Ironically cancer rates skyrocketed after a democrat in charge of a committee for malnutrition decided he should expand the committee's scope and include nutrition policy for the entire country. The deciding factor for the main focus of the food guide was to offset the costs of food stamps.

You could not make this stuff up.

“With her science-based food guide looking like it had just been rearranged by Picasso, Light was horrified. She predicted—in fervent protests to her supervisor—that these “adjustments” would turn America’s health into an inevitable train wreck. Her opinion of the grain-centric recommendations was that “no one needs that much bread and cereal in a day unless they are longshoremen or football players,” and that giving Americans a free starch-gorging pass would unleash an unprecedented epidemic of obesity and diabetes.6

But despite her concerns, Light was the lone wolf howling at the untouchable moon that is public policy. The only justification she’d been given was that the changes would help curb the cost of the food stamp program: fruits and vegetables were expensive, the head of Light’s division explained—and from a nutritional standpoint, the USDA considered them somewhat interchangeable with grains. Emphasizing the latter in the American diet would help food assistance programs stay within budget without causing deficiency.”

Excerpt From: Denise Minger. “Death by Food Pyramid.”