The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), which inform the $16 billion dollar school lunch program, federal procurement, and our national health education programs, have been a point of contention among industry representatives, government officials, medical professionals, environmental scientists and civil society. Last May, we asked the questions: Who are these guidelines really for? Should dietary guidelines prioritize the right of all Americans to have access to nutritious, affordable and sustainable food? Or should they prioritize increasing demand for the foods produced by the industry groups with the most pester power? Yesterday, we got our answer when the final 2015 DGA’s were published. “If I were the meat industry I would break out the champagne,â€? said Marion Nestle, a leading food politics expert and nutrition professor at New York University. While much of the discussion has been about whether or not the DGA’s should “keep their hands off our hotdogs,â€? the heart of this saga isn’t really about meat at all. It’s bigger than that. For the first time ever, the official scientific body that recommends updates to the scientific basis of the dietary guidelines, the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), considered the environmental underpinnings of healthy diets. Beyond this, the report took the most cutting-edge approach to integrating the best of what we know about ecological public health. The recommendations, published in February 2015, stated that: The gargantuan 18-month undertaking and rigorous synthesis of mountains of data cannot be understated. Crucially, the recommendations were made, free of the political pressure that resulted in the neutered version published by the USDA and HHS on the 7th Jan. For real guidelines, free from industry pressure, we should all look no further than the DGAC’s report which stated: But despite unprecedented support from environmental and public health organizations, and the overwhelming majority of public comments in support of the inclusion of sustainability, due to industry pressure, ‘sustainability’ became a dirty word. Politicians representing industry interests immediately acted to censor the science, by passing a congressional directive instructing United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack to “ensure that the advisory committee ‌ not pursue an environmental agendaâ€? and to reject the inclusion of ‘environmental or production factors’ in the 2015 DGAs. This didn’t stop the DGAC publishing their report, but shortly afterwards, Sec. Vilsack duly bent the knee by echoing industry’s argument that sustainability was ‘outside of the scope’ of the guideline’s legal mandate; later using the same — seemingly apolitical — pretext to rule out sustainability in a blog, published jointly with Secretary Sylvia Burwell of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). However, it’s clear that the decision was entirely political. If true, the pretext given, would also have ruled out physical activity, which has been an important feature of dietary guidelines for over a decade. A legal analysis by public health attorney Michele Simon concluded that the statutory language, Congressional intent, and previous versions of the guidelines all clearly demonstrate that the USDA and HHS would be well within its mandate to incorporate sustainability in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Disregarding this, in October 2015, it was determined that environmental concerns would be removed from the final guidelines. Nevertheless, the fight over this year’s guidelines set a precedent for public debate about the sustainability of our diets. Rapidly advancing science now shows that, on average, diets higher in plant-based foods and lower in red and processed meat are better for human health and the stability of the environment. This ‘inconvenient truth’ represents a threat to the meat industry, whose elite fear changes in multi-billion dollar federal spending on food, health and nutrition programs. In addition they fear government sending a ‘signal to consumers that such (healthy) foods are preferred’. Both could reduce profits. In response, industry representatives are doing everything in their power to discourage the American people and government from changing behavior or policy based on this science. Unfortunately this power is considerable. The meat industry has long been able to bend the arm of government to manipulate dietary recommendations that might impact sales. As early as 1977, a reduction in meat was recommended, but at the protest of industry the report was amended to suggest a decrease in ‘animal fat’. At the time, the chair of the committee, Senator George McGovern said he “did not want to disrupt the economic situation of the meat industry and engage in a battle with that industry that we could not win.â€? Almost 40 years later, little has changed. Legally binding language in the 2015 annual spending bill threatened to cut funding for guidelines that include content outside of ‘nutritional and dietary information’. Despite overwhelming and unprecedented public support, where, according to HHS Sec. Burwell, more than 97% of the 19,000 public comments on sustainability supported it, the political power of agricultural interests still overrules public interest. A case in point can be found in House Agriculture Committee Chairman, Texas Republican Mike Conaway’s opening statement at the October dietary guidelines committee hearing. Conaway said,“The inclusion of these issues [sustainability] in this process could have resulted in misguided recommendations that could have ill effects on consumer habits and agricultural production.â€? For too many lawmakers, guidelines are seen as a marketing tool for industry. It’s not hard to understand why. Analysis by the Center for Science in the Public Interest shows the 71 GOP representatives and 20 senators that signed critical letters of the recommendations collectively received more than $3 million in donations from food-related donors in 2013/2014. Of note, the senators received almost half a million from beef and cattle industries. The role of the USDA itself is convoluted with disparate and conflicting goals. On the one hand, it is charged with promoting production and demand for agricultural commodities, and on the other, providing dietary and nutritional advice aimed at the prevention of ill health. This inability to take a systemic perspective on food, demanded by modern science, has recently led experts such as
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