IS NOT THIS THE MOST INSANE NEWS YOU WILL HEAR TODAY?
MAYBE WE SHOULD GET RID OF THE FDA! IT PUSHES DRUGS FOR BIG PHARMA, AND IF YOU'RE WATCHING THE ADS ON TV FOR FDA APPROVED DRUGS, DAMN - THOSE THINGS ARE GOING TO KILL YOU ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
BUT NATURE'S PERFECTLY WONDERFUL WALNUT?
GOOD FOR YOU? YES! A DRUG? NOT IN A MILLION YEARS - NO MORESO THAN SPINACH.
WTF IS THIS CRAP, AND ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE IT?
Walnuts Are Drugs, Says FDA
<http://thenewameric
|
Written by Michael Tennant
Thursday, 21 July 2011 10:10
Seen any walnuts in your medicine cabinet lately? According to the Food
and Drug Administration, that is precisely where you should find them.
Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of
consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a
letter
<http://www.fda.
declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that —
and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States
without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened
Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply.
Diamond’s transgression was to make “financial investments to educate
the public and supply them with walnuts,” as William Faloon of /Life
Extension/ magazine
<http://www.lef.
put it. On its website and packaging, the company stated that the
omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts have been shown to have certain
health benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease and some types
of cancer. These claims, Faloon notes, are well supported by scientific
research: “/Life Extension/ has published 57 articles that describe the
health benefits of walnuts”; and “The US National Library of Medicine
database contains no fewer than 35 peer-reviewed published papers
supporting a claim that ingesting walnuts improves vascular health and
may reduce heart attack risk.”
This evidence was apparently not good enough for the FDA, which told
Diamond that its walnuts were “misbranded” because the “product bears
health claims that are not authorized by the FDA.”
The FDA’s letter continues: “We have determined that your walnut
products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because
these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and
treatment of disease.” Furthermore, the products are also “misbranded”
because they “are offered for conditions that are not amenable to
self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical
practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written
so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended
purposes.” Who knew you had to have directions to eat walnuts?
“The FDA’s language,” Faloon writes, “resembles that of an
out-of-control police state where tyranny [reigns] over rationality.” He
adds:
This kind of bureaucratic tyranny sends a strong signal to the food
industry not to innovate in a way that informs the public about foods
that protect against disease. While consumers increasingly reach for
healthier dietary choices, the federal government wants to deny food
companies the ability to convey findings from scientific studies about
their products.
Walnuts aren’t the only food whose health benefits the FDA has tried to
suppress. Producers of pomegranate juice and green tea, among others,
have felt the bureaucrats’ wrath whenever they have suggested that their
products are good for people.
Meanwhile, Faloon points out, foods that have little to no redeeming
value are advertised endlessly, often with dubious health claims
attached. For example, Frito-Lay is permitted to make all kinds of
claims about its fat-laden, fried products, including that Lay’s potato
chips are “heart healthy.” Faloon concludes that “the FDA obviously does
not want the public to discover that they can reduce their risk of
age-related disease by consuming healthy foods. They prefer consumers
only learn about mass-marketed garbage foods that shorten life span by
increasing degenerative disease risk.”
Faloon thinks he knows why this is the case. First, by stifling
competition from makers of more healthful alternatives, junk food
manufacturers, who he says “heavily lobb[y]” the federal government for
favorable treatment, will rake in ever greater profits. Second, by
making it less likely that Americans will consume healthful foods, big
pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers stand to gain
by selling more “expensive cardiac drugs, stents, and coronary bypass
procedures” to those made ill by their diets.
But people are starting to fight back against the FDA’s tactics. “The
makers of pomegranate juice, for example, have sued the FTC for
censoring their First Amendment right to communicate scientific
information to the public,” Faloon reports. Congress is also getting
into the act with a bill, the Free Speech About Science Act (H.R. 1364),
that, Faloon writes, “protects basic free speech rights, ends censorship
of science, and enables the natural health products community to share
peer-reviewed scientific findings with the public.”
Of course, if the Constitution were being followed as intended, none of
this would be necessary. The FDA would not exist; but if it did, as a
creation of Congress it would have no power to censor any speech
whatsoever. If companies are making false claims about their products,
the market will quickly punish them for it, and genuine fraud can be
handled through the courts. In the absence of a government agency
supposedly guaranteeing the safety of their food and drugs and the
truthfulness of producers’ claims, consumers would become more
discerning, as indeed they already are becoming despite the FDA’s
attempts to prevent the dissemination of scientific research. Besides,
as Faloon observed, “If anyone still thinks that federal agencies like
the FDA protect the public, this proclamation that healthy foods are
illegal drugs exposes the government’s sordid charade.”
No comments:
Post a Comment