The Dietitians of Australia believe that everyone diagnosed with diabetes should have free access to nutritional advice through the Medicare system, at least 7 visits a year, with an accredited Dietitian.

I agree people, not just those with diabetes, need more information on nutrition.

What may become a problem for dietitians is that they will no longer be working for themselves but rather be working for the government and have to follow the guidelines of the government including how many tests they can request and what they are allowed to advise in the dietary melee.  

Plus, I believe proactive people prepared to change their diet and lifestyle will pay for advice that is not funded by Medicare. But will people who have diabetes or need nutritional advice as dictated by their doctor be willing to put the effort in to change their diets? I guess time will tell if this proposal works.

In a statement Natalie Stapleton, acting CEO of the DA said,“Unhealthy eating patterns account for roughly 26 per cent of the burden of type 2 diabetes in this country,” and that “accredited practicing dietitians are best placed to support Australians to adjust their dietary intake to include more foods like fruit and vegetables and less discretionary foods high in sugar, salt and fat.”  

This is where I have a problem. Firstly, not only dietitians can give nutritional advice but instead there are a whole host of people that can teach the basics of real food and eating principles. I’ve seen many medical doctors now include in their repertoire the need for their patients to embrace diet and lifestyle changes. My graduates from The Nutrition Academy can help families and individuals change their diet and lifestyle to meet the health needs of themselves and their family. Naturopaths can also give dietary advice as well as nutritionists who, like me, have decided not to be under the banner of dietitian and be hamstrung by what advice we can give with regards to proteins, fats, carbohydrates and the change of diet for the individual (unique needs of the individual?). And if we really want to get down to the basics, our old cultures and traditions, those that were passed down by the mother, is where true nutrition was taught. 

Diet was appropriate to the human species and diet was appropriate to the latitude and longitude of food available in that area. For instance, in colder regions more animals and animal products were consumed, the Sami in The Arctic Circle are a perfect example of this. The Kitava’s on an island on the equator (warmer climate) rather ate more plant-based foods supplemented with fish. Though this may be a pipe dream for many, it can be achieved by carefully selecting as many foods as can be grown in a local area. It’s what I attempt to do as best I can.

The second part of the statement by Natalie Stapleton alludes to what foods they advise as good for the human body and what is not.  When you go through the dietitians Australia website (2) it is evident where the bias of their eating plans sit: vegetarianism or a subset of it like pescatarian, low fat, lean meats (fist size) and chicken 2 to 3 times a week; unsaturated fats, reduced salt intake, low-fat dairy, non-dairy milks; a dietitian-approved diet is considered inadequate if it does not have all the five proposed food groups. 

Of course, it’s important to note that they do talk about medical diets and that these may be needed for some individuals. There is some talk on low carbohydrate diets, but when you read the low carb diet example, I was bemused by the amount of bread that is advised on a low carb routine. They continue to promote the margarine over butter philosophy despite the research that saturated fats are bad and can cause heart disease. I note eggs are recently back in the good books. 

When you are being paid by the government in the Medicare system there are some things that it’s not clear until you are in the system that the restrictions come into play.

Last year I went hiking on the Overland Track.  Dr James Muecke (Australian of the Year), his wife and their doctor and specialist friends were on the track with me. You can imagine, 6 days and 5 nights hiking with only a few people to talk to meant there were many interesting conversations to have. I asked one of the doctors as to why she quit practice recently? She told me the reason she quit was that she didn’t have her own practice but rather was working for the government. It seemed monthly she would get a letter from the regulators as to why she had asked for so many blood tests, or another type of test or an x-ray. She was being scrutinised about everything she did. She said even though she had her own practice she was totally controlled by the Medicare system and felt hamstrung by the bureaucracy.

The Australian Dietary Guidelines are a government initiative. If the Dietitians of Australia want to be part of that scheme,then they will be heavily regulated for what they can or cannot say and prescribe.

I’ve been in the field of nutrition for well over four decades. Changing a person’s diet from a standard Australian highly processed diet to a real food diet with all the food groups (dairy, meat, grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and herbs) would be a winner for many people in solving their health issues. But now this is not possible with the rise of so many food allergies, intolerances, the destruction of the microbiome. So many people feel they have an inability to eat so many types of foods. We must sometimes become extreme in our eating patterns in order to bring back the homeostasis of eating all real foods again.

Our food has been destroyed by agricultural chemicals being sprayed throughout its growth. Chemicals are sprayed before seeding if not directly on the seeds, during crop growing. Chemicals like Roundup are sprayed before harvest as a desiccating agent on grains and legumes, Our foods then go from chemical farms to distribution points where they are preserved by irradiation, Apeel, toxic powders, waxes and the like. Then the food can be refined, extruded, or changed in some way. Compounded with the synthetic biology (GM germ made additives) added to our food, plus other forms of additives like colour, flavour, fillers, binders, acidity regulators, we have a disaster waiting to happen or worse, already happening to our microbiome and thus the health of humanity. It seems the regulators of all these chemicals are also industry funded.

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Our children are taught at a very early age that a pill will make them better rather than letting their innate intelligence get them through a fever, a cold, or a childhood disease. There are vaccines for everything and more to come put onto the childhood schedule. When I was a child at the age of 5 children walked to their vaccines, now our newborn babies are vaccinated within 24 hours.

The COVID vaccine has shown the decimation of the microbiome of keystone microbes. What’s to say we haven’t done the research on the rest of the vaccines now being given that could be destroying our microbiome. Our microbiome is the very way we digest plants and build the fundamentals for our immune, hormone and nervous systems. They are vital for a healthy system.

These are merely questions I’m asking as something has to be done so that we can eat the five food groups again without causing autoimmune diseases, digestive issues, brain and nervous system issues, and immune issues.  

As a young girl being brought up in the 1960’s and 70’s I do not remember any issues with foods at home or school. Things have dramatically changed.

We no longer have the luxury to follow the dietary guidelines, which are so outdated and poor in science back-up. There will be new guidelines out in 2024, but I’m not holding my breath as to much change. The DA do note that only 1% of the population follows the guidelines. The problem is that all hospitals, schools, elderly institutions, day care centers all must follow the dietary guidelines in their food delivery to the people that live or attend these public places. My dad in the final 2 years of his life was subjected to food, following the dietary guidelines and it was the worst food I had ever seen: everything had sugar, white flour, fried in polyunsaturated vegetable oils, plastic cheese, white bread, modified milks, and breakfast cereals were the mainstay. We have all witnessed loved ones in hospitals being delivered unfit food for a sick person. They are merely following the dietary guidelines. 

Since the conception of the dietary guidelines in Australia in 1982 (followed on the back of the US dietary guidelines) the health of the Australian people, especially chronic disease, has exponentially risen in children and adults. From just 4% of the entire population in 1964 to now a staggering 38% of our children and 80% of our adult population over the age of 65 have a chronic disease. I can’t blame this entirely on the dietary guidelines. There are many other factors at play but the guidelines play an important role in the advertising of ultra-processed foods as healthy. This is by ignoring the ingredients of the food and only concentrating on the nutritional panel of carbohydrates, fats and proteins.  

It is easy to manipulate the macronutrients, add micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) to pretend a food has a health value, but in fact is a completely fabricated food replacing a once held healthy food. A good example of this is butter and margarine. Butter is made from cream, in fact I can make it in my kitchen with cream and salt.  Whereas margarine cannot be made in a kitchen. The refined vegetable oil it is made from is either hydrogenated or interesterified, making a completely different fat composition including some trans fats and interesterified fats (I wrote about this in my book Lab to Table). Then because it doesn’t have the right colour, colours must be added, so must synthetic vitamins, preservatives and flavours to make believe you are eating something that tastes like butter, looks like butter, smells like butter but is not butter. Rather, it is a fabricated non-perishable food-like substance. I can do this with a thousand food-like substances that are now masquerading as food in the grocery store and people eat it believing that it would not be on the grocery store shelf if it was bad for us. 

The dietary guidelines have never been about quality but rather focusing on quantity of various macro- and micronutrients and calories, going with the adage of ‘calories in, calories out’. This will not solve any health crisis we are in. We must begin to focus on the quality of food we are eating. The failed heart tick and now the food star rating which the DA wants to be made part of the National Nutrition Strategy(1) continue this vein. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result. Until we realise that quality is part of change then we are still being insane.

There are many dietitians that I have spoken with, and watch on social media that seem to be going against the dietary guidelines looking at different diets, like keto, carnivore, low carb, real food, intermittent fasting and the like. If these amazing, registered dietitians go under the Medicare system they may be stopped in their tracts and not be able to help their clients with a repertoire of dietary changes. The DA already hamstring their registered practitioners by stopping them prescribing different diets that are now found to be instrumental in healing immune, nervous and blood disorders. Food is our miracle cure but commercial farming, food manufacturing and the pharmaceutical industry don’t want you to know it. They want you to continue to eat ultra-processed foods made from plants grown with chemicals so that you need drugs to keep the symptoms away.  As the years go by these three industries are all amalgamating.

Once upon a time and not that long ago the DA were funded by major food manufacturers, especially those that were heavily in the grain processing areas, but on their website it now states “We will not consider partnerships with organisations within or related to food manufacturing and food industry associations, or alcohol companies”.  But I noticed that the members of the DA can still be paid by these food manufacturers to promote their refined and ultra-processed foods. 

I was educated in the same system registered Dietitians are still being educated in.  I’ve employed young nutritionists being educated in the same system and I have not seen much change from the 1980’s to now. I created the Nutrition Academy to teach a new (old) nutrition one based on the philosophy of vitalism and anthropological principles.  They are guiding lights to help untangle the web of nutritional misinformation that seems to be permeating the consciousness of consumers. I wrote my book Lab to Table to teach people step-by-step how to move away from ultra processed foods to real foods. Yes it takes effort, yes you must re-educate yourself in order to make these changes, but I know that following a real food diet can be life changing.    

Food is medicine but it must be free from hindrances that affect the innate intelligence of nature itself. This may be altruistic but for those who do want to change and can change then this is by far the best way that I know. Education is the key. It’s time to get back into the kitchen to feed and nourish our families to heal this nation.

Cyndi

Ref;

(1) https://dietitiansaustralia.org.au/sites/default/files/2023-11/202311-Submission-Diabetes%20Inquiry.pdf

(2) https://dietitiansaustralia.org.au