…The government’s process for updating federal nutrition advice — the basis for the now-defunct food pyramid and the current MyPlate — is being criticized by advocates, who argue conflicts of interest have not been adequately disclosed.

Dietary Guidelines 101: The Agriculture Department and the Department of Health and Human Services jointly craft the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which are updated every five years. Ahead of each update, an advisory committee of experts is chosen to dive into the state of nutrition science. These experts then put together a massive report for USDA and HHS, which the agencies use to inform their updated recommendations. This committee is known as the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (simply DGAC to insiders), and it has a lot of influence.

The criticism: The Center for Science in the Public Interest (a consumer group) this week accused the agencies of “obscuring the potential financial conflicts of interest of the committee members” because they posted a four-page list of committee members’ collective financial relationships, with zero indication of which financial relationships involve each member. A wide range of entities have provided grants or other contracts to committee members, according to the list: disease advocacy groups like the American Diabetes Association, industry interests like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

CSPI president and executive director Peter Lurie, who’s long been keenly interested in conflicts of interest on federal advisory panels (particularly for FDA, where he once worked), told me he was dumbfounded by the format.