Congress to nutritionists: Don’t talk about environment
By Dan Charles, NPR
A government-appointed group of top nutrition experts, assigned to lay the scientific groundwork for a new version of the nation’s dietary guidelines, decided earlier this year to collect data on the environmental implication of different food choices.
Congress now has slapped them down.
Lawmakers attached a list of “congressional directives” to a massive spending bill that passed both the House and the Senate in recent days. One of those directives expresses “concern” that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee “is showing an interest in incorporating agriculture production practices and environmental factors” into their recommendations, and directs the Obama administration to ignore such factors in the next revision of the guidelines, which is due out next year.
The directive is not legally binding, but ignoring it would provoke yet another political battle between the Obama administration and Congress.
The federal dietary guidelines have never explicitly considered the effects of food choices on the environment, but the idea of doing so is not new.
It’s called profits before reason. Belief systems before science. Stifling inconvenient truths.
In Switzerland, where true conservatives live (not the whacked out types here), they take science and green living seriously. Everything that can be is recycled. Hall lights mostly seem to be on motion sensors and turned off until you enter the halls. Convenient public transportation throughout the nation, widely used.
They understand the importance of the long view, and that individual liberty does not mean do whatever you want regardless of the consequences to others. It’s common sense, though it does require some minor sacrifices.
The right wing dominated media, Congress, and their funding benefactors here have so fooled the average joe that many citizens cannot think critically for themselves. The media and politicians take every chance to ensure that the balanced information does not get out, or gets distorted. Might even be funny if it wasn’t so destructive.
Why would a group of nutritionists feel qualified to define and then weight environmental impacts from food production? Is human health the secondary goal?
Government guidelines are heavily weighted by corporate agriculture’s “scientists” so it doesn’t matter what their findings are: they serve themselves, not us.
The point is that they want to shut down this debate. The full scientific information can be provided by environmental scientists working in conjunction with nutritionists, and compared to economic impacts. Your argument is just an excuse they use for shutting out the relevant information, because it may hurt their profitability regardless of the consequences. Bring all the relevant info into the sunlight, then let’s see how it balances out.
The planet is the host and humans are the parasites living off of it. Congress has no credibility. Being accountable to the environment is way beyond their capacity. No surprise here.
Not Born on the Bayou – well said. And to Moral Hazard you wrote: “Is human health the secondary goal?” Why have you cast it as an “either or”, or if one is concerned about one thing, you can’t be concerned about something else that is clearly related? Environmental health = human health….and how food is grown is very much a nutritional issue as well (not to mention taste). I am getting the impression that most people in the U.S. no longer even know what their food is is actually supposed to taste like or would taste like without a million and one additives and the taste changing results of industrial processing.
Nutritional energy is a huge part of living sustainably, no matter if you’re “conservative” or not. . .nutrition is an “equal-opportunity”, & the current state of soil in this country, leached for decades as it is from too much fertilizer, does not provide the nutritional value paid for – hence the community garden movement – closer to home, closer to health. . . beginning the reduction of so many pharmaceuticals, which are more about treating symptoms rather than ailments instead of eliminating symptoms altogether by being that much healthier. . .
I agree that the credibility of Congress is more than suspect, as they are apparently not qualified to speak on anything other than lobbyist’s interests any more, not the citizenries. . . and this bullying tactic shows it. . .they allow GMO to continue unabated, which I don’t believe would be part of any Dietary Guidelines advisory that matters. . .
GMO’s are being revealed as less yield, less quality, and too expensive (for what is gotten), so Congress must protect their interests and NOT OURS !??. . .
Click on ‘Read the Whole Story’ for further insight. . .