Why the Dietary Guidelines Will Never Make Sense

As you’ve probably heard by now, the government has finally released the latest update of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). These guidelines are revised every five years to take into account the latest scientific developments, and are almost invariably released late. (The just-published version is the 2015 update.) 

Even though most citizens never read the guidelines and would be hard-pressed to identify even one of the recommendations they contain, the DGA nonetheless influences every American, because this document is the cornerstone for all federal nutrition policies, programs, and educational outreach, including things like school lunch programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the My Plate program. 

If all of this seems like déjà vu, it’s because we were talking about this last February, which is when the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee released their Scientific Report. This document, which is produced by a panel of independent nutrition scientists and researchers, is supposed to be the basis for the guidelines themselves. But that’s not what happens.

Public Comment or Industry Lobbying?

After the Advisory Committee publishes their report, there is a period during which the public is invited to submit comments to the USDA, before the final guidelines are issued. Here’s what really happens: Paid lobbyists for various sectors of the food industry spend the next nine months on a well-funded campaign to remove, or at least dilute, any recommendations that threaten the bottom line of their corner of the industry. 

Members of congress get into the act too, privately and publicly harassing the Secretary of Agriculture to remove any recommendations that negatively impact their constituents or donors.

As a result, the final guidelines, the ones that will steer national policy and expenditures for the next five years, are confusing, inconsistent, and watered down in ways that clearly reveal the political horse-trading that has gone on behind the scenes. What does and doesn’t make it into the final guidelines, and how the recommendations are worded, has a lot less to do with the convictions of nutrition scientists and a lot more to do with how much money a given industry can afford to spend. 

Focus on Foods not Nutrients?

One of the good recommendations from the Advisory Committee last February was that we take the focus off individual nutrients and talk instead about foods and dietary patterns. And, to some extent, this is reflected in the new DGA. There’s plenty of language about the foods you should eat more of, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. But, apparently, it’s not OK to tell people what foods they should eat less of, because that cuts into someone’s sales.

The Advisory Committee’s recommendation that Americans should eat less meat, therefore, was replaced by a recommendation to limit saturated fats, along with a weird and confusing comment that men and boys should cut back on protein. (See also: Do Americans Eat Too Much Protein?) 

Similarly, advice to drink water instead of soda was repackaged as a suggested limit on added sugars. Why the sudden pivot to nutrients, instead of foods? Because we don’t buy “saturated fat” or “protein” or “added sugar” at the grocery store or order it at restaurants, do we?

Commerce also shapes the recommendations for what we should eat. Along with fruits, vegetables, and lean protein, we are told that a healthy diet should include dairy products, for example. The rationale for this is that dairy products are the primary source of calcium in the American diet. But why are dairy products the primary source of calcium in the American diet? Because we’ve been promoting dairy as an essential part of the diet for the last hundred years. It’s a completely circular argument and self-fulfilling prophecy, which suits the dairy industry just fine. 

Don’t get me wrong: I certainly do my share to support the dairy industry. Because cheese. But from a nutritional perspective, I cannot support the idea that dairy is an essential food group. There are plenty of other ways to get your calcium.

See also: What Are the Best Sources of Calcium?

A Clear Conflict of Interest

If you want to read more about how these guidelines missed the mark (along with a few ways in which they hit the target), check out this editorial by David Katz and this one by Marion Nestle. But none of the outrage and frustration is likely to change anything as long as our national nutrition policy continues to be determined by the Department of Agriculture.

The primary mission of the USDA is to look after the interests of those involved in agriculture, including the farmers and corporations that produce and profit from their products, The goal is to increase consumption of these products, not limit it, which is why the guidelines seem to reluctant to suggest that you avoid or reduce any specific food. The USDA serves vegetable farmers as well, but the profits generated by the dairy, meat, and grain industry dwarf the profits generated by broccoli. And the desire to safeguard those profits often seems to thwart efforts to improve public health. 

One of the proposals floated by the Common Ground think tank I participated in recently was to relocate the Dietary Guidelines from the USDA to an agency without such intractable conflicts of interest, such as the Department for Health and Human Services. Although virtually everyone agreed that this would be a good thing, the idea was quickly abandoned as being politically impossible.

Of course, you and I can disregard the guidelines in favor of less biased sources of nutrition information. For example, check out Marion Nestle’s Rogue Dietary Guidelines, or the recommendations from the Common Ground think tank, or my book, Secrets for a Healthy Diet. For that matter, you can refer to the original report from the scientific advisory committee, before it got worked over by special interests.  But the DGA, such as they are, will continue to influence public programming, legislation, funding and public health. 

What do you think? Let me know on the Nutrition Diva Facebook page or in the comments below.

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