Lobbying is prevalent within American politics. Although it can be a positive democratic force, it can also be a tool for powerful groups to disproportionately influence laws and policies. This can result in unadulterated and unfair policy influence.
Corporations, in particular, spend millions of dollars on lobbying each year, skewing the narrative on a variety of issues, including nutritional guidelines
These attempts began when the prevalent nutrition-related issue in the United States shifted from nutritional deficiencies to chronic diseases. This shifted the narrative from “eat more” to “eat less”, but has continually shifted in focus leading to consumer confusion.
Nutritional guidelines are “grounded in the most current scientific evidence” and are designed to “help people make healthy food and beverage choices”, according to the agencies that produced them. However, scientists within this field have given the guidelines mixed reviews, scrutinizing some of their claims.
This can be accredited to lobbyists’ influence on nutritional guidelines. There is no reason that Americans should be recommended to consume three cups of dairy per day as an estimated 65 percent of the adult American population is lactose intolerant.
A prominent example of this is with the Got Milk campaign, which was a response to all-time low milk consumption. Dairy corporations lobbied for the government to stress the importance of dairy consumption, marketing cow’s milk as the ultimate calcium source and essential for bone development.
However, other countries have removed their dairy recommendation altogether, proving it is not as essential of a product as the United States has deemed it to be.
This corruption extends beyond dairy. The American agricultural system is disproportionately reliant upon three crops: soy, corn and wheat. These serve as the backbone of the “Western diet”, comprising the ingredients in many convenience store snacks, preservatives, and additives. For example, only one percent of all corn grown is consumed in its whole form. The rest is processed into a variety of corn-derived products.
These processed foods have been linked to disease in a number of studies. In 2019, The Lancet published an analysis of dietary risk factors in 195 countries based on the Global Burden of Disease Study, conducted over a 27-year period.
This study concluded that a diet lacking in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds was responsible for 11 million deaths and 255 million years of disability. Another study found that for each additional ten percent of diet that comes from processed foods, death risk increases by 14 percent.
If these statistics were being used to describe a tangible disease, action would have been taken years ago. However, this is not the case; our government profits off of the systems at play. Lobbyists pressure the government to minimize the significance of these statistics. Their money influences policy, leading citizens to doubt the validity of the research. People will follow the influence of their government.
By taking lobbyist money, the government allows for these ultra processed food corporations to harm the environment and our health. Overexploitation of the soil in pursuit of monocropping has led to the nutrient degradation of our food. The most processed foods are also the cheapest, which disproportionately harms low income communities who live under Food Apartheid.
There is an intrinsic link between processed food consumption and disease. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are both linked to cardiovascular disease, a leading cause of death in the United States.
With all of these significant statistics, why does the government continue to accept lobbyist money? Other countries have banned some of the harmful additives in these snack foods, so why can’t the United States follow suit? The answer is simple: profit.
Profit remains at the epicenter of all governmental decisions, which should not be the case. If our government is going to claim to represent the needs of its citizens, it needs to make welfare its primary concern; even if that means a restructuring of its food and agricultural systems.
This means providing grocery stores with subsidies to open in low-income areas. This means subsidies for farms to practice regenerative agriculture without having to worry about their financial yields. This means writing the dietary recommendations to most accurately reflect health research and turning down lobbyist money.
Change is needed to achieve a more equitable, sustainable society that benefits peoples’ health as well as our natural environment. If people aren’t valued above profit, what does our future look like?
