To the Editor:
Re “While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales” (front page, Nov. 7):
Kudos for exposing an intolerable conflict of interest. Government-backed agricultural programs that serve as marketing arms for the meat and dairy industries should be exposed and shut down.
For too long, we have been speaking of public health without addressing the root causes of our nation’s most serious health problems. Excessive consumption of cheese and other animal products is a leading contributor to heart disease, cancer, obesity and other afflictions.
It’s time for our government to stop promoting foods that make us sick, and instead to support increased consumption of fruits, vegetables and other whole plant foods that aid our health and well-being rather than damage it.
Gene Baur
President and Co-founder
Farm Sanctuary
College Park, Md., Nov. 8, 2010
To the Editor:
Did we not just finish an election that sent an overwhelming message that big government was not to interfere in the people’s business? How else would you describe this blatant promotion of the dairy industry by Dairy Management, an organization supported in large part by our own government?
Our government is apparently making cheese its cause, not the increasing obesity and resulting negative health effects on our nation’s children.
Sheila A. Mahoney
Co-director, Food Project
Princeton Alumni Corps
Niantic, Conn., Nov. 7, 2010
To the Editor:
Your article is a long-overdue indictment of the Department of Agriculture regarding obesity. Unfortunately, this conflict of interest is not news. The department has been propping up the dairy industry’s fat assembly line for at least the last 60 years through milk subsidies and the low-cost sale of surplus cheese to school lunch programs and poor people.
Other industries have had to modify their products to remain competitive in the global economy. Why should the dairy industry and pizza joints get a pass at the expense of the healthy food choices of all Americans?
Instead of a self-serving, free promotion campaign for Domino’s, the Department of Agriculture and Dairy Management should be engaged in developing a first-class public education campaign advising consumers how to eat fewer dairy products and suggesting healthier, low-fat food options.
Pamela Maurath
New York, Nov. 7, 2010
To the Editor:
Kudos for pointing out the self-contradictory behavior of the federal government. But these inconsistencies aren’t limited to dairy marketing. Although the Agriculture Department has pushed low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets since the first dietary recommendations in 1977, these diets have not been proved by science to prevent disease or promote good health.
While fat is demonized (as well as marketed), highly processed wheat, corn and soy products—subsidized and endorsed by the U.S.D.A.—make up the bulk of our diet. Yet science accumulated in the U.S.D.A.’s own Nutrition Evidence Library shows that diets that limit those foods lead to improved health—more so than diets that limit fat.
Efforts to reverse the epidemics of diabetes and obesity will be an exercise in futility until we take a critical look at our dietary recommendations and question the science (or lack thereof) upon which they are based.
Adele Hite
Policy Chairwoman
Healthy Nation Coalition
Durham, N.C., Nov. 7, 2010
To the Editor:
The Department of Agriculture’s use of tax dollars to promote fat-filled dairy products that contribute to obesity, diabetes and heart disease is unconscionable. The agency repeatedly appears to see its role as an advocate and protector of the dairy, meat and egg industries.
It needs to be recognized that dairy factory farms guarantee the proliferation of harm. Cows are severely confined and denied all that is natural to them. Male calves are separated from their mothers shortly after birth, raised for veal—a byproduct of the dairy industry—in tiny enclosures where they cannot turn around and slaughtered after a few months. The manure and gases from these animals will pollute the air, water and land and contribute to global warming.
The U.S.D.A. may try to dictate food choices that ignore health and ethics, but consumers have the power to think about the health and moral aspects of what they eat.
Irene Muschel
New York, Nov. 8, 2010
To the Editor:
Europe is criticized for the “butter mountains” and “milk lakes” resulting from its agricultural subsidies. How very American that excess production here is marketed by the government to poor people (free market, anyone?), only adding to their nutritional challenges.
Phil Simon
Portland, Me., Nov. 7, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 