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Nutritional Guidelines - Fact or Fraud?
"It is not...that some people do not know what to do with truth when it is offered to them, but the tragic fate is to reach, after patient search, a condition of mind-blindness, in which the truth is not recognizes, though it stares you in the face." - Sir William Osler, physician, 1849 - 1919 |
The following paragraph is taken from a recent 'Team Nutrition' pamphlet from USDA:
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is doing what it can to help. The National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs must be consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. USDA's Team Nutrition Initiative provides nutrition education materials to help schools meet these standards."
President Bush has urged all school districts to develop a plan for combating childhood obesity and have this plan ready for school year 2006. The problem of childhood obesity has been growing for years and has not responded to previous attempts to control this urgent problem. Finally it has become severe enough to demand presidential attention to validate that this is indeed a national problem and needs immediate attention.
Belief systems are hard to change. When I found that what I thought was true, was really untrue, and the cause of so many health problems, I felt compelled to tell others what I learned.
The Nutritional Guidelines for Americans - 2005 were brought out with much fanfare earlier this year by Tommy Thompson who was then the Secretary of HHS. He talked about the 13 nutritional experts who consulted together, heard other testimony from interested citizens, and made their recommendation to the USDA. Who these groups or individuals in the USDA were, "was not available". 'Whoever' it was, got this information into a final form for HHS to present to our Nation.
My beliefs began to be weakened when I found that these experts had not documented the information they compiled, had not documented the testimony that they heard, and had turned over whatever information they had to the USDA to compile. This department had been putting out the guidelines about every 5 years since the first one in 1980.
My belief system took another hit when I went back to read the previous guidelines, and found that the format and information had changed minimally, and the nutritional errors in these guidelines had persisted for last 25 years. These errors have become institutionalized in the USDA, which, by controlling funding, has forced the Wisconsin DPI - who controls funding for school lunches - to conform to nutritional regulations which are detrimental to children's health.
It was hard (impossible) for me to believe that there has been a serious effort from USDA to develop and update good nutritional guidelines. A whole new science of glycobiology, the concept of metabolic syndrome, and concept of cellular nutrition have all been ignored in a nutritional document which impacts on the health of our entire Nation. Thousands of articles available about new nutritional science are easily available on the Internet. This new nutritional science information has been completely ignored. The USDA only validates the various food pyramids as nutritional tools. The new 'individualized' pyramid website only further obscures the inadequacy of the pyramid.
The guidelines do not distinguish between low and high glycemic carbohydrates and seem to be unaware of high glycemic foods relationship to insulin resistance. The guidelines continue to limit saturated fats in school lunches to 10%. They emphasize increased use of vegetable oils and ignore the known danger of an imbalance of the omega 3 and omega 6 unsaturated fats. Good saturated fats are essential for cell wall integrity. Excess and unbalanced unsaturated fats are unhealthy, and associated with cancer (and other chronic diseases) because of their oxidation and free radicals produced when they are oxidized in the body.
The nutritional guidelines do not mention the deterioration of our food supply, or our processed food contamination with excito-toxins. These are chemicals, which mimic some natural neurotransmitters in our body and can stimulate cells that have these transmitters to death. They also stimulate our pancreas to make insulin, contributing to insulin resistance and the diseases of the metabolic syndrome. The food industry uses these chemicals as taste enhancers and artificial sweeteners.
The president has urged school districts to develop a plan to fight obesity in our schools and communities. There have been untold hours and resources contributed by sincere individuals into this effort. The DPI however demands that the failed nutritional food guidelines be followed. These guidelines have been developed to placate political and corporate interests, not individual, school, or national health objectives. The guidelines obviously have not done the job in the past and we should not be forced to use this tool to reach our health objectives in the future.
It is unconscionable for the DPI to instruct the district schools to fight this 2005 war on obesity with information and tools that are 30 years old. The DPI is responsible for validating the information that they foist on Wisconsin school districts. They have uncritically accepted information that is dated and a product of agricultural politics and corporate greed.
In Wisconsin we can do better than that! -
Walther W. Meyer MD
E-mail: info@nutritionalmedicine-wm.com or call at 715-748-3197
Like so many physicians who have been frustrated by our lack of success in treating chronic diseases, I have finally had to acknowledge my naiveté in trying to fight the battle with outdated information and weapons.
The thing that got me started on the subject was my personal search on The Nutritional Guidelines for Americans - 2005. I was able to find the old guidelines from 1980 on the Internet and was able to compare those to the 2005 version. There was not a significant change in the nutritional information in 25 years.
Like most docs, I have been very disappointed in my efforts to help patients with obesity. At the time that the guidelines were put together, there was critical testimony that did not support the guideline assertions, however that testimony never saw the light of day. These guidelines are not a scientific document, but rather a document put together by the USDA to accommodate the food industry and agricultural interests.
My recent nutritional education has come from sifting through hundreds of websites and reading dozens of books by various authors who are not on pharmaceutical company payrolls. For those interested in following up on the 'heresy' of my letter to you, I have the following suggestions:
If a semi retired old GP can get this information, think of what some young researchers could do in changing the belief that we all have in these Nutritional Guidelines. They have kept medicine in the nutritional dark ages. These guidelines are a huge scandal, and their perpetuation is one of the main causes of our loosing the war on obesity and chronic disease.
Walther W. Meyer MD
E-mail: info@nutritionalmedicine-wm.com or call at 715-748-3197
For some unexplained reason it takes 20 - 30 years for a scientific truth to become mainstreamed in medicine. Folic acid for example, has been known to be related to spinal cord birth defects since 1970, however this information did not become mainstreamed in medicine until the '90s. I think that the best explanation for this sad phenomenon is called 'Mindset'.
Most of us have been amazed as we observed little children react to their environment. We can see them become aware of their surroundings and experience feelings and emotions. We can observe their desires and attempts to satisfy them, and we can observe them learn and remember. The rapidity of the growth of young minds is exciting to see. I marvel at the capacity of these minds to learn and have wondered what would be the result if this capacity to learn would continue throughout our lives.
Children's minds have great 'plasticity'. This refers to the brain as a dynamic, constantly reorganizing, malleable system, which is influenced and shaped by its environment. The learning potential of the brain is now presumed to be continuous and life long, but we know that the rate of learning slows down considerably and may even become 'set'.
This mindset seems to come from "mind filters", which shut out information that is not familiar to us. We are continuously exposed to bits of information that become filters for conflicting information, which we do not take the time to evaluate before it can reach our conscious mind.
Sometimes there is so much information that our mind is overloaded and unable to process it, and it is filtered out.
Society norms, constant messages from advertisers, messages from corporate and political 'spin doctors', and what we have previously experienced is all part of the filter-forming process.
Most people have many compartments of thought. Some compartments are able to learn new things while other compartments become 'set' at an earlier age. We all have mindsets.
The varieties of mindsets are infinite. Examples of this range from the youthful terrorist who believes that blowing himself and others up is the sure ticket to be with God; to learned professionals who feel that they have had the best education, have learned everything worth knowing and doubt if there is 'anything else out there'. They are usually too busy to check it out.
Mindsets act like filters, which keep certain information from reaching our level of consciousness where it can be recognized as new or significant information, and then acted upon.
In my opinion these mindsets occur when we are no longer searching for the truth, because we feel that we already have it. It is a kind of intellectual or emotional block that keeps us from learning new things. Frequently we are not even aware of our mindset. This represents 'thinking in the box' and external forces pounding on this box have little impact.
Mindsets are extraordinarily difficult to change unless the individual has an unmet need that prompts the question "Is there anything else that I can do to help myself"? "Why am I hurting"? or "I need to change this situation, but how can I"? Setting goals can be a way of breaking out of a mindset.
Caregivers will need to search their heart and ask, "Is there anything else that I can do to be of help (to others)"?
Science has shown that it is possible to 'rewire' our brains to learn new thought-processes, changing from a fixed mindset to a mind that sees things differently. It has been shown that this can occur in a rich environment of stimulation and education.
Mindsets are the 'box' in "learn to think out of the box" fame. In order to think out of the box, we have to ask the question, "what else can I do"? "Is there another way to think about this"? With these humble questions, we are able to recognize that we don't know it all. For some, this thought is very threatening but, for others, it can stimulate intellectual curiosity.
There is little significant learning that goes on "inside the box" unless a special need is recognized. This special need opens the box (removes the filters), and enables new information to come in.
A Mindset is the way that our brain is 'working'. In order for us to change our mindsets we need to be aware and evaluate what our minds are 'doing' and how our minds are being influenced. Doing this will enable us to use our mind rather than having our 'mindset' use us. Our Mind is a creation of God. We should not allow it to be hijacked by external forces.
Using our minds as God intended (always searching for the Truth)
should be regarded as a basic individual responsibility.
Walther W. Meyer MD
E-mail: info@nutritionalmedicine-wm.com or call at 715-748-3197
The concept of 'Mindset' has helped me to understand why change is so difficult.
The definition of mindset is "having one's mind, thoughts, or opinions firmly fixed; obstinate, stubborn."
When we as individuals have our mindsets, that is our problem. The big trouble comes when whole societies have a certain mindset. One of the most famous examples of this was when all of the smart people in the world, thought the world was flat, except for Galileo. History shows that it can be pretty hard going for the Galileos of any day.
Societies however are made up of many individuals, and I suspect that it takes a critical mass of people with one mindset before it becomes 'general belief'. The beliefs that a society has can actually become self-destructive for that society.
The idea that a Low Fat, Low Cholesterol Diet is healthy and one that should be followed, is an example of an erroneous medical concept that developed over 20 years ago. This mindset has been 'sold' to Americans to the point where they cannot believe that this has caused an epidemic of obesity, because of our greatly increased sugar consumption. The complications of obesity are now the cause 420,000 deaths a year. Obesity statistics are catching up, and will soon exceed the 440,000 deaths a year attributed to smoking.
This diet mindset seems almost 'set in stone' and has been vigorously promoted by processed-food companies, soft drink manufacturers, and drug companies selling cholesterol-lowering drugs. I have seen patients dying of cancer still taking these drugs, and still concerned of their cholesterol level!
The individual mindset will not change easily given the above circumstances. It is apparent to me that the mindset and not the minds are frequently in charge. This should be reversed. We should not live our lives on 'automatic pilot', but make conscious decisions that search for the truth.
We live in a world where our minds are under continual assault. This has been true since the beginning, however the 'information age' has made this assault even more overwhelming.
Our minds, a significant part of our gift of creation, were given us to make decisions. Our minds needs to be skeptical of new information, but also need to 'be open' 'to find out the truth'.
Our mindsets frequently usurp the function of our minds. They can influence our perceptions, our decisions, and our actions. They frequently filter out new information. They can stunt our individual growth and learning, by filtering out what is new and unfamiliar.
Our minds are a great gift of the Creator. With this gift comes the responsibility to use it. - Walther Meyer MD
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