The fact that the goals can be stated in nutritional terms first and then mirrored in a set of behavioral changes impels a closer look at why Americans eat the way they do. What people eat is affected not only by what scientists know, or by what doctors tell them, or even by what they themselves understand. It is affected by Government decisions in the area of agricultural policy, economic and tax policy, export and import policy, and involves questions of good production, transportation, processing, marketing, consumer choice, income and education, as well as food availability and palpability. Nutrition, then, is the end result of pushes and pulls in many directions, a response to the multiple forces creating the "national nutrition environment."

It is increasingly obvious that if new knowledge is to result in new behaviors then people must be able to act, without undue obstacles, in accordance with the information that they learn. The problem of education for health as it has been practiced is that it has been in isolation, not to say oblivion, of the real pressures, expectations, and norms of society, which mold and constrain individual behavior. There must be some coordination between what people are taught to do and what they can do. Part of the responsibility for this coordination rests with the Government's evaluation and coordination of its own activities. Effective education must be accompanied by Government policies which make it easier, indeed likely, that an individual will change his or her lifestyle in accordance with the information offered.