North Carolina: State Threatens to Shut Down Nutrition Blogger
April 26th, 2012Via: Carolina Journal:
The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is threatening to send a blogger to jail for recounting publicly his battle against diabetes and encouraging others to follow his lifestyle.
Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”
Steve Cooksey has learned that the definition, at least in the eyes of the state board, is expansive.
When he 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.
i’ve been on and have been advocating that diet for decades, but the real key -besides gobs of vegetables -is elluvials. the pancreas loves elluvials (onions, garlic, chives et al).
protein heavy diets do have their downside, especially when heavy on the red meat, no matter how lean. plus carbs supposedly have a strong role in digesting protein and in their absence, the body supposedly somehow tends to use some of the available protein to digest the rest.
with that said, they can come take me away.
i ‘discovered’ the diet by necessity and trial and error. eschewing carbs was quite an experience -one of sobering up. the gained mental acuity was astonishing. the sugarlike buzz that carbs give makes for me a second understanding of the buzz most of the U.S. was on after that of sugar itself.
the history of drugs and the history of sugar might well go hand in hand. a subsequent study of diet itself is as well quite revealing. the direct impact these things have on emotional states and natures is their central root in our culture, imho.
fast food chains et al practice dietetics on a massive scale, for crying out loud, and a very detrimental form of it at that.