"Ahh, the power of cheese."
"Counting carbs? Pork's perfect."
"Beef: It's what's for dinner."
While you may be familiar with these oft-heard slogans, you may not know that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) supports these advertisements. In fact, the federal government not only approves these messages, it also requires that farmers pay for the ad campaigns.
U.S. farmers are required, by congressional mandate, to participate in agricultural promotion programs that market, research and develop specific commodities - most notably beef, pork, dairy and eggs. These revenue-collecting programs, known as "checkoff" programs, collect mandatory fees from farmers and apply the funds to promotional campaigns, like those above, aimed at increasing demand for U.S. agricultural products.
But what could be wrong with the USDA promoting goods produced by our nation's farmers? Taking a closer look at the government's role in promoting health messaging reveals a clear conflict of interest.
The aforementioned checkoff programs are government-sponsored and supported by the USDA, the same government agency that publishes the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Yet while the Dietary Guidelines promote a healthy, nutritious diet (including consumption of less saturated fat), the checkoff programs promote consumption of some of the largest sources of saturated fat in the American diet, namely red meat and dairy products.
So why is the government muddying the waters of an already unclear nutrition debate to promote beef, cheese, pork and other agricultural commodities?
Well, it's not as insidious as it sounds. Agricultural producers face a unique problem. Insomuch as their products are "generic" commodities (cheese, milk, chicken), it is nearly impossible for one producer to market his goods without simultaneously promoting the commodity as a whole.
In other words, while one individual producer might spend millions of dollars on a marketing campaign to promote his cheese, all cheese producers would ultimately benefit from the exposure without sharing any of the marketing costs.
One producer pays, and all of his competitors get a "free ride." Mandatory checkoff programs - which are industry-governed - were created to equalize a share of the marketing burden across agricultural industries.
But if checkoff programs are neither government-funded nor government-regulated, how exactly is this a government issue? For starters, industry governing boards, including the National Pork Board and the Cattlemen's Beef Promotion and Research Board, are appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. And secondly, although these boards direct both where and how the check-off funds are spent, they must first meet with USDA approval.
While approving checkoff sponsored advertising for the beef industry certainly falls in line with the USDA's task of increasing demand and economic profits for U.S. agriculture, it is not necessarily in line with the agency's task of promoting healthy, nutritious diets for the American people.
For an agency that has taken the reins in combating America's obesity epidemic, promoting products that are frequently viewed as "less healthy" (fat-laden meat and dairy products, for example) seems a bit hard to reconcile. And while consumption of checkoff-sponsored commodities like beef, cheese, pork and eggs can certainly be part of a healthy diet, the advertisements endorsed by the checkoff programs do not always promote nutritious options.
Parke Wilde, assistant professor at Tufts' Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, has written about the government conflict of interest. In an article in Choices, a publication of the American Agricultural Economics Association, Wilde cites a USDA report to Congress describing how checkoff-funded dairy programs "worked closely with top national restaurant chains, including Pizza Hut and Wendy's." Although the ensuing campaigns did in fact promote cheese consumption, the cheese-containing products they promoted included the 640 calorie, 50-percent fat Wild Mountain Bacon Cheeseburger.
Other checkoff-sponsored promotions with questionable nutrition content include promotions for cookies and milk. Nabisco, for instance, encouraged consumers to eat cookies by offering a discount with purchase of a gallon of milk. Another campaign of dubious nature was the Oreo "Dunk and Win" promotion which rewarded a lucky dunker with $1 million dollars if he or she found the winning cookie that turned her milk blue.
According to dairy industry statistics, the Oreo campaign boosted milk sales by 160 million pounds in seven months while customers redeemed over 800,000 coupons for free cookies.
Certainly the USDA doesn't condone eating cookies as part of a healthy diet. But if an increase in cookie consumption simultaneously increases milk consumption (thus benefiting the dairy checkoff program), hasn't the USDA done its job?
While most critics don't oppose checkoff-funded advertisements all together, they do argue against those promotions that increase demand for foods that inherently contradict the nutrition messaging in the USDA's Dietary Guidelines.
"It's not that any particular food is bad," Wilde says. "What matters is the quantity. The federal government should not be supporting commodity advertisements that tell us to eat more cheese, more butter, more barbeque pork ribs and more pizza, all at the same time."
Kumar Chandran is a dual-degree MS-Food Policy and Applied Nutrition/MPH student at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and the School of Medicine. He has a BA in Political Economy of Industrialized Societies from the University of California-Berkeley. Sarah Wally is the co-editor of Balance.
