Retrospective #397: If Type 2 diabetes is defined as an A1c of ≥6.5%…

If Type 2 diabetes is defined as an A1c of ≥6.5% (which is it), and the goal of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) is to manage your blood sugar such that it does not exceed 7.0%, then it follows, ipso facto, that it is ADA’s goal to maintain you in a perpetual disease state. What do you think about that?

Two explanations for this non-sensical, upside-down goal are possible. I’m not so cynical that I would buy into the first: that your doctor, and the health care industry that comprises about 1/6^th of the U. S. economy, needs to keep you sick for their business practice to prosper. I understand the temptation to think that way, but I really don’t think that there is such a sinister conspiracy. There has to be another, probably much more complex reason.

The second explanation for the low expectation (A1c = ≤7.0%) of the healthcare community is that, in their clinical experience, it is difficult, under the terms of the ADA’s Standards of Medical Care, to achieve an A1c of ≤7.0%, even with all the pharmaceutical options, both oral and injected, they have at their disposal. Big Pharma has expended vast resources over the last half century to develop new, effective drugs, to little avail.

Insulin, discovered in 1921, can achieve that goal, but most patients do not want to inject themselves multiple times a day while monitoring and counting the carbs (and protein) in everything they eat to maintain “tight control.” Besides, the ADA and most clinicians do not advocate or practice tight control because of the serious risks of hypoglycemia (dangerously low blood glucose!). The medical establishment is reluctantly content to let their diabetic patients remain in a perpetual disease state rather than risk having them pass out and be transported to hospital.

But the main reason that the ADA’s goal of an A1c of ≤7.0% is difficult to achieve began with the American Heart Association’s 1950’s recommendations with respect to eating a diet low in saturated fat and dietary cholesterol. The U.S. public health establishment’s, compounded the effect in 1977 with the “Dietary Goals for the United States” produced by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, aka “the McGovern Commission.”

This was followed in 1980 and every 5 years thereafter by the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” to “govern” what we eat. We followed it, the food manufacturers followed it, and so did the media and medical associations. We ate low fat, low cholesterol, low salt, lean meats, and low-saturated fat dairy (milk, cheese and yogurt).

Simultaneously starting in 1980, by eating this low-fat (consequently high-carb) diet, we got sicker and fatter and started to develop Insulin Resistance and Type 2 diabetes at increasing rates. This reflects an aging population, but cannot explain the soaring rates of childhood diabetes. Just look around you on the street, or maybe in the mirror.

The “ship of State,” however, has begun to change course. In 2015 the Guidelines dropped the limit (30%) on total fat and the limit on dietary cholesterol (300mg/day). I’ll bet you, and your doctor, don’t know that! Eggs and butter are now healthy again. Margarine, made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (trans fats) is now taboo.

But these little-known changes, while really significant – seminal, really – are in themselves not sufficient for the Type 2 diabetic to reverse his or her disease state and achieve an A1c of less than 6.5%, much less, lower than the 5.7%, threshold for a diagnosis of pre-diabetes. To reach this A1c goal, or even a lower, healthier A1c, Pre-diabetics need to change the foods they eat. They need to limit carbohydrates, and not eat the same, one-size-fits-all diet that the government still insists everyone should eat. They need to follow a Low-carb, High-fat (LCHF) Way of Eating.

When you start to eat Low Carb, you will feel better. You will lose weight, and your blood sugar will stabilize. You will feel less tired and less hungry.  And your A1c will come down. I’ve been a diagnosed Type 2 for 34 years and have been eating LCHF for 18. On LCHF I’ve lost 180 pounds, and managed to keep off 150. My A1c has gone from 8.9% to as low as 5.0% (currently 5.3%). With no Cardio Vascular Disease or other Macro or Microvascular complications. It’s still a challenge, but if I hadn’t made this Lifestyle Change, I probably wouldn’t be here today to write about it today. 

Retrospective #396: “Intransigent Resistance”

An acquaintance called me recently to say she had been talking to a mutual friend who had said that I had helped her lose 30 pounds (and 2 bra sizes!), by eating low carb. LOL. She (the acquaintance) asked my friend how she did it? Well, my friend suggested, the acquaintance should call me and ask. So, she did, and I was glad to help.

I am always pleased when my low-carb, moderate-protein, high, healthy (saturated) fat message is heeded. I offered to lend the acquaintance my favorite books to learn about the physiology of low carb, suggested the best websites for a neophyte to visit, and offered to mentor her, answering any question she had, as I had done for our mutual friend.

It turns out that the acquaintance – let’s call her Pam – is a very busy woman and doesn’t have the time to learn about the science. She just wants to know what to eat, and what not to eat. Apparently, Pam had read that I had lost 60 pounds in 9 months 15 years ago, by following “Atkins Induction” (20 grams of carbs/day). Then, a few years later I had lost another 110 pounds following Dr. Richard K. Bernstein’s “6-12-12 Program,” in which you eat just 30 grams of carbohydrate a day. For some unknown reason (a bias against Atkins?), Pam decided she wanted to try Bernstein.

So, I loaned her Bernstein’s “The Diabetes Diet” and his encyclopedic “Diabetes Solution.” I also told her I had recently become an acolyte of Dr. Jason Fung, fasting advocate and author of “The Obesity Code,” about Intermittent and Extended (full-day) fasting. I had unsuccessfully (due to my Insulin Resistance) tried 16-8 for about a year, in which I ate just one meal a day, or a small lunch and then supper within an 8-hour window, thus fasting 16 hours a day.

More recently, because I eat Very Low Carb and am therefore already FAT-ADAPTED, I transitioned easily to full-day fasting and have so far lost about 50 pounds. Concerned that I would be hungry or lacking in energy, I started off with alternate day fasts (Tuesday and Thursday). But because I am FAT-ADAPTED, I was neither hungry nor lacking in energy. My body transitioned easily from fed to fasting states, using glucose from the fed state and then fatty acids from body fat and ketone bodies, during the fasting state. Ketones are the by-products of fatty acid breakdown. They are the perfect brain food. Because of that smooth and natural transition, my metabolism continued to run at full speed. In fact, my sense is that I am actually more “pumped,” more energized, in my fasting state.

I then described what I eat on my 300 kcal/day Fasting Regimen: Just coffee with heavy cream for “breakfast” and a wine spritzer at the supper hour. Pam asked, “Don’t you drink more water during the day?” I said, “Only if I am dehydrated from working outside on a hot day.” “You should, you know,” she advised. I said, “I do drink some brine from the pickle jar” (to maintain my electrolyte balance). Pam was apoplectic.

In a later email exchange, I told Pam that she would have to cut way back on fruit to eat Low Carb. To eat Very Low Carb, she would have to virtually eliminate fruit. Fruit is basically just sugar. Fruit juice is worse.  It’s nature’s candy. Pam replied she had a serious problem with constipation and didn’t want to give up fruit on that account. I replied that that was a rationale I had never heard before and that I did not understand. When she didn’t explain how they were associated, I suggested it was an irrational justification, a rationalization, if you will. The silence was deafening.

I then suggested taking magnesium as a mild laxative and sleep aid. Most older adults are deficient in magnesium and should probably take a supplement. Pam then said she currently takes 400mg a day and her cardiologist doesn’t want her to take more. Her cardiologist! That was new information to me. I replied that I take 500mg a day, 200mg both morning and night plus 100mg in a multivitamin. And I had never experienced constipation on a Very Low Carb diet

Finally, to ease her bowels, I suggested increasing her fat consumption. She said, “Thank you” and signed off. I guess she, and maybe her cardiologist, think the US Dietary Guidelines still limit dietary fat to 30%, or worse, cause CVD. That’s not true, of course, but change is a slow process, especially with the medical community. And that affects the patient population, at least those who still follow “doctor’s orders.” Sometimes intransigence in both communities shuts down the process completely, ergo “Intransigent Resistance.”

Retrospective #395: All my friends are dying…

I sometimes think that all my friends are dying. Well, not all of them, but many. And in my case the usual feeling of loss that one experiences is augmented by the feeling that I could have done something about it. Again, not for all of them, but for many. And many who are still alive too. I know this sounds like I think I am a Svengali-like zealot. I plead guilty, but not to the power to save everyone – just a few.

So, I post this blog every day (in the Retrospective Series) in the hope that someone, somewhere – personal or Face Book friend or Blogger follower – will heed the message: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” (Hippocrates: 460BC-370BC). And that the food be that which enabled Hippocrates to live to the ripe old age of 90. Real foods. Whole foods, not refined “foods” designed to make you crave more. Not snack foods with flavor enhancers, deli meats embalmed with dextrose and corn syrup, and bread where the third ingredient, after flour and water, is always sugar.

Why do I think that the food we eat is responsible for the steep increase in so many of the “diseases of civilization?” Well , I am not alone. The evidence is now overwhelming. What else is there that can explain the precipitous rise in so many chronic diseases, starting about a century ago and accelerating precipitously after 1980? It’s our diet!!!

Doctors are not trained to view diseases as syndromes. They learn to identify specific disease conditions by symptoms, and treat them by writing prescriptions. Epidemiologists look at disease differently too. They do statistical analyses and draw conclusions from associations of conditions and outcomes. However, correlations do not prove causality. And epidemiological findings are often flawed by bias and poorly designed analyses with myriad confounding factors.

A few years ago, I wrote a two-part series on Gerald Reaven’s Unified Hypothesis of Chronic Disease (see #334 and #335). Reaven was a professor of medicine at Stanford University and gave the 1988 American Diabetes Association keynote Banting lecture on his Unified Hypothesis, which he called “Syndrome X.” His hypothesis later came to be known as “Metabolic Syndrome.” I first wrote about Metabolic Syndrome in 2011 (Retrospective #9).

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In #334, I quote Noakes: “Reaven’s great contribution has been to show this persistent hyperinsulinemia in insulin resistance, whether or not associated with T2DM, produces a collection of grave secondary consequences.”

“But Reaven’s greatest (and bravest) intellectual contribution is to suggest that insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia are the necessary biological precursors definitely for four and perhaps for all six of the most prevalent chronic conditions of our day: 1) Obesity; 2) Arterial disease (local: heart attack or stroke; disseminated: T2DM; 3) High blood pressure; 4) Non-Alcoholic Fatty Live Disease (NAFLD); Cancer; and Dementia (Alzheimer’s Disease, also known as Type 3 Diabetes).”

“The key finding from Reaven’s work,” Noakes says, “is that these conditions are not separate – they are different expressions of the same underlying condition. Thus, a patient should not be labeled as having high blood pressure or heart disease or diabetes or NAFLD (or perhaps even cancer or dementia).”

“Instead,” Noakes continues, “the patient should be diagnosed with the underlying condition – insulin resistance – with the realization that the high blood pressure, the obesity, the diabetes, the NAFLD, or the heart attack or the stroke, are simply markers, symptoms if you will, of the basic condition.”“And that basic condition,” Noakes concludes, “is insulin resistance which, simply put, is the inability of the body to tolerate more than an absolute minimum amount of carbohydrates eaten each day.”

Thus, we have it: Reaven’s Unifying Hypothesis of Chronic Disease: “One disease, one cause, many symptoms.” And that’s why so many of my friends are dying. Our metabolisms have been modified by our diet, and they can no tolerate so many refined carbohydrates and simple sugars. Now, if only more of my friends (and everyone else) would follow the advice to eat “no more than an absolute minimum of carbohydrates”…and save themselves!

Retrospective #394: “Alternative Preventive Medicine”?

A friend of mine, whose father perhaps not incidentally was a medical doctor, recently wrote me, “I tend to believe many of the ideas you have uncovered [?] have valid outcomes.” He described these ideas as “alternative preventive medicine,” and lamented that “modern medicine doesn’t have a great deal of concern for them.” He opined, “They love leaning on prescription solutions.” These comments gave me a lot to ponder.

First, with respect to my friend, he has been reading my columns almost since I began writing them 10 years ago, and he knows that I don’t just talk-the-talk; I walk-the-walk. Even if he acknowledges that my “ideas” have “valid outcomes,” I have failed to persuade him to follow a Very Low Carb way of eating. Like most people under the care of a specialist physician, I suspect he eats the way (s)he tells him. And today he still looks nine months pregnant with a large projecting belly…with myriad related and unrelated health issues.

Second, from my friend’s viewpoint, it sounds to him like “my” ideas are a voice in the wilderness. And from an establishment medical perspective, it’s true that low-carb, moderate-protein, high, healthy (saturated) fat eating is the opposite of the way we have been told to eat by the establishment for our entire lives. In that sense, this Way of Eating is surely “alternative.” Even Taubes, in his ground-breaking book, “Good Calories – Bad Calories,” describes his “Carbohydrate Hypothesis” (as opposed to the Diet-Heart hypothesis) as “alternative.” Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the arctic explorer, accurately described them as heretical.

And surely the low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat Way of Eating is “preventive.” And I don’t mean for just the overweight, obese, pre-diabetic and type 2 diabetics amongst us. I mean for the world’s entire population!

Since 1977, when the Dietary Goals for the United States were published, we have been told to eat a diet of 55%-60% carbohydrates, 30% fats and 10% protein. To this day the Nutrition Facts label on all processed food packaging still advises us to eat to those percentages. Some years ago, the label removed the percent protein, and the 2015 the Guidelines eliminated the “eat no more than 30% fat, but 300 grams of carbs on a 2,000kcal diet for women and 375 grams on a 2,500 kcal diet for men remains. Do the math. For women, 300g x 4kcal/g = 1,200 calories = 60% of 2,000 calories. For men, 375g x 4kcal/g = 1,500kcal = 60% of 2,500 calories.

That percentage of carbohydrates (60%) is way too high. It is the reason we are all (i.e. most of us) fat! That’s how they fatten beef on the feed lot. We eat too many processed carbs and baked goods, and refined sugars and beverages sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or cane sugar. I don’t have to tell you. You know.

So, if we are going to go with Hippocrates’ dictum of “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” what is a sensible “alternative, preventive medicine”? You don’t have to go to “extreme” measures, unless your medical indications warrant it or you want to (It is safe to give up carbs entirely.) Here is my suggestion:

●     For women: reduce your carb intake to 20% (vs.60%) of 2,000 calories. That’s 100 grams a day and a 2/3^rds reduction. You will feel better, lose weight easily, and have better blood lipids, especially HDL-C (the good cholesterol) and TGLs. Look for lower inflammation and, as you lose weight, improved BP.

●     For men: reduce your carb intake to 20% of 2,500 calories. That’s 125 grams a day and also a 2/3^rds reduction. You will have all the same benefits and feel pumped all day long. No need to snack. Your metabolism will run at full-speed because your blood sugar won’t crash. Honestly. You’ll feel great!

Of course, as you eat fewer carbs, you can increase your protein from 10% to 15% or even 20% and your fats from 30% to as much as 60%. That’s not as much as it seems since fat is more than twice as energy dense as both protein and carbs (9kcal/g for fat vs. 4kcal/g for protein and carbs). Eat more butter, cream and olive oil!

As my friend wrote, this is a “real preventive route to reaching better health.” I just wish he’d practice it.

Retrospective #393: My 2nd 30-lb Challenge (Amended): “Final” Report

This Retrospective reports on my first effort, in 2017, to become “half the man I once was.” It failed, miserably.

Followers may recall that a few months back, in my 1^st 30-lb Challenge, I lost 31 pounds in 10 weeks. I then embarked on a 2nd (16-week) 30-pound challenge. After 12 weeks, I reported a less than stellar performance and amended the 16-week goal from 30 to 15 pounds. This is the 4^thQ/Final report on the amended goal. I started the 4^th quarter at 215 lbs. The goal is to return to 202 in 4 weeks, then 197 two weeks later – a +/- 50lb weight loss with full-day “fasting.”

Week 13: Attended Keto Fest, a festival in New London, CT, organized by 2 Keto Dudes. It was educational and fun, and I ate too much: Eggs/bacon breakfasts (in a hotel), ketogenic lunches (at the festival) and half-priced cherrystones and white wine (dinner on my own), but too much food/wine. I gained 5 pounds. FBG aver: 103mg/dl!  

Week 14: Fasting Mon-Wed-Fri. I dropped 10 pounds from 220 to 210. Amazing! Including an amazing buffet lunch at the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown, NY, before seeing “Porgy and Bess.” And I cheated a little each fasting day, but only with a protein/fat snack (bought at Keto Fest) with my happy hour spritzer. FBG aver: 99mg/dl (better)

Week 15: Fasting Mon-Wed-Thurs this week. Tuesday we’ll again have lunch at the Otesaga Hotel before seeing “Oklahoma” at Glimmerglass, and then a light “all protein” supper at home. All went well ‘till Saturday, our annual neighborhood association picnic. I had just one plate of protein and fat, plus 3 cups of my keto clam chowder, and 3 glasses of white wine. Next morning: FBS up 29 points. Net 4-pound loss for the week.  FBG weekly average: 86mg/dl.

Week 16: Need to lose 4-6 pounds this week to reach my target. Glimmerglass (“Xerxes”) on Tuesday, so I will try “IF” Mon+Wed-Thu and maybe Fri. I’ll substitute iced tea, for my usual spritzer (6oz red wine + 8oz seltzer): fewer carbs. more This week I lost 3 pounds, down to 203 (1 shy of my target). 26-week total: 45 pounds. FBG average: 90mg/dl.

Conclusion

Multiple day, consecutive or alternate, “fasting” is easy, if you’re “fat adapted.” No hunger at “breakfast.” Just coffee with cream. No hunger at “lunchtime.” I usually forget about it if I was busy in the etc. Supper has proved to be a little harder. In recent years I “snacked” before supper. It’s always been real food, recently plain celery; before that radishes with salt and sometimes butter. Since beginning full-day “fasting,” I have substituted or supplemented my “snack” with a red wine spritzer (6oz wine + 8oz seltzer) as my supper beverage. In week 16, for 3 days I replaced the spritzer with iced tea, to save 150kcal/day while I used up leftover, keto chowder. Worked out okay. No cooking.

Other Related Thoughts

The brain is so facile at rationalizing. I have quickly come to accept that losing less than half the weight I wanted to lose in my 2^nd 30-lb Challenge was still a good outcome. And it was. I lost 12 pounds in these last 4 weeks. And a pound a week over the total 16 weeks. So, I rationalized that a pound-a-week-loss is respectable. Many healthcare professionals would even describe it as commendable. But I consider it a big disappointment. Not exactly a failure, but then I have high expectations for myself (and others, my wife says).

Going Forward

I have, however, gained another insight from this less-than-stellar outcome. I have reasoned that to maintain each weight loss, the challenge must continue. And the best way to do that is to continue to set goals – albeit incrementally smaller goals – in successive weight loss campaigns. There are just two variables: elapsed time and weight.

Time was the variable in the two original plans: 30 pounds in 10 weeks and then 30 pounds in 16 weeks. When I faltered in the 2^nd plan, I cut the goal to 15 pounds in 16 weeks. Going forward, beyond this next 8-week challenge, to lose the 15 pounds I fell short, I propose to lose 5 pounds in the 1^st 2 weeks. Then, the “final” 10 in the last 6 weeks.

We’ll see how it goes. And then? Another challenge?  Of course.  Don’t mind me. Weight loss is a challenge. And, readers: Pay no attention to me. You have my permission to ignore my misadventures. Just know that I will do it.

Retrospective #392: “Broccoli May Help Fight Diabetes”

When I read this headline in Medscape Medical News, in a write-up by an MD, of a real research project, my hopes soared. I thought, doctors were adopting the precept that Hippocrates, “Father of Western Medicine,” had made famous: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Finally, we had come full circle!

The full title of the Medscape précis of the study, which was published in Science Translational Medicine, was “Antioxidant in Broccoli May Help Fight Diabetes.” Nevertheless, I still believed that these medical doctors – the study authors and the Medscape writer – were advocating that we eat a diet of healthy, whole foods. And that there was a dietary fix for those among us who had already developed, to a lesser or greater degree, Insulin Resistance, that is, an intolerance for Carbohydrates and were overweight, obese, or had been diagnosed pre-diabetic or a Type 2 diabetic.

And the first sentence of the Medscape piece did not disabuse me of this Pollyannish vision of the future – a mirage or hallucination as it turns out. It described the antioxidant in Broccoli as “a new option for treating Type 2 diabetes.” The second sentence went on to describe the mechanism that the antioxident used was that it “reduces exaggerated glucose production by the liver in Type 2 diabetes,” in much the same way that Metformin does.

Unfortunately, in the sixth paragraph, the full story – and the sad truth – emerged: “The study used highly concentrated broccoli extract, which would be equivalent to eating about 5kg [11 pounds!] of broccoli per day.” “Because it’s almost impossible to eat such large amounts of broccoli [diya think?], [the antioxidant] needs to be taken as an extract or concentrate.” Okay, but where does this revelation take us?

“We think broccoli extract could be a very exciting addition to treatments that we already have,” the lead researcher said. “When we gave it to patients and measured their glucose control before and 12 weeks after treatment, we saw significant improvement in fasting blood glucose and HbA1c in obese patients with dysregulated Type 2 diabetes,” he reported. The results were ‘very encouraging,’ he added. But, for what, I still wondered.

So, where does this well-designed research in basic science lead? Medscape explained: “Currently, they [the researchers] are working with a farmer-owned organization in Sweden…to make the extract available as a functional food preparation.” Aha! A collaboration: Basic Science → Applied Science + Farmer → $$$$ for all.

Do you think I am being too cynical? Just read the accompanying Conflict of Interest Disclosure:

“The study was sponsored by Lund University. Lantmännen [the local farmer-owned organization] provided the broccoli extract and placebo for the study, and Lantmännen Research Fund financed part of the study. Lantmännen reports no influence on the study procedures, data analysis, or data interpretation. Rosengren [the lead researcher] had no relevant financial relationships. Two coauthors are inventors on patent applications submitted by Lund University that cover the use of sulforaphane [the antioxidant] to treat exaggerated hepatic glucose production. The rights to use this patent have been licensed to Lantmännen” [the local farmer-owned organization].

Okay. I wasted my time reading this piece of garbage from the usually reliable Medscape Medical News. But it is medical business news in the sense that universities, even the best of them like Lund, are not above pecuniary interests. They need “research funds” to prosper, just as “local farmer-owned organizations” need money to survive. But this story is not about eating in a healthy way to avoid developing Insulin Resistance (Carbohydrate Intolerance) or even to treat “obese patients with dysregulated Type 2 diabetes.” It’s about developing a new drug to treat Type 2 Diabetes.

So, I got to write another curmudgeonly piece to offset my usual lecture about eating Very Low Carb for losing weight without hunger, and lowering your blood glucose AND blood insulin levels. You were spared having to read that.

So, have doctors come full circle with respect to eating real food? Not in my lifetime, a friend quipped. Nor in theirs, I replied.

Retrospective #391: The U. S. Dietary Guidelines: “11 Points for Change”

A couple of years ago, while chatting with attendees at the 2 Keto Dudes’ 1^st Annual Keto Fest in New London, CT, I learned about the Nutrition Coalition. The Nutrition Coalition was founded in 2016 by Nina Teicholz, author of the 2014 blockbuster NYT best seller, “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.”

The Coalition’s objective then was to affect “11 Points for Change” in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs).

1.      Undertake a communications campaign to let Americans know that the low-fat diet is no longer recommended

2.      Ease or lift caps on saturated fats

3.      Offer low-carbohydrate diets as a viable option for fighting chronic disease

4.      Offer a meaningful diversity of diets

5.      Make the DGA diets nutritionally sufficient, with nutrients coming from whole foods

6.      Stop recommending aerobic exercise for weight loss

7.      Stop recommending “lower is better” on salt

8.      Stop telling the public that reaching and maintaining a healthy weight can be accomplished by choosing “an appropriate calorie level”

9.      Stop recommending vegetable oils for health

10.   Recommend regular meat and milk rather than the low-fat/lean alternatives

11.   Don’t issue population-wide guidelines based on weak data

Each of the Coalition’s “Points” is supported by explanatory sentences and is linked to a reference.

My first reaction to the idea of a petition supporting this manifesto was to be cynical. I was skeptical that such an effort would be effective. But on reading the “11 points for change,” I realized that it was so cogent and so comprehensive, so right-on on every point, that the Coalition deserves our support. The Manifesto perfectly embodies the reforms that are needed now.

This plain language “manifesto” encapsulates a fix for everything that is wrong with the dietary advice that the American Heart Association has been giving us for 60 years. And with particularity since the “experts” 40 years ago provided supporting testimony to the politicians at the 1977 Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs. It was that lay committee that produced the “Dietary Goals for the United States,” aka the McGovern Report, and which the USDA/HHS institutionalized as the Dietary Guidelines in 1980 and every 5 years thereafter.

As the Nutrition Coalition points out, these U. S. Guidelines “are the single-most important determinant for how people eat.” They say, “Our Guidelines determine” 1) Federal food programs, 2) Nutritional advice, 3) Military rations (MREs), 4) Packaged foods, 5) K-12 nutrition education, and 6) non-packaged foods.” Their hyperlinked text supports with more detail each of these aspects of Federal food policy. The influence of the DGA is far reaching.

If you agree with these 11 points of change, PLEASE join and support the Nutrition Coalition and add your name to their petition for “11 Points for Change.” At least you’ll feel good. And the added momentum will help with the Nutrition Coalitions’ current efforts to reform the 2020 Dietary Guidelines currently in formation.

The chat I had when I learned about the Nutrition Coalition occurred when I was talking to the father of an adult Type 2 diabetic, who was just then talking to Richard Feinman, PhD, a conference speaker and nutrition icon. They were discussing a scientific paper published in Nutrition & Metabolism in January 2015, popularly titled “12 Points of Evidence,” in which Dr. Feinman was lead author. Directed at medical doctors, the full title is, “Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management: Critical review and evidence base.”

As Gary Taubes admitted in the Afterward to his paperback edition of “Good Calories - Bad Calories,” he was disappointed by the medical community’s response to his “Carbohydrate Hypothesis.” As a cynic, I am more inclined to accept Max Planck’s dictum, “Truth never triumphs. Its opponents just die out.”