North Carolina, like many states, licenses all sorts of businesses activity, especially enterprises related to medicine. That’s why the state’s Board of Dietetics and Nutrition is gearing up to jail a blogger. According to the Carolina Journal Online,
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.
Cooksey had been hospitalized for diabetes in February 2009, and decided to take a major, independent step towards his health, beginning a low-carb, high-protein diet dubbed the paleo (or “cave man”) diet. Within 30 days, he claims, he was off insulin; within a few months he had shed off 45 pounds.
He started his blog, Diabetes-Warrior.net, to chronicle his progress and help others achieve similar success. But after he challenged a local, certified nutrition expert at his local church, the state board went after him, especially objecting to his Q&A section: “If people are writing you with diabetic specific questions and you are responding, you are no longer just providing information — you are counseling.”
Need a license for that!
Journalist Brian Doherty wittily asserts “that someone should be able to describe his experiences . . . and advocate for his own good results should go without saying, though my saying that may well contradict a directive of the California Board of Going Without Saying.”
We don’t need another bureau.
Getting rid of some that we have might be the best policy diet.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Censoring a Diet”
People in NC are some of the fattest in the world. Reason, they drink sweet tea which is nothing more than pure sugar with a little tea. When you eat out and order tea you get sweet tea unless you ask for unsweetened.
But it is a free country and the rest of us pay for their health problems.
Contrary to most of the government activity going on in this country, this actually is what is allowed under our Constitution.
But to paraphrase Wilfred Brimley from the classic film “Absence od Malice”, “It may be legal, but it ain’t right”.
Jim — you shouldn’t have to pay for their health problems.
Drik — I don’t think this action is allowed under our Constitution. The First Amendment alone precludes it.
Jim — I’m no fan of sweet tea, taste-wise or health-wise, but southerners have been drinking it a long time . . . and living longer and longer. Give people the facts and the longest and toughest of habits to break can be broken.
I see an opportunity for Obama to establish a Federal Department of Dietetics and Nutrition, complete with a Diet Czar.
The First Amendment clearly covers this as long as he has an appropriate disclaimer to the effect that he is not a licensed health care provider.
2WarAbnVet,
He could call it the Dietetics and Nutrition Council (DNC)