Don’t Let the FDA Tell You What’s Healthy

Raymond J. March  – October 25, 2022 @ American Institute for Economic Research

 

Reprinted from the Independent Institute

A glance at America’s growing waistline shows closing gyms and limiting travel away from home to combat the pandemic has worsened public health in America. 

Results from a 2021 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association found 61 percent of respondents experienced unwanted weight gain during the pandemic (by an average of 29 pounds). Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds children experienced the most significant weight gain over the past two years, many of which experienced an alarming 1.6 percent increase in BMI.

Losing weight is never easy, often requiring daily commitment to dietary and lifestyle changes. The Food and Drug Administration’s latest effort aims to help.

Hoping to “improve nutrition and dietary patterns to help reduce the burden of chronic disease and advance health equity,” the FDA recently proposed new nutritional requirements for food producers to label their products as “healthy.” Under new rules, each food item is required to contain one of the major food groups and not exceed limits of daily values for certain nutrients. 

What food items count and what nutrients need to be limited are dictated in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a 2020-2025 document jointly produced by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. By teaming up to provide new guidelines, these agencies hope to help Americans make better dietary choices to improve their health. As HHS Secretary HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra explains, “Healthy food can lower our risk for chronic disease. But too many people may not know what constitutes healthy food.”

That might be true. Americans tend to overestimate how healthily they eat. But we also wildly overestimate the FDA’s ability to regulate what is healthy correctly. 

As I have written previously, the FDA spent considerable time and effort, and ultimately failed to establish sugar-added nutritional labels for honey and maple syrup. The same agency also struggled for years to determine safety standards for children’s’ sunscreen (changing them at least every two years for a decade). Most recently, the FDA decided the Owlet’s Smart Sock was not effective and ordered they be removed from store shelves. The Smart Sock was the only commercially available device that monitors an infant’s breathing and pulse, boasted a 90 percent success rate, and is still widely used worldwide.

Partnering with other government agencies hardly improves the chance for success. 

Confusing, expensive, and time-consuming co-regulation of genomic medication between the FDA, Office of Biotechnology Activities, and the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee has prevented these treatments from reaching patients for decades. The FDA and CDC’s efforts to provide a Covid-19 test during the early stages of the pandemic produced the only Covid-19 test to be removed from the market for efficacy and manufacturing concerns (the FDA regulates both).

This is also far from the first-time government agencies offered dietary guidelines to improve public health. In the mid-1970s, the USDA established the widely recognized food pyramid, stating which food groups are healthier and should be consumed more than others. Over the years, other government agencies have become more involved in promoting diets and regulating how food is marketed. Diagrams and suggested diets have changed numerous times since then. However, as Gary Taubes chronicles in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories, there is little evidence that any state-recommended healthy eating guidelines were scientifically valid. 

Ultimately, determining what is healthy or unhealthy is complex. Complex problems rarely have entirely right or wrong answers. The FDA is trying (again) to provide this, but there is a slim chance it will succeed. 

READ MORE

Raymond J. March

Raymond March is a faculty fellow at the NDSU Center for the Study of Public Choice and Private Enterprise (PCPE) an assistant professor in the NDSU Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics, a fellow with the AIER Public Choice and Public Policy Project, and a contributor to Young Voices. His research has appeared in the Southern Economic Journal,  Public Choice, Journal of Institutional Economics, and Research Policy. He has published articles in National Interest, Washington Times, Washington Examiner, The Hill, RealClearHealth, and elsewhere.

Raymond is a research fellow at the Independent Institute and the director of FDAReview.org, an educational research and communications project on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

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Going after our food supply

By Kathleen Marquardt 04 Jan 2019 @ American Policy Center

Posted at  Environment, Farming, Privacy Rights, Sustainable Development by Kathleen Marquardt

A couple weeks ago, Tom DeWeese sent out a letter about the World Wildlife Fund and beef. It reads in part:

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is one of the top three most powerful, radical, anti-free enterprise, UN environmental groups in the world.

And WWF has succeeded in taking over the American Cattle industry!

The WWF has forced cattlemen to follow radical Sustainable rules through the establishment of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

They are getting away with this industry grab because the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is now under the control of the World Wildlife Fund.

And the WWF’s Sustainable Roundtable now controls the beef packing industry which in turn controls the entire beef retail market. Cattlemen either toe the WWF dictates or are cut out of the industry.

That means cattlemen must follow massive regulations in order to produce American beef.

These rules ignore that fact that American cattlemen have always produced the highest grade of beef in the world – simply by using a process that has been used by their forefathers for generations.
The real result of these rules isn’t to produce a better beef product – but to destroy small producers and drive the industry to the massive corporate farms that can afford to play ball with the World Wildlife Fund.

Eventually, the WWF goal is to destroy the entire beef industry.

The World Wildlife Fund has openly stated its opposition to beef production. They insist that to “Save the Earth it is demanded that we change human consumption habits away from beef.” 

Here is what they said in a recent WWF report:

“Meat consumption is devastating some of the world’s most valuable and vulnerable regions, due to the vast amount of land needed to produce animal feed.”

This is the growing threat of Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development and its stated purpose to “reorganize human society.”

And this is how they do it – one industry at a time.

In 1992, I wrote the following article for Putting People First, an organization I founded to combat the lies and aims of the animal rights movement. Animal rights is a false front; it is an attack on humans while pretending to care about animals. The leaders have no use for animals other than to change our culture and control our food supply.

Many environmentalists and animal rightists go back and forth across the line that might separate them. For example, Paul Watson looked into the eye of a dying whale and saw that the whale “had pity for us.” Many ALF (Animal Liberation Front) ELF (Earth Liberation Front) members are the same people; terrorism on behalf of animals is as comfortable for them as on behalf of Gaia/mother earth.

“ANIMAL RIGHTS” HIDES UNDER ENVIRONMENTALISM

During the past two years, Putting People First has reported on arsons, bombings and attempted murder by “animal rights” activists. Our exposure of their terrorism has helped awaken the public to the true agenda of what we call the animal cult.

But as the morally bankrupt ideology of animalism has been exposed, its apologists have gone to ground, seeking cover under the more publicly-acceptable guise of “environmentalism.”

Most members of Putting People First consider themselves environmentalists, because we support wise use and conservation, and oppose environmental destruction (just as we support animal welfare and oppose animal abuse).

However, we also oppose attempts to remove people from the natural equation. We believe that only man can use science, reason and common sense to husband animals and other resources to the benefit of people, animals, and our common environment.

And the difference between conservation and “environmentalism” is no less than the difference between animal welfare and “animal rights.”

Jeremy Rifkin’s new vegetarian manifesto Beyond Beef hides its message behind a pseudoenvironmentalist facade. The supposedly “mainstream” Chesapeake Bay Foundation shared the podium with PeTA at “Vegetarian Expo ’92.” The radical Humane Society of the United States now calls its school-infiltration arm the National Association for Humane and Environmental Education. And the terrorist manual A Declaration of War by “Screaming Wolf’ is subtitled “Killing People to Save Animals and the Environment.”

I think the clearest example of the unity of environmentalism and animalism is the close relationship between the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the “ecotage” group Earth First! These groups have been working together at least since 1987, when arsons at a California meat processing plant and livestock facility were claimed as joint ALF/Earth First! actions.

Since then. Earth First! Journal has published several laudatory articles about ALF, including one featuring Rod Coronado, the FBI’s leading suspect in several recent arsons. The March 1992 issue carried a terrorist “how-to” article with the ALF byline. The Journal is best known for trying to recruit “terminally ill AIDS patients” for “eco-kamikazee missions.”

Earth First! founder David Foreman is the former chief lobbyist for the Wilderness Society. He says, “Mankind could go extinct and I for one would not shed any tears.” Regarding the Ethiopian famine, Foreman gave this advice: “The worst thing we could do in Ethiopia is give aid. . .. The best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let people there starve.”

“As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but as a necessary solution,” says Foreman. “AIDS is a good thing, because it will thin out the population,” he adds. “If the AIDS epidemic didn’t exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one.” And indeed, Earth First! Journal has solicited donations toward the development of what it calls “a species-specific virus to wipe out the human race.”

Foreman’s magazine Wild Earth recently opined that “phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth, social and environmental.” Foreman is not alone in this opinion. “Somewhere along the line—at about a million years ago, maybe half that—we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the earth,” writes David Graber, a biologist with the National Park Service. “Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

Earth First! is best known for tree-spiking, although four of its leaders were recently convicted of conspiracy to sabotage a nuclear power plant in Arizona. Two Earth First! members, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, were seriously injured when a bomb they were transporting exploded prematurely in Bari’s car in Oakland, California. B­ari and Cherney’s legal fees were paid by Greenpeace, on whose board sits Earth First! co-founder Michael Roselle.

Sierra Club lobbyist David Brower openly defends Earth First!, saying, “They’re not terrorists. The real terrorists are the polluters, the despoilers.” Brower argues that childbearing should be “a punishable crime against society unless the parents hold a government license.” All potential parents, he says, should be “required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

According to Brower, “I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded the Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We’re still waiting for someone to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.”

Just as “animal rights” terrorists and their apologists infiltrated and took over many traditional animal welfare groups and local humane societies, so have anti-human “Greens” infiltrated and taken over many traditional conservation groups.

It is time to flush these varmints out. We have had great success educating the public about the difference between animal welfare and “animal rights.” Now it is time to educate them about the difference between conservation and “environmentalism.”

In 1992, the National Cattlemen’s Association (NCA) was run by true pioneers and American patriots. Like many organizations that represent meat, milk, circuses, rodeos, zoos, medical research, wool, leather, fur, silk, and pet ownership, the NCA has been co-opted one way or the other to turn it’s back on those who they represent; those who built and feed America.

As you can see, both animal rights and the so-called environmental movement are not friends of humans, animals, or the earth. But they are double-teaming us to take away our rights and freedoms.

Kathleen Marquardt

KathleenMarquardt@americanpolicy.org

Kathleen Marquardt has been in the freedom movement since before it was called that. She was founder and chairman of Putting People First, a non-profit organization combatting the animal rights movement. Her book, AnimalScam: the Beastly Abuse of Human Rights, was published by Regnery in 1993. Kathleen has been Vice President of American Policy Center since 2000 and is the Agenda 21/Sustainable Development expert for Rocky Top Freedom Campaign. She was a contributing writer and researcher for Freedom Advocates.

Milk Or Water: California Bill Aims To Curb Kids’ Soda Drinking At Restaurants

By Adrienne Moore August 16, 2018

A new state bill would give kids two options with their meals at restaurants—water or milk.  Senate Bill 1192 would make water or milk the default drink for kids meals in a push to reduce obesity and access to sugary drinks for children.   The bill passed the Assembly and is on its way to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. If he signs it, California would be the first state in the nation to have such a law.
No one gets in the way of Isaiah Palacios and his soda..........To Read More....

My Take -  Too much sugar or too little exercise.  When I was a kid every play ground and every ball diamond in the city was full of kids playing sports.  Today they're empty.  Why?  Too much internet maybe? 

What's really interesting is how the left feels it's acceptable for a kids to decide they're born to the wrong gender and can choose have abortions, but they can't decide to have sodas or not. 

We have lost our minds.  Fortunately the highest level of insanity is in California.  When California finally goes down the tubes I hope they don't move into other states and start contaminating them with their cancerous mentality. 

Oh, wait....I just had a thought.......maybe it's California thinking that causes cancer....let's ban California!

 

Heart-Healthy Eggs — Really

By Ruth Kava — March 31, 2017

We've described research indicating that the cholesterol content of egg yolks shouldn't prevent most people from gaining the nutritional benefits that eggs can provide (see here, for example). And now some recent research suggests that contrary to popular belief, egg consumption may actually alter a person's cholesterol profile for the better. The report was published in the Journal of Nutrition.

Dr. Diana M. DiMarco and colleagues from the University of Connecticut in Storrs enlisted 38 young, healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 30, none of whom were obese. They investigated the effects on several  of these people's cholesterol-related attributes of consuming 1, 2, or 3 eggs per day, compared to eating no eggs.......To Read More.....

American Council on Science and Health, 2011: Week Three

By Rich Kozlovich

I was supposed to post this on Saturday, but I have been sick. This week's edition the ASCH's Daily Dispatch really goes all over the place, including one of my favorite topics....DDT. I think you will find the insights on these diverse issues worth exploring. As I have said in the past....this is one of the groups I consistently turn to for the answers. There may be times that you will disagree with them, but at least they have a very simple philosophy; data in search of conclusions versus so many of the groups you will see featured here who have a philosophy of conclusions in search of data,

Enjoy!

New study pregnant with anti-chemical quackery
An outlandish study from professors at the University of California, San Francisco, published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, reports that almost all pregnant women harbor at least one out of 163 different "potentially harmful" chemicals in their blood, urine or serum .

Can you see me now? Incidence of AMD declines
The incidence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in people over the age of 50 - a result of damage to the center of the retina – has decreased in the last 15 years.

Trials for new malaria vaccine instill hope
After reporting yesterday on the looming threat of the spread of a drug-resistant form of falciparum malaria, we now bring brighter news of two phase II trials indicating that a leading candidate malaria vaccine (RTS,S/AS01E ) provides protection against the parasitic disease for at least 15 months after inoculation.

Prescription drugs face acetaminophen restrictions
\Acetaminophen, the key ingredient used in over-the-counter (OTC) drugs like Tylenol and Nyquil, will be limited only 325 milligrams per dose in prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet, the FDA announced yesterday.

Another u-turn in the controversy over antibiotics for ear infections in children
To prescribe or not prescribe? That is the question that pediatricians have been grappling with over many years as they debate whether to use antibiotics to treat acute otitis media, or ear infections, in toddlers or whether to adhere to the "watch and wait" approach.

ACSH Presents: Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health
In response to the growing level of chemophobia - the irrational fear of chemicals - among the American public, ACSH held a press conference today to announce the release of its newest position paper, Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health.

NYT offers remedy for “toxic headlines”
An excellent dash of science-based reassurance was administered over the weekend by New York Times columnist Andrew Revkin in his Dot Earth & blog.

Rude awakening: Sleep aid Ambien leaves some older users groggy and clumsy
Talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed - results of a new study suggest that the popular sleep aid Ambien, sold generically as zolpidem, can leave folks over 60 temporarily groggy and clumsy when awakened abruptly.

Another health tenet stricken: Fruits and veggies don’t decrease cancer incidence.
Consumers looking to take dietary steps towards cancer prevention might want to hold off on a daily V8 regimen. The British Journal of Cancer reports that increasing fruit and veggie consumption has little impact on cancer prevention, at least among well-nourished populations.

Green drugs down the toilet
The "Green" movement has set its sights on a new consumer market: green pharmaceuticals.

Chemophobia and Chicken McNuggets
The Montreal Gazette published an article by Joe Schwarcz, Ph.D., director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, on the subject of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets.

Possible risks of combining calcium-channel blockers and antibiotics
Monday brought word, first reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, of possible risks for patients simultaneously taking calcium channel blockers and erythromycin (E-Mycin) or clarithromycin (Biaxin) - both macrolide antibiotics.

Congestive heart failure: Where you go matters a lot
The Annals of Internal Medicine has just reported on a large-scale study at more than 4,000 U.S. hospitals which showed that thirty-day survival rates for patients diagnosed with congestive heart failure were more than twenty percent better among those who went to hospitals more accustomed to providing care for the condition.

Genetic screening: Should the government stay out?
Yesterday's Science section of The New York Times included an intriguing article by columnist John Tierney on whether the government has a proper role in regulating commercial sales of DNA analysis tests to the general public.

Anti-depressants and hot flashes: Connection isn’t so war
Last week brought word of a study which claimed that the anti-depressant drug known by the trade name Lexapro (escitalopram) could reduce the incidence of hot flashes among menopausal women.

A cheap remedy, period: Tranexamic acid for excessive bleeding
The same drug used to reduce heavy menstrual cycles may reduce the risk of complications from hemorrhage associated with trauma, Reuters; reports.


Alcohol benefits skip a beat? Potential atrial fibrillation link
Moderate alcohol consumption may be a double-edged sword when it comes to heart health, according to; recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

ColoPrint: A new way to predict progression of colon cancer?
Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. Has developed a genetic test that may predict which stage II and III colon cancer patients are most likely to experience a recurrence following surgery.

Younger women should be screened for osteoporosis
Perhaps the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) had Gwyneth Paltrow in mind when it updated the guidelines for assessing osteoporosis to recommend screening younger women who present the same risk factors as 65 year-old white women.


Follow-up lymph node dissection may not be necessary for breast cancer patients with negative “sentinel node” biopsy
Sometimes the first time's a charm, at least when it comes to breast cancer biopsies.

NYT op-ed is a shot in the right direction
ACSH staffers were pleased to read an op-ed by Michael Willrich in today's The New York Times promoting the notion already long upheld by scientific communities that vaccines are a safe and extremely effective public health measure.

Don’t wean too early: Surgeon General recommends six months of breast-feeding
In a report issued Thursday, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin reminded mothers about the importance of breast-feeding their children for the first six months while also outlining plans to expand and improve community programs that provide support and peer counseling for moms.

Rats are to humans as phthalates are to abnormal development: no relationship
Environmental Health News reports on a new study published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology alleging that exposure to the phthalate DINP (di-isononylphthalate) causes developmental abnormalities in rats.

Counting down to eliminate obesity, or not
Much like counting sheep won't get you to fall asleep any faster, counting calories at Taco Time won't get you to change your order from the Big Juan burrito combo meal to a bland garden salad any sooner either.

Anti-DDT campaign has no meat, unless you count baloney
The underlying science used by a coalition of global public health groups to promote the restriction and ultimate banning of DDT use for eradication of malaria is false, dangerous and misguided, a new study published in the journal Research and Reports in Tropical Medicine says.

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If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more?  Please Donate Now!

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