This March is the 40th Anniversary of National Nutrition Month

So what does that exactly mean?  

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics states on their site that the 2013 theme is “Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day” and that they it “encourages personalized healthy eating styles that recognize food preferences, lifestyle, cultural and ethnic traditions and health concerns that impact all food choices”.

And, of course that “registered dietitians play a critical role in helping people eat right, their way, every day”.

Hmmmm….

While there are some RDs out there who are doing an outstanding job at teaching it like it is; in other words not trying to parlay the silly MyPlate recommendations to everyone, unfortunately, the majority have been taught the antiquated approach to ‘healthy eating’ and still believe and instruct patients and clients to eat servings of whole grains every day, along with some low-fat dairy and to not overdo eating too much red meat.

Here are a few questions I’d like to pose to whomever is organizing National Nutrition Month:

• How about officially including Paleo as one of the options that people might choose as their ‘personalized style of eating’?   Veganism is recognized, as is being vegetarian or gluten-free, so why not include Paleo, too, rather than constantly giving it the brush off for ‘being too restrictive’ or ‘not having enough calcium’ or other nonsense associated all too often with Paleo?
• When will you publicly recognize that everything in moderation is not ok, and that even a little bit of refined sugar is toxic?
• How about more programming to fund getting fresh veggies and fruit and clean proteins to low-income areas who eat at fast food establishments not because they don’t know better but because they can’t afford not to, via the contributions you receive from companies such as Coca Cola, the National Dairy Council, Kellogg’s, Pepsico and Mars, just to name a few of your sponsors?

If this is an event that’s been going on for forty years and the state of obesity and “unhealth” of our nation has progressed to such a dire place, this is a seriously broken model.   How many more decades will elapse before something changes?