Thread by @DrEricDing

The USDA has just been sued by doctors for urging Americans to go big on milk, cheese and other dairy—claiming that the Trump USDA’s 2020 dietary guidelines are looking out for the interests of the meat and dairy industries rather than health. 🧵
washingtonpost.com/business/2021/…

2) Trump’s USDA in Dec 2020 suggested that Americans consume three servings of dairy each day. The doctors allege in the federal lawsuit that the dietary guidelines contradict current scientific and medical knowledge, harming the quarter of Americans who are lactose-intolerant.

3) “But the guidelines influence school lunches in many ways. For example, for a school to offer a plant-based milk alternative, a student must present a doctor’s note about a disability.

4) “Water must be offered by schools, but the USDA said schools may not offer it in place of milk and it “must not directly or indirectly restrict the sale or marketing of fluid milk.”
This can be a problem for many schoolchildren who are lactose-intolerant.

5) “Lactose intolerance is an ethnocentric word if three-quarters of the world’s population cannot digest lactose,” said Ashwani Garg, a family physician in Barrington, Ill., who himself is lactose-intolerant.

6) He said the inability to digest lactose, the primary carbohydrate in dairy, is prevalent among people of color — 95 percent of Asians, 60 to 80 percent of African Americans and Ashkenazi Jews, 80 to 100 percent of Native Americans and 50 to 80 percent of American Hispanics.

7) For these people, consuming dairy causes diarrhea, pain and other, sometimes serious, digestive symptoms.