order to enjoy an Aperol Spritz or two — for me, that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.

Groundbreaking weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have understandably generated a lot of excitement, bringing hope to the hundreds of millions of people grappling with obesity. When combined with a healthier diet and exercise, these drugs, which suppress appetite, deliver an average 10% reduction in body weight that can be sustained for years.

With more than two-thirds of adults in the United Kingdom and nearly three-quarters in the United States classified as overweight or obese — a health crisis that costs national economies billions of dollars annually — physicians and policymakers could be forgiven for embracing these drugs as a panacea. President Biden’s administration, for example, recently proposed requiring Medicare and Medicaid to cover the costs of weight-loss drugs, which would expand access for millions of Americans. But addressing obesity requires much more than a technological fix.

We ultimately also must address the root cause of the global obesity crisis: our broken food system.

The alarming rise in obesity over the past 30 years is not simply a byproduct of higher living standards or more sedentary lifestyles. The primary factor appears to be the transformation of our food environment, which has fundamentally altered both the types of food we consume and our eating habits.

In recent years, scientists and health experts have increasingly focused on foods high in fat, sugar and/or salt, which drive unhealthy dietary habits. Companies have reshaped the food system to produce ultraprocessed, hyperpalatable and highly profitable foods, leading people to snack more, eat larger portions and prepare fewer meals themselves. In the U.K., for example, the snack market has boomed while the time spent preparing meals has sharply declined.

These changes haven’t just fueled the rapid increase in consumption of salty, fatty, sweet foods. They have also led to a surge in meat consumption, especially in Europe and North America, where meat-heavy diets have become common.

Beyond the heightened risk of heart disease and related health conditions, excessive meat consumption has had devastating effects on the climate and biodiversity. Research shows that animal-based foods generate twice the greenhouse gas emissions of plant-based alternatives. Just as health experts urge us to reduce our intake of salt, fat and sugar, climate scientists consistently emphasize the importance of curbing meat and dairy consumption to keep global warming within safe limits.

In an effort to prevent a lasting change in people’s eating habits, the meat industry is seeking technological fixes to cut greenhouse emissions. For example, funding for research on cutting farm emissions — such as feed additives designed to reduce methane levels in cows’ burps — has increased markedly.

Such solutions are particularly attractive to governments reluctant to introduce measures that influence consumer behavior. Fearful of opposition from the Big Food lobby and wary of accusations of overreach, policies like sugar taxes or meat taxes are deemed political hot potatoes to be avoided at all costs.

But the overlapping crises our broken food system is fueling — from the billions of dollars spent each year on diet-related health problems to the environmental degradation pushing our planet to its limits — cannot be wished away or fixed with technological tweaks. Instead, what is needed is a major shift in dietary habits toward foods that nourish both people and the environment.

To this end, the Eat-Lancet Commission — comprising the world’s leading nutrition and sustainability experts — advocates consuming a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and plant-based proteins while reducing consumption of animal proteins, dairy and sugars. Taken together, these recommendations offer a clear blueprint for ensuring health and sustainability.

It is unrealistic to expect consumers — conditioned by food environments designed for profit rather than human or environmental health — to drive this transition on their own. With unhealthy foods widely available and aggressively marketed, many consumers struggle to moderate their food intake, and in some cases they even develop addictive behaviors.

Governments and food manufacturers must take proactive measures to reshape these environments, such as expanding the agendas of campaigns planned to take aim at reducing the consumption of salt, fat and sugar to also take aim at meat, thereby encouraging people to eat more plant-based whole foods and meat alternatives.

Another potential solution would be to extend some nations’ bans on promotions for unhealthy foods to cover meat products. Requiring food companies to report on the types of food they sell, including salty, fatty and sweet foods and the ratio of plant-based to animal proteins, would also help. These measures would encourage businesses to prioritize healthier, more sustainable options over less nutritious ones.

None of this is to suggest that the new generation of weight-loss drugs cannot benefit individuals living with obesity. For those trapped in a cycle of poor health, treatments such as Ozempic and Wegovy could even save lives, and efforts to make these treatments widely available are a welcome step.

But it is essential that we recognize that this approach merely interrupts one mechanism of obesity rather than eliminating the underlying pathology. Defusing the time bombs of ill health and environmental catastrophe requires fast, decisive action to remake our dysfunctional food system.

Emily Armistead is interim executive director of Madre Brava, a research and advocacy group.