The USDA’s Pyramid Scheme

We Need a New Way to Define “Healthy”

Presentation at the Weston A. Price Foundation press conference on the USDA Dietary Guidelines, February 14, 2011.

I am a PhD candidate in Nutrition Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina. I represent the Healthy Nation Coalition, a public health advocacy group dedicated to changing our definition of healthy food. But I also represent all those Americans who have tried to eat a healthy diet according to the USDA’s definition and have become overweight, obese, and sick in the process. I was one of those people—obese and sick—when I ate according to the guidelines.

I went back to school because I worked at a Duke Clinic, where I met a lot of people just like me, people who were struggling with weight gain and poor health, trying to force their bodies to be well on a dietary pattern never proven to have specific health benefits. That’s right, the recommended diet has not even been tested.

We know that it has not been tested because the USDA makes this statement in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines document: “The [USDA] food patterns were developed to meet nutrient needs . . . while not exceeding calorie requirements. Though they have not been specifically tested for health benefits they are similar to the DASH research diet and consistent with most of the measures of adherence to Mediterranean-type eating patterns (emphasis added).”

The first USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans were released in 1980. After sixteen years of following the recommended lowfat, grain-and-cereal based diet, I was sixty pounds overweight, fighting to get my body back. I ate less; I exercised more. I finally lost fifteen pounds. I was also hungry and tired and miserable— and what’s worse, I couldn’t lose any more weight without starving myself.

After a lot of research, I found—and the patients at the clinic found—that when we ate foods that the USDA had been telling us not to eat— foods like eggs, broccoli with butter, greens with fatback, and even the occasional steak—we felt better, lost weight, and got healthier.

For the patients I met with type-2 diabetes, they could get their blood sugars under control and reverse their symptoms, instead of having the disease progress to loss of kidney function, eyesight, or even a limb. When they changed their diets to include fat and reduced the highly processed grains and cereals that the Food Pyramid is built on, they were able to reduce or stop taking medication. They got better; they lost weight. It happened time and time again. And they wondered, as I did, why we’ve been told that the only way to be healthy is to follow the USDA guidelines, a diet that doesn’t work for me, for them, nor for many Americans.

From the start, our dietary recommendations have been based as much on politics as on science. The first set of dietary goals was written by political staffers, not scientists or nutritionists.¹ They were based on the as-yet-unproven theory that reducing dietary fat would reduce heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.² They directed Americans to consume less fat and more carbohydrate.

These guidelines have remained remarkably consistent for the past thirty years and Americans have done their best to follow them. We have lowered our fat intake, and we have increased our carbohydrates (Figure 1). Since the first guidelines, the number of obese Americans has more than doubled (Figure 2); the number with type-2 diabetes has tripled.

The dramatic rise in obesity in America began in the early 1980s after the release of the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans, after which Americans gradually reduced the fat in their diets and consumed more carbohydrate foods.

FIGURE 1: Energy intake changes during the obesity epidemic.3	FIGURE 2: Dramatic Rise in Obesity among U.S. Adults (20-74 Years) Since Implementation of the USDA Dietary Guidelines.4

How did this happen? The USDA blames our “obesogenic” environment.⁵ But the USDA creates the policies that control nearly every aspect of our food environment. Its primary mandate is to increase consumer demand for U.S. agricultural products. The primary promotional tool for U.S. food products is the Dietary Guidelines in which USDA defines “healthy food.” This definition of “healthy” shapes what consumers demand and what food industries provide.

Thanks to these policies, cheap grain and cereal-based foods are everywhere and are marketed as an important part of a healthy diet. During the past thirty years, the energy available from processed flour and cereal products and the added fats and oils in them has increased by nearly two hundred calories, while the energy available from less processed foods—meat, eggs, nuts, fruits, and vegetables— has increased by less than twenty calories (Figure 3).⁵

Since the calorie increase in our diet over the past thirty years has come almost entirely from grain-based foods, many nutrition experts now agree that it’s not just how much we are eating, but what. They believe our lowfat diet recommendations have helped fuel our nation’s health crisis.⁶ Yet the USDA has disregarded the current scientific evidence and expert opinion, insisting that “a healthy diet is high in carbohydrates.”⁵ Why isn’t it?

Humans have an inherent preference for sugary and starchy foods. The mechanism that makes these foods addictive has recently been clarified.⁷ We are not addicted to fat and salt, which on their own have limited appeal. Could you eat a stick of butter by itself? Instead, we are addicted to the sugary, starchy foods that happen to come with fat and salt. Add some bread. Now how much butter can you eat?

Dietary sugars and starches cause our insulin to rise, which encourages fat storage and prevents fat burning. Then we have no fuel: we’re hungry, we’re tired and we’re addicted. Chronically elevated insulin is also an independent risk factor for diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.⁸

Scientists know this. But when scientific evidence contradicts the USDA’s definition of healthy, the USDA ignores the science—why shouldn’t they? There is no one policing the policymakers. There are no consequences to the USDA if their guidelines don’t work.

But there are plenty of consequences to us. This cannot be stated strongly enough: the Dietary Guidelines, because they are not based on objective scientific evidence, have caused, and will continue to cause, harm.

The 2010 Guidelines focus on counting and controlling calories, when science shows us that restrictive eating patterns in children and teenagers actually lead to an increased risk of obesity and other eating disorders.^9,10 Many men and women all over America go hungry trying to compel their bodies to respond to a lowfat diet with increasingly lowered calories. Few of them will succeed. As a nation, we pay the price in rising health care costs, diminished quality of life, and the loss of loved ones. In the meantime, the USDA continues to tighten its grip on food and nutrition policy in America.

If we want to fix the obesity crisis, the USDA tells us, it’s up to us: just eat less and move more. But that’s not what the USDA really wants.

Due to their own policies, food prices and production at the farm level are both flat.¹¹ The only way to “grow” the agricultural sector is to increase processing. This is where the money is. Look closely at the “eat less” recommendations in the guidelines; they are a veiled promotion of foods the USDA want us to eat more of.

“Fear-the-fat” messages that are not based in science steer us away from minimally processed foods like eggs and meat. Instead, we are encouraged to buy enormously profitable, fortified and enriched products that are virtually devoid of nutrition until they are transformed by the miracles of modern chemistry to meet the USDA’s definition of “healthy.”

The Weston A. Price Foundation has helped educate the public on the importance of fats in the diet. The other two major calorie sources are protein and carbohydrate. Protein is crucial to good health.⁵ Carbohydrates are biologically unnecessary.¹²

That’s the nutrition part; here’s what’s happening with actual food, as shown by the two breakfasts below.

The first breakfast contains eggs, sausage and cheese. The USDA says we should eat less of these foods. But this breakfast contains just the right amount of protein, no sugar, ten total ingredients (all of them pronounceable), and the whole meal costs less than a dollar. From a meal like this, a larger percentage of that dollar is getting back to the farmer, because less of it is going for packaging and processing.

The second breakfast is composed of the foods that the USDA says we should eat more of. It contains very little protein, over forty grams of sugar, and over forty ingredients. And it costs over two dollars, of which the farmer will see a very small percentage; most of it will go to the food manufacturers who package and process cheap grain and cereal products.

The USDA doesn’t really want us to “eat less and move more.” They want us to “eat less and buy more.” The USDA-approved breakfast is “plant based” as the guidelines recommend, but filled with unpronounceable ingredients. Plant-based, lowfat “frankenfood” products are anything but natural.

The massive monoculture crops from which these fake foods are made deplete our topsoil and poison our rivers with pesticide and fertilizer run-off. A tofu “hot dog” is not good for you, it’s not good for the farmer, and it’s not good for the environment. We know that the vegan movement, Oprah’s Vegan Week, and Michal Pollan’s “eat mostly plants” message are well-intended, but eating fewer animal products means eating more Monsanto products.

That said, we do not stand in opposition to either the food industry or to the humane treatment of animals. Both are crucial to the safe and adequate food supply that Americans deserve. But Americans also deserve to know the truth about nutrition. Our farmers deserve better support; our land deserves better care.

When the first Dietary Guidelines were created, our understanding of the relationship between nutrition, chronic disease, and the food environment was immature. We didn’t know what would happen when we chose to commit ourselves to a single dietary approach directed by a single government agency. The agency then could not have predicted the explosion of food products with lower fat content and higher sugar, starches, and profit margins.

The agency could not have predicted the advances in science that would uncover not only the addiction-like process that compels us to gobble up these foods, nor could they have predicted the mechanisms that reveal how these foods can change the expression of our genetic material and predispose a generation of children to metabolic disorders, including obesity and diabetes.^13,14 The agency could not have guessed that its recommendations would have especially devastating effects on minorities whom scientists believe may be genetically susceptible to diseases related to a diet high in processed grains and cereal products.^15,16

But now we know better. The influence of the Dietary Guidelines has now greatly surpassed the assumptions surrounding the original mandates that made the USDA the lead agency in the area of nutrition. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines have become a powerful policy tool with far-reaching consequences that not only affect the daily food choices of Americans and the personal health outcomes that result, but the health of our environment, our economy, and our future.

No government agency should be given such power with so few checks and balances. The USDA tells us that the Guidelines were created with complete transparency. But transparency doesn’t help if the dice are loaded before the game begins.

As the Dietary Guidelines have grown in importance, they have outgrown their tenure at the USDA. What is needed now is an independent, authoritative body—perhaps an Office of Food and Nutrition Policy— that can coordinate the creation of our Dietary Guidelines with a full understanding and awareness of the complexity of human nutrition and its relationship to the environment, the economy, national security, and our future as a nation.

It’s time to call this 30-year-long experiment on the people of America to a halt.

Echoing its most identifiable icon, the USDA’s control of food policy is a pyramid scheme. And like all pyramid schemes, there is no benefit for the consumers and the farmers at the bottom. Only those at the top, the giants of the food industry, stand to profit from this system. It’s time to knock this pyramid down and find a new home for the Dietary Guidelines.

The USDA is fond of characterizing Americans as having too much on their plates. This description applies more accurately to the USDA itself. We must ask the USDA to do what its 2010 Dietary Guidelines are insisting that all Americans do: to push away from the table and give up its control of the creation of the Guidelines.

1. Blackburn H. Interview with Mark Hegsted. “Washington— Dietary Guidelines.” Accessed January 24, 2011. http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hegsted.pdf.

2. Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs of the United States Senate. Dietary Goals for the United States. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office; 1977b.

3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Trends in intake of energy and macronutrients—United States, 1971-2000. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2004 Feb 6;53(4):80-2.

4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). National Center for Health Statistics, Division of National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. Prevalence of Overweight, Obesity, and Extreme Obesity Among Adults: United States, Trends 1976–1980 Through 2007–2008. Accessed February 1, 2011. http://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/hestat/obesity_adult_07_08/obesity_adult_07_08.pdf.

5. United States Department of Agriculture. Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010. Accessed July 15, 2010. http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/DGAs2010-DGACReport.htm.

6. Jameson, M. “A Reversal on Carbs.” Los Angeles Times. December 20, 2010. Accessed December 28, 2010. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/20/health/la-hecarbs-20101220

7. Lustig, Robert. “Sugar, Hormones, and Addiction.” Presentation at the American Society for Bariatric Physicians, November 12, 2010.

8. Reaven, Gerald M. Insulin resistance: the link between obesity and cardiovascular disease. Endocrinology Metabolism Clinics of North America. 2008 Sep; 37(3):581-601, vii-viii.

9. Haines J and Neumark-Sztainer D. Prevention of eating disorders and obesity: A consideration of shared risk factors. Health Education Research 2006, 21(6): 770-782.

10. Field 2003 Field A, Austin SB, Taylor CB, Malspeis S, Rosner B, Rockett H, Gillman M, Colditz G. 2003. Relation Between Dieting and Weight Change Among Preadolescents and Adolescents. Pediatrics 2003; 112: 900-906.

11. Pyle, George. Raising Less Corn, More Hell: The Case for the Independent Farm and Against Industrial Food. New York: Public Affairs, 2005.

12. Report of the Panel on Macronutrients, Subcommittees on Upper Reference Levels of Nutrients and Interpretation and Uses of Dietary Reference Intakes, and the Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes. Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids (Macronutrients). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2005.

13. Smith J, Cianflone K, Biron S, Hould FS, Lebel S, Marceau S, et al. Effects of maternal surgical weight loss in mothers on intergenerational transmission of obesity. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 2009 Nov;94(11):4275-83.

14. Bland J. An Emerging 21st Century Perspective on Obesity: Beyond the Dogma of the Calorie. American Society of Bariatric Physicians Western Regional Obesity Conference, Regional Obesity Course. April 16, 2010.

15. Zamora D, Gordon-Larsen P, Jacobs DR Jr, Popkin BM. Diet quality and weight gain among black and white young adults: the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study (1985-2005). American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2010 Oct;92(4):784-93.

16. Hoffman RP. Metabolic Syndrome Racial Differences in Adolescents. Current Diabetes Review 2009 Nov;5(4):259-265.

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2011.

About the Author

Adele Hite, MAT, is a PhD candidate in Nutrition Epidemiology and an MPH/RD candidate, in Nutrition at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also serves as policy chairman for the Healthy Nation Coalition, www.forahealthynation.org.

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