Poor diet = poor health

A new CDC report finds kids are suffering from poor nutrition, yet the government does little to end this hidden pandemic. Why?

For over half a century, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Washington, D.C.-based publisher of Nutrition Action, has promoted better eating habits while lobbying to restrict harmful additives to the nation’s food supply, whether natural (excess sugar and salt, for instance) or unnatural (dyes and chemical preservatives). The advocacy group’s many accomplishments over the years include numerous upgrades to the food fact box on packaged foods that consumers rely upon.

I am proud to say I spent five years during the aughts running an “integrity in science” watchdog project for CSPI. The mission: Expose the conflicts of interest of scientists appointed by various government agencies to sit on their outside advisory committees.

Though mostly unseen and unknown to the public, the more than 900 outside committees advising over 50 federal agencies play a crucial role in evaluating the science behind health and safety regulations. Some pass judgment on new products like drugs and medical devices, others provide feedback on government guidelines for regulated industries. The Federal Advisory Committee Act, passed in 1972, prohibits agency officials from appointing industry-funded scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to these advisory committees.

However, the law contains a loophole. It allows agencies to waive such conflicts of interest if they deem a scientist’s expertise essential to a committee’s task, even if the deliberations will directly affect his or her funder’s corporate bottom line.

During my years at CSPI, I spent most of my time protesting the presence of conflicted scientists on committees advising the Food and Drug Administration, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Environmental Protection Agency. But, given that I worked for CSPI, I also followed the committee advising the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture as they updated the government’s dietary recommendations, a process that takes place every five years.

I vividly recall my shock at discovering the joint Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, most of whose members held university-based teaching positions, was larded with conflicted scientists. These academicians were either affiliated with an industry-funded think tank (the International Life Sciences Institute) or dependent on food companies for their research dollars. It was the most conflicted committee I ever reviewed.

Still conflicted

Not much has changed over the years. More than half the 20-member committee advising the last edition of the dietary guidelines, which was released in late 2020 just as the Trump administration was leaving office, had financial ties to industry, according to the group Corporate Accountability, which continues the work of exposing conflicts of interest. For example, the committee’s recommendations for lactating women were written by scientists with ties to the baby food industry. The committee wasn’t even asked to evaluate red meat and salt consumption.

“Amid a pandemic made worse by diet-related disease that’s hitting Black and Indigenous communities hardest, junk food corporations should be paying for their abuses, not stacking scientific panels and official drafting committees,” Ashka Naik, the research director at the advocacy group told the New York Times at the time.

The committee, recognizing the overwhelming evidence showing sugar drinks were undermining children’s health, did recommend the government in its 2020-25 guidelines adopt a strict limit for childhood consumption of sugary sodas and other beverages. It encouraged all Americans to limit their intake of sugar to 6% of daily calories, a reduction from the 10% of daily calories contained in the prior guidelines.

The Trump administration ignored those recommendations.

Kids’ sugar fix

The final USDA/HHS guidelines, weak as they were, did offer the perennial prescription that kids eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. It specifically called for young children ages 2 to 3 to eat at least one cup of fruit and one cup of vegetables every day and for older children ages 4 to 8 to eat at least 1 ½ cups of each daily.

I am reviewing that history now because late last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new survey of parents and their children’s eating habits. It revealed fully one-half of children aged 5 and under are failing to eat at least one serving of vegetables daily. Fully one-third failed to eat a single serving of fruit. And nearly 6 in 10 aged 5 and under had at least one sugar-sweetened beverage during the survey week.

If we look at just the 4- and 5-years-olds, 7 in 10 kids regularly guzzled sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages. The parents of African American and Hispanic kids consistently reported higher levels of sugar consumption at all ages.

 “Limiting or reducing foods and beverages higher in added sugars, including sugar-sweetened beverages, is important because added sugars are associated with increased risk of obesity, dental caries, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease,” the CDC report drily noted.

To me, the most alarming finding in the survey was that fully 7 of the 10 families that fed their kids sugar-laced (and expensive) beverages reported that they frequently could not afford to give their children enough to eat and they could not afford to buy their kids the right kinds of food.

Clearly, even watered-down advice from nutrition experts, a majority of whom have financial ties to the food industry, is having little effect on the nation’s dietary habits. I’m reminded of the retort given Captain Barbossa (played by Geoffrey Rush) in Pirates of the Caribbean when pressed by Elizabeth Swann (played by Keira Knightley) to honor the pirate code. “The code,” the grizzled pirate captain said, “is more what you might call guidelines than actual rules.”

Given the obesity epidemic raging across America, Isn’t it about time we start thinking about rules that will actually improve the choices made by kids and adults when it comes to food? Isn’t it time to begin helping families suffering from food insecurity by developing a comprehensive program that makes the most nutritious foods the most affordable ones?

Tomorrow in Part Two, I will explore policy options for improving the nation’s food supply.