Blog 4/2

Yes, the political influence that Nestle writes about in the “Politics of Dietary Guidance” is (subtly) evident in the MyPlate guidelines. For instance, it never specifically tells you to avoid certain foods. The closest it comes to that is recommending you avoid ‘certain drinks high in sugars’, though it doesn’t specifically name what kind of drinks (soda, etc). It instead leaves it up to you as the consumer to determine what ‘too much sugar’ is and what drinks have too much in them. Specifically, the area that refers to meat appeared to be a direct product of the meat producers mentioned in Nestle’s article. Instead of saying ‘avoid red meat’, ‘stick to lean meats,’ etc, it simply says to ‘vary the meats’ you eat.

 I think a few bullet points on the MyPlate guidelines are helpful, but no, they are not specific and informative enough to affect people’s diets. I was kind of surprised by the bullet point that says ‘Enjoy your food, but eat less.’ What? That makes no sense to me. It assumes the reader is over-eating, first of all, and even if they are, they shouldn’t necessarily eat less. They likely just need to make better choices about what they are eating.

New research on the soil-health connection for the food system imply that attention to soil quality is equally important as attention to crop quality, and that many nutrients come from the soil. This would affect farming because large-scale, year-round farming can be very destructive to soil quality. Farmers would need more land would need to do more to protect and nourish the soil.