The trailer ALONE, to that movie, is very powerful!
"the elimination of 'serving size' and its replacement by nutritional content per 100 gm."
Good idea.
They are going through a similar process in Canada. Read about it here: http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=867669.
Excellent! It's important that all Canadians on TuDiabetes participate. On the page you linked to I found this link to participate in the dialog:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/minist/messages/_2014/2014_07_14-eng.php
Even if we agree, it's important to make our voiced heard, even more so if we believe things need to be changed.
Update:
When this topic started there were 440 comments posted on the FDA docket for proposed changes to the Nutrition Label:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2012-N-1210-0130
Now there are 497!
As to proposed changes to Food Serving Sizes, there were 42:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2004-N-0258-0048
Now there are 55!
Let's keep our comments coming, specially we need to increase participation in the second docket.
We're up to 525 and 58 comments in each of the dockets.
Let's keep it up. We have until Friday at noon (Eastern time) to submit comments.
I just created a group called "The Diabetes Advocacy Challenge." Please consider joining this group, discussing advocacy opportunities and reporting on your accomplishments. I already created a discussion on this FDA docket, please join us in commenting on this rule and reporting your participation in the roll call.
And remember to comment on this rule before noon on Aug 1st.
As a member of Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution group and a diabetic who follows a very low carbohydrate diet it's my opinion that the proposed changes are useless at best or worse yet will be damaging to diabetics in particular but also to the general population 50% of whom will be both diabetic or pre-diabetic, and obese by the year 2050.
When we follow a very low carbohydrate as Dr. Bernstein insists is essential to the treatment of all diabetics and which many other doctors like Dr. Jeffry Gerber of Littleton Colorado recommend as the best way for many to lose weight overall calorie consumption is largely irrelevant. Making the total number of calories more prominent on the Nutrition Facts will only serve to further the false and grossly misleading notion that restricting total calories alone will lead to normal blood sugars, facilitate weight loss, or otherwise improve health.
The daily allowances recommended by marxist meddlers from federal gubment agencies are grossly in error. Telling a diabetic to get 60% of their caloric intake from starch, sugar, and other carbohydrate is abusive. Furthermore the gross over-consumption of total carbohydrate by the general populations happening as a result is probably at the root of the out of control epidemic of obesity in the general population and is probably the driving force behind the worldwide diabetes pandemic, thus making the federal gubment's retarded ■■■■■■■■ recommendations even more prominent and the focus of their Nutrition "Facts" label will only make our sick country sicker. Opinions are not facts and the opinions promulgated by the FDA and the USDA are based on marxist ideology and not on science. Science has demonstrated conclusively for 2500 years that the high carbohydrate diets the federal gubment recommends are a slow brutal death sentence for diabetics. The recommended daily allowances need to be changed or better yet thrown out the window.
I don't care what the eco-radicals, animal rights activists, global warming fanatics, pharmaceutical company profiteers and other assorted leftist lunatics like George McGovern, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Hussein Obama say I should eat. I take that medical advice only from credible and licensed endocrinologists like Dr. Richard K. Bernstein an eighty year old type one diabetic who like me was dying from diabetes in his late thirties while following the galactically stupid dietary advice coming from the federal gubment. According to him, the medical advice being given by the unlicensed never elected Michelle Hussein Obama is wrong as wrong could be.
Sodium content should not be listed before carbohydrate content. Excess dietary sodium is not the cause of the vast majority of cases of hypertension. In diabetics with hypertension abnormally elevated blood pressure is usually caused instead by a combination of chronically elevated blood sugars and too much circulating insulin in the blood. Hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia kills and disables. The recommendation to restrict sodium from the diet is most often times just another meaningless burden imposed diabetics. They bind many burdens heard to bear.
Cholesterol content should not be listed at all. The link between elevated total serum cholesterol and heart disease was asserted but has never been proven. The universal validity of the evidence used to support the hypotheses that high total serum cholesterol caused heart disease has been either seriously challenged or found to be hoax engineered by marxist, darwinist, or freudian ideologues. The link between dietary cholesterol intake and total cholesterol was simply assumed by the phony marxist consensus manufacturers peddling luddism. As a result of its placement on the Nutrition Facts label the vast majority of the public believe this link is valid. Gary Taubes a Harvard trained phycisist and science critic states in his seminal work "Good Calories Bad Calories" on page 19 in a footnote, "Decreasing cholesterol consumption from four hundred milligrams a day, the average American intake in the 1990's to the 300 milligrams a day recommended by the National Cholesterol Education Program would be expected to reduce cholesterol levels by 1 to 2 milligrams per deciliter or a decrease of perhaps 1%." It gets worse but at best dietary cholesterol is a red herring. If you double nothing you still get nothing.
Furthermore, listing fat first and breaking down the fat content into saturated fat and unsaturated fat categories is backwards and a waste of space. Fat content should be listed after carbohydrate protein and calories. High fat diets, particularly those low in carbohydrate and high in saturated fats have been proven to induce weight loss, positively effect efforts to normalize blood sugars in diabetics, and improve cardiac risk profiles and reduce the risk for other comorbidities and comortalities in diabetics and in the general population such as the risk for stroke. Saturated fats don't cause heart attacks, cows don't cause global warming. This scientific theory that high carbohydrate diets cause diabetes and thus all the bad ■■■■ diabetes causes has been supported not only by a large and growing body of evidence from peer reviewed scientific studies including the Diabetes Complications and Control Trial, the very large Framingham Heart study and the Spanish Ketogenic Mediterranean diet study, but also by compelling evidence from philosophy, logic, history, anthropology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, pharmacology along with an impressive body of clinical evidence amassed by Dr. Richard K. Bersntein a 55 plus year type one diabetic and forty year clinical endocrinologist. Many of Dr. Bernstein's patients while under his care achieve and safely maintain glycated hemoglobin A1C values between 4.2% and 4.6%, reflecting an average blood glucose level as indicated by fingerstick measurement of 83 mg/dl. These truly normal blood sugars are achieved most of the time without any deterioration in cardiac risk profiles and often times instead with an associated improvement improvement, while following a very low carbohydrate diet.
Finally, including another category on the nutrition facts label for added sugars would also just be another burdensome regulation for industry that would only serve to mislead the consumer and finds it most destructive consequeneces amongst diabetics. Sugars, whether added, or naturally occuring should be avoided by diabetics and to a lesser extent by all Americans. The total amount of carbohydrate is what matters. A single gram of carbohydrate can raise my blood sugars by 5mg/dl if not covered by bolus insulin injection or infusion. High carbohydrate diets dictate high insulin requirements, whether injected, infused, or produced naturally by the pancreas in non-diabetics and diabetics alike. In diabetics high carbohydrate consumption makes doses of injected or infused insulin impossible to calculate with the degree of certainty necessary to achieve and safely maintain normal blood sugars. Dr. Richard K. Bernstein has proven the universal validity of the law of small numbers as it relates to the treatment of diabetics with the same certainty with which Sir Isaac Newton proved the inverse square law and with the same certainty with which Albert Einstein proved the law of general relativity. Hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia kills and disable thus carbohydrates kill and disable whether they take the form of sugar or starch and independent of whether some big gubment marxist bureaucrat characterizes them as added or not.
In summary, until the marxist and darwinian ideology underpinning the the federal gubment's dietary guidelines are abandon the federal gubment's recommended daily allowances should not be included on the nutrition facts label. Only the facts are necessary.
To make your comment be taken into account by the FDA, it needs to be posted on the appropriate docket:
- Nutrition label: http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2012-N-1210-0130
- Serving sizes: http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2004-N-0258-0048
We have until noon Eastern time, this Friday (Aug. 1) to post comments.
We're at nearly 600 comments posted on the Nutrition Label docket:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2012-N-1210-0130
and just under 70 posted on the Serving Size docket:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2004-N-0258-0048
Let's continue to make ourselves heard!
Just replied to the Nutrition Label Docket. Thanks to all the staff at tudiabetes for encouraging all of us to speak up.
AMAZING JOB, all of us!!
After the close of the comments, period:
- 791 comments posted on the Nutrition Label docket: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2012-N-1210-0130
- 125 comments posted on the Serving sizes docket: http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2004-N-0258-0048
One, post comment, question I'd be interested in seeing the answer to. Given the example label:
Total Carbs 37g
Dietary Fiber 4g
Sugars 1g
Added Sugars 0g
and ignoring the serving size change, assuming *you* consumed a 2/3cup (55g) serving, corresponding to the above figures in grams, how many grams of carbs would you have consumed:
a) 37
b) 33
c) 1
d) 32
John Bowler