Dietary guidelines should be based on science, not politics

When I was growing up, the U.S. Department of Agriculture promoted the basic four food groups as the construct of the ideal diet. But it was a political construct, not a scientific one – with meat and dairy accounting for two of the four food groups and vegetables bunched into a single slot (and grains into the other).

It was a marketing initiative that helped convince American consumers to eat more animal products than any other people in the world. As with the federal government paying for research and development for factory farms through the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, created in 1964, the former dietary guidelines reflected the worst elements of crony capitalism. It was special interests influencing government to favor industrial agriculture at the expense of consumers, family farmers, and the public health.

{mosads}It’s been some time since the basic four food groups, and the USDA’s subsequent dietary guidelines have been more balanced and more science-based. The latest iteration is most certainly a big step forward. Last week, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, consisting of 14 health experts charged with advising the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services, recommended that Americans should eat a diet that includes more plant-based foods and fewer animal-based foods.

The largest U.S. institutions, including the $16 billion national school lunch program, shape their food policies in accordance with these guidelines.

Predictably, lobbyists from the meat and dairy industries are already hectoring government decision-makers to radically revise the report’s recommendations. Last year, these groups launched a campaign pressuring lawmakers to include language in a spending bill directing the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to forgo sustainability considerations when drafting their report. The committee included sustainability in their report anyway, and advised a decrease in our animal-based food consumption.

We urge the USDA and the HHS to follow the expert recommendations in the report and put our health and that of the planet above the profits of factory farming interests. Our military bases, hospitals and universities need sound advice to make healthy, humane and sustainable choices for the people they serve. Our school lunch programs need backing to create healthier menus that, in turn, will create healthier children.

In our work with schools, we’ve found an incredible amount of support from administrators, nutritionists and parents for healthy and balanced meals, including more easy and delicious plant-based foods. Our staff has worked with hundreds of school districts that are now participating in Meatless Monday programs. These include some of the largest school districts in the country, like the Los Angeles Unified School District, Detroit Public Schools (which now has two meatless days a week), Houston Independent School District, and Philadelphia Public Schools.

Meat will continue to be a major part of the American diet, and we hope that as consumers eat less meat, they place greater value on the animal products they do buy. Consumers can do this by choosing meat from farmers who raise the animals in extensive systems and don’t lace their feed with antibiotics, hormones and dangerous growth-promoting drugs like ractopamine. And the government can help by heeding the recommendations in last week’s report, which add to the superabundant data that a diet richer in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains produces less heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes.

Pacelle is president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States.