The Use of Healthy Eating Index 2015 and Healthy Beverage Index for Predicting and Modifying Cardiovascular and Renal Outcomes.

The newest version of the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), HEI-2015, is a diet quality index that measures adherence to the recommendations of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. While the key nutrient groups are included in most diet quality indices, differences in other components and the scoring system differentiate HEI. The Healthy Beverage Index (HBI) was recently introduced. Previous literature has confirmed the association of the older versions of HEI with metabolic syndrome, inflammatory markers, and negative health outcomes including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and all-cause mortality. This review presents the existing evidence on the association of HEI-2015 and HBI with health markers and long-term outcome, provides guidance on their use, and identifies persisting challenges such as the development of simple, unified, and objective tools to characterize healthy diets in routine clinical practice.