EXPOSING THE MONEY TRAIL

MONEY, not the good HEALTH OF AMERICANS, is the real news behind the new 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines.  Over the past tortured year the egg, meat, dairy, and fish industries have tried every trick in the books including falsified studies through huge “research” grants to influence the Dietary Guidelines Committee to drop cholesterol warnings from the new guidelines.  Purveyors of animal protein nearly succeeded in deceiving the public had it not been for the vigilance and legal efforts of The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and their colleagues.  After a year of defending your health and mine through petitions, oral testimony, billboards, and blogs, the Physicians Committee filed suit on January 6, 2016, against the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services exposing alleged industry corruption and financial influence in the Dietary Guidelines decision on Cholesterol.

When the Guidelines were finally released the next day, warnings about consuming animal foods remain in the form of the following conclusion:  eat as “little dietary cholesterol as possible while consuming a healthy eating pattern." Some critics think this statement is too little, too late and, furthermore, that red and processed meats warrant elimination from the American diet based on recent WHO declarations that both are carcinogenic. I concur, while also lamenting the absence of any efforts to address the environmental impact of food production in the final document.

In the opinion of some experts the new 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines are described as “useless”, unnecessarily confusing, and “a virtuoso display of linguistic contortionism…” Then there are those who sing its praises especially regarding the new recommendations to significantly reduce the amount of added sugars and sugar sweetened beverages from the American diet. The Dietary Guidelines are important for establishing food policy and practices across the nation in schools, hospitals, prisons, and countless agencies that serve the public.  In addition Americans rely on this dietary guidance for personal, family and medical decisions regarding food choices.  Dissemination of distorted and ambiguous dietary information and absence of known evidence-based scientific information regarding diet and human health is unconscionable.

To read about The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine efforts to expose alleged financial influence and additional investigations go to http://www.pcrm.org/DietaryGuidelines .

Finally, to read both the new 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines and the Scientific Advisory Committee report which has largely been ignored in preparing the Guidelines, go to http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/.

According to an article in Time.com by Alexandra Sifferlin, Dr. David Katz, founding director of Yale‘s Prevention Research Center and founder of the TRUE HEALTH INITIATIVE, calls himself a “fan” of this DGAC report saying they did a “fabulous job”.  His criticisms “pertain to the ways their work has been adulterated by politics as usual.”  He says this report “represents the work of public health scientists before political abuse, I invite every citizen who wants to eat in accord with expert guidance to refer to the DGAC report, and ignore the Dietary Guidelines!”