- I was teaching at New York University and hosting a local
radio show called, "Nutrition on the Line," fresh from completing
my doctoral studies at Columbia University. One day, I took a call from
the assistant to a NYC Congressman who wanted me to interview the Congressman
on my radio show. The aide explained that his boss was planning to hold
a series of hearings on nutrition as head of a newly constituted subcommittee,
the Consumer Affairs, Nutrition, and Domestic Marketing Subcommittee of
the House Agriculture Committee, of the U.S. House of Representatives.
-
- Congressman Fred Richmond, elected to Congress from a
district in Brooklyn, New York in 1976, was a self-made millionaire and
the wealthiest man in Congress, at the time. Elected in a district with
a majority of working poor voters, Richmond's interests reflected those
of his constituents, including food stamps and highly visible federal
food and nutrition programs. Although it was unusual for a Congressman
from a hard-pressed, urban district to serve on the Agriculture Committee,
Fred Richmond had found a niche that allowed him to be highly visible
though a junior Congressman from New York without seniority or political
capital. It also allowed him to stand up for his belief that nutrition
was a critical factor in health and wellness.
-
- Richmond was brash, confident, and had a larger-than-life
personality. When he walked into the tiny broadcast studio where I did
my weekly radio show he immediately took over. While anchoring his body
into a chair, he launched into a discussion of his plans. The subcommittee
was to be the voice of consumers in Congress and a platform for challenging
the government's lethargy and seeming inability to solve the people's
problems. He invited my listeners to be his eyes and ears, reporting to
him problems that affected the safety and quality of foods in the marketplace.
-
- It was refreshing to hear the Congressmen pledge to do
what he could to make our food the safest and best quality in the world.
- Here was someone who was independent of the big corporate
farmers and agribusiness lobbyists because he didn't need their largesse
who wanted to protect consumers not crop subsidies! It would be interesting
to watch what happened as the food industry came to grips with his vision.
Would it survive the back room deals that always seemed to end up making
the farm and food lobbies richer and consumers more poorly served? It
was not going to be easy being the lone voice for consumers inside the
halls of Congress.
-
- My family and I were living in lower Manhattan, at the
time, and to my surprise, the Congressman and his main staff person invited
themselves to Sunday brunch at our home. Over bagels and coffee, Congressman
Richmond described the Congressional Research Service (CRS) study he had
ordered on the nutrition research conducted by the federal government.
He asked me what I would like to know about that topic. I was teaching
several graduate level courses at the time and had searched for information
on government-funded research underway but I couldn't find much. For the
most part, USDA studies on nutrition were for improving crop yields and
the efficiency of animal husbandry, while those sponsored by the Department
of Health and Human Services (DHHS) concentrated on disease mechanisms
and treatments. At first glance, it looked as if the government was devoting
hundreds of millions of dollars to nutrition research, but a closer look
revealed that very little of it advanced knowledge of human nutrition.
I shared my observations with the Congressman and told him that as a college
professor it would be helpful to know which agencies were involved in
human nutrition, what they were doing, how much they were spending, and
whether the data they collected was being used to make people healthier
and government food programs more effective. The Congressman seemed pleased.
He asked me to write up a page on what the CRS study should investigate.
I followed up a few days later.
-
- At breakfast, Richmond laid out a plan for a year-long
series of hearings on food safety, consumer nutrition, food and the environment,
food advertising to children, food additives and preservatives, and food
imports and exports. Those were hot topics in 1978, and they remain hot
today, thirty years later. Although every new Administration proposes
new regulations for cleaning up unsafe food, when push came to shove,
their proposals always seemed to dissolve into thin air, and nothing much
would came of them after the press announcements. Consumers would end
up where they began, with worsening health problems, less oversight and
monitoring, and more anger and despair.
-
- Later I saw firsthand how federal agencies knuckled under
to lobbyists, failing to enforce regulations when the food industry launched
high-priced campaigns to crush even the most feeble efforts to control
food safety. It explained why pushback from the food industry invariably
stopped the government from issuing new rules or even reporting major
outbreaks of food poisoning until the numbers of people falling ill were
so great that they found their way into press reports. It was an age-old
problem that existed from the time Upton Sinclair published "The
Jungle" in 1906, with every attempt by Congress and government agencies
to establish new rules for safer food thwarted by the "take no prisoners"
tactics of the agri/food/pharma cabal.
-
- Six months after our bagel breakfast, Congressman Richmond
called to tell me that the Congressional Research Service study on human
nutrition research was completed and a high profile hearing on the findings
had made national headlines. Congressman Richmond was so pleased with
the results that he wanted to follow up immediately with another study.
He asked for my ideas. One escaped my mouth before I even thought it over.
-
- "We don't know what the government is doing in nutrition
education, either. They talk a lot about it, and USDA, FDA, DHHS, even
the FCC, claim they have programs but I can't find out what they're doing.
When I search, all I come up with are the same old generic advice they've
been giving out for 40 years: "eat a variety of foods," and
"eat enough of the basic food groups." That's not very helpful
when you're trying to figure out whether to buy fresh, canned or frozen
peas and corn, and whether macaroni & cheese is nutritionally superior
to a BLT. The average supermarket today has more than 35,000 food choices
(now, over 50,000)-including fresh, organic, non-organic, frozen, canned
and freeze-dried, and consumers don't have a clue as to how they fit in
with the Basic Four Food Groups. Food companies and their friends in government
say that all food is good food. But that's not true. Nutritionally,
a lot of food sold today is junk food, with too much fat, sugar, salt,
and chemical additives.
-
- "We've had the same national food guide, the Four
Food Groups, for more than 30 years. Nutrition and the food industry have
undergone revolutionary changes in that time, yet we are still giving
advice based on Depression era nutrition! Personally, I don't see why
people reading Adele Davis would find any value in the Basic Four, and
most people interested in nutrition today (the late Seventies) are reading
Adele Davis because her information is more up-to-date, appealing and
usable than what the USDA is publishing. I find that shocking!"
-
- I was a well-known critic of USDA's nutrition education
efforts.
- New approaches were needed to deal with a hugely expanded,
altered, and globalized food supply our dinner plates. Most Americans
don't have the information they needed to make informed eating choices
and they don't know where to get it. Better labels are needed, but also
the understanding that some eating patterns increase your risks for common
chronic diseases, while others lower your risks. The government is talking
a good line but failing to educate consumers in ways that really count.
That leaves practical advice about nutrition to the food industry. They
use their persuasive techniques to tell the public what's good to eat
while stifling news reports about what's harmful. Consumers take it on
faith that anything in print or on TV has passed the government's "truth
in advertising" test. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
-
- How could the same agencies responsible for the prosperity
of agribusiness and the profitability of farm products, protect consumers
from unhealthy junk food and junk diets? This is a time when domestic
foods are being re-engineered as part of an ingredient chain that spans
the globe, and protective rules that interfere with "free trade"
are being thrown overboard for the new world order of a borderless world.
In that world, there is no room for food safety regulations and quality
standards. We are moving into a one-size-fits-all food delivery system
that produces not food as humans had known it for thousands of years,
but feed, synthetic mixtures made to deliver more mouthfuls for the buck.
-
- People are being offered cheap food that is nutritionally
inferior to what their grandparents ate. They buy it because it is laced
with appetite-triggering chemicals that fool the brain into craving these
faux foods, and because they were brainwashed by repetitive ads that promised
buying these products would bring you love, popularity, and success.
-
- Not everyone was satisfied with factory-made food. Some
people didn't mind paying extra for fresh, local and organic food. But
it was only about 10 to 15 percent of the public who could afford organic
foods and knew why they were worth the price. It wasn't a big enough market
to change the paradigm of food as cheap but filling formula blends. Not
until the numbers of consumers avoiding ersatz food grew to one third
or more of the public did organic supermarkets appear on the scene, and
it possible to shop for a market basket of alternatives. But that wasn't
the case in the 1970s.
-
- For about a year, I kept bumping into nutritionists from
USDA in unlikely places such as airports and train stations, who talked
to me about a job "that would be perfect for me" at USDA in
Washington DC. I never wanted to work for the government or move to Washington,
so I didn't pay much attention to their recruiting efforts. Finally, the
head of nutrition education research and dietary guidance at USDA called
me personally.
-
- This was the woman who had invented the Basic Four Food
Guide. A retired Army dietitian, she was now planning to retire from USDA,
and she offered me her job. My major assignment would be to "invent"
a new food guide to replace the Basic Four. I asked her why she didn't
want to do that as she had the expertise and experience. She said, "Once
is a lifetime and is quite enough," and she laughed. Later, I learned
what was behind the laughter.
-
- Raising two little kids in New York City while my husband
and I worked full time was rough on our family, so when my husband completed
his graduate training in a dental specialty, we decided to leave New York
City for Washington. I accepted the job at USDA. (My book, "What
to Eat," describes my early days at USDA.) Before leaving New York,
I called the Congressman's office and left word that I would be seeing
him in Washington soon.
-
- One of my first assignments was to review the nutrition
and food publications of the USDA and make recommendations about how they
should be changed to be more contemporary in style and content, and updated
in nutrition content. When the 20-plus small, pasty white and green booklets
were spread out before me, on topics such as how to bake, broil, roast,
preserve, store, and home can foods, it reminded me of the historic archive
of government publications I had found in my university's library. The
booklets were examples of World War II-era nutrition information. I was
stunned to learn that they were still being offered as USDA's primary
consumer nutrition bulletins. There wasn't much call for most of them.
If there was, it was explained, staff might not be able to handle the
demand. This was a Catch-22. More up-to-date and relevant publications
were not developed because they might become too popular and agency staff
would be overwhelmed by the numbers of requests! This was an example of
a government agency creating failure to protect itself from success. How
many other agencies were guilty of similar nihilistic tendencies, I wondered?
-
- I proposed that we scrap all but the most popular of
those publications; home canning, shopping tips, casserole cooking and
vegetable cookery. Also, that we give the booklets a redesign and include
updated recipes. (Too many recipes were floating in white sauce, none
used whole grains, few were low or moderate in fat, salt and sugar, and
none were quick-cooking). But my major suggestion was that USDA start
a line of publications that would could come out monthly or quarterly,
called FOOD, in 4-colors, with interesting articles offering new ideas
for "better eating," like why not soup for breakfast?
-
- I suggested that at our next meeting our team should
bring back examples of favorite magazines featuring food and health articles
and appealing recipes. These are our primary competition in the marketplace,
I told them. "Let's be thinking how we can re-package our content
to appeal to readers of those magazines." With our conference table
strewn high with colorful, high-concept magazines, we brainstormed ideas
that would turn out to be a huge success but doomed future nutrition publications
at USDA. But more of that later.
-
- Just two weeks into my new job, I had a call from the
Congressman's staff director. He told me they needed help with the Library
of Congress nutrition education study and asked if I could come up with
a list of questions for them to answer. I explained that as a civil servant,
I wasn't permitted to work with Congress directly unless I had special
permission from my agency. Joe, the staff director, said, "No problem!"
Within a week, a directive came down from the Secretary of Agriculture's
office naming me the official USDA liaison to the Library of Congress.
-
- It was the beginning of what I would later call my Capitol
Hill dance lessons. Joe, the staff director, would call from the Congressman's
office each week and I would give him a list of questions to ask the Congressional
Research Service (CRS). A week later, a CRS researcher would phone me
and ask for help answering the questions posed by Congress, and by the
end of the week, I would get a list of the questions CRS submitted to
USDA and, as the designated agency responder, that I was expected to answer.
I drew countless flow charts with one set of questions leading into the
next and into a third. I felt as if I were playing three- dimensional
tic-tac-toe but I hoped that something useful would come of it.
-
- A month later, when all the questions had been asked
and the answers collected, I received a copy of another Executive Order
from the Secretary's office. It said that the Secretary had approved
a request from a Congressional Subcommittee to "borrow me" as
a consultant for a year. Wow! I had no idea if that was a good thing or
a bad one but my multiple roles had made me a sort of leper in my agency,
so a big change was welcome. My phone had stopped ringing, and invitations
to agency meetings and conferences stopped coming. Perhaps they were afraid
that if I knew too much I might tell their secrets to my friends in Congress.
It gave me insight into why, thirty years later, the executive branch
would classify everything they were doing, saying, thinking or planning
"secret," keeping Congress and the public in the dark, even
when their words had a direct affect on everyone in the country.
-
- My "office" in the Dirkson House office building,
was a beat-up desk set catty-cornered between the toilet, the copier and
the Coke machine. It was noisy and airless but I did get to make friends
with dozens of staffers who used the facilities. I had been warned that
watching legislation being made was messy. In my case, it was messy and
smelly!
-
- While setting up plans for Subcommittee hearings, the
staff director and I made the rounds of various public advocacy and consumer
organizations in Washington, describing our plans for hearings and asking
for their help and cooperation. The novelty of a congressional subcommittee
focused mainly on consumer issues evoked a tide of enthusiasm and camaraderie.
During our visits we learned that the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition
and Hunger had developed a draft report called the Dietary Goals for
Americans, based on voluminous research, designed to protect the public
against the most common chronic diseases: heart disease, cancer, high
blood pressure, diabetes, liver and kidney disease, among others.
-
- Young "Turk" staff consultants from Harvard
University's School of Public Health had convinced Senator George McGovern
that a library- full of research, ignored by the government, showed strong
links between consumption of certain foods and styles of eating with the
most prevalent deadly diseases and conditions. The agencies responsible
for nutrition were closing their minds to these associations in favor
of time-worn messages about being sure to get enough to eat and to eat
a variety of foods, messages that were not especially helpful in preventing
nutrition-related diseases and in fact, might even increase some risks.
-
- Consumer groups were excited about the initiative underway
in the Senate. Senator George McGovern, Chair of the Senate Select Committee
on Nutrition and Hunger, had announced a series of hearings to investigate
whether the government was providing the best scientifically-based advice
for healthy eating. A document written by Dr. Mark Hegsted, a world-famous
nutrition researcher in heart disease at Harvard University, and several
of his students, called, the Dietary Goals for Americans, was published
in 1977, and created a furor. The document described what these public
health experts considered a healthy diet for Americans. They advised
the public to:
-
- 1. Increase complex carbohydrates from whole grains,
beans and peas;
-
- 2. Eat less total fats and fats in foods and use
more unsaturated vegetable oils;
-
- 3. Decrease sugars in the diet;
-
- 4. Decrease cholesterol in the diet;
-
- 5. Decrease salt in the diet;
-
- 6. Increase fiber content of the diet.
-
-
-
- The goals were for all normal, healthy people-children
as well as adults. The objective was to reduce risks of heart disease,
obesity, high blood pressure, stroke, and some types of cancer in the
population. Emphasis was on eating foods with little or no processing,
in as natural and unrefined a state as possible. Fresh and frozen fruits
and vegetables were preferred, and the public was advised to choose lower
fat meats and dairy products, and to limit consumption of fried and high
fat foods, commercial snack foods, condiments and high fat/sugar desserts
and drinks. It meant that most of the packaged foods in supermarkets,
convenience stores, vending machines, and fast food restaurants was to
be avoided.
- Seventy percent of foods in the average supermarket were
made of fats, sugars, and refined starches, so you can imagine who objected
to this message the most!
-
- Compare the Senate's blueprint for nutrition with the
USDA's old mainstay, the basic four food groups, which advised daily
consumption of a minimum of two servings of protein foods, 2 dairy, 4
grains, 2 vegetables, and 2 fruits, with no further specification. That
may have worked pretty well in the fifties, when most moms cooked dinner
5 nights a week. But with the growing trend of two working parents, microwave
cooking, take-out and eating out, and more food choices in the supermarket,
classic diets and food roles were breaking down. The more time you spent
out of the kitchen, the less you thought about how food was made or how
healthy it was, because there were no easy ways to judge those things
when food was commercially made.
-
- If you spent a lot of time eating on the run, buying
snacks from vending machines, eating meals in your car or in front of
the TV set, you weren't thinking about the four food groups. Food was
something to fill your "tummy tank." What you ate was based
on what you could find nearby, a 21st century version of the hunter- gatherer
mentality. I call this situational nutrition, and it has had a devastating
impact on American diets and health. Compared to other industrialized
countries, we have higher rates of obesity and chronic diseases, and kids
are developing "old people's diseases" at astonishingly young
ages, today. In the old hunter-gatherer traditions of the caveman era,
people judged the safety of their food by smell, appearance, and texture.
In this second age of hunter-gathering, safety factors can no longer
be judged by our senses because they've been overridden by alterations
made in distant chemical factories.
-
- Familiar foods may look and smell the same but they are
not the same. Today food is food-like, or food-light, engineered to remind
us of old-time, familiar foods, like ice cream, lemonade, and mom's fried
chicken, but made of innovative ingredients sourced from countries all
over the globe. Are they healthy? Synthetic foods have never been proven
safe or healthy. The healthiest and best tasting food, as well as the
safest, is still natural, organic, fresh, and locally produced.
-
- We can't be sure where the packaged food we buy in the
supermarket comes from, what it is made of, and what chemical additives
it contains. Only some ingredients are listed on the label. In the old
days, when most of our food was locally produced, few might have been
affected by outbreaks of food contamination. Today, most of our food comes
from mega-farms in vast regions of the country or overseas from developing
countries where food sanitation is largely unknown. One batch of contaminated
food can reach and infect hundreds, thousands or even millions of consumers.
Is it any wonder that Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says that almost
all adults suffer from food infections every year, and most so-called
"intestinal flu" cases are, in fact, cases of food poisoning.
-
- When enough people are affected, products are recalled
and we may be alerted by a news story telling us to stop eating the suspect
foods. But that is usually long after the damage has been done to many
people who have paid a high price in illness and mortality for food advertised
as safe and tasty. The McGovern-Hegsted Report dealt with nutrition not
food safety, but many of the trends that produced the nutritionally inferior
foods described in the report were the same ones that gave us unsafe foods.
-
- The McGovern report was making the rounds of government
agencies, Congressional committees, trade and lobbyist groups, and passions
were running high. An all-out attack on the Dietary Goals hit the newspapers,
smearing, belittling and maliciously attacking the producers of the report
and their supporters. The pitched battle over America's eating habits
played out in public hearings, the pages of popular magazines, and on
radio and TV talk shows. There were editorials in the top ten newspapers
around the country, excoriating Congress for assuming the role of our
"national nanny." Everyone seemed to have an opinion, especially
the trade groups and commodity associations who had the most to lose.
Outrage from the meat, dairy, egg, snack foods, wheat, oils, and processed
food industries, who had visions of their rich futures going up in smoke,
led to the recruiting of armies of "scientists' from land- grant colleges
in the farm belt to rebut the Harvard-shaped Goals. But little by little,
the public became incensed and demanded to know why the health and food
agencies of the U.S. government weren't offering us this lifesaving information.
-
- Meanwhile on the House side, Congressman Richmond's subcommittee
was laying out the map of the hunger and malnutrition in the country
in a series of high profile public hearings. The hearings identified the
high hunger and malnutrition regions, their causes, and the types of programs
that could help to solve these problems at a grassroots level. We drafted
legislation to create community nutrition resource centers in communities
with high densities of impacted, poor people. These centers would provide
nutrition advice, emergency hot meals, summer feeding programs for kids,
grocery assistance, and help in managing food budgets without compromising
nutrition, the range of assistance needed to improve community nutrition
levels.
-
- After a while, the press started calling our efforts
a framework for implementing the Dietary Goals of the McGovern Committee.
Once that imaginary connection was made in the media, our legislation
was dead in the water and my stay in the Congress would soon be ended.
The wrath of the food industry was crushing. But a food and nutrition
revolution was underway in the country and all the lobbyists' huffing
and puffing couldn't stop it.
-
- The year was ending with our draft legislation going
nowhere, and our year-long series of public hearings completed. It was
time for me to head back to USDA, although I shuddered to think how they
might or might not welcome me back after all the notoriety. In the government,
you always need a "rabbi," someone who will back you up and
keep you out of harm's way. I picked the woman recently appointed assistant
secretary of food, nutrition and consumer services, Carol Foreman, as
my rabbi. Carol knew me from the hearings and had participated in several
on behalf of the Consumer Federation of America, an organization she headed
until her appointment to the Agriculture Department.
-
- When I visited Carol and told her I was coming back to
USDA and wanted to work with her, she asked me what job I would like to
have? I told her that I would like to be her special assistant for nutrition,
to help her reorganize the nutrition work at USDA. Carol told me that
fitted in with what she was planning, which was to create a Human Nutrition
Research Center, comprised of many human nutrition research laboratories
at leading universities working in collaboration with USDA. This type
of organization would be more robust and resistant to lobbyist pressures
than government laboratories that were fixed in the sights of the food
industry's PR machine, which steered USDA's research agendas behind the
scenes. The collaboration with independent academic researchers could
result in a more independent and effective nutrition research program
that could deal with the growing public health problems of inadequate
and excessive nutrition.
-
- Carol asked me to take on the role of helping her to
create the Center, and I jumped at the chance. The next question she asked
me was who to hire to head the new Center. I told her it had to be someone
with a stellar reputation, from a leading university, who had spent his
career studying diet and disease relationships. The day when nutrition
could be separated into "wellness nutrition," USDA's old version,
and "prevention nutrition," Health and Human Services version,
were over. There could only be one version of nutrition, no matter who
was in charge politically, I told her. She agreed. I proposed that Dr.
Mark Hegsted from Harvard University, the father of the Dietary Goals,
be appointed the first head of the Human Nutrition Research Center at
USDA. Carol liked the idea and agreed to talk with him.
-
- In addition to helping Carol reorganize nutrition research,
I was to keep my old job as head of Nutrition Education Research and
Dietary Guidance. In this role, I organized two conferences of leading
nutrition "experts" in the US and Canada. One group came from
the perspectives of traditional, agriculture-based, human nutrition research.
Their interests were in the amounts of nutrients essential for people
of different ages and conditions. The second group were medical nutrition
experts, concerned with nutrients and nutrition factors (such as antioxidants)
that influenced health, disease and longevity. The two sets of recommendations
were quite consistent.
-
- Their advice was to place the most emphasis on fresh
fruits and vegetables, along with food sources of fiber and trace minerals,
and less on refined, starchy, fatty and sugary foods. We should recommend
foods with less fat, salt, sweeteners, and additives, and advise modest
portion sizes.
-
- Other considerations were: getting enough dietary fiber
from whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and enough trace minerals from
foods that were minimally processed and refined. Animal fats were another
issue of concern. The experts emphasized moderation in fats and a balance
of the three types: polyunsaturated (example, corn oil), monounsaturated
(example, olive oil), and saturated fat (example, butter). They were concerned
about trans fat, urged more research on the subject, and advised caution
on the dangers of consuming partially hydrogenated fats and trans fats
in processed foods. What fat to eat was controversial. The heart-health
medical experts advocated the use of synthetic, engineered margarines
and oils as substitutes for butter and lard in cooking and baking, and
as spreads for bread and crackers. While the P/S ratios of margarines
were widely touted, their trans fat contents were not known at the time.
-
- The configuration of food groups we came up with would
have fruits and vegetables as the largest or foundation food group, and
smaller groups of whole grains, protein foods (meats, fish and beans),
dairy foods, and a separate fats group. Sugars would no longer be at
the top of the pyramid. The idea was to make the new guide a core eating
plan representing about 16-1800 calories of nutrient- dense foods. Consumers
could (and would) add to that core extra
- calories in the form of treats and snack foods, if they
needed them. For many people, eating the core servings alone would provide
adequate calories and nutrition for their daily needs.
-
- We made a plan to test the graphic of a pyramid versus
a circle and other ways to show the new nutrition guide. This was the
first time, I learned, that the usability of a nutrition guide was tested
before it was released to the public. We were making progress-not only
could we back up what we were advising people to eat scientifically, we
would know how well the guide could be understood and applied. Work on
the new food guide was about to be completed when an unexpected glitch
occurred.
-
- Once the pyramid food guide was in final draft, we sent
it off to the Secretary's office for sign-off and approval. But when the
guide came back from the Secretary's office, a lot had changed! The foundation
of the pyramid now showed 6 to 11 servings of grain products replacing
the 5 to 7 servings of fruits and vegetables that was the base of our
version. References to whole grains were eliminated, and dairy options
were now called milk and milk alternatives. Once again, snacks and sweets,
which we had eliminated from our plan, were shown at the top of the pyramid.
-
- This was the first time in anyone's memory that political
changes were made to a national food guide in direct contravention of
research and the best judgments of the country's leading nutrition experts.
I told my supervisor, the head of the Agricultural Research Service, that
if the guide was published in this form it would result in higher rates
of obesity, diabetes and other chronic health problems in the country,
and among health professionals, it would be seen for what it was-a political
hatchet job! But my warnings fell on deaf ears. Plans were made for the
new food guide to be published in 1979. But that didn't happen. The new
guide wasn't released to the public until 1994, fifteen years later. For
15 years it was suppressed, and a slightly altered version of the Basic
Four remained USDA's official advice about nutrition. But this wasn't
the only time that USDA, our nation's lead agency for nutrition education,
had suppressed a report because its conclusions weren't politically palatable.
-
- When I first arrived in Washington in the late 1970s,
I met scientists from the University of Maryland who were just completing
a series of studies on the role of trans fats in heart disease. What
they found was shocking! More than saturated fats in butter and lard,
trans fats were dangerous and deadly, and led to heart attacks. The research
published by the University of MD researchers prompted the head of USDA's
nutrition laboratory on fats to undertake a study of the trans fats content
of all the margarines on the market. What he learned was that virtually
all margarines, those promoted for heart health as well as those that
weren't, contained very high levels of trans fats, also known as partially
hydrogenated fats, which also was present in most processed and packaged
foods.
-
- The head of the fats lab told me that when he attempted
to publish a paper with his findings in a peer-reviewed scientific journal,
information never before available that was critical to the health of
the public, USDA suppressed it, refusing to allow the information to be
published. This eminent, world-renowned scientist told me, with tears
in his eyes, that in his 20-year career in research, he had never been
confronted with such blatant political interference in science! He left
USDA shortly after this to head a nutrition research department at a nearby
university. Two years later, his banned paper on the trans fat values
of margarines and other foods was published in the peer-reviewed, American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition. I couldn't help wondering how many people
might have avoided heart attacks if they had been alerted to the dangers
of trans fats years earlier, when I first learned about them.
-
- The FDA had required the labeling of saturated fat and
cholesterol content of foods since 1993, but it was not until 2006 that
the FDA required the listing of the trans fat content of foods. The rationale
for this, according to the FDA, was that the link between trans fats and
cardiovascular disease was now well established. If so, why were these
synthetic fats even allowed in food products?
-
- Major Food Sources of Trans Fat for American Adults
- (source: http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2003/503_fats.html
)
-
- [Average Daily Trans Fat Intake is 5.8 Grams or 2.6 Percent
of Calories]
-
- 40%
- cakes, cookies, crackers, pies, bread, etc.
- 21%
- animal products
- 17%
- margarine
-
- 8%
- fried potatoes
-
- 5%
- potato chips, corn chips, popcorn
-
- 4%
- household shortening
-
- 3%
- salad dressing
-
- 1%
- breakfast cereals & candy.
-
-
-
- One of the most exciting projects I worked on at USDA
was the Dietary Guidelines. Once the McGovern Committee issued the Dietary
Goals, the pressure on USDA was immense to develop a comparable guide
with specific advice about healthful eating for disease prevention.
-
- A growing body of research showed that over-consumption
of fat, saturated fat, trans fat, sodium and sugars increased risks of
chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. The Senate
publication, Dietary Goals, shifted the national nutrition focus from
getting enough of the "right stuff" (essential nutrients), to
avoiding too much of the "wrong stuff," food ingredients linked
to chronic diseases. For the first time in government, a guide had been
produced with quantitative goals for how much protein, carbohydrate, fatty
acids, cholesterol, sugars and sodium to eat. It challenged USDA to change
it's approach to nutrition or lose credibility.
-
- USDA's first step in that direction, discussing the role
of fats, sugars, and sodium in chronic disease risks was in the colorful
1979 publication, FOOD. An interim new food guide, the Hassle-Free Guide
to a Better Diet, in the publication, highlighted food ingredients targeted
for moderation: fats, sweets, salt, and alcoholic beverages. Although
this small change didn't go far enough for many in public health, food
industry researchers felt this was going too far. But the Surgeon-General
had just released his Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
in 1979, suggesting that people reduce their consumption of excess calories,
fat, cholesterol, salt and sugar to lower disease rates. If USDA did
not acknowledge this important new direction for nutrition guidance, the
Dept. of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) might become the new chief
nutrition educator of the government. USDA could not afford to let that
happen. The only way their clients could control the nutrition "message"
was if the USDA was in charge of it.
-
- The next step in the evolving new diet and nutrition
advice from USDA was the appointment of a team of national health and
nutrition experts to develop Dietary Guidelines for Americans, health
and nutrition advice for healthy people aged 2 and up. Unlike the Senate
publication, the USDA-DHHS publication was directional rather than quantitative.
But that didn't stop the torrent of abuse and attacks on the guidelines
when they were issued in 1980. As a companion piece to the Dietary Guidelines,
Carol Foreman asked me to develop a popular publication that showed how
you could eat well based on the Dietary Guidelines, with menus and recipes
included.
-
- The result was the publication, Ideas for Better Eating,
which was introduced at the press conference where the Dietary Guidelines
were presented to the public. Both publications, like the earlier FOOD
magazines, were instant USDA best sellers, hitting new levels of demand
never before seen in government.
-
- It was the Carter Presidency's last hurrah. Ronald Reagan
won a landslide victory and took office in 1980. When I came back from
a vacation, Washington was transformed. Black stretch limos were inching
along the avenues, bumper to bumper, down packed streets where jubilant,
well-dressed, bejeweled sightseers, were jostling by each other. It felt
like a giant cocktail party was going on all over town. The museums were
filled to the brim and there were no reservations to be had in Washington's
best watering holes and restaurants. Californians had come east to celebrate
the Reagan revolution and the celebration was everywhere.
-
- When I entered the main Agriculture building where I
had my office, the first thing I noticed was that the floors and elevators
had a high shine, and looked clean enough to eat off. As I unlocked my
door I saw two men in black with wraparound sunglasses installing wires
around my windows. I waved at them but they continued doing what they
were doing, and talking into the air. It was my first sighting of the
Reagan troops people were calling Reaganauts. It dawned on me that they
might be wiring my office so someone could listen in on my conversations.
That turned out to be the case, I found out later, when my agency director,
an extension agent from Minneapolis married to a hot dog executive, questioned
me about a conversation I had with someone from the American Heart Association.
But that's another story.
-
- I didn't have much to do now. Other than contributing
redecorating ideas to the woman hired to replace Carol Foreman, a former
staffer from the House Agriculture committee on the Republican side. Mary
would call me into her office, throw down one or two bolts of damask
over a couch or chair, and ask which I preferred. We worked through drapes,
carpets and paint colors over the next few months. Each time we had one
of our redecorating sessions, Mary would serve tea in porcelain cups poured
from a silver samovar. Styrofoam cups were outlawed for the duration of
the Reagan years, and women were not allowed to wear slacks to the office.
Suits, dresses and heels were now de rigeur.
-
- I'd been following the budget battles in the press. All
of the USDA food and nutrition programs were targeted for drastic budget
cuts: food stamps, child nutrition, and emergency feeding, among them.
- One late Friday afternoon, Mary called me into her office.
Everyone else seemed to have left for the weekend. Mary handed me a paper
with a lot of small print and some handwritten inserts in the text. "Please
read this over and give me you comments. Can you do it before you leave
for the weekend," Mary asked? I said I would.
-
- Back in my office, I started reading the document. It
was from USDA's budget office and it laid out a plan for deep cuts in
the National School Lunch program, among others. To accommodate budget
cuts, fresh fruits and vegetables were no longer to be a mandatory part
of the school lunch program, but someone had written in the margin that
catsup and pickle relish could be considered vegetables and substituted
for them.
-
- The hair on the back of my neck stood up. If the Reagan
Administration issued these rules they would be laughed out of town.
Critics would seize on "catsup is a vegetable" as an example
of the mean-spirited and counter-nutritional changes that were being
foisted on the public. I hurried back to Mary's office and placed the
paper on her desk. I told her, "If you seriously propose catsup as
a vegetable to save money on school lunches, you will be vilified in editorials
from coast to coast. Don't do it," I urged her. "It will sink
your efforts to cut back the budget for school lunches."
-
- Mary had tears in her eyes. She replied, "Luise,
we have to do it, to save the program! If we don't come up with something
drastic, there's talk that the Office of Management and Budget will zero
out the program. I'm worried about the little children who will suffer!
This is the least worst thing we can do." She hugged me, and literally
cried on my shoulder. "I just don't think the Congress will go along
with this and the public will be outraged by substituting catsup for fruits
and vegetables." Mary shook her head, and pleaded, "But fruits
and vegetables cost too much, and we have to cut something!"
-
- The rest is history. As soon as the cuts in School Lunch
and the substitution of catsup for vegetables were announced, the Department
was ridiculed in the press and media. Everywhere I went, when people heard
I was from USDA, they would laugh and ask me, "Is catsup still a
vegetable at USDA?" Twenty years later, they were still asking me
that question. The derision that greeted the "catsup rule"
forced the Administration to back down and withdraw the planned cuts in
School Lunch altogether. Laughter is still a powerful force in Washington
when politicians do dumb things and forget common sense.
-
- After that, I was relegated to limbo, out of all the
loops. Until one day, Mary confided in me that the new thrust of the Reagan
administration was going to be public-private partnerships. She was looking
forward to becoming the first assistant secretary to land one. I told
her that I would see what I could put together and she hugged me.
-
- Some weeks earlier I was contacted by an executive of
the American Red Cross (ARC) who asked if there was a way I could help
them develop a new course in nutrition that was up-to-date. The one they
were offering was developed in the 1950s. I said I thought that might
be possible. A series of high-level meetings at the Red Cross headquarters
resulted in an agreement for a collaboration between USDA and the ARC
in developing of a new program based on the Dietary Guidelines. I knew
that the new administration wanted to bury the Dietary Guidelines, but
the public-private partnership with the ARC provided an opportunity to
install it permanently across the country. I didn't make the fact that
the course was based on the Dietary Guidelines very prominent and Mary,
the assistant secretary, didn't ask for many details because she was
elated with the project. The next week, at a meeting of assistant secretaries
from across the government at the Freer Institution, Mary was the first
to announce a new public-private partnership to great applause and terrific
reviews in the press. She was now my friend, within limits.
-
- All of the nutrition publications that I had worked so
hard to develop disappeared from view within the first month. Though
popular, the Food magazines were given away to the American Dietetic
Association to sell at a much inflated price, one of hundreds of publications
listed in their catalogue. Ideas for Better Eating and the Dietary Guidelines
disappeared down a rabbit hole. Nowhere were they described or listed
as available any longer. When asked what they were going to publish about
nutrition now, I was told that nutrition was going to be outsourced to
the food industry.
-
- The new course for the Red Cross was coming along. We
were heading toward completion of the project when I received a call from
the senior vice president for quality control of a top three food corporation.
Mike said he was coming to town and would like to meet with me. I told
him I'd have to run it by my supervisor and he said he'd call back in
a few days.
-
- My supervisor, the extension agent from Minneapolis,
encouraged me to meet with the food executive. We arranged a meeting in
the lobby of the Willard, a posh hotel in the grand tradition. Mike was
a tall slender youngish man who was gripping an attaché case and
sweating profusely. He said he had something to show me and asked if
I would come up to his room for a moment. I was startled and looked into
his face to see if he was kidding. He wasn't. I told him I didn't do that
sort of thing. He assured me that he had honorable intentions and that
we could keep the door to his room open if that made me more comfortable.
In the end, overcome by curiosity, I agreed. We sat opposite each other,
Michael on the edge of his bed, and myself on a sofa, facing him. He was
clutching the attaché case on his lap, still sweating profusely.
I asked him what he wanted to show me. He opened the case. It contained
stacks of neatly bound new bills. It looked like quite a lot of money.
In a soft voice he said, "I'm prepared to offer you $60,000 if you
will agree to leave the words "diet and cancer" out of the Red
Cross course you're developing." I was stunned.
-
- "Sorry, I can't do that," I told him. "Of
course, if it was several million, I might have to think about it for
a few minutes." I walked out of the room and back to my office. I
didn't report the attempted bribe because I expected that my supervisor
knew all about it, in fact, might even have had a hand in it. She knew
what was in the Red Cross course and her husband worked for the same
company as the man who tried to bribe me. For all I knew, it was a sting
operation and the cops would have arrested me the minute he handed me
the money. After that episode, I realized it probably was dangerous for
me to stay at USDA any longer. This crowd wouldn't be satisfied until
they succeeded in punishing me for my independence.
-
- A call came in from a friend at the American Heart Association,
inviting me to talk at a Conference in Dallas. It earned me a trip to
my supervisor's office. With an imperious scowl, Mildred, the extension
agent from Minneapolis said, "You've been using your office phone
to solicit speaking fees and job opportunities. That's illegal. You're
fired!"
-
- I was speechless. "Are you talking about the call
I just received from the scientific director of the American Heart Association?
- She invited me to speak at their fall nutrition conference.
I thought that was part of my job! But how did you know who phoned me?
Do you listen in to my office calls? I thought that was illegal."
-
- "Pack your bags," she told me in no uncertain
terms. "Listen,' I told her, "As much as you want to get rid
of me and I want to move on, which I assure you I do, firing me this way
will open a can of worms. I will have no choice but to take my case to
an attorney specializing in civil service abuse as soon as I leave here.
Do you and the Department want to be waist deep in another lawsuit?
- There was a story in the Washington Post just this week
about the thousands of civil servants who were unceremoniously fired from
their government jobs, who have started a class action lawsuit against
the Administration. I'll just add my name to their case."
-
- "I want you out of here by the end of the day."
-
- Mildred and I didn't hit it off from Day One. I was the
enemy because I was trying to do my job, the job I was hired to do. If
that was no longer what USDA management wanted to be done, they needed
to tell me. Failing that, if she wanted me out of the picture, we could
have talked about a transfer. New to government and full of swagger, Mildred
wanted to punish me for my work on the new food guide, the Dietary Guidelines,
and the new vision of nutrition that I had helped to install at USDA.
Nutrition was not going to be a top priority of the Reagan Administration.
They were privatizing it, passing the baton to the food industry. The
food industry was very selective about what they said about nutrition
and they were only interested in versions that promoted the sales of
their products.
-
- I started contacting friends in other organizations and
agencies. New opportunities were popping up and I expected to be in a
new position by the end of the month. I decided to have a reunion visit
with Joe, Fred Richmond's staff director, to find out how he was faring
with the Reaganauts in charge. We met one morning in the House cafeteria.
I spotted Joe with his head buried in his arms on the table. I went over
and started to give him a hug. He turned his head up and I saw tears streaming
down his face. I had never seen Joe cry. He was a tough New Yorker from
Queens!
-
- Joe spilled out the story as I sat beside him. The Congressman
had been arrested earlier that morning for soliciting a minor in front
of his house. A sixteen year old boy wearing a wire was out for a run
in front of Fred's house. He had been running there for several days.
This morning, Fred offered him money for sex. Joe added, the IRS is climbing
down his back, too, and "I'm waiting for the next shoe to drop,"
Joe said. "It's all over," he added. Everything we worked so
hard to put in place is gone!"
-
- The story was all over town and all over the news. The
coup de grace was delivered about a month later. The Congressman's houseboy
was discovered dead in the bathtub of Fred's Brooklyn townhouse. The
papers called it a suicide, but was he suicided by the people who were
out to get Fred? The scandal saw to it that he would never be elected
again. Subsequently, the Domestic Marketing and Nutrition Subcommittee
was disbanded and has never been reconstituted under Republican or Democratic
Congressional leadership.
-
- What I learned as a government employee is that the government
we trust to do the people's business is busy doing the business of business.
It really doesn't matter which party is in charge. The idealists who come
into government to "make a difference" have stars in their eyes
and fog in their brains. Eventually, they learn that the decisions are
not theirs to make. Change can happen, but only if you're prepared to
wait 30 or 40 years! This is not the government the Founders had in mind,
but it is the one President Eisenhower warned us against in his farewell
speech.
-
- "In the councils of government, we must guard against
the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military/industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
-
- "Down the long lane of the history yet to be written
America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid
becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud
confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must
be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the
same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic,
and military strength." _________________________________________________________
-
- Luise Light, MS, EdD, is the author of, "What to
Eat; The Ten Things You Really Need to Know to Eat Well and Be Healthy."
Her weekly radio show, Sundays, 2-3- pm eastern time, "What to Eat,"
is heard on WOOL-LP, 100.1 fm in southeastern VT, and over the station's
website, www.wool.fm. To contact Dr. Light visit her website, www.luiselight.com,
or email her at, luvalu365@yahoo.com.
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