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 natural health author and award-winning journalist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he is well known as the creator of popular downloadable preparedness programs on financial collapse, emergency food storage, wilderness survival and home defense skills. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2010, Adams co-founded NaturalNews.com, 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 a noted technology pioneer and founded a software company in 1993 that developed the HTML email newsletter software currently powering the NaturalNews subscriptions. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body. Known by his callsign, the 'Health Ranger,' Adams posts his missions statements, health statistics and health photos at www.HealthRanger.org
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Tuesday, November 02, 2004
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