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[GregS]

You can't make this stuff up.

 

Walnuts Are Drugs, Says FDA

Nov 16 • Articles, Government Watch, Seeds • 15795 Views • 435 Comments

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by MICHAEL TENNANT

Seen any walnuts in your medicine cabinet lately? According to the Food and Drug Administration, that is precisely where you should find them. Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a letter declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that — and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply.

 

 

Diamond’s transgression was to make “financial investments to educate the public and supply them with walnuts,” as William Faloon of Life Extension magazine put it. On its website and packaging, the company stated that the omega-3 fatty acids found in walnuts have been shown to have certain health benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease and some types of cancer. These claims, Faloon notes, are well supported by scientific research: “Life Extension has published 57 articles that describe the health benefits of walnuts”; and “The US National Library of Medicine database contains no fewer than 35 peer-reviewed published papers supporting a claim that ingesting walnuts improves vascular health and may reduce heart attack risk.”

 

This evidence was apparently not good enough for the FDA, which told Diamond that its walnuts were “misbranded” because the “product bears health claims that are not authorized by the FDA.”

 

The FDA’s letter continues: “We have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.” Furthermore, the products are also “misbranded” because they “are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes.” Who knew you had to have directions to eat walnuts?

 

“The FDA’s language,” Faloon writes, “resembles that of an out-of-control police state where tyranny [reigns] over rationality.” He adds:

 

This kind of bureaucratic tyranny sends a strong signal to the food industry not to innovate in a way that informs the public about foods that protect against disease. While consumers increasingly reach for healthier dietary choices, the federal government wants to deny food companies the ability to convey findings from scientific studies about their products.

 

Walnuts aren’t the only food whose health benefits the FDA has tried to suppress. Producers of pomegranate juice and green tea, among others, have felt the bureaucrats’ wrath whenever they have suggested that their products are good for people.

 

Meanwhile, Faloon points out, foods that have little to no redeeming value are advertised endlessly, often with dubious health claims attached. For example, Frito-Lay is permitted to make all kinds of claims about its fat-laden, fried products, including that Lay’s potato chips are “heart healthy.” Faloon concludes that “the FDA obviously does not want the public to discover that they can reduce their risk of age-related disease by consuming healthy foods. They prefer consumers only learn about mass-marketed garbage foods that shorten life span by increasing degenerative disease risk.”

 

Faloon thinks he knows why this is the case. First, by stifling competition from makers of more healthful alternatives, junk food manufacturers, who he says “heavily lobb[y]” the federal government for favorable treatment, will rake in ever greater profits. Second, by making it less likely that Americans will consume healthful foods, big pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers stand to gain by selling more “expensive cardiac drugs, stents, and coronary bypass procedures” to those made ill by their diets.

 

 

But people are starting to fight back against the FDA’s tactics. “The makers of pomegranate juice, for example, have sued the FTC for censoring their First Amendment right to communicate scientific information to the public,” Faloon reports. Congress is also getting into the act with a bill, the Free Speech About Science Act (H.R. 1364), that, Faloon writes, “protects basic free speech rights, ends censorship of science, and enables the natural health products community to share peer-reviewed scientific findings with the public.”

 

Of course, if the Constitution were being followed as intended, none of this would be necessary. The FDA would not exist; but if it did, as a creation of Congress it would have no power to censor any speech whatsoever. If companies are making false claims about their products, the market will quickly punish them for it, and genuine fraud can be handled through the courts. In the absence of a government agency supposedly guaranteeing the safety of their food and drugs and the truthfulness of producers’ claims, consumers would become more discerning, as indeed they already are becoming despite the FDA’s attempts to prevent the dissemination of scientific research. Besides, as Faloon observed, “If anyone still thinks that federal agencies like the FDA protect the public, this proclamation that healthy foods are illegal drugs exposes the government’s sordid charade.”

Source: The New American - Like The New American on facebook

Read more at http://www.realfarmacy.com/walnuts-are-drugs-says-fda/#R2e5eko4AJ2C1Ctp.99

Edited November 22, 2013 by GregS

[trichcycler]

we the people have the power to end their corrupt FDA system, the one where big pharma owners, doctors, and investors,change seats with fda authorities on a yearly basis, to approve the products they are in charge of screening, maybe.

 

good article, thank you

[imiubu]

“If anyone still thinks that federal agencies like the FDA protect the public, this proclamation that healthy foods are illegal drugs exposes the government’s sordid charade.”

[zachw]

Specific claims ("qualified health claims") are closely regulated by the FDA. Like it or not, a food manufacturer, an herbal supplement supplier, etc. cannot make a claim that isn't backed up by scientific consensus. If Diamond Foods can back up their claims, then no problem. If not, they gotta remove the claim. Regardless of one's feelings about the FDA, this is a pretty straightforward requirement. In any event, the FDA is constantly being challenged regarding this requirement and it looks like they may be loosening the rules as they have for consumption of whole grains & reduction of type 2 diabetes.

[Letterhead954]

Great article. Thanks Greg.

[t-pain]

cannabis prohibition is like if the DEA reclassified mold as a schedule 1.

and the fda only approved penicillin, and said 'mold has not been studied enough to prove its efficacy."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_penicillin

 

the FDA thinks it can ignore the hundreds of years of research and discoveries and evidence and books and patient and doctor reports that say moldy bread was used as an antibacterial agent.

 

without those hundreds (thousands?) of years of people using moldy bread to fix wounds, we wouldnt know about it today. to ignore history like this is folly. it seems like the USA is trying always to go back to 1950. 1950 had the best medical advances? 1950 was the best time for medical research? baloney. get out of the 1950s for a second and look at history.

 

they had placebo studies back in the 1600s too.

it was called 'this guy with the moldy bread lived, and that guy without the mold died'.

 

just because they didnt have electron microscopes and gas chromatography or electricity doesnt mean they were wrong.

 

why are bacteria immune to penicillin today? is it because they stuck with that penicillin from the 1950s and never updated it? could they grow stronger mold that destroys the resistant bacterias? could they grow different strains of penicillin? look at the wikipedia article, it mentions different strains work differently! can you imagine what other strains are out there, and what their properties can do??? 

 

but no, instead we sit in 1950 like babies. oh penicillin doesnt work, lets try a different drug instead of finding out whats wrong with penicillin, which was used for THOUSANDS OF YEARS without problem. because we sit in the 1950s that says we must use a liquid form of this mold. what if the dry powdered form is better? what if you let it grow out longer until after it 'fruits' ? is it stronger or weaker against bacteria? so many questions. can you breed penicillium fungi? make hybrids?

 

thats why the pharma companies are against plant based medicines like cannabis.

its not that cannabis is a cure all. its that people are learning how plants can fix/cure them AT ALL.

its learning that hey, maybe 1950s idea of 'take a pill' was WRONG. we could just change our diet and feel better. maybe instead of eating vitamins made from sheep's wool grease, we eat the vitamins in the plants and vegetables?

Edited November 23, 2013 by t-pain

[beourbud]

cannabis prohibition is like if the DEA reclassified mold as a schedule 1.

and the fda only approved penicillin, and said 'mold has not been studied enough to prove its efficacy."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_penicillin

 

the FDA thinks it can ignore the hundreds of years of research and discoveries and evidence and books and patient and doctor reports that say moldy bread was used as an antibacterial agent.

 

without those hundreds (thousands?) of years of people using moldy bread to fix wounds, we wouldnt know about it today. to ignore history like this is folly. it seems like the USA is trying always to go back to 1950. 1950 had the best medical advances? 1950 was the best time for medical research? baloney. get out of the 1950s for a second and look at history.

 

they had placebo studies back in the 1600s too.

it was called 'this guy with the moldy bread lived, and that guy without the mold died'.

 

just because they didnt have electron microscopes and gas chromatography or electricity doesnt mean they were wrong.

 

why are bacteria immune to penicillin today? is it because they stuck with that penicillin from the 1950s and never updated it? could they grow stronger mold that destroys the resistant bacterias? could they grow different strains of penicillin? look at the wikipedia article, it mentions different strains work differently! can you imagine what other strains are out there, and what their properties can do??? 

 

but no, instead we sit in 1950 like babies. oh penicillin doesnt work, lets try a different drug instead of finding out whats wrong with penicillin, which was used for THOUSANDS OF YEARS without problem. because we sit in the 1950s that says we must use a liquid form of this mold. what if the dry powdered form is better? what if you let it grow out longer until after it 'fruits' ? is it stronger or weaker against bacteria? so many questions. can you breed penicillium fungi? make hybrids?

 

thats why the pharma companies are against plant based medicines like cannabis.

its not that cannabis is a cure all. its that people are learning how plants can fix/cure them AT ALL.

its learning that hey, maybe 1950s idea of 'take a pill' was WRONG. we could just change our diet and feel better. maybe instead of eating vitamins made from sheep's wool grease, we eat the vitamins in the plants and vegetables?

Nice...better than the original article.......which of course was just nuts

[trichcycler]

a man cannot be ridden, unless his back is bent.