Corporate groups spent $15.3 million lobbying on the guidelines and other issues in the quarter,

Corporate groups spent $15.3M lobbying for diet guidelines in quarter.

WASHINGTON — The battle to define what Americans should eat is pitting nutritionists against deep-pocketed groups that are spending almost 14 times more cash on lobbying in Washington.

Coca Cola , food-industry and farm groups concerned about the recommendation of a government panel to cut sugar and meat consumption accounted for 85 percent of the comments on the issue from April to June, with health and environmental groups making up the rest, federal records show.

The corporate organizations spent $15.3 million lobbying on the guidelines and other issues in the quarter, compared with $1.1 million by groups supporting the proposals, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. Specific spending isn’t tracked for work on the guidelines, which were proposed by a panel of scientists five months ago.

“When you’re a nonprof- it you rely on donor dollars, and we don’t have the resources others have,” said Kristy Anderson, government relations manager in Washington for the Dallas-based American Heart Association. “When we advocate it comes down to the science and our reputation.”

The recommendations, if adopted by the Obama administration, would move nutrition policy closer to the goal of reducing the overconsumption that is blamed for almost tripling U.S. obesity rates from the 1960s to 2010.

The guidelines are used to shape school lunch menus and the $6 billion a year Women, Infants and Children program, which helps more than 8 million Americans buy groceries. The departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture plan to release their twicea-decade recommendations by the end of this year.

The nonpartisan Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, a panel of scientists that is advising the agency, proposed the first explicit target on “added sugars” from food processing. It recommended that U.S. adults consume no more than 10 percent of all calories as added sugar, down from the average 13 percent now.