POLITICS ON THE PLATE: The government’s dietary guidelines peddle an environmental agenda with no connection to health.

Washington’s dietary guidelines have been controversial from the outset, largely because they advised Americans on how to adjust their diets to reduce cardiovascular disease—chiefly heart attacks and stroke. . . .

In recent years, some researchers have attacked the notion that advising people to adopt a diet lower in meat and dairy products and higher in carbohydrates would be harmless at worst. . . . Americans have significantly cut their fat intake and increased consumption of carbohydrates over the last three decades. The result has been a sharp increase in obesity which “possibly laid the groundwork for a future increase in [cardiovascular disease].” . . .

Even as the scientific rationales for eating less meat and fewer dairy products have fallen away, the dietary guidelines committee has found a new reason to steer people away from these foods—but one that has little bearing on individual health. The nutrition experts now invoke the concept of “environmental sustainability” to advise Americans to adopt a more plant-based diet, which the committee claims will “ensure a healthy food supply will be available for future generations.” The committee made its recommendations despite a directive from Congress last year to the Obama administration to stick to nutritional advice and ignore “agricultural production practices and environmental factors” in the new dietary guidelines.