After unveiling a new (and useless) food pyramid five years ago, the USDA has recently released the new plate.I find this to be equally useless. Yet simultaneously, it demonstrates better how different food lobbies prefer the food pie to be sliced up (carved? apportioned? cut?)
The recommendations that come with the new plate are short: Balance your calories by eating less, increase your fruit, veg and whole grain consumption and change from sugary drinks to water, whole milk to 1% milk and high sodium to low sodium. Frankly, I'm surprised the USDA got away with saying 'water instead of sugary drinks.' For the government, this represents a pretty strong push away from the high-fructose corn syrup merchants, yet as Marion Nestle has pointed out, this lumps fruit juices in with energy drinks and sodas, which is potentially unhelpful.
These recommendations smack of a processed food society and implies several things: 1) everything comes with a nutrition facts label; 2) cow's milk should be part of a normal human diet; 3) people have an understanding of what whole grains are (and dairy/protein for that matter); 4) that the fundamental problem with our eating is that we eat too much...just to name a few. Furthermore, by consistently separating these things out into their own sectors, the fact that nutrients to not hold to these borders is lost; for example: protein is a nutrient and is found in many food items such as dairy...
And forgive me here, because I'm going to go Foucault on you, but this is an approach that has the USDA asking people to police themselves. It's a model to change behavior, indicating that it is personal food choices that are responsible for the problems of obesity, under-nutrition and hunger. I firmly disagree with this standpoint, to be sure, our choices influence such things, but this obscures issues of access, race, class and etcetera.
Again, this guide to "healthy eating" is an industry staple, serving the interests of companies, not people (oh wait, I forgot that corporations are people too). This serves capitalism, not diet. It allows large conglomerates to make unfounded health claims (heart-healthy cereal, immunity boosting yogurt and so on) and privileges the purchase of processed (labelled) foods. It also relies on these companies to make such claims, allowing Proctor & Gamble, Kraft and Coca-Cola to educate the public--through advertising--about what food is.
