White Lies?

"Milk your diet. Lose weight!" promise ads from the Milk Processors Education Program. "Burn More Fat!" say labels for Yoplait yogurt (ads for Kraft cheese carried the same claim).

A bold marketing campaign--using radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, package labels, signs in supermarkets, free samples, WebMD, e-newsletters, information kits to dietitians and reporters, and more--claims that eating "3-A-Day of Dairy" helps you burn more fat and lose more weight than cutting calories alone.

Yet the entire campaign is based largely on three small published studies. A government panel of diet experts has called the evidence "inconclusive" (see "Milking the Data," p. 9).

How can the dairy industry get away with making such big claims based on such little evidence?

Starting in the 1980s, Congress set up 35 commodity "checkoff" programs that require food producers and processors to pool their money for advertising and promotion. The biggest programs are for dairy, beef, and pork. The "Got Milk?" and milk moustache ads, the "Beef. It's What's for Dinner" ads, and the "Pork. The Other White Meat" slogan are examples of the programs' handiwork.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is supposed to oversee the programs and make sure that the ads are not false or misleading.

However, the AMS's standards are rather low. For example, the AMS says that if the ads make a claim about health, at least two published studies should support the claim. Yet it approved the dairy industry's weight-loss ads before the two controlled trials were published. (Three studies conducted by a scientist with ties to the dairy industry have now been published showing greater weight loss in people who eat three servings of dairy a day, but their results have been contradicted by two studies by independent researchers.)

Essentially, one arm of the USDA is promoting the consumption of dairy foods for weight loss, while a panel of nutrition experts appointed by the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that there is too little evidence for the "Dietary Guidelines for Americans" to include any mention that dairy foods can promote weight loss.

Instead of speaking with one voice on nutrition, the USDA is talking out of both sides of its mouth. And the side pushing milk, cheese, and yogurt is a lot louder.

The USDA has failed the public, as has the dairy industry. I'm pleased that the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing the dairy ads. I'm also pleased that the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine--a group advocating animal rights, vegan (non-meat, non-dairy, non-egg) diets, and better nutrition--has sued the three main dairy industry trade associations, as well as General Mills (which sells Yoplait), Kraft (which has dropped its ads), and Dannon, for deceptive advertising.

I suspect that the dairy-weight-loss ads will be stopped soon and hope that food companies will think twice before basing future ad campaigns on skimpy scientific evidence.

Otherwise, misleading claims will undermine the public's trust in both the industry's ads and the government that oversees them.

Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D. V Executive Director Center for Science in the Public Interest