How Food Policy Got Political | Your Diet Sucks Podcast
What if the most influential nutrition advice in American history wasn’t based purely on science, but on politics, profit, and power?
In this episode of Your Diet Sucks, Zoë Rom and Kylee Van Horn trace the hidden history of U.S. food policy, from the earliest calorie charts and vitamin ads to the 1977 “eat less meat” controversy, the creation of the food pyramid, and today’s corporate capture of science itself.
They dive into how lobbying by the meat, sugar, and dairy industries shaped everything from school lunches to “heart healthy” labels, and why the same playbook that once defended tobacco is now being used to undermine nutrition research. Plus: what “food freedom” really means under the current administration, and why every athlete, eater, and label-reader should care about the politics behind their plate.
References:
Books
Nestle, M. (2013). Food politics: How the food industry influences nutrition and health (Rev. ed.). University of California Press.
Taubes, G. (2007). Good calories, bad calories: Fats, carbs, and the controversial science of diet and health. Knopf.
Teicholz, N. (2014). The big fat surprise: Why butter, meat, and cheese belong in a healthy diet. Simon & Schuster.
Government Documents
U.S. Department of Agriculture & U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2020). Dietary guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025 (9th ed.). https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/
Journal Articles
Hall, K. D., Ayuketah, A., Brychta, R., Cai, H., Cassimatis, T., Chen, K. Y., Chung, S. T., Costa, E., Courville, A., Darcey, V., Fletcher, L. A., Forde, C. G., Gharib, A. M., Guo, J., Howard, R., Joseph, P. V., McGehee, S., Ouwerkerk, R., Raisinger, K., ... Zhou, M. (2019). Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain: An inpatient randomized controlled trial of ad libitum food intake. Cell Metabolism, 30(1), 67-77.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008
Keys, A., Menotti, A., Karvonen, M. J., Aravanis, C., Blackburn, H., Buzina, R., Djordjevic, B. S., Dontas, A. S., Fidanza, F., Keys, M. H., Kromhout, D., Nedeljkovic, S., Punsar, S., Seccareccia, F., & Toshima, H. (1986). The diet and 15-year death rate in the Seven Countries Study. American Journal of Epidemiology, 124(6), 903-915. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a114480
Monteiro, C. A., Cannon, G., Levy, R. B., Moubarac, J. C., Louzada, M. L., Rauber, F., Khandpur, N., Cediel, G., Neri, D., Martinez-Steele, E., Baraldi, L. G., & Jaime, P. C. (2019). Ultra-processed foods: What they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 22(5), 936-941. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980018003762
Policy Documents
Project 2025. (2023). Mandate for leadership: The conservative promise. The Heritage Foundation. https://www.project2025.org/