Notes 1 US government’s 2020-2025 guidance is meat- and dairy-heavy. Climate advocates are concerned that the guidelines, which form the
basis of the government’s public nutrition recommendations, rely too
much on meat and dairy and don’t mention the climate crisis at all. Climate advocates are still hoping things might be different when it
comes to the 2025 to 2030 guidelines. In May, 40 climate, animal welfare
and public health groups including CBD and the Center for Science in
the Public Interest signed a letter to the USDA and HHS urging them to
include sustainability in the next round of guidelines.
✓ Experts say that isn’t sustainable
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2 This isn’t the first time the environment has been at issue in the nation’s dietary guidelines. In 2015, the government-appointed panel of nutrition experts that advised the 2015-2020 guidelines addressed sustainability in its scientific report. “In general, a dietary pattern that is higher in plant-based foods, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds, and lower in animal-based foods is more health promoting and is associated with lesser environmental impact,” the panel wrote.
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✓
To keep the climate habitable, most scientists agree that switching to renewable energy alone isn’t enough – Americans also need to change the way they eat. Environmental and public health advocates are pushing a new strategy to help get there: including climate breakdown in the official US dietary guidelines, which shape what goes into billions of meals eaten across the country every year.
Every five years, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services jointly publish a new version of the guidelines. They form the basis for the public-facing eating guide MyPlate, formerly MyPyramid, as well as many government-backed meal programs, such as National School Lunch. Historically, these guidelines have narrowly focused on human nutrition, but some are now saying they should be expanded to incorporate climate considerations as well.
The current, 150-page edition for 2020-2025 doesn’t mention food’s role in the climate crisis at all. Climate groups say this is an abdication of responsibility, with Americans feeling the effects of a warming planet more than ever. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in US history, does very little to address the food system.
“Climate change poses a multitude of threats to human health and nutrition security. We cannot extricate these things from each other,” said Jessi Silverman, a senior policy associate for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Her group and 39 others, including the Union of Concerned Scientists and the American Academy of Pediatrics, in May wrote a letter urging the government to include sustainability in the 2025-2030 dietary guidelines, which are now in development.
A sustainability component would encourage Americans to eat less meat and dairy, which have a significantly higher climate impact than nutritionally comparable plant-based foods. “It would be virtually impossible to even meet the two-degree [Celsius] limit in global temperature change without incorporating substantial reductions in beef intake,” said Mark Rifkin, senior food and agriculture policy specialist for the Center for Biological Diversity, another signatory to the letter.
The current guidelines advise Americans to eat far more animal products than is sustainable, said Walter Willett, a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health. The primary dietary chart recommends 26 ounces of protein from meat, poultry and eggs a week, compared with just 5 ounces from plant-based foods, although there are alternative charts that show how vegetarians can get the same nutrients without meat. They also “still basically say three servings of dairy a day, which is actually really radical because our current consumption is 1.6 servings a day”, he said. “To just recommend three servings of dairy and say nothing about the environmental consequences if people really did that is just completely irresponsible.”
Because most Americans are deficient in fiber and fruits and vegetables, not animal products, Rifkin, a dietitian, said climate-focused guidance would line up with what the public needs nutritionally. It would also help address other problems that stem from the meat-heavy US food system, he said, including risk of future pandemics, food security and pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations, which disproportionately affects communities of color.
A proposed list of questions released in April for the scientific panel that advises the guidelines didn’t include sustainability. That worries advocates, but they say it’s still early. Janet de Jesus, HHS’s staff lead on the guidelines, said sustainability could still be included. “We’re not saying that it’s not going to be in the dietary guidelines – we’re not saying that at all,” de Jesus said. “It’s a high priority for HHS leadership to address climate change.”
Countries including Germany, Brazil, Sweden and Qatar have addressed sustainability in their dietary guidelines, according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report. Canada’s Food Guide advises choosing plant-based foods more often for the environment. Germany has cut its per-capita meat consumption by 12% since 2011, Vox reported last month, and its minister of food and agriculture has recently prioritized a shift toward more plant-based eating.
Advocates say a change in the US dietary guidelines could have a similar influence. “The guidelines are much more impactful than I think a lot of people realize,” Silverman said. Federal food aid programs have to comply with the guidelines, shaping how millions of people eat. The National School Lunch and National School Breakfast, for instance, served more than 7bn meals a year to tens of millions of children before the Covid-19 pandemic. The guidelines also influence cafeteria food served in government buildings, hospitals and other institutions, and are used in nutrition education programs. . .
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U.S. Diet Guidelines Still Recommend Too Much Meat and Dairy, Climate Groups Say
A school lunch at Garfield Elementary School in Washington, DC. U.S. dietary guidelines still emphasize too much meat and dairy, climate advocates say. Dixie D. Vereen /For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Founded in 2005 as an Ohio-based environmental newspaper, EcoWatch is a digital platform dedicated to publishing quality, science-based content on environmental issues, causes, and solutions.
There is growing awareness in the scientific community that the way people eat — especially in wealthy countries — needs to change in order to address the climate crisis and other environmental problems. University of Oxford professor Joseph Poore said that eating a vegan diet is likely the single most important thing an individual can do to reduce their overall impact on the environment, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for a reduction in meat consumption in its special report on climate change and land, as Nature reported.
But it seems that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Housing and Human Services (HHS) didn’t get the memo when they put out the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) for 2020 to 2025. Climate advocates are concerned that the guidelines, which form the basis of the government’s public nutrition recommendations, rely too much on meat and dairy and don’t mention the climate crisis at all.
“Climate change poses a multitude of threats to human health and nutrition security. We cannot extricate these things from each other,” Center for Science in the Public Interest senior policy associate Jessi Silverman told The Guardian.
For example, the current guidelines recommend that people get 26 ounces of protein every week from meat, eggs and poultry and only five ounces from plant-based products. Further, it recommends three servings of dairy products every day, even though most people only consume 1.6 servings daily now.
“To just recommend three servings of dairy and say nothing about the environmental consequences if people really did that is just completely irresponsible,” Harvard School of Public Health professor Walter Willett told The Guardian.
The dietary guidelines published by the U.S. government matter because they form the basis of its food messaging and also inform programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the School Lunch Program. It’s also a climate justice issue. A 2020 study found that following the dietary guidelines of G20 countries including the U.S. would see temperatures rise above the Paris agreement goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“The American diet is devouring far more than our fair share of food-related emissions,” Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in response to the study. “Food policy is climate policy. We have to stop pretending these are separate issues.”
There have been people in the federal government working to bring sustainability into the diet guidelines. Scientists advising the drafting of the 2015-2020 guidelines tried to bring climate concerns into the discussion, as the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health reported. They concluded that plant-based diets were better both for U.S. eaters and the planet than the current U.S. diet, but, after protests from the meat industry, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwel decided that sustainability was beyond the scope of the guidelines.
“You can’t have food security without a sustainable diet. Therefore, food sustainability is in scope,” Miriam Nelson, professor emerita at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University who led the sustainability effort, protested, as Harvard reported.
Climate advocates are still hoping things might be different when it comes to the 2025 to 2030 guidelines. In May, 40 climate, animal welfare and public health groups including CBD and the Center for Science in the Public Interest signed a letter to the USDA and HHS urging them to include sustainability in the next round of guidelines.
“Incorporating the relationship between nutrition and climate change and the related environmental crises into the development of the next DGA is urgently needed,” the organizations wrote. “This will support long-term food and nutrition security, the administration’s stated priorities around equity and the climate crisis, and the Departments’ priorities for the proposed scientific questions regarding importance to public health, impact to federal programs, and research availability.”
While sustainability was not one of the topics on an April list of proposed questions for scientists advising the next guidelines to tackle, HHS Nutrition Advisor Janet de Jesus told The Guardian that doesn’t mean the issue is off the table.
“We’re not saying that it’s not going to be in the dietary guidelines — we’re not saying that at all,” de Jesus said. “It’s a high priority for HHS leadership to address climate change.”
— Marina Bolotnikova🐈 (@mbolotnikova) August 26, 2022I wrote for @guardian about the push to include sustainability in the U.S. dietary guidelines — which are more influential than you might think.
Last time this was considered, the National Cattlemen's Beef Ass'n spent $303K lobbying to keep beef in.. 1/https://t.co/ZsvfB2JQ2v
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