I'm not one of those conspiracy theorists who think Big Business, like the drug and food industries, prevent any useful health guidelines from being published by government agencies. I generally respect the impartiality of the government, as well as mainstream non-profit organizations like the American Heart Association. But when the U.S. advisory panel that created the food pyramid, updated its guidelines to include Fewer Grains, More Veggies [subscription required], I think you have to remember that any committee will have the weakness that it requires a lot of consensus. Many things about diet are just not understood well enough to be 100% emphatic all the time, so no matter what recommendation they put forward, somebody can show good scientific data that refutes or moderates it. The net result is a least-common-denominator conclusion.