Posted on 04/26/2012 5:09:53 AM PDT by EBH
The state of North Carolina has its own "Board of Dietetics and Nutrition"--of course it does--and it has decided that one bloggers right to free speech ends where the North Carolina Board of Dietetics and Nutrition's officious overbearingness begins, as I think Oliver Wendell Holmes (or was it Oliver Wendell Douglas?) once wrote.
Here's the naughty bits, as reported in Carolina Journal:
[When] Steve Cooksey...was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.
But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided 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.
Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.
The board’s director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can’t encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist.
Seems he came to their attention after contradicting a local hospital's director of diabetes services at a local meeting, and handing out cards about his site. What did the Board find objectionable about Cooksey's site?
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, [Dietetics and Nutrition Board director] 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 bureaucrat speaks!
Charla Burill, the board’s director, told Carolina Journal she could not discuss the details of Cooksey’s case because his website is still under investigation, but agreed to talk about the law in the hypothetical....
Burill said [Cooksey's] disclaimer may not protect a nutrition blogger from the law.
“If I’ve given you reason to not worry that I don’t have a license because I have all these other reasons I’m an expert, you could still harm the public,” she said. “At least you’re not trying to mislead the public, but you’re trying to get the public to trust you.”....
Burill said if Cooksey refuses to come into compliance with the law, the board could file for an injunction.
The paleo diet--a passionate fad and/or lifestyle change of an enormous number of folk I know concentrated in the world's of libertarianism, futurism, space, and your basic "new digital economy" (does that still exist?) and the places where all those interests intersect--may or may not save you from diabetes, give you the pep you need, or revert you back down the evolutionary chain, or whatever it's supposed to do.
But that someone should be able to describe his experiences with it and advocate for his own good results should go without saying, though my saying that may well contradict a directive of the California Board of Going Without Saying.
The board's review of Cooksey's site. in remarkably official-looking pen scrawls in margins of a printout of the site.
Read Cooksey's site if you care to--it ain't illegal (yet).
In a previous century, I wrote about the Federal Trade Commission's power to essentially censor speech when it comes to claims about chiropraxy.
I know I read several months ago that they are studying and finding connections to using a low carb-high protein diet to not only control diabetes, but in rare instances get it to go into remission.
The healthiest human I know follows the Paleolithic diet.
I swear the guy looks 15 years younger than his actual age.
I do NOT understand it but the main stream medical community has ALWAYS been against the food is your best medicine line of thinking. Another tactic that improves almost everyone’s health is fasting. The book Eat Right For Your Blood Type is also a very good resource.
The drug companies etc just want to sell more medications, needles, etc. What a racket.
Follow the money.
There must be nutrionists losing business to people going on the cave man diet.
Did they move to ban the books too?
Is it the money, or is there something inherent in the leftist mindset that says we shouldn’t eat meat?
An evolutionary assumption, perhaps? (”A dog is a rat is a pig is a boy”)
I always look at the root cause of leftism for the answer to any question about their conclusions - and that root is the rejection of the Truth of God.
This is where he really crossed the line in the boards view I believe, taking money to "support" someone with their diet.
The caveman diet is really close to Adkins, and that diet saved my life so I have no problem with what he is saying either.
There you go - the bureaucrat, thinking of all of us individuals as "one public" who "could be" harmed by this guy, thus they shut him down. Nanny state goes wild.
Always follow the money. This guy was probably alright until he started charging “a small fee” for individual counseling. I have no problem with free adults deciding to exchange money for advice but, to the fascists in government, no such right of contract can go unregulated.
Did “Dear Abby” have a license to practice counseling/therapy?
It’s kind of ironic; here is a diabetic trying to help other diabetics and they say no-you need a license.
But when Paula Dean announced she had been diabetic for 3 years, the SHTF and people said she should have been helping other diabetics cook/eat better foods, instead of her (delicious) Southern “high-fat” cooking. Is she a certified nutrionist?
So, which is it?
How soon before anyone who e-mails a friend about the low cost, low risk, benefits of Coconut Oil on Alzheimer’s or the John Hopkins research on high fat diets having a success rate of over 70% on epilepsy (Steven Speilberg’s son benefited from this)will be silenced?
I do agree however if you are going to charge for advise you are stepping across the line but to offer a list of what you are eating is, or at least was, to have been protected First Amendment speech prior to the communist takeover of this country.
Decades ago Mr. M and I lived on a beach with some friends out away from any civilization except the beer truck which went through twice a week to the copra plantation. Warm beer. yum. So we lived on fish and beer and cabbage and tortillas. Once every two weeks we would drive 60 miles to the little indian village and if they were baking, buy up as much bread and we could. We were so starved for carbs. I lost a lot of weight. All pre-Adkins diet.
Cooksey should rewrite his blog with words to the effect ...
"Due to overbearing, self serving, power grabbing, intrusive, stifling, close-minded, bigoted, self-important, threatening, pencil-pushing popinjays, I'm amending my blog to curtail what was once quaintly referred to as "freedom of speech".
As the elitists lay claim to our bodies through the amorality of Obamacare, their dictates are going to become more and more intolerant, confining and extreme.
Right now they harass and attack smokers but soon they will be after everyone who does not speak and act like a brainless, soulless robot - the perfect socialist citizen.
“You vil eat pink slime! And, you vil like it!”
After having put on WAY, WAY, WAY too much weight despite trying many “diets” I had a brain storm. I tried my “idea” and have dropped a little over ONE HUNDRED POUNDS so far.
My Doctor frowned at the start, advising against “the plan”, but admits and smiles at great blood pressure, blood work, “in the little jar” tests, and everything else.
My only problem is the VAST expenditure for clothes that won’t fall off. The only articles still usable are socks, ties and handkerchiefs. Everything else, from the skin out had to go, including a suit I’d NEVER worn.
So here I am, enjoying my “FUN DIET”, having a hell of a good time losing a whole lot of me, but knowing it wouldn’t be approved.
I’d spell it out, but I don’t want the FOOD POLICE on my trail.
Go ahead and spell it out
I fast quite a bit.
People these days have made eating a hobby “foodies” they call themselves. Some cannot miss a single meal without having a complete meltdown.
I have the same issue with having to replace too big clothes and have found that for women anyway, the small sizes get snapped up.
I weigh 100 lbs. This is not an unusual weight for a woman pre WW2. Now there are so many large people it is disturbing.
I think this is an interesting case as there are a number of forums where the site founders or long-standing members do answer questions and give advice, albeit with disclaimers like Cooksey.
Are they going to go after sites like Brain-Talk Communities or the Feline Diabetes Message Boards? It was the old Brain Talk Communities that helped me get a medical condition under control through the use of nutrition as an adjunct therapy. And the Feline Diabetes Message Board literally saves the lives of cats diagnosed with diabetes, by things as simple as switching to low carb or no carb diets. And what about some of the menopause websites that advocate a nutrition based plan and give advice on how to make it work?
All of those sites request a small fee or donation to help keep the ‘support’ groups on the web...have all those members crossed the line in giving advice based on their experience?
On several occaisons over the last fifteen years the FDA has paid for studies investigating the feasibility of making vitamins available only by prescription. Their plans included appropriations for armed FDA agents to raid bulk supplement distributors across the country.
Imagine three guys in a jail cell, one’s in there for selling crack, another is in there for heroin possession, and another for Centrum Silver.
They are God, that is why. And they don’t want to follow God’s commandments, view them as guidelines at most
About 99.999% of humanity has the exact same allele set for growth and operation of the liver! Then there are these other people in Scandinavia who have 82 different sets!
They can eat raw seal's liver ~
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