The Food Dome: dietary guidelines for Arab countries.

Dietary guidelines are important tool for selection a healthy diet. There is no special dietary guidelines for Arab people. Health Institutes are mainly using the Western dietary guidelines, such as American Food Pyramid. The objective of this paper therefore, was to summarize the steps taken by Arab Centers for Nutrition to establish "Food Dome", the dietary guidelines for the Arab countries. The development of Food Dome was done in eight steps as: 1) Identification of the current nutrition problems, 2) Identification of current food consumption patterns, 3) Identification of food groups used in the region, 4) Identification of specific foods within each group, 5) Estimation of nutritional profile for each group, 6) Identification the serving sizes for each group, 7) Incorporating physical activity into the food guidelines, 8) Identification of the pictorial illustration for the food guidelines. This Food Dome provides dietary guidelines for the Arab people to prevent the risk of diet-related diseases. It is also a useful tool for nutrition education. However, more testing in the target population is needed to evaluate the understanding of messages delivered by this Food Dome.