The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, updated every five years, never fails to cause a stir. For the current revision, released in February, a federally appointed scientific committee — after a two-year review of the latest research and numerous public hearings — has recommended (PDF) lowering consumption of red meat and processed meat.

Despite being fairly tepid, this advice set off a media firestorm, driven by a defensive meat industry and others who have been muddying the waters for some time on the role of meat in the diet. The meat lobby is taking full advantage of the current “debate.”

Adding to the confusion is Nina Teicholz, the best-selling author of “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet,” whose recent attempts to discredit the committee’s recommendations on meat have been published in The New York Times, alongside meat industry trade publications such as Beef Magazine and Cattle Network.

Most of the discourse around red meat has largely focused on two issues: whether or not saturated fat is unfairly vilified as contributing to heart disease, and how, despite lowering their intake of red meat, Americans continue to gain weight.

The nutritionally myopic approach to meat-eating’s relationship to heart disease and obesity plays right into the meat lobby’s game. It’s a strategy honed by the tobacco industry decades ago: Create enough doubt to maintain the status quo — in this case, the promotion of red meat by the federal government.

Currently, federal dietary advice is to “choose lean meat,” a politically safe message that is itself the product of meat industry lobbying to undermine previous committee findings that Americans should lower red meat intake. The meat lobby is desperate to keep this friendly message in the revised dietary guidelines, but it’s a confusing recommendation that falsely attributes health advantages to foods that should (at best) be limited. A look at the science on red and processed meat reveals that fat content is far from the sole cause of concern.

Claims that lowered red meat consumption has resulted in higher obesity rates are pure obfuscation. Although beef intake has declined in recent years, consumption of other types of meat (mainly poultry), along with cheese and highly refined foods, has significantly increased, providing a surplus of calories. Lowered beef intake in and of itself is not responsible for the obesity epidemic.

Another common argument we hear from the meat lobby is that red meat is “nutrient dense,” a phrase that refers to the amount of nutrients available in food on a per-calorie basis.

But plant foods contain all nutrients available in animal foods (except for vitamin B12), as well as fiber (not found in any animal foods) and thousands of phytochemicals, compounds made by plants that offer an array of health advantages, including reducing inflammation, protecting the cardiovascular system and acting as antioxidants.