AliciaLinFoodPyramid

= **The Food Pyramid** =

**Is it helping you or big business? ** Image [Left]: Corporate Travel. Web. 24 Mar 2010. . Image [Right]: "My Pyramid." Health Promotion. Web. 22 Mar 2010. .

The food pyramid is a graphical representation created by the USDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, of one way for people to eat a healthy diet.
 * What is the food pyramid?**

The USDA in 1916 first set dietary guidelines that were supposed to address food shortages and rations during the Great Depression.[[|1]] Throughout the years, the USDA used a large part of their money to help the needy and poor by providing food assistance in the form of the National School Lunch Program, the Food Stamp Program, and the Women Infant and Children Program. Thus, because of this assistance with food, the government thought there was reason to provide nutritional information in the form of the food pyramid in 1992.[[|2]]
 * Where did this start?**

The USDA’s main focus is to support and promote farmers' interests. Before setting any form of dietary guidelines, the USDA was supporting the agricultural industry. Thus, this creates an inherent conflict of interest in terms of the objectivity of the health information the USDA supplies. [[|2]]
 * Conflicts of Interests**

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in 1999 filed a lawsuit against the USDA claiming the department “unfairly promotes the special interests of the meat and dairy industries through its official dietary guidelines and the Food Pyramid.”[[|2]] Apparently, six out of the eleven members of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee had financial ties to meat, dairy, and egg interests.[[|2]]
 * The Food Pyramid Committee**

The new 2005 Food Pyramid advocates for 3 cups of milk a day. With this government suggestion as well as the $180 million annual advertising budget of the dairy industry itself, the. the average American consumes over 600 pounds of dairy products every year. In general, U.S. dairy farmers produce 163 billion pounds of milk and milk products annually. However, Milk may not be as healthy as people may think. Milk has been linked to asthma, juvenile-onset diabetes, obesity, heart disease, ovarian and breast cancer, and a slew of other diseases. [[|2]]
 * Milk as a Category**

Additionally milk as a category by itself is questionable. According to Johnson & Johnson, lactose intolerance affects “over 50 percent of the Hispanic population, 75 percent of Native Americans, 80 percent of African Americans, and 90 percent of Asian Americans.“ [[|3]] Instead of advocating for alternatives to milk, such as rice milk or soy milk, the USDA guidelines to convince Americans that milk is an integral part of a healthy diet. [[|3]] The idea that milk is a food group implies that milk is essential to a healthy diet when there are plenty of cultures that consume very little dairy products except for breast feeding. Additionally, there are healthy vegans that do not consume milk or milk products.

In 1916, the USDA’s first dietary guidelines, based on the science of the time, informed Americans to “eat less” and consume less fat. The concept of “eating less” and reducing fat intake could potentially compromise the meat and dairy industry financially. Therefore, the meat, egg, and dairy lobbyists from 1916 to 1992, when the Food Pyramid was revealed, intervened at every version of federal nutritional policy. Words were altered, for example, in 1979, this was the last time “eat less” and “cut down” were in reference to meat. Thus, they chose the words “choose lean” in describing meat while the Food Pyramid proposed 2-3 servings of meat, which was actually an increased from the dietary goals of the time.[[|1]] **Our Diet is a Sustainability Issue** Essentially, a meat and dairy centric diet is unsustainable. “According to a recent report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock production, dominated in the West by large-scale factory farming, is responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions; a bigger share than all of the world's transport.”[[|4]] A meat based diet is more energy intensive and uses more resources than a plant based diet. Producing 1 kg of meat uses 100 times more water than needed to produce 1 kg of grain.[[|5]]
 * Meat as a Category**

The food pyramid is the most widely used source of dietary information.[[|1]] It’s important that the Food Pyramid remains unbiased for the health and safety of our nation. Perhaps we need to change the department of Government responsible for setting our nation’s dietary guidelines. It’s ridiculous that the same government agency responsible for educating Americans about nutrition also promotes industry. We need to separate these two conflicting interests and make the government accountable to the people its serving.[[|6]]
 * Solutions**

Additionally, we need to make choosing a healthy choice a viable financial option. According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the federal subsidies for food production between 1995 - 2005 is 73.80% of meat, 13.23% of grain, 10.69% of sugar, oil, starch, and alcohol, 1.91% of nuts and legumes, and only 0.37% of vegetables and fruits.[[|7]] Additionally, “with the recent passage of the Farm Bill on May 13, 2002, dairy farmers and processors will receive $2 billion more in subsidies over the next three and a half years.”[[|2]]


 * Related Links **
 * **[|Toward a New Food Guide Pyramid]**
 * **[|Not Milk: The USDA, Monsanto, and the U.S. Dairy Industry]**
 * **[|The Politics of Meat and Dairy: How Big Business Influences Government Policy and Our Food Choices]**
 * **[|Subsidizing Poor Eating Habits]**


 * For the Complete Bibliography, click here.**