By now, many of you have already read the Sunday New York Times front page story entitled, “While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales.”
In case you haven’t, here’s the upshot: Even as the Department of Agriculture is encouraging Americans to cut back on cheese, a major source of saturated fat in our diet and correlated to rising obesity, an organization within the department called “Dairy Management,” is working hard to increase cheese consumption as a means of dairy industry support.
With an annual budget of almost $140 million (mostly from a mandatory dairy industry fee but with several million from the Agriculture Department iteself), Dairy Management works with fast food restaurants like Domino’s Pizza, Wendy’s and others to come up with ever-cheesier (and less healthful) items to sell. (One Dairy Management success story is the “Wisconsin Pizza” sold by Domino’s which uses no less than six cheeses.) Dairy Management is also responsible for a recent ad campaign — proven false by one of its own studies and later barred by the FTC — claiming that dairy consumption aids weight loss.
As the Times noted in its very well researched and reported piece, “[t]he organization’s activities . . . provide a stark example of inherent conflicts in the Agriculture Department’s historical roles as both marketer of agriculture products and America’s nutrition police.”
While only tangentially touched upon in the piece, this conflict of interest is nowhere more apparent than in the department’s management of the National School Lunch Program. As Janet Poppendieck, Chef Ann Cooper and others have long noted, the fact that the Agriculture Department is both a promoter of U.S. farm commodities and the overseer of the NSLP means that our children’s best interests are often in direct conflict with the financial concerns of food producers.
Definitely take a moment to read the full report.
Karen says
This article made me sad. I love pizza, being from a place where American style pizza was born and treated with respect. Where the biggest argument was whether it was the hot cheese or the sauce that burned your pallette; ah, VJ’s Pizzeria, how I miss you. However, as a lactose intolerant adult, I am so sad when I order a pizza in Houston – even restaurants that serve pizzas close to what I remember from my childhood pile on the cheese so heavily that I cannot eat it.
In Italy, where I was blessed to work periodically over a few years, I ate such lovely, lovely pizza. Thin crust, nicely flavored sauce, and hardly any cheese except fresh mozzarella and a sprinkle of parmegiano. “Dairy Management,” I object to the cheesification of pizza.
bettina elias siegel says
Karen: Totally agree. I love cheese but once they start jamming it inside the crust and layering it on so thickly — yuk!