Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 12/17/15


The fight in Washington over controversial dietary guidelines the Obama Administration could release within days intensified this week when legislators took the opportunity of a new spending bill to attach riders that would limit the scope of the guidelines.  

“The bill blocks new and nonsensical big-government dietary guidelines that have little or nothing to do with dietary and nutrition science,” said House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) in a statement about the fiscal year 2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill.  

“To ensure the guidelines adhere to the nutritional and dietary scope of the law and are based upon sound science, bill language has been included clearly stating that the final guidelines cannot be released or implemented unless they are based upon significant scientific agreement and adhere to the statutory mandate,” the legislators wrote in an explanatory statement accompanying the appropriations bill. 

The statement went on to say, “Questions have been raised about the scientific integrity of the process in developing the dietary guidelines and whether balanced nutritional information is reaching the public. The entire process used to formulate and establish the guidelines needs to be reviewed before future guidelines are issued. It is imperative that the guidelines be based upon strong, balanced science and focus on providing consumers with dietary and nutritional information that will assist them in eating a healthy and balanced diet. At a minimum, the process should include: full transparency, a lack of bias, and the inclusion and consideration of all of the latest available research and scientific evidence, even that which challenges current dietary recommendations.” 

The legislation also provides $1 million for a National Academy of Medicine review of the dietary guideline process.

Let the games begin
Washington insiders have been expecting USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services to jointly release the 2015 Dietary Guidelines any day now.

Supporters of the Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee recommendations are urging the Obama administration to publish the guidelines before the omnibus riders take effect, according to Politico.

Controversy has surrounded the guidelines since the advisory committee made recommendations to the USDA and HHS that injected a sustainability element into the criteria for food recommendations and took a strong stance on limiting processed meat consumption.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in October, however, that "sustainability" would not be included in the final version of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines.

The meat industry has been voicing its concern over the process the advisory committee took in creating its recommendations for more than a year.

On the other side of the debate, Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University and a former senior nutrition policy advisor for DHHS, weighed in on Congress’ action on the guidelines.

“I continue to be astonished that the House of Representatives would take such an intense interest in the science of nutrition when it is so uninterested in the science of climate change,” Nestle wrote in a blog. “And I am puzzled as to why the House thinks that nutrition scientists appointed by the Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine) would have views any different from those of the current Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.”

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate are expected to consider the legislation on Friday.

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