I’m FURIOUS! Class Action Lawsuit? Attorneys, please weigh in

#21

This is very thoughtful, interesting and even hopeful. Thanks, Richard. It’s a path forward.

#22

Thank you for your response @richard. I’m fearful nothing will ever change. :cry:

(Renee Slaughter) #23

I know in the scheme of things we are a minority. But I figure that’s how movements get started. We , the Keto low carb community have a movement that is growing and picking up speed around the world. We are doing it 2 people or more at a time. Example. My boss is reducing her carbs slowly she is feeling better guess what? She told her overweight employee who asked me the details I turned her to YouTube. I will likely invite her over for my low carb lunch and discuss details. Movements gain momentum remember the history.

#24

I’ve said for YEARS it would be easy enough for all of us to form a class and drag the USDA into court, we’d never win of course BUT it would make news and we could squeeze out a lot of their disinformation and wake up a lot of people in the process.

#25

I think this would work if it was something that a person can reasonably see is wrong. No one but a bigot would ever believe there is another side to apartheid. With diet, even the best minds in the field can argue over what is right or wrong. For example Fung thinks that keto is great. Attia has publicly stated that keto simply does not work for a portion of his patients (STEM Talk podcast 2016). He claimed that there were patients whose CRP and LDLp I think, shot up. Pritikin really did believe a low fat diet saved his life. I have read that he had directed his widow to order an autoposy after his death to prove his arteries were clear.

When I started keto almost a year ago it was with great trepidation and a fear of saturated fat. Despite being the owner of more diet books than I care to admit, I had no idea that protein needed to be limited and I considered myself pretty knowledgeable about diet. Everyone I know who has ever dieted has tried and failed Atkins at some point, whether in induction or regaining the weight the second they went off it. When I tell them I lost weight doing Atkins (I start telling them keto, they give me a blank but eager look, then I will describe it and they will say with a dismissive gesture, Atkins, yes tried it but did not work, call me when you regain the weight (not said but you can tell they are thinking it). Plus there is the urban legends you have to deal with, my cousin’ sister’s uncles’s co worker did that, lost 100 lbs and then their cholesterol shot up so they had to stop and regained the weight or lost 100 lbs and dropped dead of ____________ (heart attack, pancreatic cancer, stroke, hit by a car while jogging - kidding about the last one).

It is easier to get someone off carbs than to get them to embrace fat. The problem is, in the absence of a real threat (prior heart attack, severe T2) the diet becomes unsustainable because it is not satisfying. While I am not a fan of experts or physicians, I think it is the physicians like Fung that are needed to move this forward. The very sickest really do listen to their physicians and try to do what they say. The problem is those physicians are giving them the wrong message

#26

:clap::clap::clap: Well said Renee, Richard, Saphire!

(Adam Kirby) #27

I take issue with this for two reasons. One, because personal responsibility is only feasible if one has the correct knowledge to make the correct choices. In our case we have been fed so much damaging information under the guise of professional opinion for so many decades that you can’t really blame people for trying to follow the advice they’ve been inundated with. In our cases we all unplugged from the Matrix, but that usually requires being incredibly sick and having wasted decades on poor health.

Secondly, the guidelines affect a ton of government and private organizations who take their cues directly from them. Most docs base what they recommend on the guidelines. Hospitals serve food to patients based on the guidelines. The military feeds soldiers based on the guidelines. Millions of peoples are subject to the consequences of the guidelines whether or not they have any knowledge of them at all.

#28

Yeah, as others have said, the lawsuit isn’t going to happen. Just be thankful you have the knowledge you have now live your life the best you can.

(Mark Rhodes) #29

I am for a general amnesty. I was scanning this post to see if someone already advocated one. Sure enough it was @richard . This amnesty does not even have to include mea culpa. It does need to cover any aspect of healthcare, commercial products, food industries ect. that have promoted themselves as heart healthy or similar false labels.

The closest thing we have is keeping a strong mind on the updated food guidelines set to be released in 2022.

Keto is too rigorous for many but a LCHF diet should mitigate many of our healthcare woes.

#30

Well said, and the absolute worst, School Lunches are based on these
guidelines

(Doug) #31

Doug = cynical. The powers-that-be have other interests ahead of the people’s.

I like Richard’s idea of an amnesty period followed by liability, but don’t think the huge impetus required to meaningfully move things in that direction, to scare big entities into taking that deal, etc., is even remotely likely for a long time, if ever. The individual is best served, as a practical matter, by taking things into their own hands, and rightfully, scornfully, turning their backs on City Hall.

(Stephanie Sablich) #32

I agree completely, with both of your points. I’d also argue that (in accordance with your second point), the “trickle down” effects of these policies have a disproportionately negative effect on already disadvantaged communities. Is it any surprise that low-income communities are often the least healthy?

Has anyone been into a WIC office lately? There are literally millions of people who barely manage to scrape by and feed their children because of this assistance. Take a wild guess at the nutritional guidelines informing WIC policy.

Our privilege is showing when we fall back onto the “personal responsibility” rhetoric.

#33

The more I think about it, the more it has to be about the guidelines.

A lot of what I read about nutrition falls into two camps. Either they are based on personal experience puff pieces and will draw your average consumer in if they identify with the person. IE this housewife, busy executive, body builder, Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker who is just like me lost 70 lbs doing keto, I should try it. Or on the flip side you need to relearn how ADP converts to ATP via the krebs cycle to understand the article, someplace you have not been since high school biology class (and for most people someplace you never thought you would go again unless it was to help your kid study for a test). I even sent some articles to my kid’s bio teacher and she thought they were a bit dense to get through! Never mind that until I started reading last year I had no idea that double blind placebo controlled trials could be manipulated and were not the gospel.

The puff pieces do not help because the person could have just as easily found an article about weight watchers and done that instead, they are not really learning. In contrast, even a book like the Obesity Code takes a certain level of understanding that people do not always have the attention to get through.

People need guidelines that are not wrong. Schools, Hospitals, WIC, the Military and Physicians need a different standard of care.

As I said above, the AHA needs to stop defining whole grains as heart healthy and getting paid to say it. People need to be given the proper information.

The problem is like cigarettes, maybe the companies lose some money but the profits are simply too huge for Coke to cease to exist. I have no problem with Coke existing as long as people are given information on what they should be eating

If they are given good information and still choose Coke and chips, I have no problem with that but first they need the information. After all, everyone on this forum knows that Coke and chips/donuts/real pizza are bad for us but who has not indulged at least once while keto (not taking a poll here, I realize it is not everyone but it is most). We rationlize it but at the same time we know better and still choose to do this. For many of us we have to go out of our way since we do not even have it in the house anymore

(Banting & Yudkin & Atkins & Eadeses & Cordain & Taubes & Volek & Naiman & Bikman ) #34

Folks, genes matter. If you have 6 copies of AMY1, for instance, you’ll make enough amylase to easily digest complex carbs without spiking insulin at all. If you have double APOE4, you might have some issues with saturated fat. If you have certain MTFHR mutations, you have other problems.

The dietary guidelines should not be rewritten. The entire pyramid/plate, recommended servings should be eliminated. As different things work for different people, the USDA should be in the game of recommending RDAs of vitamins and minerals to avoid deficiency disorders and recommending Optimal Daily Allowances for optimum intake of the same. They should recommend against refined sugar, refined flour and refined vegetable oils high in Omega-6 PUFAs. They should recommend in favor of low glycemic fruits and low starch vegetables. And maybe make a caloric minimum definition of going hungry and starvation.

Beyond that, you’re in the land of things that work for some people and don’t work so great for others.

A class action lawsuit against the federal government is nonsense. On so many levels, I’m shocked this conversation has gone this far.

(Doug) #35

I think it’s a good conversation, though, LC. I agree with most of your suggested changes, and that different things work for different people. Most of what you say, at the current time, is common sense to me.

I do feel misled by the authorities - really for all my ‘conscious’ life, and it’s somewhat maddening. Yet I’m going to be okay; I found out in time what really does work for me to get better, and I’m quite confident that I can go through the few remaining decades of life doing pretty well.

This conversation has made me ponder the responsibilities of the individual, as well as that of governments, etc. The more reliance placed on govt’s, the worse, I think - I see it as human nature, and the usual nature of the hierarchies we create.

(Valerie) #36

I agree! I would consider him possibly the “most” culpable.

(Valerie) #37

Has anyone brought up this book yet?

The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451624433/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_3AQWAbZ2NDT9D

I’m reading it now and really appreciate more of the history she offers.

(Diane) #38

Exactly!

#39

I absolutely agree that everyone is a snowflake. Denise Minger has a lovely article on why some are great as vegans and others no https://deniseminger.com/2016/10/20/why-do-some-people-do-well-as-vegans-and-vegetarians-clues-from-the-magical-world-of-genetics/

Perhaps a lawsuit to change the guidelines is in order. To get attention. Even people well versed in diet do not know. Everything is still about belief rather than science. If a doctor wants to do anything different, then he is bound by the standard of care not

Having said that, I am having the unfortunate experience of watching someone I care about who has T2 Tofi following her doctor’s advice to the letter, having the best conventional medical care money can buy and watching her fade away one body part at a time. When I try to intervene she very graciously yeses me and then goes back to what her physician tells her. She is one of the smartest people I know but is too sick to do her own research and her close family (one of is a genius but is outside his area) will not make unconventional decisions

(Doug) #40

To me, this has 2 meanings - one that we’re all individuals, and often different (which I think is true) and then that it’s pejorative - that we’re wimpy whiners that feel sorry for ourselves (sometimes).

I can’t blame anybody, really - for decades I knew I was pushing it; “Poster Child for Type 2 Diabetes” was how I described myself, even as all the while I engaged in all manner of rationalization and denial. “Pretty good genes, no diabetic history in the family, blah blah blah…”