USDA Advises Eat More-No Eat Less-No Eat More Cheese

In this week’s New York Times there is an article about cheese and public health.  The perfect topic for a post!

The article by Michael Moss, who has written great articles some about beef safety in the past, discusses the dual responsibilities of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  On one hand the USDA is charged with providing nutritional guidelines to the public and on the other it is also charged with promoting agricultural products to improve sales.  Moss discusses how the Dairy Management Organization, started by the USDA, recently advised Domino’s to add more cheese to their pizza in order to increase sales.  The writes that the new pizza has 40% more cheese and that ¼ of a pie contains ¾ of the daily-recommended allowance of saturated fat.  He contrasts this with recommendations from the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, who advise eating a diet low in saturated fat.  A diet low in saturated fat should involve eating less cheese and meat.

A striking fact from the article is that Dairy Management has a budget of about $136 million, which seems to be derived mostly from the dairy check off program, plus  $5.3 million from the USDA.  Meanwhile the budget for the Center for Nutrition and Policy, which has to develop and promote the nation’s dietary guidelines, is only $6.5 million.

This article highlights a number of important public health issues.  The first is that the USDA is divided between two contradictory missions.  One is to promote public health and one is to promote industry without regard for public health.  It is hard to imagine that a single agency could do both of these things.  In the future it will be important to reconcile these differences and perhaps to create a separate well-funded agency that deals diet and food safety from a strong public health perspective.  The other issue highlighted is the small amount of money available to promote healthy food choices as opposed to the amount of funding available to promote industry and unhealthy options.  This is a reason why many public health practitioners believe that education is not a very effective tool in getting people to change their habits for the better, since there is almost always more money on the other side promoting unhealthy behavior.

Now, let me just say, that at TheDairyShow.com we are promoting dairy products and other foods, but our focus is on responsibly raised/grown foods.  The farms on our show are very different and produce very different products than the commodity products pushed by Dairy Management.  The foods featured on the show are very special, because they are produced by sustainable farming practices, made in small quantities, and rather expensive.  Because of these inherent properties, these products are really meant to be enjoyed in small quantities.  It is important for health to eat less animal products than the average American does, but if you are going to eat them, its important to eat cheeses like the ones you find featured on our show, because these are going to taste better, and be better for the farmer, animals, and environment.

What do you think we should do about the mixed messges we get from the department of agriculture?