It's all just another chapter in the history of food politics: food industry giants lobby government departments to make sure their health advice is so watered down as to be meaningless. The USDA, for example, doesn't even have the political courage to admit that drinking soft drinks causes diabetes and obesity (thanks to the lobbying efforts of the soft drink industry). They certainly won't say that red meat causes cancer and heart disease (thanks to lobbying efforts from the beef industry), nor that refined white flour
causes nutritional deficiencies and blood sugar disorders (thanks to the grain growers associations).
In fact, if you look at the USDA Food Guide Pyramid, it's really just a marketing piece -- a brochure for the food lobby. The foods that are most strongly recommended on the pyramid end up being those with the greatest lobbying budgets. In fact, the pyramid has no relevance whatsoever to good nutritional science.
That's why nutritionists are dumbfounded. Here we have a nation of rising diabetes and obesity, and yet our own government won't dare tell people to "eat less" of anything. The message from the USDA has always been "eat more," precisely because that's the message that benefits the food industry lobby.
Any ideas why this is the case? It's probably because the vast majority of the people actually writing these dietary guidelines have financial ties to the very food industry groups that would be financially harmed by any advice telling Americans to eat less of anything.
It resembles the situation at the FDA, where many of the people making the decisions on which drugs get approved are, themselves, bankrolled by pharmaceutical companies. Can you spell C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N?
To learn more about how all this really works behind the scenes of the food industry, read the book Food Politics by Marion Nestle.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing site that has now grown in popularity. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also the founder and CEO of a well known email mail merge software developer whose software, 'Email Marketing Director,' currently runs the NaturalNews email subscriptions. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. He's also author of numerous health books published by Truth Publishing and is the creator of several consumer-oriented grassroots campaigns, including the Spam. Don't Buy It! campaign, and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. He also created the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the ending of corporate control over medicines, genes and seeds.
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Tuesday, November 02, 2004
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