Following USDA dietary guidelines can be hazardous to your health 0

Jill Richardson flagged this op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle co-authored by a nutritional biochemist and a doctor. In their commentary, they indicate that current government dietary guidelines might be an eensy bit flawed:

Here is a daily diet that meets those nutrition guidelines:
Breakfast: 1 cup Fruit Loops; 1 cup skim milk; 1 package M&M milk
chocolate candies; fiber and vitamin supplements. Lunch: Grilled
cheddar cheeseburger. Dinner: 3 slices pepperoni pizza, with a 16-ounce
soda and 1 serving Archway sugar cookies.

This helps explain
why 12-year-old schoolchildren develop thickening of their carotid
arteries to the brain, and 80 percent of 20-year-old soldiers, dying in
combat, are found to have coronary artery heart disease.

How
could the government distribute this information and call it science?
Members of the committee had financial ties to industries that benefit
from higher protein and sugar allowances, and the panel was partly
funded by corporate money.

I couldn’t possibly come up with snark to match this—the stat about Iraq vets is frankly shocking. The whole op-ed is worth reading; it’s full of great (and simple and inexpensive) recommendations. But so many problems with our food and health are encapsulated in those three graphs. It’s. Just. So. Wrong.