The panel of experts helping the government revise the Dietary Guidelines for Americans “strays from strictly nutritional evidence” to dabble in “areas like sustainability and tax policy,” charged House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway. With two cabinet members slated to testify before his committee on Wednesday, Conaway said in an essay published by U.S. News and World Report that the advisory committee veered from traditional nutritional recommendations into topics “with which members of the committee had neither expertise, evidence nor charter.”
The Departments of Health and Agriculture are scheduled to issue a new edition of the guidelines later this year, which are used in crafting federal food programs. In a show of force, the Republican-run Congress included in government funding legislation for fiscal 2015 language against consideration of sustainability in the guidelines. Conaway’s essay indicated Health Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will face similar warnings at the hearing on Wednesday.
Agricultural groups, with cattle ranchers in the forefront, have criticized the advisory committee’s voluminous report, filed in February, as unduly harsh in some recommendations, such as to consume less red and processed meat. Conaway is from Texas, the No 1 cattle state.
Critics say the panel of experts over-stepped its bounds by saying that assuring food supplies in the future should be a factor in recommendations of healthful diets today; advice that favors consumption of fruits, vegetables and grains and leans away from meat. The statute authorizing the Dietary Guidelines, which are updated every five years, says “each such report shall contain nutritional and dietary information and guidelines for the general public.”
A group of food policy and and sustainability experts said in the journal Science there is no prohibition in the law against consideration of sustainable food supplies. One of the co-authors, former deputy agriculture secretary Kathleen Merrigan, noted the guidelines recommend matching food consumption to physical activity in order to avoid chronic disease. Inclusion of sustainability would be an analogous step, she told Ag Insider. The Netherlands, Brazil and Sweden have incorporated sustainability into their dietary advice and Germany is considering it, said the experts. They say politics is driving the criticism of the advisory committee.
In U.S. News, Conaway said “misguided recommendations have ill effects not only on consumers but for agricultural production as well.” He said decades of advice for Americans to lower their blood cholesterol helped drive down per capita egg consumption by 30 percent.
“Before the federal government makes recommendations that could have long-lasting consequences for agricultural industries, we must guarantee the science is clear and irrefutable,” wrote Conaway, adding, “there is a concern about whether the committee’s recommendations will maintain the scientific integrity necessary to benefit the public.”
Conaway twice mentioned tax policy in his critique but did not go into detail nor was a spokeswoman immediately available to do so. Nutrition professor Marion Nestle wrote in her Food Politics blog that the advisory committee urged Americans to get less than 10 percent of their calories from sugar. The panel suggested economic and pricing incentives should be explored to promote purchase of healthier foods and beverages. As an example, it said higher taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages could encourage people to consume less of them.
The environmental group Friends of the Earth said its analysis of the 29,000 comments filed on the advisory committee report found “overwhelming support for including sustainability considerations and clear guidance for diets that include less meat and more plants.” A companion report said the government would be within the law to include sustainability in the new edition of the guidelines.
The recommendations from the expert panel are similar to previous Dietary Guidelines. “The overall body of evidence … identifies that a healthy dietary pattern is higher in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low- or non-fat dairy, seafood, legumes, and nuts; moderate in alcohol (among adults); lower in red and processed meat; and low in sugar-sweetened foods and drinks and refined grain,” said the advisory committee’s report in February.