Fight For Your Right to Go Paleo

Found via @tferriss.

In May the Institute for Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina on behalf of blogger Steve Cooksey. The suit claims the state violated Cooksey’s First Amendment right to free speech when it informed him that his anti-diabetes blog runs afoul of North Carolina laws requiring a license to dispense anything the state considers dietary advice.

This week Forbes is reporting that the main driver of the state crackdown on Cooksey is the national Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association). Forbes reports this group, based on internal documents the magazine says it obtained, pushes states to establish powerful dietetics and nutrition boards—like the board in North Carolina that has targeted Cooksey—“for the express purpose of limiting market competition for its Registered Dietitian members.” (Emphasis in original.)

If true, this is both illegal and troubling. But surprising? Hardly.

It’s just one example of a larger trend. After all, in the United States many regulations and policies steer people toward certain dietary practices and away from others—nearly always with the backing of some powerful, entrenched, monied interest and nearly always for no good reason whatsoever.

For example, government subsidies pay farmers to produce some foods in lieu of others. Think corn, soy, dairy, and sugar. Government policies promote particular foods at the expense of others. The USDA’s MyPlate (formerly the Food Pyramid), the Institute of Medicine’s proposed EnergyStar-like front-of-package label, and federal licensing and state practitioner requirements for registered dietitians are good examples of this longstanding trend. And regulations make it easier to produce some foods while making it more difficult to produce others. For example, a host of federal regulations create barriers to small-scale meat, fruit, and vegetable production and sale, which often presents immense scalability issues and helps concentrate production in the hands of a few larger producers.

Such a system of picking winners and losers would be abhorrent even if we could somehow label it a success. After all, it’s not government’s job to promote or restrict particular ways of eating. But because the science behind these subsidies and regulations is often disputed, unsettled, or—even worse—just plain wrong, many argue the results have been nothing short of catastrophic.