USDA's New Symbol of Dietary Guide is Propaganda for Dairy Industry

While there's some good news when it comes to fruit and vegetables, the new guidelines seem tailored to encourage maximum dairy industry profitability. 

By Ari LeVaux, AlterNet
Posted on June 13, 2011

MyPlate, the USDA's new symbol of dietary correctness, was unveiled on June 2. It replaces the agency's Eating Right Pyramid (est. 1992), which succeeded the Four Basic Food Groups (1956). Those four in turn represented a consolidation of the seven food groups the agency pushed in the 1940s, themselves pared down from 12 during the Great Depression, when many people would have been happy to find even a single food group on their plates.

The USDA's first nutrition guide was published in 1916, a year after the National Dairy Council was founded. The dairy industry has worked tirelessly with (and on) the USDA ever since -- an investment that has paid many dividends, including dairy's privileged perch as one of only four basic food groups. And despite zero scientific basis that a healthy diet requires dairy, the stuff has managed to maintain its position as a key dietary recommendation on each successive symbol du jour, through the pyramid days and on to today's MyPlate graphic.

In fact, the MyPlate paradigm is practically a repeat of the Four Food Groups, with only three discernible tweaks.

The "meat and fish" group has been generalized to "protein." This is barely even a change, and more of a semantic adjustment to reality given how many ways there are to get your fill of essential amino acids without meat.

The grain group made the transition from to MyPlate relatively unscathed, with an added piece of advice to eat more whole grains. It's worth mentioning that plenty of "Paleo diet" followers, not to mention the Atkins crowd, seem to do fine without grains as well. And if you avoid grains and sugars, it's practically impossible to get fat.

The most substantial change to the dietary recommendations is the "fruit and vegetable" category, which has been split in two. Fully half of the USDA's new plate consists of fruit and vegetables. This is an audacious goal considering how few Americans currently come close to consuming that ratio. If taken to heart by enough people, this change alone could have profound effects on public health.

By including recommendations against oversized portions, and generalizing the protein group, the USDA has managed to distance itself from the influence of special interests like the meat and fast-food industries. But it remains clearly beholden to dairy.  

This brings us to the third discernible difference from the four food groups: the MyPlate symbol includes a little circle next to the plate that looks like a glass of milk. Labeled "Dairy," it stands for three daily servings of dairy, including cheese, yogurt, milk, and other processed secretions of mammary glands, usually bovine.

In response to MyPlate's debut the dairy industry took a victory lap, with press releases from various dairy-oriented think tanks and trade groups praising the new symbol.

"USDA's new MyPlate, the simple visual metaphor of a serving of dairy products alongside a plate, says it's vital to consume three servings of low-fat and fat-free dairy foods every day," gloated Jerry Kozak, president of the National Milk Producers Federation, as he tacitly reveals how the new guidelines seem tailored to encourage maximum dairy industry profitability.

Three servings of dairy per day would be an increase for most Americans, who currently consume an average of two. Encouraging Americans to eat low-fat and nonfat milk products means even more profit, because the fat skimmed off is then processed into butter and other marketable products. The more items you can sell from a single gallon of milk, the more money you make, which is why as far as the dairy industry is concerned the MyPlate cup might as well be full of champagne: the industry has convinced USDA to recommend increased consumption of a product that's not only unnecessary, but is actually bad for most people.

Lactose intolerance, by some estimates, affects 75 percent of the world's population.

Caucasians have one of the lowest rates of intolerance, at only 12 percent. These numbers don't include the people like me, who may not get explosive diarrhea and other classic effects of lactose intolerance, but don't do well on dairy, with results including phlegm, heartburn and upset stomach. And if 75 percent or more of the world's humans can't handle dairy, it's hard to argue it being necessary for optimal human health.

Here is USDA's obsequiously dairy-centric advice to the lactose-averse: "If you avoid milk because of lactose intolerance, the most reliable way to get the health benefits of dairy products is to choose lactose-free alternatives within the Dairy Group, such as cheese, yogurt, lactose-free milk, or calcium-fortified soymilk (soy beverage), or to consume the enzyme lactase before consuming milk."

Calcium is the primary justification for the importance of dairy, but many green vegetables offer just as much calcium as milk, and in a more easily absorbed form. With the exception of soymilk, all other calcium sources, including almond milk -- which contains twice the calcium of dairy milk -- are cautioned against:

"[Non-soy, non-dairy calcium sources] may provide calcium, but may not provide the other nutrients found in dairy products."

If science and health were calling the shots, then milk products would simply be absorbed into the protein category as one of many ways to get your essential amino acids, or perhaps into a "calcium" group that would also include dark-green leafy vegetables and fortified dairy alternatives.

Much of the positive health hype about dairy is perpetuated by the National Dairy Council, which has a history of exaggerating dairy's positives and downplaying its negatives. In 2007 the Federal Trade Commission forced the NDC to retract its claim that dairy consumption encourages weight loss.

The NDC is "the nutrition research, education and communications arm of Dairy Management Inc," the Web site of which makes its intentions clear -- and improving public health isn't one of them. "DMI helps build demand for dairy on behalf of dairy producers and is dedicated to the success of the dairy industry."

Consuming dairy products is a choice that we (at least the lactose tolerant among us) have. But to spin the consumption of milk as a thrice-daily necessity is yet another scary reminder of the power that industries wield on policy.

At least with food we have the option to think for ourselves. But if USDA policy is so clearly shaped by industry, it makes you wonder about compromises the agency might make in other areas of its purview. USDA regularly makes decisions on things like pesticide regulation, forest policy and approval or disapproval of genetically modified crops. And those decisions, unlike a plate symbol, aren't so easily ignored.
 

World Food Prices Reach Record High & Enter 'Danger Territory'

(If anything gets us, it will be this--or this in combination with one more thing, like another real estate crash or a crash of the US dollar.--jef)

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UN food price index rises for sixth month in a row to highest since records began in 1990
by Jill Treanor
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

Soaring prices of sugar, grain and oilseed drove world food prices to a record in December, surpassing the levels of 2008 when the cost of food sparked riots around the world, and prompting warnings of prices being in "danger territory".

An index compiled monthly by the United Nations surpassed its previous monthly high – June 2008 – in December to reach the highest level since records began in 1990. Published by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation, the index tracks the prices of a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, and has risen for six consecutive months.

Abdolreza Abbassian, FAO economist, told the Guardian: "We are entering a danger territory." But he stressed that the situation was not yet as bad as 2008.

Sugar and meat prices are at record levels while cereal prices are back at the levels last seen in 2008 when riots in Haiti killed four people and riots in Cameroon left 40 people dead.

Abbassian warned prices could rise higher still, amid fears of droughts in Argentina and floods in Australia and cold weather killing plants in the northern hemisphere.

"There is still room for prices to go up much higher, if for example the dry conditions in Argentina tend to become a drought, and if we start having problems with winterkill in the northern hemisphere for the wheat crops," Abbassian said.

Prices have been rising steadily but Abbassian said that by now he had been expecting food prices to start to fall because many poorer countries had good harvests last year.

But this has not happened after unpredictable weather caused a poor wheat crop in Russia. Last year European wheat prices doubled, US corn prices rose more than 50% and US soybean prices jumped more than 30%.

The current floods in Australia have the potential to affect prices for commodities such as sugar and cane growers are warning of production problems for up to three years. Wheat supplies are expected to affected – Australia is the fourth largest wheat exporter – and the country is also the largest exporter of coking coal, production of which is also being affected by the floods.

At the same time demand from emerging countries such as China and India was strong.

But, Abbassian played down concern that the rising food prices could cause fresh riots as happened two years ago when the price of cereals was largely the cause of the problem along with a dramatic spike in the price of oil. He noted that another rise in the oil price – currently around $95 a barrel – could exacerbate the problem. While oil is rising in price, and forecasters are suggesting it could hit $100, it is still well below the $145 peak it reached in July 2008 on a wave of buying by international speculators.

The FAO food index hit 215 points last month, up from 206 in November, to break the 213.5 registered in June 2008. It shows a dramatic rise in prices for food in a decade. In 2000 the index stood at 90 and did not break through 100 until 2004.

Economists are on guard for spikes in inflation around the world, which might force up interest rates which in the developed world are at historically low levels as a result of the banking crisis.

Julian Jessop, chief international economist at Capital Economics, said: "The upward pressure on inflation this year from the recent surge in the cost of agricultural commodities will be much greater than that from the pick-up in oil prices".

Jessop said the price of oil was rising largely as result of demand caused by a rebound in global industrial activity. "In contrast, the surge in agricultural food prices is largely a consequence of supply shocks, such as droughts in major wheat producing countries. These have been compounded by speculative pressures."