Tag Archives: USDA Dietary Guidelines

Call to action: Feds ignore science on saturated fats, poised to tighten restrictions in 2020-25 guidelines

Posted on by
2

Where is our dairy industry? No time to waste!

dga2

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, April 3, 2020

 WASHINGTON, D.C. — While Congress, USDA and HHS are all consumed by the health concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is moving forward full-steam-ahead with what looks like more restrictions on saturated fats to be announced in May. Meanwhile, dairy leadership organizations sit on the sidelines, just letting it happen.

According to the Nutrition Coalition, and this reporter’s own following of the DGA Committee process, the process has been flawed from beginning and has reached a critical juncture. There is an urgent need for the public to pay attention and get involved.

Many had hoped the Committee would review and include the sound science and revelations about the flaws in the saturated fat limits in the current dietary guidelines to remove those restrictions or improve them in the 2020-25 guidelines. But the opposite is occurring.

As reported previously in Farmshine, some of the very best and most rigorous science on saturated fats and in relation to dairy fats vs. cardiovascular disease have been excluded from the review process from the very beginning.

Unfortunately, the process that began in 2019 is poised to move Americans even further down the wrong road with even more restrictive fat rules that will govern and inform all institutional feeding and which heavily influence the foodservice industry. Even worse, farmer checkoff funds are forced, by USDA, to help promote these unhealthy guidelines.

While National Milk Producers Federation, International Dairy Foods Association, Dairy Management Inc., and other industry organizations are silent, the Nutrition Coalition, founded by Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, is sounding the alarm.

“We need your help to ensure that the federal government not continue to ignore large, government-funded rigorous clinical trials — the “gold standard” of evidence — that could reverse decades of misguided nutrition policy on the subject of saturated fats,” writes Teicholz in a recent communication.

She’s right. From the beginning, the DGA Committee was formed, and the research pre-screened by USDA, in such a way that many of the best studies and minds have been excluded.

Processed With Darkroom

Part of the screening process used by USDA for science that will be included or excluded from Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee consideration is this curious item shown above: “Framed around relevancy to U.S. Federal  Policy”. Committee members in October asked for more information on this research screening criteria. USDA explained it to them and those watching that this refers to including only the research that “aligns with current federal policy.”

Interestingly, one of the criteria for screening the research the Committee can consider is that it must “align with current federal policy.”

This dooms the entire process to a slanted view that is entrenched in the flawed bureacracy right from the start!

During the recent meeting of the DGA Committee in March — the last such meeting before release of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) in May or June 2020 — the Committee failed to consider any of this evidence on saturated fat.

Instead, the committee announced it had found the link between saturated-fats consumption and cardiovascular disease to be “strong,” for both children and adults.

In fact, the committee recently proposed lowering the caps on saturated fat even further, from the current 10% of calories down to 7%!

“These conclusions ignore the entire last decade of science, during which a growing number of scientists have concluded that the caps on saturated fats are not supported by the science,” Teicholz points out.

She cites the work of a group of leading scientists who have reviewed the research on saturated-fats and released a consensus statement.

“Scientists are concluding that the most rigorous and current science fails to support a continuation of caps on saturated fats,” writes Teicholz. “So, why is the current DGA Committee — yet again — simply rubber-stamping the status quo and ignoring the science?”

The Nutrition Coalition is working fervently to expose the flaws in the process the DGA Committee is using under the USDA Food Nutrition Services umbrella. This in turn is what is used by USDA and HHS to govern what Americans eat.

These are not just “guidelines”, these are edicts to which everything from school lunches to military provisions are tied.

In fact, even farmers are tied to these guidelines as the dairy checkoff program leaders maintain they cannot promote whole milk because they are governed by USDA to stick to the guidelines, forcing farmers to mandatorily fund this completely flawed and unscientific “government speech.”

Americans deserve a recommendation on dietary saturated fat that is based on the most current and rigorous science available, and the Nutrition Coalition is issuing a call to action for Americans to join them in calling on the 2020 DGA Committee to critically review the most up-to-date evidence and modify its position on saturated fats accordingly.

“When we refer to “rigorous science,” we mean the data from well-controlled, randomized, clinical trials—the type of evidence that can demonstrate cause and effect,” writes Teicholz. “These trials were conducted on some 75,000 people addressing the question: do saturated fats cause heart disease? The results are that fats have no effect on cardiovascular or total mortality. This evidence has never been directly reviewed by any DGA committee.

“Ignoring evidence in order to preserve the status-quo is not acceptable,” she continues. “It’s not good policy, and it has not been good for the health of the American people. With the next iteration of the guidelines, your help is more crucial than ever to ensure that the USDA critically review the most up-to-date evidence and modify the government’s position on saturated fats to reflect the science accurately.”

Meanwhile, the dairy industry leaders continue to drag their collective feet.

As reported in Farmshine over the past few years, the call to action and support for healthy recommendations that consider the science on saturated fats and the goodness of whole milk, for example, has been largely pursued by grassroots efforts while industry organizations either fall in lockstep with the guidelines or stay neutral on the sidelines.

Once again, it will be up to the grassroots to get involved, for the public to be aware and get involved, for the Congress to be contacted, informed and involved.

How many times have we heard industry leaders shrug their shoulders and say “it all hinges on the Dietary Guidelines”?

dga1

When presented at the October DGA meeting with the first 12,000 names on the “Bring the choice of Whole Milk Back to Schools” petition (now numbering close to 30,000 online and by mail), Brandon Lipps, USDA Deputy Under Secretary of Food Nutrition Services, gave this response: “We have to see the science start coming together and be sure to bring everyone in… into the process.” Now it appears the Dietary Guidelines that control food at school, daycare, work settings, military, and many other foodservice and institutional feeding settings will be even MORE restrictive allowing even LESS of the healthy fat we — especially our children — need. The fat we eat is not the fat we get! Why is USDA moving us further in the wrong direction and excluding the science on this?! Act now. There are links in this article to speak out. Sign the Whole Milk in Schools petition also!

If there is even a chance that our children can have whole milk and healthy meals at school, that farmers can use their mandatory checkoff to promote the true healthfulness of whole milk and full-fat dairy foods, this biased process of DGA Committee guidelines has got to be challenged in a big way.

Here’s how you can help.

Contact your Senators and Representatives in Congress with a simple message. Ask them to please ensure that USDA is not ignoring the science on saturated fats.

Below is a message that the Nutrition Coalition suggests, which you or your organization can adapt and share with others in communicating with members of Congress:

Please urge the agencies in charge of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), the USDA and HHS, to stop ignoring large clinical trials-the “gold standard” of evidence – that could reverse decades of misguided caps on saturated fats.

Shockingly, none of this evidence has ever been reviewed by any expert committee overseeing the science for the Guidelines. In fact, the current committee is pushing to lower the caps even further.

This is extremely alarming given that a growing number of prominent nutrition scientists have concluded the evidence shows that saturated fats have no effect on cardiovascular or total mortality. In fact, a recent panel of leading scientists reviewed the data and in a groundbreaking consensus statement, soon to be published in a medical journal, found that the science fails to support a continuation limits on saturated fats.

The current DGA committee appears to be one-sided and biased on this issue.

Please urge the USDA to stop ignoring the science and give serious consideration to lifting the caps on saturated fat for the upcoming 2020 DGA.

An easy way to do this online is available at this “take action” link https://www.nutritioncoalition.us/take-action

Or find the name and contact information for your Senators and Representative at this link and contact them that way https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members

Also, comment at the Federal Register docket for the DGA Committee by May 15, 2020. The sooner, the better, because the committee is expected to make its recommendations in May. Submit a comment to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee here https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=FNS-2019-0001

Also take this opportunity to sign this petition to “Bring the Choice of Whole Milk Back to Schools” at https://www.change.org/p/bring-whole-milk-back-to-schools

-30-

Animal Ag is in globalists’ crosshairs

Posted on by
3

DMI’s longtime PR firm is link to EAT Lancet

Decade of ‘players’ and ‘playbooks’ drive youth toward global food transformation endzone

(Left) This is a screenshot of the corporate partners in the EAT FReSH Initiative as displayed at the eatforum.org website on January 15, 2019. (Right) This is a screenshot of the corporate partners of GENYOUth as displayed at genyouthnow.org on January 15, 2019

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, February 15, 2019

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — Edelman, a communications marketing and public relations company, which has been called the world’s largest global public relations firm, figures prominently as a herd-dog bringing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations together in the launch of the EAT Lancet forum last month.

Edelman also figures prominently in its similar work for DMI and GENYOUth. Richard Edelman, CEO and president of the company, sits on the board ofGENYOUth. According to a 2011 MarketWatch article, Edelman was instrumental in recruiting Alexis Glick to be CEO of GENYOUth.

He and his company have had a working relationship with DMI for 20 years, according to Edelman. The company most recently crafted and launched DMI’s Undeniably Dairy campaign.

None of this is, by itself, alarming, until peeling back the layers to see that Edelman is the core asset for the EAT FReSH launch as part of its move toward working with clients to build social values into business communication goals. The company is known for its annual Edelman Trust Barometer that monitors and interprets societal shifts.

So, what is EAT Lancet and what is EAT FReSH?

Dairy producers who attended the Pennsylvania Dairy Summit recently in Lancaster may have heard Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a climate and air quality expert from the University of California, Davis, talk about climate change and how cows are the solution, not the problem. (click here to read about that)

Dr. Mitloehner talked about how he found the flaws that led to retractions in the 2012 United Nations FAO report on Livestock’s Long Shadow. His discovery led to a substantial change in the report’s original assessment that animal agriculture accounted for 18% of green house gas (GHG) emissions, when the real number “corrected by the authors” is 3.9%.

The EAT Lancet Commission’s report released in January recycles portions of the old and discredited ‘longshadow’ report — and its flawed process — with a new approach to drive global eating patterns toward vegan goals for what it deems to be the pathway to healthy people and a healthy planet.

Mitloehner was confident last week that this EAT Lancet report is full of inaccuracies where milk and meat production are concerned. He outlined them methodically.

So what’s the connection of all of this to checkoff? In a word: Edelman.

In a May 2018 blog post at the company website, CEO and president Richard Edelman wrote about the company’s involvement in the EAT Lancet Commission. He wrote about the EAT FReSH initiative initially involving 25 food and agriculture supply-chain companies, which has since grown to 41. Some of the logos on the accompanying graphic reveal further cross-over alliances with GENYOUth

PepsiCo is one example. (And PepsiCo — recently honored by GENYOUth for buying 100 school breakfast carts at a reported cost of $7000 each – has detailed on its website its health and sustainability goals to be focused on plant-based diet leadership, which they’ve pursued this year with the launch of Quaker Oat beverage, a milk alternative, and with their nutrition “greenhouse” incubator program working with startup companies on non-dairy cheese and non-dairy yogurt).

Another cross-over alliance is Corteva Agriscience / DuPont / Dow as Dupont is part of the corporate EAT FReSH alliance and Corteva now has representation on the GENYOUth board via Krysta Harden, who served as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture under Secretary Vilsack.

Back to the EAT Lancet report and the EAT FReSH Initiative (see eatforum.org), Edelman writes in May 2018 – eight months before the EAT launch: “Food Reform for Sustainability and Health (FReSH) was launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the EAT Foundation (EAT). The alliance of 41 global food and agricultural companies aims to create new pathways to reach healthy, enjoyable diets for all, produced responsibly within planetary boundaries.”

Richard Edelman continues in his blog post, stating: “Edelman has partnered with (EAT) FReSH to help accelerate transformational change in global food systems.”

These two paragraphs, alone, signal what has occurred since January 2019 in the form of internal media launches, even though the first EAT Forum in the U.S., held at the United Nations last week, had a small media presence on site to “cover” it. In fact, dairy farmers and leaders listening to Dr. Mitloehner at the Pa. Dairy Summit last week breathed a collective sigh of relief because there had been little media coverage of the EAT Forum at the UN on the day before.

Instead, the PR campaign is in full swing. Videos about what the world would be like if it all went vegan were released a few weeks prior by the internationally-renowend magazine, The Economist.

Stories picking up portions of the report signaling animal agriculture in various separate ways as threatening the planet’s ecosystem have been circulating and published in media such as The Guardian.

Democrats, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, launched the Green New Deal resolution for which the original “FAQ” included a statement about “eliminating farting cows” and transforming the food system.

A high-profile interview with 2020 presidential hopeful Rep. Cory Booker, a vegan, this week quoted his thoughts. Here’s a sample: “The tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially-produced animal agriculture because of environmental impact.”

These are but a few examples of the insidious PR campaign that has erupted from all angles in the span of a few weeks on the one hand while the actual media coverage of the details of the EAT Lancet Report, itself, have been ‘light.’  

Back to Edelman’s May 2018 blog, where he talks about Lara Luten, who is the account director for Edelman, Amsterdam. In that blog post prior to the EAT launch, Edelman wrote that Luten “will be helping the (EAT FReSH) partnership build communications and marketing plans in preparation for the Stockholm Food Forum and the upcoming (EAT) Lancet Commission Report.”

This EAT deal has a marketing plan underway. Meanwhile, the science behind it needs to be tried in the press with transparency on its significant shortcomings. A marketing campaign is  guiding the public discussion instead.

The EAT Lancet Report calls for drastic reductions in dairy and meat consumption, globally. It mentions a carbon tax on foods derived from cattle. It positions a more vegan diet as the only way to feed 10 billion people seeking to transform the food supply to exist “within planetary boundaries” by 2030 – all based on science that is far from being settled on a dietary or planetary level — while completely overlooking science showing cows to be the solution, not the problem.

Going back to Edelman’s May 2018 blog post again for a moment, he describes his company’s work in the EAT launch as “working in a pre-competitive environment on a project that is driving impact by leading change.”

This same sort of pre-competitive environment has been used by DMI in the formation of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy eight to 10 years ago, which works on new products for checkoff grant funding as well as establishing sustainability and stewardship parameters for dairy farms to follow that are then incorporated at program-and-enforcement-levels by milk buyers and cooperatives down through the supply-chain to the farms that fund the checkoff.

What’s all this got to do with GENYOUth and helping kids be healthier in school?

GENYOUth has emerged as an alliance of corporations, government, NGOs and other ‘thought leaders’ on various areas of youth as change agents.

Here, too, Edelman is the prime mover on public relations that one can argue has morphed into NGO social-engineering.

GENYOUth describes its view of youth as “change agents”. Throughout its program layers, youth are educated and ‘herded’ toward the plant-based, low-fat, global-sustainability platforms that form the foundation for the very food-system transformation that the EAT Lancet Commission advocated in its report.

The wheels for this global agenda were set in motion 30 years ago by progressively more restrictive iterations of USDA Dietary Guidelines. Over the past 10 years, the progress toward this end was hastened under the Obama/Vilsack administration, in part through an alliance with Dairy Checkoff and others to educate and feed America’s youth along the lines of these transformational food choices – in the name of fighting obesity — even as obesity and diabetes levels worsened among America’s youth.

In the name of fighting obesity and diabetes, the Clinton Foundation has also been actively involved for at least 10 years, according to former President Bill Clinton’s remarks during his YouTube-televised speech at the 2017 GENYOUth Gala, where Clinton, a vegan, presented the Vanguard Award that year to his friend, former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

-30-