The New USDA Food… Plate?

Congress mandates that “new food policies” be implemented every 5 years.  The due date was 2010. The revised, tardy dietary guidelines endorsed with an introductory letter from Thomas Vilsack the Sec. of Agriculture and Kathleen Sebilius – Sec. of Health and Human Services opened with – “We are pleased to present the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010” on January 31, 2011?

2010 Report -Dietary Guidelines For Americans: http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/DGAs2010-PolicyDocument.htm

The new /old propaganda released from the USDA is the same old same old… which begs the question – why was it late?  Allegedly “based on the most recent scientific evidence” not much has changed… until today.

Today the USDA released the new symbol – A circle divided in quarters accompanied by a secondary circle that pays homage to the Dairy Board and their lobbyists. While the iconic triangle shape is no more, the advice and the influencing minds behind the advice remain as obtuse as ever.

It’s not the shape of the icon that concerns me as much as the shape of the nation. The erroneous information the USDA refuses to re-do opting instead to reuse and recycle the same ambiguous and inept information … doing little good for our collective internal environments.

The new MyPlate icon sans protein and milk looks an awful lot like the pre-existing MyPowerPlate.org icon…coincidence?

NEW USDA - MyPlate

PCRM - MyPowerPlate

Interestingly enough, just two weeks after the tardy release of the 2010 Guidelines, the creators and promoters behind the curiously similar MyPowerPlate – the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed a lawsuit (again) against the federal government accusing the USDA of using “deliberately obscure language regarding foods Americans should avoid”, the PCRM’s legal filing also cites the USDA with conflicts of interest and arbitrary and capricious behavior.

Interestingly enough the PCRM also requested in its legal filings that the USDA and HHS withdraw and replace the confusing mypyramid. http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm11sprsum/usda.html

Hmmm that solves the mystery of where the “new” USDA Myplate icon came from if you were wondering.

This is not the first time the PCRM has sued the USDA. The prior suit alleged the federal government met secretly and conspired with meat, dairy and egg industries when compiling the 2000 Guidelines.  The PCRM won the case when the court ruled the USDA and HHS had violated federal law failing to comprise the committee of different, fair and balanced points of view that prohibit special interests. Ooops… Evidence revealed that 6 of the 11 committee members had financial interests to the food industries.

The obvious similarities of MyPlate and MyPowerPlate appear to be just another case of the USDA pandering to any group with money or influence.

The PCRM which collectively favors a vegan lifestyle is right about one thing – The current guidelines continue to perpetuate confusion and appear to be designed to keep Americans eating unhealthy foods.

The USDA’s nutritional recommendations have remained virtually unchanged in over 100 years – something the USDA proudly exclaims? http://www.choosemyplate.gov/downloads/MyPlate/ABriefHistoryOfUSDAFoodGuides.pdf .Perhaps they are unaware of the current obesity crisis that has coincidentally risen at unprecedented rates since they started dispensing nutritional advice and policy.

The heavily industry and lobbyist influenced USDA Pyramid icons (1992 – 2011) we’ve all seen in schools, doctors offices and adorned on packaged foods promoting the consumption of more grains and less low fat, and somehow trying to convince us that milk is actually good for us?  Forms the basis of the lucrative government food program contracts.

Like a true pyramid scheme it fails on many levels punishing the “masses” and creating profit only for those who initiated the scheme itself – the food manufacturers.

The question we should really be asking is… Should the USDA be telling us how to eat, or is the USDA myplate just another propaganda piece for the agriculture industry?

The myplate advice is purposefully vague and subject to gross speculation and interpretation. Here is what the Dairy Industry is already saying about the new myplate icon:

“Dairy foods are rightfully being recognized — from the school house to the White House — as an important part of everyone’s diet,” says Jerry Kozak, NMPF’s president and CEO. “USDA’s new icon, with a simple visual metaphor of a serving of dairy products alongside a plate, says it’s vital to consume three servings of low-fat and fat-free dairy foods every day.”

Wow! All that from a single little blue circle?

The evidence seems clear to me, the pyramids of the past and plate of today continue to endorse and conduct the worst experiment in history of nutritional advice…  maintaining a virtual a blanket demonization of all fats? Fat is nowhere to be found on the plate.

The overly simplified erroneous message that we are fat because we are eating too much fat remains the erroneous mainstream mantra despite all of evidence to the contrary, and the essential healthful benefits of fats like omega 3.

Unwittingly, over the past 30 years Americans have collectively followed the low fat – high carbohydrate advice endorsed by the USDA  only to find obesity, diabetes and heart disease become epidemic.

Slideshow and State-by-State statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

Perhaps instead of changing icons and renaming diseases like Adult Onset Diabetes to Type 2 Diabetes -since children are now equally plagued… we might actually want to make some real changes to the nutritional advice. http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/projects/cda2.htm

© 2011 Copyrights Grant Roberts, All Rights Reserved