“Equity” will be among the top priorities for the government agency tasked with establishing the dietary choices of hundreds of millions of school children, hospital patients, and countless others—raising concerns that politics could trump science in determining American nutrition.
Including factors such as socioeconomic status and race into the nation’s food guidelines has some experts concerned that the resulting advice will blur the lines between science and politics.
“Health equity is something that needs to be addressed, but how do we define it, and how do we integrate it with the science on diet efficacy for achieving metabolic health?” Dr. Nicholas Norwitz, who has researched metabolic health, told The Epoch Times.
“Social and metabolic and biological sciences should be integrated at a policy level, but it’s unclear to me how one would go about integrating them at the level of the data in building guidelines. I'd hope the dietary guidelines committee can make that more explicit to the public.”
The CDC added: “Achieving this requires ongoing societal efforts to address historical and contemporary injustices; overcome economic, social, and other obstacles to health and health care; and eliminate preventable health disparities. ... To achieve health equity, we must change the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustices that give rise to racial and ethnic health disparities.”
‘Advice Is Insufficient’
Dr. Norwitz said that people have good reason to be skeptical.“In my opinion, the continued rise in metabolic disease has not only been disturbing for a lot of people but there is a sense of learned helplessness. What we are being told to do appears not to work, resulting in confusion and lost hope,” he said. “One could argue people just aren’t following the guidelines, but the fact of the matter is the provided advice is insufficient to solve the metabolic health epidemic at hand.
“At the very least, the food industry and our culture seem quite capable of ‘hacking’ the guidelines, enough so to permit obesity to be an ever-worsening health epidemic. So we need to try something new.”
The guideline’s impact on the nation’s health has also been under criticism. Beginning in 1980, after the United States first released its Dietary Guidelines, on the suggestion of officials, Americans shifted their diets away from the meat, eggs, and whole milk consumed by past generations and instead became increasingly reliant on carbohydrates and foods low in saturated fats. Over the same period, metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes skyrocketed.
“The evidence is clear: no person who seeks health should follow their advice.”
On Sept. 12 and 13, the Department of Health and Human Services and USDA will host the third meeting of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. The new guidelines will be released next year and serve as the nation’s food supply through the year 2030.
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