While Congress battles it out over health care reform, the resulting government shutdown will have far-reaching impacts on food safety, environmental protections, food production and farming. It also has serious implications for the health and nutrition of many Americans. Depending on the duration of the shut down, it could be nothing less than catastrophic for a great number of people.

For those same Americans to whom the Republicans are so opposed to providing adequate health care, the shutdown will also affect their already limited ability to access healthy foods, further harming their health. This will be especially true for those most in need -- namely the nine million pregnant women and new mothers who rely on the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says that states will be able to fund WIC for a week and beyond that additional funds may be available through October, however, the USDA warns that state agencies "may still face funding shortfalls associated with FY 2014 obligations during the shutdown."

WIC is a critically important program that provides healthier food options for pregnant women and new mothers who are poor, have medical problems, or are considered to be at "nutrition risk." WIC also provides important health referrals to the nine million people who currently rely on the program. And when considering the negative long-term effects that poor nutrition has in utero and in young children, the true costs of cutting funding for WIC have not been accounted for.

Which brings us back to health care. Many politicians fail to see that the state of the economy depends in large part on the state of health among all Americans. American health is on a downward trend and by cutting crucial food funding for the poor, especially pregnant women and new mothers, we will only exacerbate this trend.

The shut down also means that the USDA's communications offices are now closed. So, if important information about food safety comes to light, we probably won't know.

USDA databases that provide import market information for farmers will also be closed. Modern Farmer reports that, "Markets rely on reports from the USDA to set the price of soy, wheat, corn, beef, etc. Without an October report traders would be adjusting prices in the dark and farmers would be selling without knowing the real value of their crops."

Small family farmers will also be affected since many are dependent on loans from the USDA and delays on loans will likely cost many their farms -- as many as 1,400 small farmers are likely to lose their farms as a result of the shutdown, according to Rural Foundation Advancement International.

Other agency shutdowns that will affect our food system include:

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is essentially completely shut down except for current work on Superfund sites. This means the EPA will stop monitoring air pollution and pesticide use.
• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which will eliminate much of its food-safety checks, including "routine establishment inspections...monitoring of imports, notification programs (e.g., food contact substances, infant formula), and the majority of the laboratory research necessary to inform public health decision-making."
• The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has stopped taking new patients for clinical research and its hotline for medical questions is closed.
• The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which has stopped its flu program and says that it will have a "significantly reduced capacity to respond to outbreak investigations." The CDC has also stopped providing "support to state and local partners for infectious disease surveillance."

And while the USDA will continue to inspect meat, dairy, eggs and food imports with 87 percent of its employees still working, the agency has also said that if a violation is indeed found it may not have the resources to fully investigate. The USDA plan also warns that, "A lengthy hiatus would affect the safety of human life and have serious adverse effects on the industry, the consumer and the Agency."

The FDA, which is responsible for inspecting the majority of the food industry, will not be functioning in this capacity during the shutdown. Typically, the FDA inspects 80 food facilities a day and files reports on those in violation of health codes. This means an end to important investigations and reports, like the one that brought a peanut facility to a close last year after a salmonella outbreak.

It's beginning to look like what Republicans have wanted all along: To eliminate social programs to help the poor and scale back on regulations particularly when it comes to the environment and our food supply. But what kind of country would that look like? Currently four out of five Americans live in danger of falling into poverty and are struggling with joblessness.

These Americans are reliant on social programs like WIC or food stamps (which will continue to be funded at least through October) and without this help many will be forced to decide between medications, rent, or food.

Every American would be best served by understanding that the health of Americans comes first and defunding social programs, regulatory agencies, and independent research will only further undermine America's deteriorating health, which in the end, will cost us a lot more than a failing economy.

If there were any lingering doubts as to whom our elected representatives really work for, they were put to rest Tuesday when Congress announced that frozen pizza was a vegetable. The United States Congress voted to rebuke new USDA guidelines for school lunches that would have increased the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in school cafeterias and instead declared that the tomato paste on frozen pizza qualified it as a vegetable. For this we can thank large food companies -- in this case ConAgra and Schwan -- which pressured Congress to comply with their financial interests. It simply doesn't suit the makers of frozen pizza, chicken nuggets and tater tots for schools to offer real food in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Many conservative lawmakers are also insisting that the federal government shouldn't tell people what to eat. This is the same argument Sarah Palin used against Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign to the rallying cry, "nanny-state."

But the government clearly does not control the food Americans eat. Corporations do. In this case ConAgra and Schwan are quite literally determining what the vast majority of our school children will be fed in school cafeterias: A veritable chemical concoction made to look like pizza. These are the ingredients for the "traditional 4x6 school pizza" made by ConAgra:

CRUST: (Enriched wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean oil, dextrose, baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum sulfate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate), yeasts (yeast, starch, sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid), salt, dough conditioners (wheat flour, salt, soy oil, L-cysteine, ascorbic acid, fungal enzyme), wheat gluten, soy flour).SAUCE: (water, tomato paste (31 percent NTSS), pizza seasoning (salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated onion, guar and xanthan gum, garlic powder, potassium sorbate, citric acid, tricalcium phophate and soybean oil (prevent caking)), modified food starch). SHREDDED MOZZARELLA

CHEESE: (Pasteurized part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes). SHREDDED MOZZARELLA

CHEESE SUBSTITUTE: (Water, oil (soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with citric acid), casein, milk protein concentrate, modified food starch, contains 2 percent or less of the following: sodium aluminum phosphate, salt, lactic acid, mozzarella cheese type flavor (cheese (milk, culture, rennet, salt), milk solids, disodium phosphate), disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, nutrient blend (magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin and vitamin B-12), vitamin A palmitate).

It's not even pizza, much less a vegetable. (And if you think that's bad take a look at the ingredients for the "Pepperoni, Reduced Fat Pizza").

This vote by Congress makes it abundantly clear who calls the shots when it comes to feeding our nation's children. According to The New York Times food companies have spent $5.6 million lobbying against these new rules.

Meanwhile, writer Ed Bruske brings up an important, related point on The Slow Cook. He writes:

[This] also provides a vivid illustration of what happens when you go after the foods kids most love in the lunch line. Pizza is the all-time favorite school lunch food, followed by potatoes in all their guises. Essentially, the proposed new guidelines would sharply cut back on foods kids really like, and replace them with things they hate: vegetables, beans and whole grains. Turns out there are huge amounts of money at stake behind the foods beloved by the 32 million children who participate in the national school lunch program. Frozen food companies are protecting their share the best way they know how: using their clout with their local congressman.

He goes on:

Other efforts to mess with pizza also have failed. In Berkeley, for instance, elementary school children get a rectangular pizza made with a locally-produced whole wheat crust. Middle schoolers, however, insist on a round pizza, which has to be sourced through a wholesale food distributor ... As I've learned sitting in on meals at my daughter's school the past two years here in the District of Columbia, children will go to great lengths to avoid the foods adults consider "healthy." Vegetables, beans and whole grains -- they typically get dumped in the trash. Kids will spend inordinate time picking the spinach out of fresh-cooked lasagna, for instance, before wolfing down the pasta.

So, the real question is, why do children want pizza, potatoes and pasta while vehemently eschewing green vegetables, beans and whole grains? This hasn't always been the case. Keep in mind that industrial food as it exists today has only been around for roughly 60 years. Much of what we take as the truth about what kinds of food kids love and hate is largely dictated by the food industry itself. The idea that kids won't eat vegetables is a construct invented by the food industry and reinforced by well-meaning parents, school lunch programs and government officials.

Herein lies the brilliance of the food industry -- not only has it created a myriad of products but it also created the idea that children want industrial food products above all else. While most Americans have bought into this notion, it's simply not true. Children 100 years ago couldn't have possibly eaten the industrial foods they are eating today. But listening to parents and children now, you'd be convinced that they will only eat industrial foods. Bruske writes that the middle schoolers in Berkeley "insist" on round industrial pizza.

How was this notion started? The food industry literally shapes and changes the palates of our children. Constantly eating sugary, salty and fatty food products adjusts taste preference to the point that simple, real foods taste bland and unappealing. While the food industry insists that it only advertises to children "to influence brand preference," a study published in the journal Appetite found that the food industry works to, "fundamentally change children's taste palates to increase their liking of highly processed and less nutritious foods."

This makes it all the more outrageous that Congress won't stand up to Big Food to say it will not allow financial interests to trump the health and well-being of America's children. With one out of five four-year-olds now obese, the health of our nation's children is in such a sorry state that the food movement may have some unlikely allies on this front. According to the Associated Press, a group of retired generals criticized the move by Congress, calling the decision a national security issue since obesity has become the leading medical disqualifier for military service. Amy Dawson Taggart, the director of the group called Mission: Readiness said in a letter to members of Congress before the final plan was released, "We are outraged that Congress is seriously considering language that would effectively categorize pizza as a vegetable in the school lunch program."

But this is what Congress has done. It has let the American people down and failed to protect our children. As Michele Simon astutely points out, "Congress has hijacked the USDA regulatory process to do the food industry's bidding." How much longer will we allow Big Food and our government to propagate lies about food and compromise the health of our nation's children for their financial and political gain? Please join the movement and attend Occupy Big Food's rally this Saturday from 1 to 3 in Zuccotti Park.

Erin Fairbanks of the Farm Report interviewed me last Thursday on Heritage Radio Network. We talked about nutrition, food, and the corporate control of the food supply. Here's the link to the full interview and the write up the station wrote: The Farm Report - Episode 98 - Nutrition with Kristin Wartman

Certified Holistic Nutritionist Kristin Wartman joins the Farm Report with Erin Fairbanks today to bust some food myths and expose some of the evils of big industry agriculture and food. Find out what makes a healthy diet and hear about some of the common mistakes people make in trying to get healthy. Hear why Kristin thinks food and democracy go hand in hand and why all concerned foodies should be occupying Wall Street and making their voice heard!

Milk is truly one of the oldest, simplest whole foods - and we certainly drink a lot of it. According to the USDA, Americans consumed an average of 1.8 cups of dairy per person, per day in 2005. But is the milk Americans are drinking today the same milk our ancestors drank thousands of years ago? Is it even the same milk our great-grandparents were drinking a hundred years ago? By and large, the answer is no.

Like many other modern foods, most of the milk sold today has been altered, stripped, and reconstituted. Once minimally processed, milk now undergoes a complicated and energy-intensive process before it ends up bottled and shipped to grocery store shelves. There are so many additives and processes involved that buying a gallon of milk or a cup of yogurt at your grocery store essentially guarantees that you'll get a mixture of substances from all over the country -- and possibly the world.  But that's not where it ends; milk by-products also now appear in a wide variety of other processed foods.

Lloyd Metzger, director of the Midwest Dairy Foods Research Center and Alfred Chair of the Dairy Department at South Dakota State, outlined the process: Milk is received at the processing facilities and is tested for off-flavors and antibiotics. Several tanker trunks worth (from multiple different farms) get combined and placed in holding silos. Then the milk goes through a cream separator to create two products: cream and skim milk. At this point, various percentages of cream are added back into the skim milk in order to create whole and low fat milk. Milk is then homogenized, which is the process of passing it at high speeds through very small holes to create a uniform texture and prevent the cream from separating and rising to the top. It's then pasteurized, or heated to at least 145 degrees. In some states, non-fat milk solids are added to the milk in order to thicken it and give it a better mouth feel. Then synthetic vitamins A and D are added.

When all is said and done, the product is a far cry from the milk that actually comes out of a cow. And, depending on whom you ask, each step along the way might carry its own risks.

Homogenization

"Homogenization is not good," says John Bunting, a dairy farmer who researches and writes about dairy for The Milkweed. "The milk is pumped under high pressure which smashes the milk molecules so hard. Homogenization splits and exposes the molecules." The hard science goes like this: A raw milk molecule is surrounded by a membrane, which protects it from oxygen. Homogenization decreases the average diameter of each fat globule and significantly increases the surface area. Because there's now not enough membrane to cover all of this new surface area, the molecules are easily exposed to oxygen, and the fats  become oxidized.

Milk solids

Critics believe that milk solids, which are sometimes added back into the milk, contain oxidized, or damaged, forms of fat and cholesterol. Nonfat milk solids are created through a process of evaporation and high heat drying which removes the moisture from skim milk. Exposure to high heat and oxygen causes fats to oxidize. And oxidized cholesterol has been shown in numerous studies to lead to atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and to raise LDL, aka "bad" cholesterol. One study from 2004 found that oxidized dietary fats are a "major cause" in the development of atherosclerosis.

This phenomenon worries Nina Planck, author of Real Food. "This damaged cholesterol is much different than what I call "fresh cholesterol," which is found in egg yolks, whole milk, and butter," she said. "We know that fresh cholesterol has one main effect and that is to raise HDL [or ‘good' cholesterol]. On the other hand, oxidized cholesterol raises LDL."

What's more, Planck says that the law does not require manufacturers to tell consumers when milk solids are in food or milk. "It's a [potential] scandal because it's unlabeled," she says. Michael Pollan writes about this as well in In Defense of Food: "In the case of low-fat or skim milk, that usually means adding powdered milk. But powdered milk contains oxidized cholesterol which scientists believe is much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol."

In California, where the industry reports the ingredients on its website, all industrially produced milk contains nonfat milk solids. Even "whole milk" is a product of reconstitution; it contains at least 3.5 percent milk fat and 8.7 percent nonfat milk solids. This is also true for (industrially produced) organic milk.

Nonfat milk solids are also found in low-fat and fat-free yogurt and cheese, infant formula, baked goods, cocoa mix, and candy bars.

Are these milk solids really as big of a problem as Planck and others in her camp believe them to be?  Lloyd Metzger is doubtful. He says there's virtually no fat left in the milk to oxidize. Bunting agrees, "If it's skim milk, there might be small amounts -- but that's not a real concern. If you're worried about oxidized fat, it's homogenization that is the real culprit."

Has Bunting seen evidence of the health impacts associated with oxidized fats in milk? "No," he says. "But who's going to fund it? The USDA is the largest funder of dairy research in this country and they're not going to fund a study they don't want to hear about."

Regardless, says Plank, "[Industrial] milk is transformed by heat. Why would you consume an adulterated product?"

Milk protein concentrates

Yet another product that ends up in industrial dairy products is milk protein concentrates. MPCs, as they're called, are made by ultra-filtration -- milk is forced through a membrane to remove some of the lactose. MPCs have less carbohydrates and more protein than other milk solids and are often used in protein bars and drinks as well as in some processed cheeses, according to Metzger. Nonfat milk solids are approved for food use but MPCs are not considered GRAS, or generally regarded as safe by the FDA.

"MPCs have undergone a change," says Bunting. "They cannot be reconstituted into anything called milk." He suspects that the protein in MPCs is not as digestible as that in milk, but it has never been tested. He says Kraft, in particular, uses a lot of MPCs.

Lorraine Lewandrowski, a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Newport, N.Y., is also concerned about MPCs. "MPCs are derived from milk, but they're not really milk," she said. "There have been a lot of complaints by farmers concerned about MPCs being added to cheese to boost production." She says that typically around 10 pounds of milk yields one pound of cheese. MPCs -- many of which come from overseas -- can increase yields considerably.

Planck is troubled that most MPCs are being imported from countries such as New Zealand, Mexico, and China. "We cannot trust foreign governments with the safety of these ingredients," she says. According to Metzger, MPCs must appear in ingredient lists, but the country of origin doesn't have to be labeled.

An alternative

Milk doesn't have to contain nonfat milk solids, MPCs, or any other additives. Mark McAfee, founder of Organic Pastures, offers an alternative in California. "What is in our bottle comes straight from grass-fed, pasture-grazed cows. All we do is chill it and test it," he said.

In the New York region, where the sale of raw milk is illegal, small dairies leave their milk unhomogenized and pasteurize it at low temperatures to avoid damaging the milk molecules. Unfortunately, most Americans don't have access to real milk from a local dairy farmer whose operations are transparent. "The real issue is trust," Bunting said. "If people could buy from someone they trusted, we wouldn't even need pasteurization. It extends shelf life, but it's not a safer product."

Even when milk is produced regionally, farmers still encounter processing hurdles. Lewandrowski raises 60 cows on pasture and knows them each by name. But since she can't afford her own bottling facility, her grass-fed milk gets mixed with that from farms across the region (many of them large-scale dairies that feed their cattle grain and keep them in confinement) and gets shipped off for use in a myriad of dairy products. "People tell me I should bottle my own milk," she says. "But I don't have the $50,000 it would cost."

Meanwhile, industrial milk production is being shaped to increase profits in counter-intuitive ways. "Americans are drinking more skim milk, while they're consuming more milk fat, in the form of ice cream and half and half," says Bunting. In some areas, he points out, school districts have banned whole milk and are serving students skim milk."Part of the idea is to take that fat and use it somewhere else more profitable," he says.

McAfee agrees, "They have butchered milk into its parts and now make more money because of the low fat craze."

So how can Americans gain access to real, unadulterated milk? This would require a re-localization of dairy production, which would mean more dairy farmers. "Look," Bunting says, "if you don't want industrial processes, then we need more people producing food." Of course, in order to make that work, we'll also need a much more robust support system for dairy farmers, and a larger base of consumers willing to pay more for milk produced on a smaller scale.

This piece was also published on Grist.org

In my recent critique of the new USDA dietary guidelines, I wrote that we’ll never see a real food version of MyPlate as long as the food industry holds sway over the guidelines and USDA continues to promote industrial foods. While this is true, there’s no reason we can’t create our own real food version of MyPlate to promote what we think is healthy and what’s not. Admittedly, it’s difficult to convey a lot of information in a single graphic but MyPlate promotes foods that are truly unhealthy. There are structural problems with MyPlate as well—dairy should be included in the protein category and the glass next to the plate should be water.

Allowing industrial food corporations to influence the dietary guidelines — from dairy and meat to apple juice and corn flakes — makes it clear that the health of the American people is not the USDA’s top priority.

My real food approach to MyPlate clearly conveys what should be included and what should not be, and has no agenda other than presenting the healthiest real food diet for all Americans. The underpinning of a real food diet is plant-based and focuses on whole foods that are organic and sourced locally, whenever possible.

Simply giving these guidelines isn’t going to change the fact that too many Americans lack access to real foods — but change doesn’t seem to be happening from the top down. In the meantime, by providing clear and accurate guidelines based on real food, Americans can see what a healthy diet really looks like and start demanding greater access to these foods.

The following is an infographic of my real food guide to MyPlate by Voltier Creative:

The USDA finally did away with the much-maligned Food Pyramid and replaced it with MyPlate. Many in the food world are calling it progress. It's certainly a clearer and more concise image and deserves some credit for the fact that half of the plate is comprised of fruit and vegetables. "This is a step in the right direction," Marion Nestle wrote in an email. "It's the best they could come up with and some education needs to go with it, as always."

In my view though, when you look a little deeper, you see that beyond the clearer image not much has really changed.

The five food categories indicated in the image are: Fruits, Vegetables, Protein, Grains, and Dairy. At first glance the MyPlate image appears to eliminate many problematic sugary, processed foods, but when you actually click on the categories a host of unhealthy foods are revealed.

For example, the fruit category includes fruit juice which should be considered a "sugary drink" something the recommendations say to drink less of. There are 15 grams of sugar in one small four-ounce juice box of Mott's 100 percent apple juice and an eight-ounce glass of Tropicana Orange juice has 22 grams of sugar--depending on how many ounces consumed, these fruit juices approach or even exceed the amount of sugar found in sodas.

There's no doubt that fruit juice is a step up from soda, but in a country where 26 million people have diabetes and many other people exhibit signs of insulin resistance (the precursor to diabetes) liquid sugar in any form is detrimental. This is why the fruit category should be strictly whole fruit -- whole fruit contains fiber to help balance out the sugar content and thus has a lower glycemic load. Whole, fresh fruits also contain many vital vitamins, nutrients, and minerals not found in the processed juice version.

But many Americans don't have enough access to fresh fruit -- and the emphasis on drinking fruit juice appeals to food corporations who profit on fruit juices and other processed fruit products. Indeed, on the Web sites for Mott's and Tropicana, you find out that your apple and orange juice provide the required fruit recommendations by the USDA.

When you click on the dairy category you find that chocolate and strawberry flavored milks are included -- more examples of "sugary drinks" inexplicably deemed acceptable by the USDA. Flavored milks, regularly served in school lunch cafeterias across the country and subject to much debate, contain loads of sugar. A serving of strawberry milk contains 27 grams of sugar, equal to the amount of sugar in eight ounces of Coca-Cola. (Flavored milks were just banned by the Los Angeles Unified School District).

Meanwhile, the grains group remains amorphous. The guidelines do say to keep half of the grains you consume whole, but that's not indicated in the graphic. Again, this group is far too inclusive and leads the consumer to believe that many highly refined ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, white buns, breads, and rolls are part of a healthy diet. Given these vague guidelines one could eat Lucky Charms for breakfast, a Subway sandwich on a white bread roll for lunch, and a few slices of Domino's pizza for dinner and consider these processed grain-filled options as part of the healthy MyPlate meal.

Much on the MyPlate Web site is based on outdated science. The low-fat and fat-free dairy recommendations are based on the premise that saturated fats are harmful (see my article on fats for more on this) and that Americans should cut down on these calories -- but the truth is Americans are not getting heavier due to the fat in dairy products but rather due to the overconsumption of sugars and refined carbohydrates.

As is illustrated in this infographic, while obesity rates have soared since the 1970s the amount of calories consumed in the form of dairy, meat, and nuts has remained mostly stable. On the other hand, the amount of calories consumed in added sugars, added fats (the type of fats are not indicated in this graphic but I would bet they are in the form of highly processed vegetable oils and trans-fats) and grains has also soared. This suggests that the fats found in real foods like dairy are not the cause of our nation's massive weight gain.

The underlying issue is quality of food not just quantity. But this won't be addressed as long as industrial food corporations hold sway over the dietary guidelines. Discussing quality gets to the root problem of access to healthy, whole foods in this country. Quite simply, the USDA cannot insist that people eat only high quality foods while many don't have access to them. Herein lies a conflict of interest for the USDA since it has the dual role of promoting the business of industrial food production and simultaneously advising Americans on healthy eating.

Indeed, the MyPlate recommendation to, "Enjoy your food but eat less" is hardly helpful when the goal of the industrial food industry is to encourage Americans to eat more. Industrial food corporations are great at filling bellies with highly caloric yet nutritionally void food -- and sugar and refined carbohydrates are the main culprits. If the USDA truly wanted to endorse healthier eating, it would focus on promoting nutrient-dense foods. Switching to a nutrient-dense diet goes a long way in addressing portion control -- it's difficult to overeat a real food diet.

The ideal image would be more exclusive-that is to say, many foods now endorsed by the USDA as part of MyPlate would be eliminated. The fruit group would be strictly fruit, the vegetable group strictly vegetables. The protein group would include dairy (the fact that dairy is a separate category highlights the influence of the powerful dairy lobby) and would eliminate the many processed foods now listed as part of these groups: Flavored milks, processed cheeses, processed deli meats, and processed soy products. The grains group would eliminate refined and processed grains and reserve these to be used minimally in the form of treats. The same applies to all sugary foods and sugary drinks.

As Michele Simon rightly points out in her recent post, what's really needed to affect change are policy changes. She writes, "It's going to take way more than a measly $2 million educational campaign to get Americans to fill up half their plate with fruits and vegetables. It's going to take a massive overhaul of our agricultural policies."

And this is why we'll never see a real food MyPlate. As long as our current agricultural policies and farm subsidies remain the same, the government can't offer much else in the way of recommendations. What they've recommended is what's available to most of the American population--processed and packaged foods subsidized by government policies.

MyPlate is simply a cleaner graphic image with mostly the same old information. I can think of a much better way to spend that $2 million dollar budget: Fund urban farming projects so more Americans can actually fill those plates with fruits and vegetables. Now that would be real progress.

The low-fat trend finally appears to be on its way out. The notion that saturated fats are detrimental to our health is deeply embedded in our Zeitgeist—but shockingly, the opposite just might be true. For over 50 years the medical establishment, public health officials, nutritionists, and dieticians have been telling the American people to eat a low-fat diet, and in particular, to avoid saturated fats. Only recently, have nutrition experts begun to encourage people to eat “healthy fats.” This past December, the Los Angeles Times reported that excess carbohydrates and sugar, not fat, are responsible for America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics. One of the lead researchers in this field, Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said, “The country’s big low-fat message backfired. The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.” Another expert, Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, said, “Fat is not the problem.”

Last month, Martha Rose Shulman of the New York Times Recipes for Health section, wrote that she’s taken the “no low-fat pledge.” Shulman writes, “I took a pledge the other day that will surprise my longtime followers. It even surprised me. I pledged to drop the term ‘low-fat’ from my vocabulary.”

Shulman, an influential food and recipe writer with over 25 books to her name, has long promoted low-fat and light cooking, but now writes, “There are many recipes in my cookbooks from the 90s that now look and taste dated to me. I’ve put back some of the oil and cheese that I took out when editors were telling me to keep total fat at 30 percent of total calories–a concept that is now obsolete even among policymakers.”

She and a room full of “nutrition scientists, dietitians, doctors, chefs and food service titans” recently listened to experts on nutrition debunk some of the common fat myths. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, who co-directs the program in cardiovascular epidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and is an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, was also there and said, “No randomized trial looking at weight change has shown that people did better on a low-fat diet. For many people, low-fat diets are even worse than moderate or high-fat diets because they’re often high in carbohydrates from rapidly digested foods such as white flour, white rice, potatoes, refined snacks and sugary drinks.”

These are clear indications that an important tipping point in the mainstream understanding of fat and nutrition is underway. But it did take some time. Back in 2002, Gary Taubes wrote about it in the New York Times magazine, laying out a fine deconstruction of the low-fat premise presented to the American people. He pointed out that the science behind this recommendation was never proven and was actually based on “a leap of faith” (more on this here).

In 2001, Dr. Hu, writing in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, noted, “It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health problems.” Or, as Michael Pollan pithily puts it in his In Defense of Food, “The amount of saturated fat in the diet may have little if any bearing on the risk of heart disease, and the evidence that increasing polyunsaturated fats in the diet will reduce risk is slim to nil.”

This brings up several important issues in the fat debate. It is still widely held that what matters are the types of fat we consume. Even in Shulman’s article on her fat re-education, there are contradictions—it’s clear she just can’t get her head around the idea that saturated fats may indeed be healthy. She writes, “Saturated fat—the kind found in animals and dairy products, as well as in any hydrogenated fat—is also regarded as a less healthy fat because it raises L.D.L cholesterol, or ‘bad’ cholesterol in the blood, and this kind of cholesterol is related to heart disease. But even saturated fat is not so bad compared to refined carbohydrates, the doctors say, and if we were to eliminate it from our diet we would also be eliminating many foods that are also rich in healthy fats, like fish, whose omega-3 fatty acids are vital to good health.”

But as Pollan points out, the idea that saturated fats are a less healthy fat just isn’t true, as the picture is fairly complex. Indeed, most foods are composed of a many different types of fats. For example, half the fat found in beef is unsaturated and most of that fat is the same monounsaturated fat found in olive oil. Lard is 60 percent unsaturated and most of the fat in chicken fat is unsaturated as well, according to Taubes 2008 book Good Calories, Bad Calories.  In his New York Times article he writes, “Even saturated fats–AKA, the bad fats—are not nearly as deleterious as you would think. True, they will elevate your bad cholesterol, but they will also elevate your good cholesterol. In other words, it’s a virtual wash.” Taubes continues, “Foods considered more or less deadly under the low-fat dogma turn out to be comparatively benign if you actually look at their fat content. More than two-thirds of the fat in a porterhouse steak, for instance, will definitively improve your cholesterol profile (at least in comparison with the baked potato next to it); it’s true that the remainder will raise your L.D.L., the bad stuff, but it will also boost your H.D.L. The same is true for lard. If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.”

Nearly every day new research and studies come out debunking popular fat myths; despite this, misinformation persists. On the Mayo Clinic’s Web site, saturated fats are lumped in with trans-fats under the banner “harmful dietary fat” and the site claims that saturated fat can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

The link to cardiovascular disease is tenuous at best—the idea being that saturated fats raise your cholesterol and triglyceride levels which in turn leads to cardiovascular disease. But according to the most recent studies, including one reported in the Los Angeles Times article, this is not true. “Contrary to what many expect—dietary fat intake is not directly related to blood fat. Rather, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet appears to be a potent contributor,” Marni Jameson writes.

And during a symposium called “The Great Fat Debate: Is There Validity In the Age-Old Dietary Guidance?” at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo, four leading experts agreed that replacing saturated fat with carbohydrates is likely to raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Walter Willett said, “If anything, the literature shows a slight advantage of the high fat diet.”

And as for diabetes, there is no data to support the notion that a high-fat diet increases the risk for diabetes. Again, if anything, the opposite appears to be true. In a 2008 study reported in the Los Angeles Times article, obese men and women with metabolic syndrome (a precursor to diabetes) that went on a high saturated-fat, low-carb diet saw their triglycerides drop by 50 percent and their levels of good H.D.L. cholesterol increase by 15 percent.

But old dietary habits die hard and convincing people that what they’ve been told for the past 50 years is just plain wrong, is a hard sell. Not only that, but the continued recommendations to eat low-fat versions of foods (as in the USDA’s latest dietary guidelines and on the Mayo Clinic’s Web site) don’t help. Americans are confused about nutrition and disease and it’s only getting more complex with corporations claiming to make healthier foods (see Mark Bittman’s take on McDonald’s oatmeal and my take on Wal-Mart’s health washing).

Keep in mind, there is one type of fat that is implicated in high cholesterol, atherosclerosis, heart disease, and diabetes: Trans-fat. Trans-fats raise bad cholesterol, lower good cholesterol, and increase triglycerides, they also promotes inflammation and insulin resistance, according to a 2000 article in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. This points to the one basic axiom that always hold true: Eat real, whole foods and nothing else—now, if we could only just all agree on what those are.

Every five years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) publishes dietary guidelines for Americans. The 2010 dietary guidelines are in and to spare you the trouble of reading the 95-page report, here are the key points: Enjoy your food, but eat less; avoid oversized portions; make half of your plate fruits and vegetables; switch to fat-free or low-fat (one percent) milk; compare sodium in foods like soup, bread and frozen meals and choose the food with lower numbers; drink water instead of sugary drinks. These are decent and reasonable guidelines for the most part, and in general, the response from experts has been subdued—no one is jumping for joy, but no one is up in arms either. Marion Nestle is excited that the guidelines direct Americans to eat less; Michael Pollan is happy that the guidelines contain some common sense.

Some are critical of where the guidelines fall short. Dr. David Katz told the Boston Globe that, “Most Americans don’t have the skill-set to build nutritious meals,” and wonders why the guidelines haven’t addressed this underlying problem even as it’s telling Americans to cook at home more often. Still others are critical that while the health of Americans is steadily deteriorating, the cornerstones of the USDA’s guidelines haven’t changed all that much.

I’m a bit underwhelmed myself, but there are several things the USDA should be applauded for. The advice to drink water instead of sugary drinks, cut down on processed foods with high amounts of salt, sugar, and fat, and to eat less. Sound advice, though nothing groundbreaking.

I thought they might take into account some of the latest research on saturated fats, which have increasingly been show to be a critical part of a healthy diet. I was also hoping they would stress the importance of completely eliminating sodas and processed foods more aggressively. Instead, what we’ve gotten is the usual party line on how bad saturated fats are and a somewhat muddled message on processed foods.

One of the biggest flaws in the report is the recommendation to use fat-free or low-fat dairy products. This recommendation comes on the heels of recent research reported in the Los Angeles Times this past December that excess carbohydrates and sugar, not fat, are what’s responsible for America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics. In addition, the USDA needs to take a firmer stance on the elimination of highly processed and refined foods.

Good nutrition includes a balance of good, healthy fat. It does not include a steady stream of highly processed carbohydrates in the form of refined grains and sugars. As I see it, there’s a serious contradiction in the USDA’s recommendations: Telling American’s to limit their intake of refined grains and sugars does not work with also telling them to limit their intake of saturated fats.

Quite often in my practice, I see that people crave poor-quality fatty foods like French fries or chips because they’re deficient in high-quality fats, like omega-3s found in fish, nuts and seeds, or grass-fed meat, eggs, and dairy products. When I recommend they switch to good, clean sources of protein and fat, their unhealthy cravings go away.

There is one important caveat to all of this worth mentioning, which of course is nowhere to be found in the USDA’s guidelines. Buying the cleanest dairy, poultry, eggs, and meat — pasture-based, no hormones, no pesticides, no antibiotics—is important because pesticides, hormones, and other toxins are stored in fat. This means if you’re drinking a glass of full-fat milk or eating a pat of butter from cattle raised on an industrial dairy farm, you’re taking in concentrated amounts of these toxins.

As Mark Bittman points out in his debut opinion column for the New York Times this week, “Food Manifesto for the Future,” concentrated feed lot operations must be a thing of past. He writes, “The concentrated system degrades the environment, directly and indirectly, while torturing animals and producing tainted meat, poultry, eggs, and, more recently, fish.”

Of course, too many people in this country don’t have access to clean food and this is where structural and institutional changes must come in, another aspect of our food system that the USDA’s guidelines don’t delve into enough.

In the meantime, here’s what I wish the USDA guidelines would have said: Eat a primarily plant-based diet that includes plenty of fresh, clean vegetables, beans and legumes; eat fresh fruit in season; eat moderate amounts of pasture-based animal and dairy products in their unadulterated form; eat moderate amounts of whole grains; use fats like butter, olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, and seeds; minimize refined carbohydrates and added, refined sugars; drink plenty of fresh, filtered water; eliminate all sugary beverages.

If the good food movement can gain enough steam over the next five years perhaps this will become a reality.

This post also appeared on Civil Eats