The Republican-controlled Congress scolded the Health and Agriculture departments over their handling of the new edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, due for release this month, and ordered an outside review to ensure future editions are even-handed and “based on strong, balanced science.” Lawmakers allotted $1 million for the review by the National Academy of Medicine.
They also renewed language to restrict the 2015 Dietary Guidelines to “nutritional and dietary information” that “is based on significant scientific agreement.” The panel of experts that advised HHS and USDA said healthful diets also should take into account sustainability of food production. Farm groups, led by cattle ranchers, said the advisory committee unfairly attacked red meat consumption. USDA and HHS have said sustainability will not be a factor in the 2015 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. The advice is similar to previous Dietary Guidelines. The suggestion to eat less red and processed meat was particularly controversial.
In a rider in the 2,009-page funding bill, lawmakers direct USDA to engage the National Academy of Medicine “to conduct a comprehensive study of the entire process used to establish the advisory committee … and the subsequent development of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”
In an explanatory statement that accompanied the bill, lawmakers said, “Questions have been raised about the scientific integrity of the process in developing the dietary guidelines and whether balanced nutritional information is reaching the public. The entire process used to formulate and establish the guidelines needs to be reviewed before future guidelines are issued. It is imperative that the guidelines be based upon strong, balanced science and focus on providing consumers with dietary and nutritional information that will assist them in eating a healthy and balanced diet.”
The House Agriculture Committee said the funding bill “blocks new and nonsensical big-government dietary guidelines that have little or nothing to do with dietary and nutrition science.”
“At the heart of the debate over the Dietary Guidelines is the meat industry’s everlasting fear that the government will urge Americans to eat less red meat,” said Michael Jacobson, head of the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest. “The preponderance of scientific evidence shows that Americans should eat less red and processed meat to help reduce their risk of cancer and heart disease. Americans should eat more vegetables, fruits, seafood, legumes, nuts, and whole grains and less sugar, refined grains, and salt.”
New York University Nutritionist and author Marion Nestle wrote in her Food Politics blog that Congress seemingly wanted a different message about healthy eating than it was getting. “I continue to be astonished that the House of Representatives would take such an intense interest in the science of nutrition when it is so uninterested in the science of climate change,” she said.
The WHO’s cancer agency classified processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans” and red meat as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in late October. The rating for processed meat was the strongest categorization given by the agency and was based on “sufficient evidence for colorectal cancer.” The meat industry faulted WHO for a “dramatic and alarmist over-reach” that did not consider the health benefits of meat consumption.