Wellness 2.0 – Rust Nutrition Services – Chew The Facts®

In a previous post I commented on the growth of the wellness industry over the past 20 years. I’ve watched this movement unfold and gain speed thanks to well-organized food activists, functional and alternative medicine doctors, chiropractors, and “holistic healers”. Over time, they have slowly molded public perception of food, nutrition, and medicine.

They are convincing, because they stand for some things everyone can agree on – eating more vegetables, eating more whole foods and less processed foods, consuming less sugar, getting outside, keeping fit, and paying attention to how your body feels. However they dismiss science when it comes to specific recommendation that support those goals. Sometimes they are also out of touch with what typical Americans have access to, and the challenges they may struggle with.

Diet and Health

Every five years the Dietary Guidelines For Americans are released. This document is the result of a report provided by a scientific committee that reviews current evidence for diet and disease. From their recommendations, the government is charged with creating a set of dietary guidelines. Calley Means has been critical of the expert panel’s recommendations because they state there isn’t enough evidence to say that all Americans should eat less ultra-processed food. Is it a good idea to throw out this 453 page scientific report, and literature review, in exchange for a so-called “simple document” from the MAHA team?

There are so many better policies that could be proposed: Portion recommendation, smaller drink sizes, lowering sugar and sodium in products, and most important – added nutrition education in outpatient healthcare settings.

The Grift

Why are registered dietitians outraged with these proposed changes and the overall direction of health and nutrition that our current administration is taking? They are dismissing an entire body of evidence that took years to develop. They are also dismissing an entire group of health professionals who are actually trained in food and nutrition.

We are now at a place where a non-board-certified and non-practicing doctor has been nominated for the office of Surgeon General. In an interview about health, Casey Means (whose claims her life goal is “tackling the root causes of why we are sick”) made a statement like ‘there’s no specialty for metabolism, even though there’s a surprising connection between metabolism and every aspect of our life and health.’

What?

News Flash: Registered dietitians are literally trained in nutrition in metabolism. A large portion of the scope of practice in the dietetics field is devoted to preventive medicine.

There is actually lots of research and many books written about biochemistry and the topic of nutrition and metabolism. I have a book on my shelf called “nutrition in health and disease” and I’ve taught these courses in my career. However Means works that grift by using terms like “good energy” and discusses her “solutions” in terms of “mitochondrial health”. Sounds amazing, but it’s not exactly true.

Metabolic Biomarkers Aren’t New

My biggest issue with Means is that she presents information on diet and metabolism as if she has discovered magical and new information. It’s not.

It’s fascinating to me that Casey Means, wrote a book that seems to make statements that suggest she did not learn about metabolism in medical school. She even goes as far as to make up theories about human metabolism, and pass them along as proven.

As registered dietitians we are specifically trained to evaluate metabolic markers. In fact most of the clinical aspects of our professional scope of practice focuses on this. Metabolic markers include body weight (body mass index), fasting glucose, insulin, liver enzymes, and lipid profiles. Regular monitoring of these values is an important window into your overall health.

In the Huberman Lab podcast (Transform Your Health by Improving Metabolism, Hormone & Blood Sugar Regulation), Means recommends “You should probably get metabolic lab work three or four times a year” (interestingly she also is co-owner of a company that offers blood tests through their lab).

News flash: Most doctors will prescribe a “complete metabolic panel” at your annual visit. Once a year is probably enough if your lab work is normal. These metabolic tests are not a secret, or new.

Diet Recommendations in the MAHA Era

Overall I can agree with her basic dietary premise that we should eat less processed food and eat more foods high in fiber, omega-3s, healthy protein, probiotics, foods high in antioxidants. Again, not new. This is what the DASH Diet studies are based on. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans also includes foods high in fiber, omega-2s (fatty fish twice a week), and plenty of fruits and vegetables (antioxidants).

However I am not aligned with some of the other diet messages I’m hearing. During her interview with Andrew Huberman, Means calls our gut microbiome the “pharmacy in our body” and a bunch of other kookie things. She likes to use the word mitochondria (the working part of our cells), and makes blanket statements about ultra-processed food (and our “toxic food supply”). She reasons this is the reason why your body’s cells are driving you to eat more. Her nutrition recommendation is to “eat more whole foods from good soil”. Okay, more whole food is a great idea. However it’s misleading to suggest so much soil is “not good” (her claim is this is due to “industrialized agriculture“.

Recommendations Rooted in Reality

My philosophy has always been one rooted in reality when it comes to behavior change. Our jobs as health educators are to frame recommendations that are easy adopt and adhere to.

What can this person realistically do with the means and current lifestyle that they have? Both in my education and practice, I learned that there many meal plans that can be coded as “a healthy diet”. By “healthy diet” we mean a meal plan that improves metabolic markers. Again, it’s always been about improving the metabolic markers! 

Yet the current MAHA movement seems to be overly focused on food ingredients.  The focus should be on dietary patterns and established research about diet and disease treatment and prevention. According to Mean’s cooking blogs, she seems to recommend the avoidance of vegetable oils, and other foods or ingredients (namely wheat and dairy), claiming they  “cause inflammation”.

Nobody will adopt blanket recommendations if they do not suit their taste, cultural preferences, or budgets. I’m doubting that a rural mother of three is going to appreciate her flaxseed crackers made with Zen basil seeds. But I digress…

Functional Medicine

The wellness industry does not care about sick children or helping you. RFK Jr and his cohorts at the HHS seem to be hell bent on burning an entire body of evidence that has taken years to procure.

I wonder why physicians switch to any type of “alternative” or “functional” medicine.  Perhaps they weren’t very good regular doctors? Or maybe their ego was drawn to the potential to get big media attention, and big side money. These branded health influencers include: Dr. Oz, Dr Will Cole (chiropractor), Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Josh Axe, Dr. Gundry, Chris Kresser, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Phil, and Dr. Mercola. Just about every single one of them sells supplements or tests and other high-cost products.

Functional and alternative medicine practitioners claim that traditional medicine only treats disease and does nothing to prevent it.  If you start to listen, you’ll hear it. These folks all repeat some version of the same buzz line: “Chronic disease is growing at an alarming rate!” And they all blame the same things: sugar, wheat, dairy, and seed oils. None of which they have any evidence for. It’s getting old.

On the other hand, ethical and qualified health professionals take individual needs, personal medical and social history into account. And they already know how to evaluate the results of your metabolic blood panel.

Spotting the Red Flags

Mitochondrial health! Magical blood tests (that have actually been utilized for decades)! “If you just do these five things, (and buy my supplements) you’ll be healthier”!

Functional medicine grifters always prey on your emotions. They make false promises that sound ground-breaking. They simply messaging and apply it to broad audients (all genders, ages) and want you to believe things like:

• Natural is better
• Personal experiences (anecdotal evidence) outweigh population based research
• A bad experience with a doctor negating all medical advice

I promise you, messages like this that are presented as a new and transformations discovery, are a grift. It’s up to you to think about what makes sense, and who to believe.