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ABSTRACT
This investigation follows the shift in US “healthy diet” guidance from prevention of nutritional deficiencies to prevention of chronic diseases. In particular, it shows how the Dietary Goals for Americans, first published in 1977, came to be based on the relatively new science of nutritional epidemiology of chronic disease, a methodology of statistical analysis whose most influential datasets relied primarily on white health professionals deeply invested in cultural norms surrounding dietary health. With this scientific authority, health differences among subpopulations came to be blamed on a lack of agency at best, if not poor judgment and personal failure.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the anonymous reviewers who provided many insightful comments to an early draft and to Jeffrey Pilcher for his patient and perceptive guidance throughout.
Notes
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2. Biltekoff, Eating Right in America, 180.
3. Krieger, Epidemiology and the People’s Health.
4. Belasco, Appetite for Change, 174–76.
5. Biltekoff, Eating Right in America; Viet, Modern Food, Moral Food.
6. Crawford, “Healthism and Medicalization of Life”; Crawford, “Health as Social Practice,” 409.
7. Crawford, “Health as Social Practice,” 408.
8. Coveney, Food, Morals and Meaning; Biltekoff, Eating Right in America.
9. Viet, Modern Food, Moral Food.
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11. Daston, “Science Studies and the History of Science.”
12. Viet, Modern Food, Moral Food, 130.
13. Nestle, Food Politics.
14. Biltekoff, Eating Right in America.
15. Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories.
16. Garrety, “Dietary Policy, Controversy and Proof,” 24.
17. Levenstein, Fear of Food.
18. Scrinis, Nutritionism, 7.
19. Rabinbach, The Human Motor.
20. Aronson, “Nutrition as a Social Problem,” 478.
21. Atwater, “Foods,” 10; Atwater, “What We Should Eat,” 444.
22. Hess, “Newer Aspects of Nutritional Disorders.”; Chacko, “Understanding Geography of Pellagra.”
23. Biltekoff, Eating Right in America.
24. Backstrand, “The History and Future of Food Fortification.”
25. Kamps, What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam? 57.
26. Kannel and Gordon, “The Framingham Study, Section 24,” 9.
27. Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories.
28. Keys, “Atherosclerosis.”
29. Garrety, “Dietary Policy, Controversy and Proof.”
30. Yerushalmy and Hilleboe, “Fat in the Diet,” 2346.
31. Ibid.
32. Kritchevsky, “History of Recommendations about Fat.”
33. Levenstein, Fear of Food.
34. Blackburn and Labarthe, “Stories from the Evolution.”
35. Hill, “The Environment and Disease.”
36. US Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee, Smoking and Health, 31.
37. Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Dietary Goals for the United States, xiii.
38. Hoffman, “Health Care Reform.”
39. Larsen, “The Leap of Faith.”
40. Lalonde, A New Perspective on Health, 32.
41. Lalonde.
42. Crawford, “Health as Social Practice,” 402.
43. Page et al., “Atherosclerosis”; Keys, “Coronary Heart Disease”; Turner and Nader, The Chemical Feast; Yudkin, Sweet and Dangerous; Atkins, Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution.
44. Keys, “Coronary Heart Disease.”
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46. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb.
47. Pines, “Meatless, Guiltless.”
48. Garrety, “Dietary Policy, Controversy and Proof.”
49. Oppenheimer and Benrubi, “McGovern’s Senate Select Committee.”
50. National Nutrition Policy Study, 1974, 2496.
51. Ibid., 2499.
52. Ahrens, “The Evidence Relating Six Dietary Factors.”
53. National Nutrition Policy Study, 1974, 2610.
54. Woolf and Nestle, “Dietary Guidelines Obesity Epidemic.”
55. Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Dietary Goals, 7, 63, 78.
56. Leeper, “Senator McGovern on Dietary Goals,” 163.
57. Austin and Hitt, Nutrition Intervention, 326.
58. Hite, “Beyond ‘Good Nutrition’”; LaBerge, “Ideology of Low Fat,” 146.
59. Austin and Hitt, Nutrition Intervention, 325–26.
60. Nestle, Food Politics, 41; Pollan, “Unhappy Meals.”
61. Austin and Quelch, “U.S. National Dietary Goals.”
62. Nestle and Porter, “Evolution of Federal Dietary Guidance,” 53; Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Dietary Goals: Supplemental Views.
63. Harper, “Dietary Goals – A Skeptical View”; McNutt, “Dietary Advice to the Public.”
64. Broad, “Jump in Funding Feeds Research,” 1060.
65. Weil, “National Dietary Goals Justified?”
66. Austin and Hitt, Nutrition Intervention; McNutt, “Dietary Advice to the Public.”
67. Miller and Stephenson, “Rationale for the Dietary Guidelines.”
68. Interview with J. Michael McGinnis, September 9 2015.
69. Miller and Stephenson, “Rationale for the Dietary Guidelines.”
70. Hite et al., “Contradictory Evidence”; Slavin, “Dissecting Dietary Guidelines.”
71. Larsen, “The Leap of Faith,” 228.
72. Toole and Kuchler, “Improving Health.”
73. Stampfer, “Observational Epidemiology Is Preferred”; Byers, “The Role of Epidemiology.”
74. The Physicians’ Health Study began as a randomized trial but continues as an observational one.
75. Hu et al., “Diet Assessment Methods.”
76. Belanger et al., “The Nurses’ Health Study,” 1039.
77. Nelson, “Nurses’ Health Study.”
78. Willett, Nutritional Epidemiology, 5.
79. Kristal, Peters, and Potter, “Abandon the Food Frequency Questionnaire?”
80. Harvard Food Frequency Questionnaire.
81. Menachemi et al., “Overstatement of Results.”
82. Krieger, Epidemiology and the People’s Health; Rothstein, Public Health and Risk Factor.
83. Krieger, Epidemiology and the People’s Health, 273.
84. Potischman and Weed, “Causal Criteria in Nutritional Epidemiology.”
85. Shapiro, “Meta-Analysis/Shmeta-Analysis”; Ioannidis, “Implausible Results in Nutrition Research.”
86. Coveney, Food, Morals and Meaning; and Biltekoff, Eating Right in America.
87. Marmot, “Status Syndrome”; Mechanic, “Disadvantage, Inequality, and Social Policy.”
88. Shrank, Patrick, and Brookhart, “Healthy User and Related Biases.”
89. Satia, “Diet-Related Disparities.”
90. Lidfeldt et al., “Socioeconomic Status and Diabetes.”
91. Djoussé, Khawaja, and Gaziano, “Egg Consumption and Diabetes”; Dehghan et al., “Fats and Carbohydrate Intake with Cardiovascular Disease (PURE).”
92. Kirkland, “Environmental Account of Obesity.”
93. Email from Dr Christopher Gardner, August 12 2014.
94. Mayes and Thompson, “Is Nutritional Advocacy Morally Indigestible?”
95. Mayes, The Biopolitics of Lifestyle, 26.
96. Scientific Report of 2015 Guidelines Committee.
97. Mayes, The Biopolitics of Lifestyle, 27.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Adele H. Hite
Adele H. Hite is a Ph.D. candidate in communication, rhetoric, and digital media at North Carolina State University. She is also a registered dietitian/nutritionist with a background in nutritional epidemiology and public health nutrition. Her work encompasses rhetorical and cultural studies of food politics, nutrition science, dietary guidance, and public health nutrition policy.