Big Grain does not want cut in recommended grains

Courtesy of Rosie Mestel
Los Angeles Times

During the lengthy deliberations for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, one possibility discussed by the advisory group was to substitute some of the grains we eat with starchy vegetables like potatoes. The reasoning? First, we eat way too many spuds and they're currently counted as vegetables. (Loading up on fries is not what nutrition experts have in mind when they tell us to ramp up on produce.) Second, as the Nutrient Adequacy Subcommittee of the dietary guidelines advisory committee noted, the "macronutrient profile" of starchy vegetables is more similar to grains than, say, broccoli or kale, i.e., they have a lot of starch in them.

Such a shift would entail recommending fewer servings of grains so that we wouldn't ramp up our calorie intake. (There's a concern, you may have heard, that Americans are getting more calories than they need already.) To ensure that such a substitution could be done without robbing Americans of the nutrients they need for optimal health -- an interesting exercise, given how far we are from anything approaching such virtue -- the scientists ran models and found that the nutrition consequences were minimal.

The North American Millers' Association, American Bakers Assn,, American Institute of Baking, Grain Foods Foundation, Grains for Health Foundation, Independent Bakers Association, National Assn. of Wheat Growers, National Pasta Association, USA Rice Federation and Wheat Foods Council feel this is wrongheaded and wrote to the committee to state as much. Here's the trade groups' recent letter and here is the Dietary Guidelines Web page where you can access all the discussions of the advisory committee as they plod through each point -- fish, selenium, fiber, added sugar, more -- and, back in April, the potato-placement issue.

Among starchy vegetables, 80% of what we eat is spuds. And the fuller breakdown is:

Boiled potatoes: 26.5%
Baked potatoes: 13.2%
French fries: 18.2%
Potato chips: 19.1%
Hash browns: 6.5 %
Yellow corn: 8.3%
Hominy, grits, white corn: 1.7%
Green peas : 4.1%
Lima beans : 0.6%
Cow peas, black-eyed peas pigeon peas etc.: 0.5%

P.S. Some scientists have long argued that potatoes have no place in the vegetables group and that Americans eat way too many of them. One long-time spud foe is nutrition scientist Walter Willett of Harvard University.

Steve - it should come as no surprise that Big Grain is fighting tooth and nail to keep the amount of grain servings as is. They are at risk of losing two grain servings daily to be replaced with two vegetables servings. This would be a titanic shift in the DGA recommendations. Big Milk does the same, as does Big Beef, Pork, etc. While desperately necessary, I do not have very much confidence that the DGA Committee will make the adjustment.