Quite a few progressive groups, along the lines of the Food Movement, have signed on to the recent Dietary Guidelines proposal. It’s generally treated as a united front, a no-brainer, with no other progressive points of view. They’ve even put out a full page ad in major newspapers.
In contrast, I see it as a flawed paradigm, with some key anomalies showing the flaws.
THE QUESTION OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
One kind of criticism comes from the sustainable agriculture community, including organic farmers like me. The dietary guidelines have included a sustainability component. That’s not the concern of these critics, they think that inclusion is great. The problem is with how it’s included.
Michael Whamm, a consultant to the Food Sustainability and Safety committee, quotes from the report in a blog on this topic, (http://www.fcrn.org.uk/fcrn-blogs/michaelwhamm/us-dietary-guidelines-report-–-whats-fuss-over-sustainability ) as follows:
“…[diets] lower in calories and animal based foods is more health promoting and is associated with less environmental impact than is the current U.S. diet.”
On the “animal based foods,” (and assumedly on the other topics as well,) then, a very general approach was taken. The environmental aspect of livestock production as practiced in the US is bad, therefore don’t eat meat. That’s the logic.
The concern of sustainable farmers is that the method rejects all meat, even though there are sustainable ways of raising livestock that can improve the environment. See, for example, the “Comments from Sustainable Livestock Farmers on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Recommendations,” here:
These concerns are easy to understand. Should the report have argued that, since there are huge problems with a wide range of aspects of “the current U.S. diet,” we we should not eat U.S. food? They did not do that, but rather specified a number of ways to do it better. That’s also what organic and other farmers want.
THE QUESTION OF HEALTHY DIETS
On some of the more standard or longstanding aspects of the Dietary Guidelines, other concerns are raised by nutrition organizations. Older people will recall that transfats and hydrogenated oils were once touted as the new healthy foods. Nonfat ingredients were also touted. These were complicated ingredients that had never been in the human diet. Saturated fat, such as from “animal based foods” and long a human diet staple, often with very positive results, (Weston A. Price, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, was rejected.
This was pushed by the vegetable transfat/fat substitute complex by advertising at least as far back as the 1960s, (in my recollection,) and they had a big influence on the government as well, for example on the McGovern committee of the 1970s. All of this was against the evidence. (see sources below)
That proved hard to reverse. A nutritionist here (Cedar Rapids) told me that it took 20 years to get hospitals to stop recommending margarine to heart patients!
It was then picked up by Frances Moore Lappe, in her best selling book, Diet for a Small Planet. Lappe wrote:
“The good news is that eating polyunsaturated fats—safflower, sunflower, corn, and soybean
oils–actually lowers the blood cholesterol levels, and may help control hypertension as well.
So the recommendation is that at the same time as we reduce our total fat, we shift from
animal fats and palm and coconut oils to more of these polyunsaturates.”
(Diet for a Small Planet, p. 124, 1971, 1975, 1982)
Well, not quite, according to another group of nutritional experts.
The Weston A. Price Foundation has been a leader on these issues. In “The Oiling of America,” (http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/the-oiling-of-america/) they lay out the history of these issues that I’ve mentioned above.
Their most recent critique of the (latest) Dietary Guidelines is introduced in a press release. While the report claims associations or correlations of health problems with meat (rather than causations,) here some important benefits of meat for U.S. diets are identified. The misunderstandings about fats are another area of concern. See the press release here:
http://bit.ly/failed-low-fat-advice
and the 18 pages of comments are found here:
http://www.westonaprice.org/wp-content/uploads/DGAC2015GuidelinesWAPFComments.pdf
For a short summary contrasting the problems of transfats with the benefits of saturated fats, see this brochure:
http://www.westonaprice.org/wp-content/uploads/2000/01/trifold-transfats2010.pdf
One group pushing the current version of the Dietary Guidelines is the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a former transfat advocate that still supports polyunsaturated vegetable oils. See a further critique of their views here.
THE QUESTION OF POLITICS
The progressive food groups touting the new dietary guidelilnes tend to frame the politics of it as: good progressive on one side, bad agribusiness livestock interests on the other. While they make some important points along these lines, in important ways, it’s is a misleading oversimplification, as seen in under the two headings of this blog. They’re throwing too much baby out with the dirty bathwater.
Finally, this all fits in with a paper I’m writing on “Essentialism in the Food Movement,” and with another recent blog post about a series of problems stemming from a few gross generalizations and overly simple syntheses made by the Food Movement (“Are Farmers Commodified ‘Excess Resources’ to Food Progressives,” http://www.dailykos.com/blog/uid:134766 ). I’m a big fan of the Food Movement. It’s a godsend to farmers in many ways. Unfortunately, however, there’s been a disconnect between the previous 5 decades of “family farm” or “farm justice” activism, and the new (Sustainable) Food Movement. To fix these problems, which all go strongly against Food Movement values and goals, requires greater engagement between these sectors.
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