Hi Donovan, 
The essence of what I'm saying is that we can't effectively regulate what we
don't yet understand. It is clear that the field of dietetics is so
seriously retarded that its mainstream practitioners are like the
obstetricians who worked under Ignaz Semmelweiss..... who stopped washing
their hands and laundering their smocks after the research project was
complete despite having seen a really dramatic decline in childbed fever.
They simply couldn't believe that what Semmelweiss called "invisible
atomies," and we now call germs, could possibly communicate disease.
Similarly, most mainstream dietitians cannot believe that a fat dominated
diet could be healthy or that a gluten free diet could halt autoimmune
disease, neurological diseases, etc., or that there is little risk of scurvy
while eating a ketogenic diet.

Prior to regulating any field, it is important to understand exactly what is
safe and what isn't. The article depicts a situation in which regulation has
preceded widespread understanding among the professionals who are certified
as knowledgeable in this area, but in practice, they are quite ignorant.....
because of the very training they were given toward their certification.


You said:
"How many years has it taken for society as a whole to NOT learn that low
fat, high carb isn't working?  When I drink Coke, I feel awake and the sugar
cravings go away.  It doesn't last long, but it *does* feel better for a
little while."

But the researchers like Yudkin, Burkitt, and Peter Ahrens (to name just a
few) had all published detailed reports, with supporting data, decades prior
to the 1977 publication of the US Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and
Human Needs, led by Senator George McGovern, that was titled something like
'recommended Dietary Goals for the American people'. 

Similarly, Dr. Robert Atkins, a group of dietetics researchers at Cornell
University, and a number of lipid researchers were well aware that the
identification of saturated fats as contributors to cardiovascular disease
was simply bogus. They tried to speak up about it, but they were silenced by
politicians holding research purse strings and charlatans such as Ancel
Keyes and his followers and grad students.  

You said:
"If houses started burning down and bridges started falling all over the
place, we'd all be yelling for solutions.  But what would those solutions
be?  Would we want to say, "Screw regulating it.
 Anyone can design and install wiring in a house."?  I think that might
exacerbate the problem."

It is important to understand the principles that caused the bridges to
collapse and the houses to burn down before introducing regulations aimed at
safeguarding against these catastrophic events. Otherwise, you get the kind
of dietary recommendations we got.

 
You said:
" I think we're headed in the right direction.  Twice now, you've made
suggestions that changed my eating habits and fixed serious health problems
I was struggling with.  Both times your advice conflicted 100% with what my
doctor advised and both times it completely fixed the problem."

And both times I was providing dietary advice without certification as a
dietician. I was providing advice that runs absolutely contrary to the
principles that form the education of those professionals. If you had
reported me to some governing body, you might have caused me the same kind
of grief this fellow experienced, as reported in the article.

You said:
"I just think that we, on a societal level, need to try to make these
changes safely.  How we can do that and still leave people free to explore
the issue, I'm not sure."

We can't make these changes in total safety. We can only use the best
science we can find to make our own best, individual guesses. And in the
meantime, for every listserv, paleofood forum, and informed dietary book
available, there are many thousands more Internet venues and books that
preach the current conventional wisdom. People who stick their necks out to
offer dietary advice based on the principles that drive the Paleodiet, low
carb diets, ketogenic diets, etc. are the only path I can see for correcting
the egregious dietary errors driven by politicians and bureaucrats. It is an
awful lot safer to follow any of these diets than it is to eat a standard
American diet (SAD). I admit that a large minority of us will not benefit
much from such diets, but the majority will, and most of the people who are
open to changing their diets fall into this latter category because they are
overweight or have some other malady that is driven by the SAD.     

Vegetarians follow a diet that can be enormously harmful to themselves and
their children, yet society doesn't prosecute those people. 

Finally, I like Larry's signature:
> > > Keep the books,
> > > Burn the censors
Love, 
Dad