How Meat Producers Have Influenced Nutrition Guidelines for Decades
The USDA is responsible for both regulating and promoting the industry. No surprise then that this year’s dietary recommendations probably won’t include decreasing meat consumption.
In December of that year, the committee released the second edition of its report. A proposal to “decrease consumption of meat and increase consumption of poultry and fish” had been replaced with a recommendation to “decrease consumption of animal fat, and choose meats, poultry, and fish which will reduce saturated fat intake.” Senator George McGovern, who chaired the committee, was quoted as saying that 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.”
A similar battle played out in the early 1990s when the USDA replaced its food wheel, which visually put eggs, meat, poultry, and dairy on the same footing as vegetables, with a food pyramid, which made it clearer that Americans should eat more fruits and vegetables than meat, poultry, and eggs. In April 1991, the Washington Post published a story about the arrival of the “Eating Right Food Pyramid.” “There is no question that the basic food groups as they used to be presented really gave the impression that the most important things were meats and dairy products,” Joan Gussow, a nutritionist with the Columbia University Teachers College, told the paper. “This is a real mark of progress.”
By the end of the month, though, the pyramid had been pulled. “Yielding to pressure from the meat and dairy industries, the Agriculture Department has abandoned its plans to turn the symbol of good nutrition from the ‘food wheel’ showing the ‘Basic Food Groups’ to an ‘Eating Right’ pyramid that sought to deemphasize the place of meat and dairy products in a healthful diet,” the Washington Post reported. As Alisa Harrison, a director of information for the National Cattlemen’s Association told the Post, her organization worried that consumers would think the pyramid meant they should “drastically cut down on their meat consumption.” A year later, another pyramid was released with 33 small changes, including numbers that showed how many servings from each food should be eaten.
As described in detail in this 1993 article by Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University’s nutrition department, instead of saying to “eat less,” the guidelines came to include only positive instructions. In the most recent Dietary Guidelines, published in 2010, “lean meat” is listed in Chapter 4: Food and Nutrients to Increase. This year, however, the advisory report preceding the updated guidelines explicitly advises to eat less red and processed meat, though the total amount of recommended meat intake is the same as it was in 2010.
In response to an email inquiry, NAMI extolled the healthfulness of meat as a reason to keep eating it at current levels. Americans “currently eat the recommended amount of protein, there is no reason for the government to reduce its recommended levels of meat and poultry,” NAMI spokeswoman Janet Riley wrote.
But as government data consistently shows, most Americans actually eat much more than their recommended daily protein intake (46 grams for women, and 56 grams for men). And among populations where more protein is necessary, lean meats, poultry, seafood, and plant-based proteins are the ones usually suggested by health professionals.
The key tactic: Attack the scientific methodology used by those recommending a drop in consumption.
According to Politico, before the Nutrition Coalition was officially formed, Teicholz attended a meeting with representatives for ConAgra, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, among others, to talk about whether criticizing the guidelines from the scientific standpoint would “create new opportunities” for rewriting the recommendations. Since then, Politico reports, Teicholz also has met with USDA staff, House Agriculture Appropriations chairman Robert Aderholt, and Debra Eschmeyer, a senior nutrition policy adviser to Michelle Obama and the executive director of the first lady’s health initiative, “Lets Move!”
It is far from the only instance of the government’s expert panel being attacked for its methods. Republican lawmaker Mike Conaway of Texas, who chairs the House Committee on Agriculture and hails from the largest cattle-producing state in the country, wrote an op-ed for U.S. News & World Report echoing Teicholz’s article for BMJ by questioning the science behind the advisory group’s conclusions, as well as its decision to include sustainability as a factor in its recommendations. And as James Hamblin wrote in The Atlantic, at the recent Congressional hearing on the guidelines, lawmakers spent a significant amount of time questioning the scientific validity of the advisory report.