Food Policy
Political Ecology of the World Food System
"While warning about fat, U.S. pushes cheese sales" by Michael Moss
According to Michael Moss' article "While warning about fat, U.S. pushes cheese sales" from the New York Times, the U.S. government is sending profoundly mixed messages about the consumption of cheese to the American public. Dietary advice is confusing when it is solicited even from objective research studies, but the government has further complicated the public's ability to comprehend how to eat right by simultaneously trying to promote better public heath while bolstering the economic interests of dairy producers. The article notes how an organization called Dairy Management, a creation of the United States Department of Agriculture, actually encouraged the fast food corporation Domino's to create a new pizza with extra cheese, to bolster the pizza chain's flagging sales. While the public gobbled up the new offering, the new pizza was high in both calories and saturated fat, which promotes obesity, heart disease, and other lifestyle...
To use up the excess milk fat, the public is being urged to consume more cheese. The Obama Administration has been urging restaurateurs to offer healthier options; Dairy Management is urging them to offer more cheese-laden products, to use up a surplus product that the American public is more than willing to gobble up in the form of cheese. Along with obesity rates, consumption of cheese has drastically increased in America since the 1970s. "Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat; an ounce of many cheeses contains as much saturated fat as a glass of whole milk" (Moss 2010:1).
The policies advocating healthy choices of the First Lady and other branches of the federal government, such as the FDA and the Health and Human Services Department, are blatantly contradicted…
