Physicians Sue USDA Over Dietary Guidelines “Driven By Milk Marketing Concerns”
Current dietary guidelines on dairy intake contradict scientific and medical knowledge and harm one-quarter of the U.S. population who are lactose-intolerant, lawsuit says.
A group of physicians have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for issuing guidelines that are said to reflect meat and dairy industry interests rather than the health interests of the U.S. population.
The lawsuit argues that by promoting high-levels of meat and dairy consumption, the current dietary guidelines “contradict current scientific and medical knowledge”, and specifically harm one-quarter of Americans who are lactose-intolerant.
And USDA is accused of a conflict of interest that is “driven by milk marketing concerns”, reports The Washington Post.
“One charter of the USDA, to market agricultural goods, including meat and dairy products, is in direct conflict with the National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act, which requires that the Dietary Guidelines ‘include nutritional and dietary information and guidelines for the general public’ based on ‘the preponderance of the scientific and medical knowledge which is current at the time the report is prepared’,” explains Dr. Forrester, a family practice physician from Sacramento.
Dr. Forrester is among the physicians who filed the lawsuit, along with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit organization of 17,000 physicians that promotes the health benefits of a plant-based diet.
“The USDA’s conflict of interest is perhaps best illustrated in its statement that ‘[m]ost individuals would benefit by increasing intake of dairy’, even though there is no convincing evidence that this is true”, Dr. Forrester adds. Nor do they mention the “well-accepted scientific evidence showing the association between dairy intake and prostate cancer, a leading cause of cancer death”, the lawsuit argues.
The Dietary Guidelines have already been condemned for overlooking lactose-intolerance - which is prevalent among people of color, including 95% of Asians, and 60-to-80% of African Americans and Ashkenazi Jews.
The U.S. government uses the Dietary Guidelines as the basis for its food assistance meal programs, nutrition education efforts, and decisions about national health objectives, and therefore have “tangible implications for everyday Americans”, the lawsuit warns.
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