Government’s Deadly Food Advice Is Linked to All-Cause Mortality

You should never trust the government with your health. I’ve been telling this to my patients for years.

And it turns out you shouldn’t trust most dieticians either.

Newly released documents reveal that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics — a powerful lobby group with wide-ranging influence over government policy on food — has almost no interest in your nutritional health.

Instead, they are focused on lining the pockets of Big Food manufacturers — and themselves.

These findings are part of a recently published, peer-reviewed study led by a team of U.S. and U.K. researchers.

This new study is titled “The Corporate Capture of The Nutrition Profession in The USA.”¹

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried...

The researchers examined a stockpile of financial documents and internal communications obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

They were shocked by what they discovered.

It turns out that the cozy and corrupt conspiracy between the Academy, the government, Big Food giants like Kraft, General Mills and Nestle, as well as industry bodies like the Sugar Association, is enough to make even the most trusting person suspicious.

The Academy bills itself as an independent group that lobbies Congress to shape national food and nutrition policy.

It also provides guidance to more than 110,000 U.S. dietitians.

Yet the group is riddled with industry interests and corruption.

And it’s controlled by former industry bosses from companies like Monsanto and its new owner, Bayer.

The level of backroom deals, kickbacks, and quid pro quos between the Academy and Big Food uncovered by the research is simply mind boggling.

Perhaps most blatant of all is the paper trail which reveals that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics owns stock and has received millions of dollars in contributions for the shameless promotion of ultra-processed food that for years has been linked to a wide range of chronic health problems.

In this Confidential Cures article, you’ll learn just how corrupt Big Food and the government really are and why you should never trust them with your health.

I’m also going to show you how you can get these nutritionless, disease-causing fake foods off your dinner table. It’s time to take back control of your diet from greedy corporations whose products have nothing to do with your health, but everything do with power and profit.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics claims to be an independent voice and “trusted educational resource for consumers.”

But that’s a long way from the truth.

The researchers found that the Academy accepted at least $15 million from corporate contributors between 2011-2017, and more than $4.5 million in additional funding went to the Academy’s foundation.

Among the highest contributors were companies and industry entities including Nestle PepsiCo, Hershey, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Conagra, the National Dairy Council, as well as baby formula producer Abbott Nutrition.

The Academy also received funding from Big Food through sponsorships, which the researchers revealed were just quid pro quos.

In a 2015 email obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, an Academy employee defined sponsorship as:

“When a company pays a fee to the Academy in return for... specific rights and benefits.”

Talk about corruption. To me, that definition sounds more like a bribe.

The email reveals that the Academy was in a two-year, $300,000 “sponsorship” deal with Abbott at the time. The email went on to describe how the Academy could use its dietitians’ influence in pediatricians’ offices around the country to push Pediasure, one of the Big Pharma company’s baby food products.

The researchers also found that the Academy owned Abbott stock at the time of the deal.

The same email described a sponsorship agreement with the National Dairy Council, which would pay $1.2 million for a package that would fund “support for both the Academy and the Foundation to continue the collaborative work around food, nutrition, and agriculture.”

Other Academy sponsors include Coca-Cola’s industry group, and Conagra, which owns brands like Reddi-Wip, Slim Jim, and Banquet.

Documents also showed there were discussions with Subway about how the Academy could “endorse” the fast-food chain’s “healthier products.”

And it agreed to allow Kraft to put its “Kid’s Eat Right” seal on Kraft Singles packaging. This “seal of approval” suggests an independent source had verified the product’s nutritional value. Of course, you know that this processed cheese product, which contains dyes and other chemicals, has extremely poor nutritional value.

After a consumer blowback, the academy denied that the label was an endorsement. But it did up being forced to rescind the stamp.

Meanwhile, about $4.5 million in corporate funding from processed food giants like General Mills went to an initiative called the “Champions Program.”

This granted funds to hundreds of organizations to support projects that essentially promoted a range of ultra-processed foods as part of a campaign for “healthy eating and active lifestyles for children and their families.”

In terms of your health, these ultra-processed foods are some of the most damaging foods you can eat, and the revelations are just the very tip of a massive corruption iceberg.

Make no mistake about it, ultra-processed foods — which include breakfast cereals, pizza, chicken nuggets, sodas, chips, and other salty, sweet and savory snacks, packaged baked goods, microwaveable frozen meals, instant soups and sauces, and much more — are loaded with some of the most unhealthy and unnatural ingredients in existence.

Most contain unnaturally high amounts of processed sugars and salt, industrial oils, trans fats, artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, and chemical sweeteners.

Of course, they also contain additives — many of which are banned in other parts of the world — that imitate the texture and taste sensations produced by natural foods.

And the economics of industrial food manufacturing mean you can buy ultra-processed foods cheaper than unprocessed meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables.

And as we’ve just learned, they’re usually marketed as healthy, thanks to the influence of the Academy and their backroom deals with Big Food.

Government diet gurus and even dieticians — especially those who pay attention to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics — perpetuate this lie. They end up playing directly into the hands of food processing corporations and their life-shortening products, claiming they are an inevitability of our modern world.

This is unforgivable and plain wrong.

A quick look at the U.S. consumption rates for ultra-processed foods is shocking: ^2,3

Even though the government’s Dietary Guidelines recommend limiting added sugars to no more than 10% of daily calories — this is a near-impossible goal with the level of ultra-processed foods now in the typical American diet.

And it’s not just the terrible damage these foods themselves cause.

A steady diet of ultra-processed foods will also leave your body starving for the vitamins, minerals, live enzymes, micronutrients, and healthy fats you need to ward off diseases.

Research shows that the consumption of ultra-processed foods has been linked to an enormous range of chronic health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, Alzheimer’s, macular degeneration, arthritis, cancer, obesity, and much more.

Meanwhile, a large study from the Netherlands, published in The Lancet last year, revealed that the closer people live near fast-food outlets, the higher their chances are of developing diabetes and other chronic health problems.⁴

And recent research from scientists from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found that people who eat ultra-processed foods on a regular basis have a staggering 49% higher risk of developing lung cancer — even if they’ve never smoked a single cigarette.⁵

The good news is that avoiding these fake foods and switching to a healthy diet is much easier than you might think.

Your primal ancestors knew the secrets of good health instinctively. And over the span of a couple of hundred thousand years, humans evolved to require a certain range of nutrients for our health to thrive — and ultra-processed foods were never among these ingredients.

Even your grandparent’s generation didn’t have to contend with the dangers we face every time we walk into the supermarket.

I’ve been warning my patients away from unnatural, ultra-processed foods for decades. They’re the root of almost every modern chronic ailment.

If you want to enjoy the kind of primal health your body was built for — the first step is simply to eat naturally...and avoid processed foods.

Here are three quick and easy changes you can make:

Most of us think of malnourishment as something that happens to starving people in Africa or third-world countries, not here in America.

But my research shows that because so much of our calorie content comes from processed foods, most people in the U.S. are overfed yet undernourished.

We live in a world where we eat enough to fill our bellies, but what we eat is so deprived of nutrients our bodies don’t get enough to even reach a base of what we need for basic nutrition.

We’re full, yet our bodies are starving for the most basic nutrients.

Only 8% of Americans meet the minimum recommended daily allowance of their essential nutrients. It’s important to note that the RDA is only the minimum, not the amount of a nutrient you need for your best health.

As nutrition pioneer and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling once said, “Recommended daily allowances only give levels of vitamins and minerals that will prevent death or serious illness from vitamin deficiency. To get real health benefits from vitamins, you need to get more than just the minimal recommended amounts.”

I have taken a quality multivitamin nearly every day for 30 years and you should too. But choose a quality multivitamin. I say this because there are a lot of bad multivitamins out there.

The most popular one in the world — I won’t mention the name — is the worst one I’ve ever found. It’s pure junk. It’s just chemicals and minimal doses.

But even a high-quality vitamin isn’t enough. Here are the supplements I think everyone should take:

To Your Good Health,