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 of the public nutrition guide MyPlate, formerly MyPyramid, as well as many government-supported meal schemes such as National School Lunch. Historically, these guidelines have focused narrowly on human nutrition, but some now say they should be expanded to incorporate climate considerations. The current 150-page version for 2020-2025 does not mention the role of food in the climate crisis at all. Climate groups say it’s an abdication, with Americans feeling the effects of a planet warming more than ever. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, the most important climate legislation in US history, does very little to address the food system. “Climate change poses a multitude of threats to human health and food security. We can’t take those things away from each other,” said Jessie Silverman, senior policy fellow 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, wrote a letter in May calling on the government to include sustainability in the 2025-2030 dietary guidelines, which are now under development. A sustainability component would encourage Americans to eat less meat and dairy, which have a significantly higher impact on the climate than nutritionally comparable plant-based foods. “It would be practically impossible to meet the two points [Celsius] limiting global temperature change without incorporating meaningful reductions in beef intake,” said Mark Rifkin, senior food and agriculture policy specialist for the Center for Biological Diversity, another signatory to the letter. A table showing the USDA and Health and Human Services food guidelines compared to the recommendations of climate experts. When it comes to proteins, experts recommend that we exchange proteins of animal origin with proteins of plant origin. As well as changing a cup of milk to a glass of water. Current guidelines advise Americans to eat far more animal products than is sustainable, said Walter Willett, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. The main nutritional table recommends 26 ounces of protein from meat, poultry and eggs per week, compared to just 5 ounces from plant foods, although there are alternative tables that show how vegetarians can get the same nutrients without meat. Also, “they’re still basically saying three servings of dairy a day, which is really radical because our current consumption is 1.6 servings a day,” he said. “To just recommend three servings of dairy and not say anything about the environmental consequences if people 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 keep pace with what the public needs nutritionally. It would also help address other problems stemming from the meat-heavy U.S. food system, he said, including the risk of future pandemics, food insecurity and pollution from concentrated animal feed operations, which disproportionately affects communities of color. A proposed list of questions released in April for the scientific panel advising the guidelines did not include sustainability. That worries advocates, but they say it’s still early days. Janet de Jesus, HHS chief of staff on the guidelines, said sustainability may still be included. “We’re not saying it’s not going to be in the dietary guidelines — we’re not saying that at all,” de Jesus said. “It is a high priority for HHS leadership to address climate change.” Countries such as Germany, Brazil, Sweden and Qatar have addressed sustainability in their dietary guidelines, according to a report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Canada’s Food Guide advises choosing plant-based foods more often for the environment. Germany has cut its per capita meat consumption by 12 percent since 2011, Vox reported last month, and its Food and Agriculture Minister recently prioritized a shift toward a plant-based diet. Advocates say a change in the U.S. dietary guidelines could have a similar effect. “The guidelines have a lot more impact than I think a lot of people realize,” Silverman said. Federal food assistance programs must comply with the guidelines, shaping how millions of people eat. National School Lunch and National School Breakfast, for example, served more than 7 billion meals annually to tens of millions of children before the Covid-19 pandemic. The guidelines also affect cafeteria foods served in government buildings, hospitals and other institutions and used in nutrition education programs. The National School Lunch’s reach makes it “uniquely positioned to influence the dietary patterns of American children and adolescents and could help address the environmental impacts of food systems,” according to a recent paper in Communications Earth & Environment. Meat contributes disproportionately to the climate impact of school meals, as well as land and water use. Because government programs and other large institutions serve so many meals, sustainability advocates in recent years have focused on trying to influence their food purchasing decisions. California earlier this year allocated $100 million to help schools serve more plant-based meals. It is not the first time that the environment is an issue in the country’s dietary guidelines. In 2015, the government-appointed nutrition expert panel that consulted on 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 foods is more health-promoting and associated with lower environmental impacts,” the panel wrote. . But after an outcry from the meat industry and Republican lawmakers, the recommendation to eat more plants was dropped from the final guidelines. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal at the time, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said sustainability was outside the scope of the dietary guidelines and compared the scientific panel to his granddaughter “coloring outside the lines.” “It’s really condescending stuff,” Bob Martin of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Sustainable Future said of Vilsack’s comments. “The people involved in this were highly qualified.” Agribusiness has a long history of influencing dietary guidelines and will no doubt be a factor this time around. The meat and dairy industries spent $49.5 million in political contributions in 2020 and another $15.9 million lobbying the federal government. Food industry groups also report systematic lobbying of federal nutrition policy. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association spent more than $303,000 between 2014 and 2016 to keep beef within dietary guidelines, according to federal lobbying records. Several industry groups, including the North American Meat Institute, the International Dairy Foods Association and the National Turkey Federation, have already weighed in on the process for the 2025-2030 guidance. “[W]Although an important issue, sustainability is outside the scope of the Dietary Guidelines,” the National Pork Producers Council wrote in a public comment in May. Although environmental advocates face an uphill battle, much has changed since the failed 2015 effort to mainstream sustainability, said Jessi Silverman of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “I think the public pressure to have concrete policies to deal with climate change has increased a lot in the last few years since then.”
