| I am not a nutritionist. I am an avid reader, so I have read Food Politics by Marion Nestle, which covers in depth how the food industry wrangles with the government to keep the guidelines from EVER telling anyone to "eat less." They much prefer when the government says "choose wisely." The government also talks about nutrients instead of foods. They don't say "Don't eat Cheetos." Instead they tell you to limit sodium and fat intake.
The food industry's fingerprints are very clearly on this new version of the Dietary Guidelines with the phrase "Energy Balance." Here's what Michele Simon says about energy balance in her book Appetite for Profit:
A variation on the personal responsibility theme is this: it's time Americans got off their lazy duffs. Food companies, trade associations, industry front groups love to portray lack of exercise as the "true cause" of (and hence the solution to) the obesity epidemic. This is, of course, a great way to deflect blame while changing the subject...
I try to listen very closely to the rhetoric that food company executives and trade-group representatives use. I'm no fan of conspiracy theories, but when I begin to notice the repeated use of certain catchphrases and sound bites by different corporate representatives, I can't help wondering if they've called a meeting to get everyone on message. In 2003, industry's increasingly habitual use of the term "energy balance" as code for the real solution to the obesity problem emerged on my radar screen. By 2004, the phrase was virtually ubiquitous...
Linda Bacon, a nutrition and physiology expert with the University of California, Davis, says the energy balance concept, as utilized by food marketers like PepsiCo, is overly simplistic at best:
This is more confusing than it appears on the surface. We can't control energy balance. For example, we may exercise to burn calories but our body may decide that losing weight is unhealthy for us and get conservative in other ways so you stay in energy balance, despite increasing activity. In other words, gaining/losing weight is a lot more confusing than just cutting calories or exercising, and some of this is beyond or control
I would add to that that any message of calories in-calories out implies that all calories are the same, which they are not. A Big Mac is not equal in terms of its impact on our health to an equal number of calories of fruit. And even if you lined up two foods that are identical in calories, fat, protein, fiber, sodium, and vitamins A through E, they still would not be nutritionally equal if one was a whole food and the other was a processed food. That's because of all of the phytochemicals in the food we eat, many that humans haven't even discovered yet. It's also true because of the forms the vitamins come in in whole foods compared to processed foods, and the synergies between them (i.e. when a certain amount of one nutrient helps your body utilize a second nutrient present in the food).
But back to the larger point of this post. All I am saying here is that it's not a good sign that the government is picking up the food industry's terminology and framing. And "you should exercise" may be health advice but it is NOT dietary advice. |
