What role does the government/public officials have in nutrition, if any? page

[superseiyan]

Do you all feel that there is a tension between government or the public sector promoting health awareness (which i know you're hostile too) and letting people choose independently what they eat? Do we differentiate in how children and adults are handled?

In the Paleo/Primal community we know for example that sugar is a no-no. It is literally suicide by a thousand cuts (See Sisson's article: The Definitive Guide to Insulin, Blood Sugar & Type 2 Diabetes (and you’ll understand it) | Mark's Daily Apple). However, many people would recoil from soda machines being pulled from schools or people being disgouraged from drinking too much soda.

Do you feel there is a proper role for the government/public officials? Seems when they try to do something, they get ridiculed, as an example:
Maybe the White House Should Address This Kind of Bullying . . . - By Julie Gunlock - The Corner - National Review Online

I mean yes, you don't want a nanny state. On the other hand, if there's an effort ti improve the lives of our youth, and to undo some of the damages that subsidies (corn) or the FDA (food pyramid) have done, what's wrong with it? Is the French government out of line for having the school menu's that they do?

Do you sometimes see a tension between your philosophy/politics and what you know about nutrition.

[runnergal]

However, many people would recoil from soda machines being pulled from schools or people being disgouraged from drinking too much soda.

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. MOST people I know have no problem with "people being discouraged from drinking too much soda" regardless of their views on the nanny state. I guess it depends on the means of discouragement. Education? Banning?

Is the French government out of line for what? Having more vegetables and real food in the menu? That is not nanny-ism. If the government is creating the lunch menu and subsidizing the lunch menu how is it "out of line" to make it healthier*? Should the government deliberately make it less healthy and that is less nannyism how? Nannyism is when the school starts telling you what you can send to school in your kids lunch box.

*regarding ""healthier" If the american lunch system actually followed US nutrition guidelines I would be fine with that despite the whole grains. - If they made lunches a lean protein, a serving of whole grains, a serving of veggies and a fruit it would be infinitely better than the "catsup is a veggie" system we have now.

[chuckarie]

One role the government has in promoting health awareness is in the USDA food pyramid (which is completely inaccurate). The USDA food pyramid is more concerned with SELLING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS than it is about health! The government doesn't want consumers to believe that grains and sugar are bad because then sales in agricultural grain and corn products would go down dramatically, so they keep telling us to consume lots of "heart healthy whole grains" (oxymoron) and to stay on a low fat/high carb diet (which is total bull). What's going to happen to our economy if the biggest part of our food industry (grains, sugar, processed foods) crashes? That's why you constantly see inaccurate health information being thrown at us in the media. I mean, the USDA recommends 300g of carbs a day! That is insane and anyone following that diet is going to have major health problems. But the government knows that people are easily persuaded by the media, so they use it as a tool to persuade consumers into buying agricultural products.

Also, the idea that saturated fat leads to high cholesterol leads to heart disease is FALSE. First of all, saturated fat raises HDL, the good cholesterol. Second, cholesterol does NOT lead to heart disease; heart disease is what ACTS ON cholesterol. Heart disease is not caused by high cholesterol but by INFLAMMATION in the arteries (through the OXIDATION of cholesterol which is what causes plaque in the arteries). Oxidation of cholesterol is caused by consuming processed vegetable oils and a diet high in carbohydrates (specifically grains and sugar). If you've ever seen the documentary "Fat Head", you'll learn that high cholesterol can actually be better than low cholesterol, and is usually the case for women over 60.

Of course, everybody has been brainwashed into thinking that high cholesterol is bad, because the cholesterol lowering drug companies of the pharmaceutical industries have been so effective in paying off big media associations to print these stories so consumers will buy their products. It's all about making money!

If you squeeze the entire length of human existence into one year, we have only been eating grains and sugar about YESTERDAY and processed vegetable oils about 10 MINUTES AGO (I'm getting a lot of this info from "Fat Head", it's a great documentary if you haven't seen it!), yet the government and the "experts" have somehow convinced us that the way to good health is to eat that crap. Bleh, it disgusts me.

[chuckarie]

It's very important to question the accuracy of many "health" articles in newspapers and magazines. Most are just being funded by major food companies to sell their products.

[LJH]

I trust ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOTHING that the government touches. Industries with the most money pay for the rules and dictate the results - the Monsantos, drug and insurance companies buy politicians like the rest of us buy shoes or groceries.

Follow the money - that's really all you have to know.

[chuckarie]

I trust ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOTHING that the government touches. Industries with the most money pay for the rules and dictate the results - the Monsantos, drug and insurance companies buy politicians like the rest of us buy shoes or groceries.

Follow the money - that's really all you have to know.

I'm so glad someone else knows how I feel! And if you look at the members of the USDA, they're mostly former CEOs of major agricultural companies like corn and even Monsanto!! (I couldn't believe it when I learned of this).

[Monty]

The folks writing the nutritional guidelines are probably grain and corn farmers anyways.

[Grok]

Once the government uses force of arms to forbid free choice you have entered into a slippery slope.

You can prove that just about anything is "harmful" to you and given enough political influence, you can use the violence and force of arms of government to force people into purchasing your product over a competitors product.

It is best to keep the guns, and the violence and force out of the picture. Let the free market choose.

[AuH2Ogirl]

Well, ok, so they took soda machines out of schools. Next stop, good fats. Oh, wait, they've already done that. Is meat next?

While we may all agree soda is bad for us, we don't need the government deciding what's not healthful and eliminating it from certain places. Even schools. But then, I don't think the federal government should have its hands in educating children in the first place.

[Grok]

The government education of children is an extremely bad problem. I had to relearn just about everything I was taught in school, even how to perform basic math. Only a state run education system will tell you to add numbers from right to left.