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North Carolina Threatens To Shut Down Nutrition Blogger
vvaduva writes "The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is threatening to send a blogger to jail for recounting publicly his battle against diabetes and encouraging others to follow his lifestyle... the state diatetics and nutrition board decided [Steve] Cooksey's blog — Diabetes-Warrior.net — violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to 'practicing nutrition,' the board's director says, and in North Carolina that's something you need a license to do." If applied consistently, I think this would also clear out considerable space from the average bookstore's health section. (And it could be worse; he could have been offering manicures.)
I guess this means I should stop reading the ingredients in my food and trying to eat healthy and balanced. Don't want to be jailed for "practicing nutrition"
FTFA:
"After the meeting he handed out a couple of business cards pointing people to his website.
Three days later, he got a call from the director of the nutrition board."
once you go into the real world and hand out business cards you are operating a business, it's no longer free speech. Title is misleading.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Geez, if you started this process where would it end. You would have to shut down all the biology departments in schools for practicing Religion without the tax exempt status. You would have to jail all the "Job Creator" appologists for operating without a "Snake Oil" license. It would be total anachry. Free speach no more ,without paying someone for the right to say it (unless your already a member of the club and paid your dues).
Lets bring this sort of thing to all the people that are effectively practicing medicine without a license.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I guess this means I should stop reading the ingredients in my food and trying to eat healthy and balanced. Don't want to be jailed for "practicing nutrition"
He makes money on ad revenue for this advice. And also from the article:
McCullagh said the board may be on more solid ground in its complaint about the telephone support packages Cooksey offers. “But if customers are paying $97 or $149 or $197 a month to have someone listen, that sounds a lot like life coaching, which doesn't require a license.”
So I think the board is trying to do Crooksey a favor because here's what's going to happen. Someone is going to die after telling their family members that they've stopped seeing a regular doctor and went holistic with Crooksey when they should have had their ankle amputated. The family is going to sue Crooksey probably with a number of things like practicing nutrition without a license, etc etc. And since Crooksey is making money off this operation it's going to be hard to tell the court that was just friendly advice over tea. Crooksey isn't going to have malpractice insurance and his first amendment rights aren't going to protect him from the lawsuits that follow regarding the repercussions of his preachings.
Crooksey should be able to say whatever he wants and put it on his blog. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be held accountable for what he says. It's wrong for the board to try and shut him down now but if I were them I would just kindly let Crooksey know that the things he is saying might leaving him with serious liabilities in due time.
My work here is dung.
First in flight, 48th in education...
Am I the only one not surprised by this?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I say, allow individuals to say whatever they want, be it true or false. Also, the listeners/readers need to be allowed to decide what they do with that information, They must be allowed to suffer the full consequences, be they good or bad. The government needs to step out of the way and let We The People take full emotional, financial, physical -- what have you -- responsibility for the consequences of our choices, even if they are poor choices. End the nanny state please.
Seems to me if he just included the dietary equivalent of IANAL in his signature he could sidestep most of this criticism. Such as: "I am not a licensed nutritional expert, but I do have experience and common sense, and I think..."
A nutrition blog
Is a horrible slog.
Go straight razor smooth,
Get some barbecued hog!
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I tell people to pull their heads out of their asses quite a bit. Do I need a license for that?
I particularly like all of the "Become and Nutritionist" and "Become a Health Coach" ads that I see with this story. By the way, what the hell is a "Health Coach"? How many players are there on a "Heath Team"? Is there a professional league? What do they call the finals?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
My psych prof in college had to be careful not to use "Dr." as a title on anything in NYS, even though he had a valid doctorate in psychology. I believe it had something to do with the doctorate not being in clinical psychology or somesuch.
Although I can see these rules being for consumer protection, many of them are poorly implemented.
The server appears to be in Utah, not North Carolina. Certainly Provo isn't within the NC Board of Nutrition's jurisdiction.
According to the Huffington Post in 2011, NC ranks 36 in the nation and below average. Not that I take much stock in the Huffington Post. However, I know people that have lived in NC and I was surprised that they ranked as high as they did compared to what I've been told.
They call a FAQ a 'assessing and counseling readers' because it answers questions. From the article:
Where it crosses the line, Burill said, is when a blogger “advertises himself as an expert” and “takes information from someone such that he’s performing some sort of assessment and then giving it back with some sort of plan or diet.”
Cooksey posted a link (6.3 MB PDF download) to the board’s review of his website. The document shows several Web pages the board took issue with, including a question-and-answer page, which the director had marked in red ink noting the places he was “assessing and counseling” readers of his blog.
“If people are writing you with diabetic specific questions and you are responding, you are no longer just providing information — you are counseling,” she wrote. “You need a license to provide this service."
The board also found fault with a page titled “My Meal Plan,” where Cooksey details what he eats daily.
In red, Burril writes, “It is acceptable to provide just this information [his meal plan], but when you start recommending it directly to people you speak to or who write you, you are now providing diabetic counseling, which requires a license.”
The board also directed Cooksey to remove a link offering one-on-one support, a personal-training type of service he offered for a small fee.
Cooksey posts the following disclaimer at the bottom of every page on his website:
“I am not a doctor, dietitian, nor nutritionist in fact I have no medical training of any kind.”
The idea that only licensed people can discuss a subject that everyone is familiar with is like the freak flip-side to 'teach the controversy'; instead of forcing people to disseminate wrong information, they've decided that only government licensed counselors speak the truth.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
because Obama run NC now?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Can someone PLEASE threaten to shut down Gillian McKeith in the UK? Please please please! That woman is a quack of the highest order!
this would also clear out considerable space from the average bookstore's health section.
Trudeau would have to get a real job rather than claiming "The Man" is trying to keep "free" cancer cures secret from the public and harassing him.
After all, Big Government is in cahoots with Big Pharma so people are bled dry using tested and approved medicines rather than "vitamin" pills to cure cancer.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Just because one person did something and got well does not, in any way, imply
that it works, or is even a good idea for the population as a whole.
It is exactly this kind of stuff the general public is very susceptible to,
and needs protection from, so kudos to North Carolina.
All they have to do is place a disclaimer on the site that says "I am not a practicing nutritionist. The following nutrition tips are for entertainment only. Please consult with your North Carolina Practicing Nutritionist before following anything on this site."
Crisis deverted.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
You kidding? You don't think this is happening everywhere? Freedom is being lost everywhere. It starts at the top. This NC department is just a copy-cat of the FDA
What the hell is wrong with the people in charge that they feel the need to hassle an innocent blogger? At worst he gives out bad adivse and screws up a diabetic's diet...they have civil court for that kind of thing.
NC, endowed with the natural wonders of the Great Smokey Mountains and Outer Banks is one of my favorite eastern states. Years ago, I used to work around RTP. Heard a story from a friend regarding a young mother of 3 who was busy strapping her youngest into the car while the older 5 yr old strayed into the street playing. They lived at the end of a dead end road out in the cuntry where the only traffic occurred during work drive times. A neighbor reported the mother for child endangerment. The state used the complaint to remove the children from their home pending investigation. Nice place to visit, just don't live their.
Damm you North Carolina. It's really hard to take you serious when you pull INSANE SHIT LIKE THIS.
Get smarter!
Is he qualified to do what he is doing? Does this guy have a degree in nutrition or certification from a third party? Is he running a business? To put it bluntly, how do I know that he isn't a crackpot?
They want this guy to prove he isn't a crackpot in offering what is effectively medical advice. How is this a free speech issue? I'm not a doctor, so I have no place being in a business offering medical advice. The entire point of having things like certification boards is to keep people like this person from simply hanging a sign and going into business without the necessary qualifications.
If this person is qualified, than I'm much more inclined to think that the state can bugger off.
There is no difference between this and licensed doctors, engineers, lawyers, ect.
These should all be voluntarily organizations. So if you want to see a real doctor you can find one that has AMA accreditation. But if you want to see a witch doctor, herbal specialist, or chiropractor go ahead. It's your body.
Now if someone claims to have AMA accreditation when they don't that is committing fraud.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It's never been considered 'freedom' to commit fraud.
The Government of North Carolina should go F*** Themselves because they pay themselves for the pleasure as they are corrupt government whores. So that would technically make them prostitutes.
This is what happens when business interest groups lobby to pass laws to "protect their profession", this is why in some states you can buy a teeth cleaning kit but you can't technically have your friend help you use it because then they would be breaking the law for "practicing dentistry without a license" or some other bullshit charge like that.
It would be like con-agra or monsanto or your local grocery store lobbying to pass laws to make it illegal to have your own garden because you are "destroying their business by raising your own food".
This is where I get pissed off when politicians use "number of laws passed" as a "positive bragging metric" when they run for re-election. They will say, hey re-elect me because I am "effective" because i passed 500 laws. Sure they are effective in a way, but how many of those 500 laws are complete bull crap that cause more problems than they solve?
Of course people will say I am a "crazy libertarian" which I am a libertarian and they will say, "Dumb libertarians want NO GOVERNMENT and that is anarchy!"
But that is a complete blatant misrepresentation of libertarianism. Most all libertarians that I talk to DO WANT RULE OF LAW, however they want the sum total NUMBER of laws that the federal, state, and local governments to be LIMITED to something that a person could sit down and read over the course of a week or weekend. And then if any governmental body wants to pass a new law they would have to go in and remove an old law first to "make room for it". They believe that congress should spend 10% of it's time working on new laws and 90% of their time going over and debating old laws and deciding whether or not to keep or throw them out.
The biggest issue is when laws are passed that are then used by ANY group to protect their interests in a vein of limiting any current competition or perceived future competition. Instead of recognizing the efforts of small upstarts, they seek to "hammer down" the upstart pegs that stand out amongst the crowds.
If you want to decrease your risk of diabetes, eat less sugar and exercise more.
If you want to lower your blood pressure, eat less sugar, maintain proper electrolyte balance (doesn't necessarily mean less salt!), and exercise more. Also consider breathing/meditating exercises as well.
If you want to lower your risk of cancer, particularly colon cancer, eat more blueberries, green leafy vegetables, garlic, and exercise more.
If you want to decrease your LDL cholesterol levels, eat more oatmeal and olive oil (not together, that would be gross!), and exercise more.
Take that, North Carolina! I just posted nutritional advice without a license!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Just if you charge someone for designing a computer, not fixing.
IIRC, they accused a man of practicing engineering because he was able to accurately refute some highway rule in a scientific way.
There was some court doc which required a State-Certified Engineer to sign off on some item. He wasn't certified even though he was in fact qualified, so when he signed it himself it was considered Perjury.
At what point was the accusation of fraud even levelled? This is about the state's control over the supply of medical advice and collusion with the professional organizations to control the number of students in a given field so that one can be arrested/fined/punished for supplying advice outside of government-approved channels.
Did this person ever say he had acquired a license? If so, that's fraud.
He shouldn't be censored, becuase we should be free to pay any person for any kind of advice we want. Freedom FROM licensing.
We're allowed to think the world was created 6000 years ago -- and pay money to people who promote this idea. But apparently we're not allowed to follow people's advice. We're not smart enough to make our own decisions. The government should make them for us. That's what I'm getting out of this.
Another phrase I hate: "the science is settled." That's what they said to Socrates, Galileo, the guy who discovered penicillin (too lazy to Google) etc ad nauseum. It kills me that the people for whom skepticism is (supposed to be) a way of life have such a habit of asking the rest of us to set aside all skepticism.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Then he should be arrested/sued for defrauding people. I didn't see anything about that in the story.
http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/
It seems to me that if I get sick and die from following the guidelines put forth on this website, that I or my next of kin should be able to sue the federal government using the same North Carolina logic, no? I think to err on the side of safety, all "dietetics and nutritionists" should cut their recommendations to the following concise statements:
"Not eating will kill you. Eating too much may make you sick and may subsequently kill you. Regardless of the choices you make in life, you will die."
Not only that but this is a "profession" that quite often changes it's tune and is currently responsible for the largest increase in obesity in human history.
Burning all of these "licensed nutritionists" at that stake might not be such a bad idea.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What a complete failure of a summary.
South Carolina doesn't recognize clinical nutritionists as licensed practitioners. Apparently, the only state that doesn't too. In this case though, it creates a loophole by proximity for this guy.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
This person is selling advice which he claims is superior to the consensus. Looking at some of the things he writes, in particular the attacks on the ADA diet it is pretty obvious that his advice can be very dangerous (could cause hypoglycemia).
That is fraud IMHO.
in the summary its probably not. given north carolinas epidemic levels of obesity and uncontrolled diabetes, coupled with the fact that this guy was basically selling unqualified help online, i think this is an example of a pretty responsible state. Diabetes and obesity for that matter are slowly reducing the deep south to a population of blind motorized-cart parapalegics.
so good start, NC. Next step, crack down on fast food and big box stores and stop pretending the unmitigated ability to eat yourself to death is a "right" enjoyed by the people.
Good people go to bed earlier.
No, but governor Beverly Perdue is of the same party.
Reading the comments here decrying the fact that an unlicensed person would write about nutrition is maddening.
These license requirements are written by the same government that brought us the DMCA, the Patriot Act, and narrowly missed on SOPA. Also Vioxx, and school sponsored sugar bomb school lunches, with some whole grain. And apprently USDA inspections of student's brought lunches. It's the same. It's the same people, same motivations, same corruption, same everything.
We know the MPAA and RIAA are self serving corps who will destroy anything and anyone to perserve their power and make another dollar. Everyone here knows that. But apparently we don't know enough about organizations like the AMA to realize that they are the same.
They are out to protect the consumer or patient in the same way the MPAA is out to protect movie viewers. It's the same.
Or he could do the opposite:
Start again studying, get a license, and they stay a little longer in the academics and do some research in order to have a better picture of his theories and to have a little bit more data points than "1 single exemple: my self".
From what I know (Medicine, but not nutritionnist), what he's doing does have some sense. It's not completely unlike the regiment that weight lifter and body builder are using to "dry out" their muscles. (Eating almost only proteins and no carbs). And we have plenty of data points proving that lots of proteins/no carbs hasn't been that much harmful to these athletes. And as (almost) no carbs are includined in this diet, diabetes is (almost) non relevant.
Biologically:
- Diabetes come from difficulties processing sugar. Either because not enough insuline is produced (Type 1 - onset in youngs) or because the body doesn't react to insuline anymore. Sugar stays in the blood instead of getting inside cells which need it. High concentration of sugar are directly and indirectly damaging. And the sugar-starved cells start to use alternate source of energy (proteins and fats). Which saddly procudes some toxic by products (ketonic bodies). And they stay in the blood stream (where they cause additionnal damage) because there *is* sugar in the blood and no process kicks in to destroy them (for exemple, the brain can use ketonic bodies as fuel, but the brain can also use sugar without insuline and thus gets its normal sugar and doesn't realise that it needs to burn ketonic bodies).
This is an over simplification, but it mostly gives an approximative picture of what's happening.
What classical handling of diabetis tries to achieve is:
- Giving insuline, etiher replacing the deffective production (Type 1) or trying to overcome the lack of reaction with more insuline (Type 2). Thus sugars enters inside cells and is processed as it should. (Stored for mid-term storage, converted to fat for long storage, burned as energy for physical performance, or used as fuel to keep temperature high, or used to power body while the body is creating more muscles, etc. - it all depends on exercices, hormones, etc.)
The good thing:
- blood sugar remains low (no direct and indirect damage)
- no production of ketonic acids.
The not so good thing:
- it all depends on eating carbs, and the western-civilisation living style is rather sedentary and wouldn't always need that much energy (thus fat is produced) which lead to fat related problems, like obesity, and like... well Type diabetis. The carbs need to be adjusted to the life-style needs, and the life style needs a minimum level of exercice. Sometime the obesity related problems needs to be taken care of.
What he's trying to do:
- Just kick the carbs out of the diet. (almost) no carbs, (almost) no need for insuline. Eat meat and greens. And exercice a lot. As the cells are starving for sugar, they start burning alternate fuels like proteins and fat. This produces ketonic bodies which are in turn digested by other organs who notice that there's no sugar in the blood. Basically his body is functionning like that of an ahtelete (a body builder or a wiehgt lifter) on a fat burning diet.
The good things:
- No carbs, no diabetes problems.
- No carbs, less obesity problems.
The not so good things:
- still producing ketonic acids, but at least now they are correctly burned instead of causing damage (I don't remember if physical exrecise helps it or not).
- needing a fuck big quantity of proteins (both the normal quantity used by the body + additionnal quantity because of turn-over of muscles tissues and muscle buidling caused by physical exercice + much much more because now it's used as a fuel).
- higher level of fats because that now the new energy source (but can be compensated by either eating good fats and/or exercice)
- proteins and fat: might lack some vitamins - that's why he's eating also a lot of greens
- without exercice and huge amount of proteins, instead of
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Now if someone would only put "Dr." Phil in jail for dispensing medical advice without a license. He's really mastered the attempt to shame people into changing method.
all he needs to do is partner up with an actual MD to provide some actual medical backing.
btw where are the ads on his blog?? (i do run adblock but i don't see any ads or "missing" parts)
also where does is say on his website that he charges anything??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
sorry...is he lying about his disagreement with organizations like the ADA? Is he claiming the ADA supports his opinion? Both of those would be fraud.
If he's disagreeing openly and honestly...that's the exact opposite of fraud.
They ought to be suing the lady who was telling people to go high carb low fat. You know why we have an obesity epidemic? Decades of high carb low fat diets that cause insulin spikes, insulin resistance, and massive increases in adipose tissue (that's body fat). Every person whoever followed a high carb low fat diet on the advice of people like that should sue for having their health destroyed.
Most license requirements have exemptions for common use cases that have a reason to exist, and are not actually practicing, such as teaching or news coverage. For example you need a license to give financial advise, unless doing it as an instructor or as a member of the media. Imagine if every news person, blogger, and high school life science teacher had to have a Series 7 license to do their job.
This should be the same.
If anybody ventures to his page, they'd see that he is preaching the Paleo / Primal lifestyle. I have friends that follow this diet strictly. I, myself, will occasionally do a 30-day stint of strict paleo. The rest of the time I try, try, try to be fairly processed food and gluten free. There is a whole community built around this (a lot of Crossfitters...)
The number one complaint I see is from people who love the Paleo life style and have seen many people succeed with it - from just weight loss to getting a handle on symptoms of autoimmune diseases - yet have to go through years of "misinformation" when becoming a dietician or nutritionist.
So what do they do? they go through the motions of learning about how great whole grains (and high carb) are for you only to cast the information aside and preach their own Paleo beliefs. There are many blogs regarding the same topic. I haven't really scoured his website to see how his is any different... it doesn't seem to be. Maybe he's just the only one without a disregarded nutritionist cert.
I think the real question is why do we put so much faith in the government created food pyramid and ADA? In seems more like a profit machine - keeping people sick.
Maybe this is more of a rant because i'm an avid supporter of the Paleo life style... but I find it disgusting that people are tossing around the word "fraud." Nutrition in America is broken - and this is NOT the man doing the harm.
But I offered my opinion on my blog regarding a recently released film.... Should I be worried that North Carolina will be coming for me next?
I guess now that that 4th amendment is dead in the USA, the 1st amendment can't be far behind. Zeig Heil.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The sad part is that the ADA advice is not only *obviously* dangerous, it is *demonstrably* dangerous.
Gary Taubes tore apart the pseudo-science of nutrition with his original "Good Calories, Bad Calories", and followed up with a book more targeted towards laymen called "Why We Get Fat". Read one, or both, and come back with impressions.
I couldn't help but notice that his site (diabetes-warrior.net) is hosted by Bluehost in Provo, Utah. Not really having a legal background I wonder how this changes the landscape... i.e.-
What if he were living in Utah but the site was hosted in North Carolina? Could they go after him then? What if he just registered the site under a business in a different state and continued to host the site in Utah? Could they still get him for writing it in N.C.?
Don't get me wrong. It does appear he crossed the line by offering 'coaching' services which is forbidden by the law. But the blog itself describing his battle against diabetes and the steps that he has found useful is likely protected free speech. It's going to be hard to convince a judge that a blog is illegal when the same information could be printed and bound in a book and sold at the Barnes & Noble in Raleigh legally.
Reading the lawthough, pretty much every mother in North Carolina is likely a criminal. From the statute-
Nutrition care services means any part or all of the following:
a. Assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups, and determining resources and constraints in the practice setting
b. Establishing priorities, goals, and objectives that meet nutritional needs and are consistent with available resources and constraints
c. Providing nutrition counseling in health and disease
d. Developing, implementing, and managing nutrition care systems
e. Evaluating, making changes in, and maintaining appropriate standards of quality in food and nutrition services.
Seriously, any parent worth their salt does this for their children from an early age. Friends do it for each other. Adults do it for their aging parents. 'Dad! Why are you eating that? You know it'll set off your gout/blood sugar/.' It takes support and encouragement to make lifestyle changes. Some people find that support in their family or friends. Some find it online. The best solution would be to slap his wrist for offering coaching and let the rest go.
One guys book isn't going to prove anything. At most there is a logical sounding narrative in there. I am not saying he is wrong, but you shouldn't act like the guy created some book of truth.
This all boils down to money. Full stop.
Take, if you will, a look at what is going on around us in the world of pharmaceuticals. There are now more commericals for drugs on TV than for soap and food. None of these wonder drugs does anything but treat the symptoms. None of them address a cure. Why? Because there is no profit in curing people. The profit is seen by stringing people along month after month, year after year. Ads for drugs need to go the way of ads for cigarettes -- away. People are sheep, most of them, and they see these ads for all manner of stuff:
- my dick doesn't work (no cure there)
- my cholesterol is through the roof (no cure there) (put down the damned dagwood, maybe)
- my eyelashes aren't as long as they were (you're sixty years old, get over it)
And, all of these drugs have potential side effects that would make a sane person sit up and take notice. Possible death, thoughts of suicide, internal bleeding, blindness, paralysis... it goes on and on. WTF? And this is somehow better because it's legal and vetted by some ivory tower scientist? Prescription drugs kill more than 250,000 people a year due to unforseen side effects. How many people has that guy's website killed?
There are more websites out there offering medical advice than it is possible to count. Some are decent, some are not. The onus, obviously, is on the reader to employ common sense and due diligence and not undertake advice which could emperil them. I sense anger by the state because they cannot tax this guy via a license. That is all.
Roll on universal healthcare, no drug ads on TV, no legal (or illegal) lobbying by the pharm and MD companies. A sane society is still possible if the notion that profit has to fit in everywhere is removed.
Gary Taube is a journalist with no training in any field even RELATED to medicine, biology etc.
You have got to be kidding me.
A high school student could see that he has the right to freely express himself and this law is blatantly unconstitutional. Which begs the question, "If secondary school students can see a law is clearly unconstitutional, what group of morons passed it into law?"
This guy was charging for his speech, it was in no way free.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Gary Taubes didn't do the research he cites, people with training in medicine and biology did the research he cites. What Gary Taubes is is a journalist, writer, and scientist who has been able to properly research, cite and present a whole host of data and work that others have done - he stands on the shoulders of giants, even if he isn't one.
If you haven't read his work (compiled from the work of others, of course), you should.
If you have read his work, and simply dismiss it because he isn't an MD, go ahead and check out Dr. Eades (http://proteinpower.com/), or Dr. Lustig.
Of course his book doesn't prove anything - what it does is cite a whole host of literature and experimental science that *does*. I'm not saying that Taubes did original research, and did so without any sort of medical training himself - what he did was, for the first time ever, rigorously go through the body of research, and the history of the science of diet and obesity and chronic disease, and thoroughly repudiated the common wisdom given to us by government, thanks to a misguided Ancel Keys who took hold of the "fat is dangerous" meme and forced it upon us by sheer will.
http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/childs-lunch-allegedly-taken-by-teacher-told-it-wasnt-healthy-enough
I have nothing in principle against this kind of law, but it seems that it is not applied uniformly. If you get together with 1000 other like minded people to promote your brand of alternative medicine, and lobby/bribe the government, you will get a rubber stamp and they will ignore the fact that you are giving "advice" (note that the law contains a factual test for advice). So as usual there is one law for the big fish and another law for the little fish.
It seems like the paleo guys get picked on by the government because (a) they are a small (off the internet) group, and (b) they aren't organized with lots of money and lawyers. Which is a pity because unlike most alternative medicine, these people seem to have something to contribute, or at least their criticism of mainstream nutrition ideas seems worthy of addressing.
I noticed in a couple of episodes, Alton Brown was very careful to disclaim that he is not a doctor, is not offering dietary advice and that you should consult your doctor about such things. I suspect his liability concerns were wider-ranging than "might get me arrested in North Carolina." Anyone with an "in" want to corner the guy and ask him about it?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
;]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So if somebody says "I'm thirsty" and you way "drink some water" you''re "diagnosing conditions and recommending treatment plans" ?
Technically, yes. We aren't bothered by this, and why? It's stuff everybody knows, and you don't need peer reviewed journals to back this up, it's grandfathered.
One could make the point that so is the dietary advice he's handing out (and doesn't go far enough with, he's missing a couple of key points) is also grandfathered, look it up in any journals of evolutionary biology. Keywords: encephalization, vitamins.
NC is trying to protect their licensing revenue, and just for laughs, their policies are based on a combination of hokum and paid-for "advice" from big agro. Check for yourself. You know enough now to do that. Google scholar and medline are two good places to start.
Need Mercedes parts ?
So change the wording. "Here's the history and science behind it, here's 30,000 case studies that worked, that's your history lesson for today, sign here that you understand this is not nutritional advice".
Pffffffffft. We can argue this in court for ages. I got time, how are those legal bills lookin at taxpayer expense.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I highly doubt he properly analyzed the literature. You can cherry pick literature to say whatever you want. Doesn't make him wrong, but doesn't mean his theory has been tested either.
During 2011 I was able to attend many health related conferences around the country in addition to the NAMA, National Automatic Merchandising Association (aka Vending Machines) conference. While at the NAMA it is no surprise I was surrounded by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, Mars and a host of other related companies that make food like products. It was also of no surprise that most of the people were over weight and looked unhealthy.
Then I got to attend the Ancestral Health Symposium. Major difference, people were talking about eating food our ancestors would have eaten and getting back to the basics. Reducing our sugar intake, lower our consumption of processed foods and getting more information about what we are really putting in our bodies. Some people were overweight, but the majority of people there looked like they cared about their overall health.
Last I got to attend the ADA conference. This is a huge conference in San Diego where all the Dietitians go to get some of their continuing education credits and current health information. Who was there?!? Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, Mars and a host of other related companies that make food like products. It was so sad for me to see. So much became clear to me over the course of that weekend.
I would much rather give my money to Steve Cooksey for his advise, or to support his legal fees, than to most of the Dietitians I met at the ADA.
NAMA: http://www.vending.org/
Ancestral Health Symposium: http://ancestryfoundation.org/
American Dietetic Association: http://www.eatright.org/
The First Amendment stops the government from passing laws that restrict what you can say in public (among other things). In theory.
In practice, the supreme court has identified several categories of speech that are not protected by the first amendment, and the government can and will pass laws that make it illegal for you to say anything within these categories.
So the first amendment does not "guarantee your ability to say darn near anything you want." You cannot exercise obscene speech, for example, nor is commercial speech free, nor can you freely violate copyright.
Saying "you are free to say whatever you want, but you might get punished for it" is logically equivalent to saying "you are not free to say whatever you want." But this semantic hair-splitting doesn't matter, since there are specific things that are not protected by the first amendment, so you are not free to say them in any sense of the word.
This guy was diagnosing symptoms and charging for the service of doing so. That is more than just speaking, that is practicing a regulated trade that requires specialized education and training. It is and should be illegal.
Just a quick comment -- although I am not familiar with that blog, I have practiced low carb for managing my diabetes VERY successfully. I raised my HDL, lowered my LDL, and dropped my average blood sugar from 140 or so to 85, not to mention losing massive amounts of weight. No other way to live!
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
you need a license to tell people about how the diet we evolved on is good for us? most licensed nutritionist recommend foods we as a Homo sapiens have only been exposed to since the start of modern agriculture. 80% of you are intolerant of wheat on some level. plz don't sue me, just the messenger
Ah, yes, North Carolina's "proper" dietetics, "We want to see your papers," (where "please" is forbidden for non-optional demands). Brought to you by North Carolina's Mike Nifong School of Law, Nutrition and Fascism, located near the Soylent Green Theatre.
Licensing can be a good thing. This is especially true when your house doesn't fall over during a 5.0 quake or a category 1 hurricane.
I would like to see competition for licensing though, and the right to waive some of it.
For example, instead of having the government inspect your house, the government would instead accept some number of applications from contractors who wish to become inspectors. The inspectors would assume liability for failing to reject things that shouldn't pass code, in exchange for receiving the inspection fees. The fees should drop some. Also, if I want to live in a "red tagged" house, that's my own bloody business; but I should be required to report it when selling. Financing would be much harder to obtain without an inspection so there would still be an incentive to jump through the hoops. We'd see more disaster deaths; but we might see fewer people stressing out and dying from heart attacks or freezing because they can't afford a government inspected house.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hahaha! Another blow to the fattest state in the union! How about some more pork rinds? Yee-ha!
Free Speech is not subject to their approval
It takes an additional 6 months of education as well as a special certification to be a nutritionist in NC over and above the requirements of a certified rehab exercise physiologist. For example personal trainers are not permitted by law to offer nutritional plans to clients. That's the law. If you don't like it, change the law.
The problem is that the RD - LDN dietitians often give demonstrably bad, dogmatic advice about carbohydrates for insulin resistant persons, "diabetic" or not, often sledgehammered with insulin or side effect prone drugs.
If by a low carb diet, maybe Paleo, a person can drop their triglycerides 60+%, lower LDL, raise HDL, stabilize their blood sugar at an optimal value (~78), improve some immune measures and eliminate insulin use, what's not to like? Dr Richard K Bernstein showed diabetics could use very low carb diets decades ago to keep healthy, stable blood glucose levels, and outlive their RD advised contemporaries.
Sounds like a job for the Institude of Justice.
Nicely said.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
It's not like anyone could be hurt from following their advice if they have no idea what their talking about. End snark.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
my guess is that if accessing his website of checkboxes is free, he's fine. If he charges, he'd need a license. And he'd probably get his license pulled, because diagnosing via questionnaire is pretty damn sketchy. We're not talking about diagnosing a software glitch, this is people's health we're talking about.
As for walnuts, if you're selling them based on claimed health benefits, yes, the FDA has the responsibility of verifying those claims.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
...so we should just throw up our hands and let everybody practice medicine? Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Licensing isn't perfect (Guess what? Nothing is!), but it's better than doing nothing, which seems to be your recommendation.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Movie critics aren't licensed, and nobody has ever been hurt or killed from receiving poor movie viewing advice. Nutritionists are licensed, and I've heard diet can affect your health.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Well, I'd be interested if you have any specific critique. Frankly, most of the basics are generally not contested (insulin promotes fat deposition, blood sugar drives insulin levels, and carbohydrate intake drives blood sugar levels).
Have you read any of his work?
The web site http://www.diabetes-warrior.net/ is clearly located in Utah.
So, possibly he's working remotely from his home in Missouri, but the practice is still in Utah. Utah is not Missouri, therefore, it is interstate commerce if anyone in Missouri is being served from Utah, placing this matter clearly outside of Missouri's regulatory authority.
A state for really stupid fat people.
The "don't eat rocks state".
The "Babies must be breast fed state."
The "Our state legislators believe in a healthy diet."
The "Consult a professional, keep them employed state."
Nutrition shuts YOU down!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
It's not so surprising to us that NC is doing something like this.
NC has the disappointing honor (not) of being the state with the lowest speed broadband Internet access, due to gov't corruption (ie, passing a law to protect the state's un- or anti-competitive incumbent ISPs (and they are the -big- US players in the Internet marketplace).
Community ISPs were banned by the law, leaving NC residents dependent on slow services from the bigger incumbents.
With such a low level of respect for justice & what is in their residents' best interest, was anyone surprised to read that that also gone after a blogger in this way?
Where are the wise people of NC when they're needed?
OK, here's an idea: Why don't we just collectively sue ourselves for being stupid. Would that cover everything?
And have lived many other places...
This state has no clue how to run a government of any sort. Every level of state and local government is layered with such bureaucracy it can barely function. Even when it somehow manages to get and retain people who actually want to help you, the system strangles them and makes it impossible.
What makes this worse is their happiness to include you, as a visitor/student/just citizen into the bureaucracy itself. I have examples. Go to any of the NC state park websites, look at their list of rules and regulations. It practically takes a law degree to understand what is and isn't allowed.
It extends to universities. I was forced to sit out a semester between my community college and NCSU because of their inability to figure out how to transfer me properly until after I graduated the community college, despite my extremely high GPA, membership in the honors program, etc.. Even their head of admissions admitted it was absurd, but could do nothing. When I finally could apply, they lost my transcript, which I handed to them in person.
The police in the town here will simply sit at intersections in neighborhoods and wait for someone to do absolutely anything illegal. The best part is, if you pull up behind them, trying to actually use the intersection in the direction they have blocked, they will ignore you and sit there.
Go read Wake country "sanitation department" inspections for restaurants. Lose 3 points for putting something in a fridge with the lid on too soon; lose 1 for cockroaches in the kitchen.
I could go on all day. It simply does not surprise me at all that this is occurring here. I have no idea how the state government manages to function on a day to day basis at all, yet it doesn't come as a shock it feels the freedom to violate the first amendment while failing utterly to accomplish its stated goals. The state government needs to be totally trashed, on every level, and tried again from scratch.
Great Intellect...
You better watch out, you better not shout, you better not blog I'm tellin' you why... The NCBDN is shuttin' you down? I cannot believe that courts even have time to listen to this nonsense. He can talk about whatever he wants to talk about... and if he cannot then America is no longer a good place to live.
But every one of the meals on his site seems to have a decent amount of saturated fat and cholesterol. Even if it works to fend off diabetes, how long will it be until that diet gives you life threatening heart disease?
He googled it using bing, so what?
Now excuse me, I have to go hoover the floor.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They passed the same bill in Nevada last year, supposedly to license dietitians, but promised that things like this would not happen. I am not surprised to read this. Typical government censorship of information. Everyone needs to read Global Censorship of Health Information by Johnathan Emord.
Does this mean McDonald's has to take down their nutrition signs in their stores because they are "practicing nutrition"?
NC is wrong for a reason. Even though nutrition science is a science and you can't, with good reason, claim to be a nutritionist without certification, also a good thing, he's not claiming to BE a nutritionist and people have been talking about diet and health from time immemorial.
I actually think each of his pages should carry a disclaimer that he is NOT a nutritionist and nothing he says has been scientifically tested and shown to be true.
But if they're so worried about this nutritionist, what about eh LEGIONS of global warming denier-quacks that populate the red states like N.C.? Where is the concern about what effect- death on a scale so massive it dwarfs WWII - THEIR unscientific and reckless opinions are having on naive readers?
I actually think in the case of global warming the media outlets and personalities who perpetrated the fraud of denialism should be prosecuted under a Nuremberg - like framework.
If we truly do nothing to stop global warming, that result - giving them access to due process of any sort- will be giving them a safe refuge from the masses of people looking to string them up Mussolini style from the nearest tree.
Yeah, I know. Mussolini, Saddam and Mubarak never thought it could come to that either Funny how the sudden imposition of reality can produce shocking results .
They still believe that smoking is good for you, that the sun revolves around the Earth, and that having your picture taken steals part of your soul.
I think it is the legal and moral responsibility for mothers and fathers to practice nutrition.
This action makes no sense and MUST be balanced by banning all books and school health
clases that present health information. History bookers must be purged of all references
to Limies and why British seamen were called "Limies". Further dictionaries must be purged
of references to rickets, palegra, scurvy, etc.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
It is called "Tinfoil Hat Moon Battery". The guy (in his own words) is not a doctor, dietitian, or a scientist...
Basically: He is making stuff up and pushing off paranoid opinion and trying to push it off as "scientific" fact.
I read his "blog" (resisting the urge to rage here...) and he wrong about a lot of things. I have been Insulin Dependent since I was a baby and it had nothing to do with my diet or life choices. Yet he wants to blame diet and a plethora of BS for my condition NEVERMIND THE FACT my diabetes is a direct result of genetics. Also, its hard for a 10-month old to know what a choice is, let alone make one.
I hope he gets sued and jailed for his stupidity and paranoid BS.
Fraud is a crime, so the state will investigate it. Or are you are you advocating the decriminalization of fraud?
Learn to love Alaska
So he selected the works to prove his hypothesis, and discarded everything else, and that's a good thing?
Learn to love Alaska
Actually, he selected works that *disproved* the hypothesis of Ancel Keys, and that's a good thing. Discarding evidence that was consistent with Ancel Keys' hypothesis was perfectly reasonable, since we were looking for falsification, not blind confirmation.
Now, as to the alternate hypothesis he puts forth, regarding the carbohydrate origins of chronic disease, thus far, I haven't seen anyone who has found a falsification.
No, I am asking if it is the FDA's responsibility to investigate fraud.
With regards to medical fraud, yes. It's not like the Constitution restricts all investigations to the FBI, so the agencies split up investigations according to specialty. FBI for bank robberies and Secret Service for counterfeiting may not be logical, but that's how they do it. And FDA gets medical.
Learn to love Alaska