Page 62 - Winter2014

The agenda cially saturated fat and cholesterol from animal foods that have a wider profit margin than eggs
11
of vegetarians products—led to heart disease. Responding to and meat.
These cultural forces coalesced around
these interests, manufacturers of “heart-healthy”
and health margarines and meat substitutes began claiming Senator George McGovern's Senate Select Com-
reformers their products could reduce the risk of heart dis- mittee on Nutrition and Human Needs, which
who urged ease, although the federal government remained was first created in order to address malnutrition
unconvinced.
in America. The work of the Select Committee
Americans to Evidence that dietary fat and cholesterol had had been so successful that it shifted its attention
consume significant effects on heart disease was elusive, from malnutrition to “overnutrition” and focused
fewer animal and the Federal Trade Commission repeatedly on the creation of a report that was meant to do
warned manufacturers not to make false and for diet and chronic disease what the 1964 Sur-
products, eat misleading claims linking food products to geon General's Report had done for cigarettes and

more grain the prevention of heart disease. Although the cancer. This work took on renewed urgency and
8
12
and cereal AHA primarily aimed its fear-of-fat message significance as the committee's tenure seemed
at businessmen who might be lucrative donors, about to come to an end. Such a report would
13
8
products, the counter-culture thinking that emerged from address the public's growing fears about obesity
and to the social upheavals of the 1960s picked up the and chronic disease and policymakers' concerns
substitute refrain, marrying concerns about chronic disease about rising health care costs―and perhaps ex-
to anxiety about the environment and world tend the lifespan of the committee itself.
14
poly- hunger. During the summer of 1976, the committee
unsaturated Earlier in the decade, a popular vegetarian conducted a series of hearings, entitled "Diet
oils found in cookbook by Frances Moore Lappé, Diet for a Related to Killer Diseases," from doctors and
Small Planet, suggested that a meat-free diet scientists specifically chosen for their willingness
corn and would be low in saturated fat and cholesterol, “to talk about eating less fat, eating less sugar,
soybean oil thus reducing risk of obesity, heart disease and eating less meat.” The title of the hearings and
15
for saturated cancer; furthermore, Lappé asserted, a vegetari- the experts chosen to testify set the direction
an way of life would reduce world hunger, energy for their findings. In early 1977, the commit-
animal fats like costs, and environmental impacts of agriculture. tee released the Dietary Goals for Americans,
9
butter and While Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a blaming what they saw as an “epidemic" of killer
lard, fit neatly Small Planet popularized vegetarian ideology, diseases—obesity, diabetes, heart disease and
then-Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, an cancer—on changes in the American diet that
into large economist with many ties to large agricultural had occurred in the previous fifty years, specifi-
agribusiness corporations, was enacting policies that encour- cally the increase in “fatty and cholesterol-rich
16
efforts to aged the planting of large-scale, monoculture foods.”
crops on all arable land.
The report claimed that in order to reduce
10

increase the The “fencerow to fencerow” policies their risk of chronic disease, Americans should
market for Butz initiated helped to shift farm animals reduce their intake of food that contained fat,
processed from pasture land to feed lots. Making room particularly saturated fat and cholesterol from
for government-subsidized corn and soybeans animal products like meat, whole milk, eggs
foods that would increase efficiency of food production; and butter, and instead consume more grains,
have a what didn’t go into cows could go into humans, cereals, vegetable oils, fruits, and vegetables.
wider profit including the oils that were a by-product of turn- These particular recommendations reflected
not only concerns related to health, but the
ing crops into animal feed.
margin than The agenda of vegetarians and health re- “back-to-nature” ideology that was becoming
eggs and formers who urged Americans to consume fewer increasingly popular with regard to food and
meat. animal products, eat more grain and cereal prod- diet. The committee used material from Diet for
ucts, and to substitute polyunsaturated oils found a Small Planet, along with research on vegetarian
in corn and soybean oil for saturated animal fats diets, to argue that a shift to plant-based protein
like butter and lard, fit neatly into large agribusi- could reduce intake of calories, cholesterol and
ness efforts to increase the market for processed saturated fat, as well as reduce blood pressure,
58 Wise Traditions WINTER 2014 Wise Traditions

145881_text.indd 58 12/23/14 12:16 AM