A “paradox” arises from two statements or ideas that by themselves may seem sound but cannot exist in the same space without contradiction. So for example, “Be spontaneous!” is such a paradox. You can do something purposely or have it arise accidentally, meaning, without known effort. But there is no context in which trying to have an accidental experience can occur.

Recently, there was an article in the New York Times about the contradiction between a major dietary trend in the U.S. away from saturated fat, supported by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as part of an increased awareness of the relationship between dieting and health, and the USDA’s motivation toward vastly increasing dairy usage, especially cheese. Apparently, this contradiction has been spearheaded by a USDA marketing entity, “Dairy Management”, which is simultaneously encouraging dietary steps to reduce obesity, and then promoting increased cheese sales, despite evidence that excessive consumption of such foods is unhealthy: a paradox!

It is not difficult to understand that the impetus behind the paradox is enterprise– money. As low-fat diets have proliferated there has been a surplus of whole-milk and milk fat products such as cheese, and this has been somewhat of a threat to the dairy industry. Accordingly, the USDA, while continuing to promote healthy dieting, hired researchers to countermand the prevailing wisdom that cheese is one major reason the average American diet contains too much saturated fat, a serious risk factor for heart disease and other major health challenges.

So far, the pattern is: (1) Our target behavior, cheese sales, is in conflict with known health risks but, (2) We can’t severely restrict such a pervasive staple food group as dairy without compromising the financial well-being of several industries, so (3) We need to perform research and prove that increasing cheese consumption is not only not harmful but actually beneficial to people’s health in some way…

….Robert Anton Wilson in his book,”Prometheus Rising” once stated an interesting principle about human brains: What the thinker thinks, the prover proves. Essentially, whatever we give thought to we organize our perceptions around to make it so. Therefore, if you think that it’s better if cheese did not threaten your health– so that you can benefit financially- (think “Graves 5″ from a previous post), you will organize efforts around proving this. And so Dairy Management went hunting for a nutritionalist who could confirm their beliefs and found Dr. Michael Zemel, who claimed to have proved through research that increasing dairy consumption– and of course that means cheese– will hasten weight loss. This excited the USDA. After all, who doesn’t get turned on by ways to successfully lose weight? And doing so while also increasing cheese consumption (a/k/a/ cheese revenues) was orgasmic to the agency! But alas…

(4) The pattern continues… After finding research that proves what we think, research suggesting the contrary emerges. And so studies conducted at the University of Vermont’s Department of Nutrition and Food Science failed to result in weight loss with increased cheese and dairy consumption. While the research controversy continues to rage, the industry has none the less moved forward with their objective: sell cheese.

Despite the conflicting evidence of health risk and fueled by the almighty dollar, apparently Dairy Management’s new strategy focuses on “personal habits” as a way of infusing more cheese into the American diet. Specifically, the thinking is along these lines, “Though there is overwhelming evidence of a relationship between excessive dairy consumption, particularly whole milk and cheese, and obesity-related cardiovascular disease, our resolve is unwavering: we need to look at this as an enterprise and therefore encourage food companies to sort for those consumers whose preference for unhealthy snacks outpaces their concern for health risks. Dairy Management, according to The Times, even gave this a name, “Cheese snacking fanatics.”

Can you imagine this as a default motivation strategy for other risky behaviors? How about the tobacco industry? Suppose they were to fund research that questioned the conventional wisdom that smoking leads to pulmonary diseases, including cancer? And suppose in order to increase the proliferation of cigarettes once again they lobbied for decreasing price, relaxing restrictions on advertising, increasing availability and sorting for those whose desire to smoke greatly outweighed their concern for health hazards? (Oh wait!  Wasn’t this pattern essentially the centerpiece of the lawsuit against “Big Tobacco” a decade or so ago?) How about alcohol? Shall I continue? The point is that articles such as the one in the New York Times provide with great clarity the priorities of many entrepreneurs and government officials. Their motivation to achieve financial success at any cost is…well… quite cheesy.