Food fights determine feds' take on nutrition

By Rosie Mestel
Los Angeles Times

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"What do we want to recommend for children? Fish twice a week?" asked Chairwoman Janet King.

"Small fish," said another panel member.

"Children are advised to eat smaller portions of fish than adults?"

"Can we defer a vote on that?" pleaded another.

The panel of nutrition researchers had been talking this way for 45 minutes. The ballroom was filled with listeners scribbling away on notepads — some looking a little haggard. Those in the audience had witnessed exhaustive discussions on protein, sugar, fat, grains, breakfast and exercise, and a 2 1/2-hour standoff on vitamin D.

"Mind-numbing isn't the half of it," said one woman. "I want to strangle them."

After a year's work, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is in the final stages of overhauling the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are to be formally adopted next year.

Since 1980, the guidelines — consisting of seven to 10 short statements and an accompanying booklet — have been issued every five years by the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services. School menus must comply with the guidelines; so must the Women, Infants and Children Program, which provides food to low-income mothers. The food pyramid is based on the guidelines.

To reach their conclusions, committee members — unpaid volunteers generally drawn from academia — have waded through thousands of pages of studies on fat, heart disease, television watching, obesity and the effect of fiber on stool weight. They have investigated the best way to wash broccoli and argued bitterly about sugar.

They have been aided by testimony and letters from hundreds of groups and individuals, including the Sugar Association, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, the American Heart Association, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Bible-based Hallelujah Diet and scads of disciples of Dr. Joseph Mercola, author of "The No-Grain Diet."
 
Writing the dietary guidelines is honor, toil, aggravation and tedium, in unequal measure.

The committee has held four public meetings to discuss the ideal U.S. diet. The panel is to hold its fifth — and supposedly last — public meeting today.

The third meeting, which took place in March, attracted as usual a veritable Who's Who of the food world. The National Dairy Council's representative sat up front. Farther back was an employee from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer-advocacy group.

There were cheerleaders for seemingly every foodstuff: walnuts, soybeans, sugar, alcohol, crackers, jellies and vegetables. They listened intently and dashed off during breaks to inform headquarters of critical twists in the deliberations.

Committee chairwoman King, a nutrition researcher at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, said there would be reports from the carbohydrates subcommittee, the fatty-acids subcommittee and the macronutrients subcommittee.

"I think we will have a real dynamic afternoon addressing those three topics," she said to a few snickers from the audience.

Complaints surfaced from the moment the committee was appointed last year. The CSPI pointed fingers at seven of the 13 committee members for having financial relationships with industry groups, including the Sugar Association, Campbell Soup and the American Cocoa Research Institute.

How, asked the consumer group, could Americans be sure these scientists were unbiased?

Richard Hanneman, president of the Salt Institute, was pretty ticked, too. He has peppered the committee with letters complaining about the unfair and unscientific treatment given to salt in the 2000 guidelines, which told Americans to "choose and prepare foods with less salt."

"We could not accept that," he said. "We don't think there's evidence that the public should consume less salt."

Such intensity about eating advice did not exist a century ago when the government began issuing guidelines, said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and author of the 2002 book, "Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health."

The trouble began when the government started advising Americans to start eating less of certain foods, Nestle said.

One flap erupted in 1977 after a Senate committee report suggested Americans cut back on saturated fats, sugar, cholesterol and salt. The cattle, dairy, egg and sugar industries protested, and the report was revised, easing up on salt and cholesterol and dumping the phrase "reduce consumption of meat" for a friendlier, "choose meats, poultry and fish which will reduce saturated fat intake."

The food pyramid drew ire upon its completion in 1991 because its pointed shape indicated that some foods should be eaten less than others. Strenuous objections from the National Cattlemen's Association and National Milk Producers Federation caused a one-year delay in the pyramid's release.

Creating the guidelines is "political — from start to finish," said Nestle, who was on the 1995 Dietary Guidelines Committee. "It's science politics. It's politics politics. It's corporate politics."

The fourth meeting of the committee was held in May. It was supposed to be the last, but a rollicking debate about vitamin D threw everything off schedule. No one was certain when the meeting would end.

"I'm figuring midnight," said a USDA employee, placidly stitching away on a patchwork quilt.

Fresh science, it seemed, had emerged since 2000, revealing that many people are deficient in the vitamin. But some committee members were nervous about recommending a big jump in intake.

Brisk progress was made on some subjects: Eight draft guidelines were crafted, advising Americans, for instance, to "keep food safe to eat," "monitor your body weight to achieve health" and "choose and prepare foods with less salt."

For the first time, the committee planned to recommend that Americans slash their intake of trans fats, found in stick margarines and many baked goods.

But sugar was a sticky mess. As the committee took up the issue again, an excited rustle went through the audience like so many candy bars being unwrapped.

Dr. Carlos Camargo, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard University, cited three recent studies reporting that kids drinking the most sugary soft drinks ended up plumper later on.

Nutrition researchers Teresa Nicklas, professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, and Joanne Lupton, professor of nutrition at Texas A&M University, lobbed back other types of studies that didn't find that link.

Camargo, noting his position as president of the American College of Epidemiology, said that the other types of studies were inferior in design.

Well, said Lupton, if we're going to ignore them for sugar, we have to ignore those kinds of studies for other issues, too.

"We're here to make a difference," Camargo said.

"I don't think we are here to make a difference," retorted Lupton. "I think we are here to evaluate the science."

The mood began to lighten when sugar was put off again and matters drifted on, past cholesterol and fish to alcohol, in which nothing, as usual, was left unquestioned.

The panel debated a recommendation that alcohol be avoided by children and those operating heavy machinery. One committee member asked for the pertinent data.