USDA should put its money where its mouth is.

Marion Nestle recently highlighted on her blog the disparity between the percentage of USDA subsidies that go to certain food sectors and the propaganda of the USDA dietary guidelines. Her brief discussion comes out of a larger study completed by the Produce for Better Health Foundation. The section that I was most interested in (Disconnect between USDA Spending Priorities and Public Health Goals) analyzes the extent to which the allocation of USDA spending on the major food groups is congruent with their endorsement of the 2005 dietary guidelines for people living in the US.

The methodology for their statistics on this is interesting (check out page 10-11 of the report), as it is rather difficult (as was pointed out to me by Scott) to compare subsidies to daily food intake. But I think that it is an interesting thought experiment and I was extremely happy to see that they had broken down the information visually.

Wow, look at the blue one. The meat group dominates spending, as does the grain group (a double whammy, as it were, as the majority of subsidized grain in the US goes to meat production), the only close to reality spending versus advocacy is in dairy and fats.