19 Feb 2015 Federal Government’s Dietary Guidelines Should Not Be Distorted By Environmental Activism

Climate Change Activists Have Been Pushing to Influence Report Out Today

Dietary Guidelines Should Promote Health and Disease Risk Reduction, Not Focus on Promoting a Smaller Carbon Footprint in Food Production, Expert Says

New York, NY / Washington, D.C. – The Obama Administration’s Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services joint Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is releasing its report today at 1 PM ET.

National Center Senior Fellow and Risk Analysis Division Director Jeff Stier has warned about the outcome of the report, writing in the Washington Examiner last year, “At a closed-door meeting (in March), administration officials and their advisers will plot to insert the global warming agenda into dietary guidelines mandated by Congress.”

Below is a statement from Jeff Stier:

The process leading to today’s report was heavily influenced by activists’ plans to change the nation’s dietary guidelines to promote foods that they believe have “a smaller carbon footprint.”

In the past, as required by Congress, the federal government’s dietary guidelines were intended exclusively to “promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases.”

This is no longer the case. For the first time in the history of the guidelines, “sustainability” has been a prominent part of the agenda. Actual items on their Dietary Guidelines working group agenda included “immigration,” “global climate change” and “agriculture/aquaculture sustainability.”

What’s more, if the Obama administration allows this theme to become part of the new dietary guidelines to be released later this year, it will cost the public money and not make us any healthier.

By favoring foods which activists think have a smaller carbon footprint, the new guidelines will increase the prices you pay for your food. It will also increase the cost to all taxpayers, since the Dietary Guidelines are used to set policy for food stamps (SNAP) and military diets.

New York City-based Jeff Stier is a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and heads its Risk Analysis Division. Stier is a frequent guest on CNBC, and has addressed health policy on CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, as well as network newscasts. Stier’s National Center op-eds have been published in top outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Newsday, Forbes, the Washington Examiner and National Review Online. He also frequently discusses risk issues on Twitter at @JeffaStier.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, three percent from foundations, and three percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors.

Contributions are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.

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