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Food politics making America obese
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I’ve been doing a lot of research on the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid lately. As I’ve gotten older and more cynical, I have come to believe it is a political tool foisted on unwary American citizens.
I came across an illuminating source that verifies my suspicions. Of course, like most people, finding information to verify what I suspect is easy. It’s this ability to question and to look deeper that makes me feel my opinions and/or beliefs are justified, or not. In this case, I still believe the food pyramid is based on food politics.
Some people, more naive than myself may say: How could something as seemingly innocuous as the food pyramid be so political?
How can it not if it is generated by a governmental agency, might be my cryptic reply? But I don’t recommend anyone take my word if I can’t back it up. Guess what? I can – but I bet you knew that.
The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee 2000 Report says on its first page, “Let the Food Guide Pyramid guide you so that you get the nutrients your body needs each day.”
It seems obvious when scanning through this document (which is 19 pages), that the drafters felt fitness is at least as important as good nutrition.
I agree with that, but I don’t necessarily think everyone who is heavy is overweight because they are lazy, which is what that position seems to imply.
Though the Dietary Guidelines for Americans continually states throughout that “Aim for a healthy weight” is a goal, the food pyramid sabotages us.
A group of doctors called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) have taken on the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid.
They have an active campaign detailed through their own web page. The PCRM has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, claiming they “operated in violation of the law” when they generated the Dietary Guidelines.
According to the lawsuit history news release on their web page, several weeks before the Pyramid was due to be released back in April 1991, the PCRM asked that the USDA replace the Basic Four established in the 1950’s with New Four Food Groups which incorporate whole grains with vegetables, legumes and fruits at the pyramid’s base.
The National Cattlemen’s Association and the National Milk Producers Federation, among others concerned for their profit margin, joined forces to approach Edward Madigan, the Secretary of Agriculture at that time.
When the proposed adjustment to the pyramid was dropped a few weeks later, Madigan said the reason was because it would be too hard for children to understand if adopted.
What the heck? Is America getting fatter because our secretary of Agriculture didn’t want to confuse school children with a healthier version?
Well, no, not really. At least not according to the PCRM, lobbyists and USDA employees who said the real reason was the food producers’ objections.
The American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association and other organizations that deal with the results of bad nutritional standards made their own objections to the USDA’s dumping of the “Eating Right Pyramid.”
The USDA’s answer to those objections was to hire a private firm to determine whether there was another alternative shape nutritional information could take, like, say a bowl.
They wanted to test it on children, since that is the USDA’s target audience, but discovered their (our) money and time was wasted. The present pyramid was released a year later than planned with 33 changes the meat and dairy lobbies demanded. Doesn’t sound political to me.
Why is this even important? Well, the National Center for Health Statistics shows that in a study conducted from 1988-94, 56% of Americans were overweight.
Since the USDA controls school lunch menus nationally, based on the Food Guide Pyramid fine-tuned by meat and dairy industries in 1991, and their target audiences, children, the next study from 1999-2000 would seem to be an indicator of the success (or lack) of teaching and applying their version of healthy eating habits to children.
The study shows 64% of Americans to be overweight. This is definitely indicative of a problem when your stats rise 12% in 6 years.
It gets better. Remember the lawsuit filed against the USDA by the PCRM? There was a news release, dated Oct. 2, 2000, that said a federal court ruled against the USDA for violating federal law, keeping secret documents used in setting those nutritional guidelines.
In the suit, the PCRM argued that of the 11 members on the committee that produces the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 6 of them had financial ties to the meat, dairy or egg industries.
Yeah, maybe our nation’s weight problems lie not in enough physical activity. I’d like to blame computers, too. And the information age has sure made accessing information much less physical than it used to be.
I can’t help shaking the conviction that eating habits are established in childhood, introduced when minds are impressionable, reinforced with false information, supplied by people who are more motivated by money than truth.
The sacrificial lambs are children, who grow to be overweight and/or obese adults that our society thinks are lazy. Makes a person wonder who’s really lazy.
Is it an apathetic, judgmental public, an appointed government official who wants a bigger house, or a misguided overweight person who was molded by the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid into exactly what he/she is?
Tracy Curran, The Arbiter
