The new Dietary Guideline for Americans (DGA) will not include sustainability in its scope of its newest volume.
Food sustainability has been a cause for many heated debates with the U.S. Government and non-government organizations who pushes sustainability to be part of the Dietary Guideline.
The Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee believes that a diet that includes high plant-based food is commendable for good health and is also very environmentally sustainable. The panel even agreed that sustainability should be included in the federal government's dietary advice.
But incorporating it sustainability advice with nutritional advice doesn't seem to work out.
Two cabinet members of President Barack Obama will oversee the writing of the new guidelines and will testify before the House Agricultural Committee on Wednesday.
"We do not believe that the 2015 DGA (Dietary Guidelines for Americans) are the appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation about sustainability," Tom Vilsack, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary and Sylvia Burwell, secretary of Health and Human Services, said in a joint statement.
The Guideline provides nutritional and dietary information and has always been like that. The two secretaries will follow their given mandate and stick to the purpose of the dietary guideline.
A group of co-authors wrote about sustainability being incorporated in the guidelines, saying that sustainability will welcome sustainable investments (environmentally friendly) and will signal consumers that sustainable food is preferable.
Most of the debate centers around meat production, which is one of the biggest methane producing industries in today's society.
The argument of the North American Meat Institute points out that experts need to have a broader understanding in food production and its impact in the environment.
"If you compare 10 pounds of apples and 10 pounds of meat, the meat surely has the larger carbon footprint, but it also delivers more nutrition, it nourishes more people longer," Janet Riley of the North American Meat Institute told the Salt.
The DGA is sticking to their proposed guidelines and will not change it anytime soon.
