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Healthy Eating Index

The Healthy Eating Index (HEI) is a measure of diet quality that assesses conformance to federal dietary guidance. USDA’s primary use of the HEI is to monitor the diet quality of the U.S. population and the low-income subpopulation. For this purpose the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) uses the data collected via 24-hour recalls of dietary intake in national surveys. The original HEI was created by CNPP in 1995. It was revised in 2006 by a federal working group, led by CNPP with members from the National Cancer Institute and the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, to reflect the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The HEI-2005 is described in a fact sheet and in a technical report on its development and evaluation, and in two articles published in the November, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association (vol. 108, pages 1854 and 1896). Reports of population scores, listed below, are available as are support files, including a documented version of the SAS program and Excel worksheet used to estimate the scores and links to the necessary databases. An article on the population ratio method for calculating HEI-2005 scores is published in the September, 2008, issue of the Journal of Nutrition (vol. 138, page 1725).

All files are PDFs unless otherwise noted. To view PDF files, you can download Adobe Reader for free.


Health Eating Index-2005 Reports

Original Healthy Eating Index Reports

Last Modified: 03/14/2012