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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

2015 USDA guidelines won't address sustainability

After considering sustainability as a goal in its 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last week it will not focus on the issue in its finalized 
guidelines.

The guidelines tell citizens what they should be eating for optimum health and provide nutrition guidance to programs across the United States. Despite public interest in sustainability, the newest DGAs won’t address food sustainability.

“Because this is a matter of scope, we do not believe that the 2015 DGAs are the appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation about sustainability,” wrote Scecretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell and U.S. Secretary of Department of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in a statement published on the USDA Blog.

The USDA releases updated GDAs every five years. This year’s guidelines aren’t yet complete, but Vilsack and Burwell wrote they will reflect the diet recommendations made in past 
guidelines.

The 2015 GDAs will contain updates on what constitutes a healthy diet based on current scientific research, and they will lack information concerning the relationship between nutrition and sustainability.

Certain foods chew up more resources when they’re produced — a pound of meat takes more water and energy to create than a pound of vegetables. Meanwhile, choosing a locally produced food over one produced hundreds of miles away also consumes fewer resources.

Jennifer Studebaker of the Bloomington Food Policy Council said she thinks many people in the U.S. have doubts about their own power to change the food system — but in Bloomington, it’s at the top of many residents’ lists.

“I think it’s a priority for people,” she said. “It’s something that people do care about.”

Nicole Wooten, president of the Bloomington Food Policy Council, said eating locally is one of the best ways to be sustainable.

“I think that the more we can encourage folks to eat as much fresh food as possible, the better off we’ll be,” she said. “We consume food three times a day, so it’s a great way to impact the world that we live in by making wise choices.”

Studebaker said highlighting sustainability in the GDAs could lead to stronger support for local farms and, in turn, economies. By including the importance of green eating in their guidelines, the USDA could enhance public understanding of how the food they choose to eat affects the earth.

“It is a shame that they’re not including highlighting sustainable practices, because I think it’s something a lot of people can do,” she said.

In last week’s blog post, Burwell and Vilsack wrote the USDA is not ignoring sustainability altogether, but focusing on the issue in other ways.

According to the post, the USDA “invests billions of dollars each year across all 50 states in sustainable food production, sustainable and renewable energy, sustainable water systems, preserving and protecting our natural resources and lands and research into sustainable practices.”

Sustainable diet practices could arise in the 2020 guidelines. But Alyce Fly, an associate professor at the IU School of Public Health, said she thinks more work will need to be done before those changes are made.

“There is more study and discussion needed to determine how eating guidelines and sustainability are to be best integrated to promote healthy diets for Americans,” she wrote in an email.

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