2023.06.20 Plant Based Treasure Valley. How Big Sugar Undermines Dietary Guidelines: Dr. Michael Greger (06/2022)

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-big-sugar-undermines-dietary-guidelines/

How Big Sugar Undermines Dietary Guidelines: Dr. Michael Greger (06/2022)

“International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) , a nonprofit, is accused of being a front group for Coca-Cola and other junk food giants.”

Dr Greger reports: “In 2019, a series of reviews was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that concluded the same thing that past reviews have concluded: adherence to dietary patterns lower in red or processed meat intake may result in decreased risk for premature death, cardiometabolic disease and mortality––meaning the risk of getting and dying of diseases like heart disease and type 2 diabetes, as well as the risk of getting cancer and dying from cancer. Therefore, they concluded in their Dietary Guideline Recommendations, “continue your current red meat consumption,” “continue your processed meat consumption.” Wait, what?! Yeah, premature death, cancer, heart disease, diabetes––but keep eating your burgers and bacon.”

According to Dr Greger, to understand what just happened, we have to go back to 2015. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans had just had the audacity to recommend people reduce their sugar intake. Imagine you work for the sugar industry. The evidence is overwhelmingly against you; so, what do you do? Well, what did the tobacco industry do? One method involved the tobacco industry’s funding of and involvement in seemingly unbiased scientific groups to manipulate the scientific debate concerning tobacco and health. Groups like the ILSI, the International Life Sciences Institute, which has enjoyed a long and serious collaboration with the tobacco industry also shapes food policy around the world.

The International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), technically a nonprofit with an innocuous sounding name, “has been quietly infiltrating government health and nutrition bodies around the world.” It was created by a top Coca‐Cola executive, and “is almost entirely funded by Goliaths of the agribusiness, food, and pharmaceutical industries”. “After decades largely operating under the radar, the Institute is coming under increasing scrutiny by health advocates in the United States and abroad who say it is little more than a front group advancing the interests of the 400 corporate members,” among them Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.

So, when the 2015 US dietary guidelines advised eating less sugar, the soda-funded International Life Sciences Institute sponsored a review concluding that the guidelines on sugar were simply not trustworthy. (Bradley Johnston, was the lead author.) And

here it is, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The Scientic Basis of Guideline Recommendations on Sugar Intake, concluded there basically wasn’t one. “Guidelines on dietary sugar do not meet criteria for trustworthy recommendations as they are based on low-quality evidence.”

“This comes right out of the tobacco industry’s playbook: cast doubt on the science,” said Professor Marion Nestle. “This is a classic example of how industry funding biases opinion. It’s shameful”, says Dr. Greger. ”Yes, the paper was paid for by the likes of Coca-Cola, Hershey, Red Bull, and the makers of Oreos. But the authors swore they wrote the protocol, and conducted the study independently. It turns out that was a lie, forcing the journal to publish a corrected version after the Associated Press obtained emails showing the industry front group “requested revisions.” It also came out that a co-author conveniently forgot to mention a $25,000 grant she got directly from Coca-Cola.

Dr Greger states, “You know it’s bad when candy bar companies criticize an industry-funded paper on sugar. The maker of Snickers, Skittles, and M&Ms broke ranks with other food companies, and denounced the industry-funded paper. They themselves were a member of the ILSI, but come on, telling people to ignore guidelines to cut down on sugar? That’s just making us all look bad.”

If you look at the relationship between funding sources and the conclusions in nutrition-related scientific articles, there’s about seven or eight times the odds that the conclusion will skew favorable, compared to studies with no industry funding. For interventional studies, the proportion of studies paid for by industry that reached unfavorable conclusions about their own products was a big fat 0 percent, which should not surprise anyone.

So, what can journals do to counteract tactics that industry often uses to advocate for the safety of unsafe products, or question the integrity of science that calls their products into question? To combat the tobacco industry’s inuence over scientic discourse, leading journal editors have refused to be passive conduits for articles funded by the tobacco industry. They just won’t accept tobacco industry-funded studies period. Accordingly, high-quality journals could refrain from publishing studies on health effects of added sugars funded by soda and cookie companies. But they’re not. This was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

And so, four years later, the next batch of dietary guidelines is on the way, and the last scientific report of the guidelines committee, encourages people to eat diets not just lower in sugar, but lower in meat as well. So, Big Beef decided to follow in the footsteps of Big Butterfinger. Same journal, same guy, same scientist-for-hire, Bradley Johnston, as lead author, and the rest is history.

For additional information on ILSI, see the following article:

https://usrtk.org/pesticides/ilsi-is-a-food-industry-lobby-group/

International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) is a food industry lobby group

Posted: March 22, 2022 by Stacy Malkan

The International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) is a corporate-funded nonprofit organization based in Washington DC, with 17 affiliated chapters around the world. ILSI describes itself as a group that conducts “science for the public good” and “improves human health and well-being and safeguards the environment.” However, investigations by academics, journalists and public interest researchers show that ILSI is a lobby group that protects the interests of the food industry, not public health.

Recent news

● June 2022: ILSI rebrands (again) to duck bad press, by U.S. Right to Know.

● March 2022 study in Cambridge University Press found that 95% of the U.S.

2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee had conflicting interests with the food, and/or pharmaceutical industries. Particular actors, including Kellogg, Abbott, Kraft, Mead Johnson, General Mills, Dannon, and the ILSI had connections with multiple members. The “significant and widespread” conflicts of interest on the committee “prevent the DGA from achieving the recommended standard for transparency without mechanisms in place to make this information publicly available.”

● February 2022 study in Globalization and Health co-authored by USRTK shows that food and chemical industry players view the International Food Information Council (a group that works closely with ILSI) as “being central to promoting industry-favorable content in defense of products facing potentially negative press, such as aspartame...” The study describes IFIC as “a sister entity to ILSI. ILSI generates the scientific facts and IFIC communicates them to the media and public.” See also, IFIC: How Big Food Spins Bad News.

● April 2021 study in Globalization and Health documents how ILSI plays a key role in helping the food industry shape scientific principles by promoting the acceptance of public-private partnerships and permissiveness about conflicts of interest.

● Coca-Cola has severed its longtime ties with ILSI. The move is “a blow to the powerful food organization known for its pro-sugar research and policies,” Bloomberg reported in January 2021.

● ILSI helped Coca-Cola Company shape obesity policy in China, according to aSeptember 2020 study in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law by

Harvard Professor Susan Greenhalgh. “Beneath ILSI’s public narrative of unbiased science and no policy advocacy lay a maze of hidden channels companies used to advance their interests. Working through those channels, Coca Cola influenced China’s science and policy making during every phase in the policy process, from framing the issues to drafting official policy,” the paper concludes.

● Documents obtained by USRTK add more evidence that ILSI is a food industry front group. A May 2020 study in Public Health Nutrition based on the documents reveal “a pattern of activity in which ILSI sought to exploit the credibility of scientists and academics to bolster industry positions and promote industry-devised content in its meetings, journal, and other activities.” See coverage in The BMJ, Food and drink industry sought to influence scientists and academics, emails show (5.22.20)

● Corporate Accountability’s April 2020 report examines how food and beverage corporations have leveraged ILSI to infiltrate the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and cripple progress on nutrition policy around the globe. See coverage inThe BMJ, Food and soft drink industry has too much influence over US dietary guidelines, report says (4.24.20)

● New York Times investigation by Andrew Jacobs reveals that a trustee of the industry-funded nonprofit ILSI advised the Indian government against going ahead with warning labels on unhealthy foods. The Times described ILSI as a“shadowy industry group” and “the most powerful food industry group you’ve never heard of.” (9.16.19)The Times cited a June study in Globalization and Health co-authored by Gary Ruskin of U.S. Right to Know reporting that ILSI operates as a lobby arm for its food and pesticide industry funders.

● The New York Times revealed the undisclosed ILSI ties of Bradley C. Johnston, a co-author of five recent studies claiming red and processed meat don’t pose significant health problems. Johnston used similar methods in an ILSI-funded study to claim sugar is not a problem. (10.4.19)

● Marion Nestle’s Food Politics blog, ILSI: true colors revealed (10.3.19) ILSI ties to Coca-Cola

ILSI was founded in 1978 by Alex Malaspina, a former senior vice president at Coca-Cola who worked for Coke from 1969-2001. Coca-Cola has kept close ties with ILSI. Michael Ernest Knowles, Coca-Cola’s VP of global scientific and regulatory affairs from 2008–2013, was president of ILSI from 2009-2011. In 2015, ILSI’s president was Rhona Applebaum, who retired from her job as Coca-Cola’s chief health and science officer (and from ILSI) in 2015 after the New York Times and Associated Press reported that Coke funded the nonprofit Global Energy Balance Network to help shift blame for obesity away from sugary drinks.

Corporate funding

ILSI is funded by its corporate members and company supporters, including leading food and chemical companies. ILSI acknowledges receiving funding from industry but does not publicly disclose who donates or how much they contribute. Our research reveals:

● Corporate contributions to ILSI Global amounting to $2.4 million in 2012. This included $528,500 from CropLife International, $500,000 from Monsanto and $163,500 from Coca-Cola.

● A draft 2013 ILSI tax return shows ILSI received $337,000 from Coca-Cola and more than $100,000 each from Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Agrisciences, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Bayer CropScience and BASF.

● A draft 2016 ILSI North America tax return shows a $317,827 contribution from PepsiCo, contributions greater than $200,000 from Mars, Coca-Cola, and Mondelez, and contributions greater than $100,000 from General Mills, Nestle, Kellogg, Hershey, Kraft, Dr. Pepper, Snapple Group, Starbucks Coffee, Cargill, Uniliver and Campbell Soup.

Emails show how ILSI seeks to influence policy

A May 2020 study in Public Health Nutrition adds evidence that ILSI is a food industry front group. The study, based on documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know via state public records requests, reveals how ILSI promotes the interests of the food and agrichemical industries, including ILSI’s role in defending controversial food ingredients and suppressing views that are unfavorable to industry; that corporations such as Coca-Cola can earmark contributions to ILSI for specific programs; and, how ILSI uses academics for their authority but allows industry hidden influence in their publications.

The study also reveals new details about which companies fund ILSI and its branches, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions documented from leading junk food, soda and chemical companies.

● Public Health Nutrition: Pushing partnerships: corporate influence on research and policy via the International Life Sciences Institute, by Sarah Steele, Gary Ruskin, David Stuckler (5.17.2020)

● The BMJ, Food and drink industry sought to influence scientists and academics, emails show, by Gareth Iacobucci

(5.22.20)

● U.S. Right to Know press release: ILSI is a food industry front group, new study suggests

How Big Sugar Undermines Dietary Guidelines: Dr. Michael Greger (06/2022)

“International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) , a nonprofit, is accused of being a front group for Coca-Cola and other junk food giants.”

Summary:

● The International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), which is supposedly a non-profit (term used lightly), was created by a top Coca Cola executive (Alex Malaspina, in 1978) and it is funded almost entirely by huge agribusinesses, tobacco, food and pharmaceutical industries.

● After running under the “radar” for decades, ILSI has come under increasing scrutiny by health advocates in the US and Europe who say that it is just a front group advancing the specific interests of the 400 corporate members.

● ILSI rebranded to become the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS), a 501(c)(3) organization focused on catalyzing science for the benefit of public health. (2020)

● Coca-Cola allegedly severed ties with ILSI in 2021, Mars (left in 2018). The World Health Organization (WHO) severed ties with ILSI in 2015.

● PepsiCo, Kellogg, Kraft, Cadbury, Syngenta, Cargill, Unilever and over 400 other companies are members.

04.18.2023 Plant Based Treasure Valley Oatmeal Diet Put to the Test for Type 2 Diabetes Treatment

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/oatmeal-diet-put-to-the-test-for-diabetes-treatment/

Dr.Michael Greger:

● Thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, diabetes was described as a “too great emptying of urine”.

● The recommended remedy, ironically, was a diet consisting of wheat grains, grapes, honey, and berries.

● The person who coined the term “diabetes” (** was Aretaeus of Cappadocia in the 2nd century. He provided the first accurate description of diabetes, while in the

17th century Thomas Willis added the term mellitus to the disease).

● Aretaeus also prescribed a high-carbohydrate diet. Then, right up until we had insulin, doctors were saving the lives of people with diabetes with an oatmeal diet.

● This wouldn’t make any sense until Sir Harold Himsworth arrived on the scene, the first to separate out type 1 diabetes from type 2 diabetes and define the concept of insulin resistance. After just a few days on a high-fat diet, you can get twice the blood sugar spike in response to drinking sugar water, compared to after eating a high-carb diet.

● Now that type 2 diabetes is like the Black Death of the 21st century in terms of devastating health impacts, what about revisiting the almost forgotten, short-term dietary oatmeal intervention as an economical, yet highly effective tool to achieve better blood sugar control in patients with type 2 diabetes?

● Basically, patients are offered up to about two and a half cups of oatmeal three times a day as their meals with nothing but some herbs and maybe small amounts of raw vegetables just to mix things up. For how long? Just a couple of days. Note that’s only about a thousand calories; so, the result is a hypocaloric, plant-based dietary intervention that is low in fat—in fact, no added fat—no salt, and excludes animal protein.

● Is a few days of oatmeal really going to make much of a difference?

● Dr. Greger reports on a case of an oatmeal intervention for a person with severe

insulin resistance, in the ICU.

● Within 48 hours of admission, the patient developed such severe insulin

resistance she required more than 200 units of insulin per day. Up until then, the patient received standard diabetic tube feeds, which obviously were not working. So instead, they dropped oatmeal and vegetables down the tube instead,

presumably using a really good blender. And it worked. Her first blood sugars of the day dropped from up around 250 down to about 100 five days later. But that near-normal blood sugar was on 160 fewer units of insulin, down from over 200 units a day. Lower blood sugars on 160 fewer units of insulin!

● But for people with type 2 diabetes (“regular diabetes”), what good is eating oatmeal for a few days if you just go back to your regular diet?

● Several studies have suggested that the beneficial effects could last about a month after a few days of oatmeal.

● For example, in this randomized controlled crossover trial, not only did insulin needs drop about 40 percent in just two days, compared to just restricting calories alone with a hypocaloric diabetic diet, but also a measure of long-term blood sugar control taken four weeks later reflected the benefit. There was a highly significant reduction of required daily insulin doses, with beneficial effects shown weeks later.

● Dr. Greger posed: “Who cares if you have to take huge doses of insulin, though?” He stated that insulin causes weight gain, which just makes the underlying insulin resistance worse. It is a vicious cycle.

● But instead, with the oatmeal you’re actually treating the cause, not to mention the incidence of cancer and overall mortality associated with having such high levels of insulin in your body all the time.

● Other new studies have shown the same thing. Two days of oatmeal significantly reduced the required amount of insulin and improved blood sugar levels with beneficial effects noted for up to four weeks.

● For example: Patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes, using the two-day oatmeal diet lead to a 40 percent reduction of insulin dose, accompanied with almost normalization of average blood sugars.

● Although the intervention only lasted for two days, they observed a lasting significant reduction of insulin dosage and ameliorated mean blood sugars for weeks after they were dismissed from the study. And this was after they resumed their regular diets.

● A massive drop in insulin was needed after eating the oatmeal for two days, but, a month later they were still needing about 40 percent less insulin.

● How could this short intervention lead to such dramatic results that somehow continued for weeks?

● Although short-term dietary oatmeal interventions cannot be compared to whole food, plant-based diets in terms of maximizing the intake of protective foods—(as per Dr. Greger) that’s ideally what people should try to eat to reverse their type 2 diabetes completely—eat oatmeal and eat a WFPB diet that strictly excludes the animal-based foods that seem to increase the risk of developing diabetes.

● Dr. Greger stated: “even cutting out saturated fat for even two days may reduce insulin resistance. You can free ride on that for at least a few weeks, even if you go back to eating crap.”

WARNING! If you try this oatmeal diet, your physician has to be ready to rapidly deprescribe your blood sugar drugs, else you become dangerously overmedicated. Imagine if this woman was still getting 200 units of insulin. Her sugars would crash so low she’d be dead. So, oatmeal interventions should not be performed in patients that might have difficulties in reporting symptoms of low blood sugars, who you can’t closely monitor. The downside of trying oatmeal is that it may work a little too well; so, it must be done under close medical supervision.

Sources Cited:

Beer G. The recognition and treatment of diabetes through the ages. Pract Diabetes. 1996;13(1):33-34.

Wood FC, Bierman EL. New Concepts In Diabetic Dietetics. Nutr Today. 1972;17(3):4-12.

Porges O. Carl H. von Noorden. Digestion. 1958;90(2):117-120.

Kim SH. Measurement of insulin action: a tribute to Sir Harold Himsworth. Diabet Med. 2011;28(12):1487-1493.

Bryder L, Harper C. Commentary: more than “tentative opinions”: Harry Himsworth and defining diabetes. Int J Epidemiol. 2013;42(6):1599-1600. Himsworth HP. The influence of diet on the sugar tolerance of healthy men and its reference to certain extrinsic factors. Clin Sc. 1934(Nov. 14):251-264.

Storz MA, Iraci F. Short-term dietary oatmeal interventions in adults with type 2 diabetes: a forgotten tool. Can J Diabetes. 2020;44(4):301-303.

Storz MA, Helle P. Oatmeal interventions in severe insulin resistance on the intensive care unit: A case report. Complement Ther Med. 2019;46:69-72.

Delgado G, Kleber ME, Krämer BK, et al. Dietary intervention with oatmeal in patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes mellitus - a crossover study. Exp Clin Endocrinol Diabetes. 2019;127(9):623-629.

Zerm R, Helbrecht B, Jecht M, et al. Oatmeal diet days may improve insulin resistance in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Forsch Komplementmed. 2013;20(6):465-468.

Zerm R, Kröz M, Girk M. Oatmeal diet in patients with severe insulin resistance – an overview and possible mechanisms of action. Forsch Komplementmed. 2013;20(suppl 3):1-50.

Lammert A, Kratzsch J, Selhorst J, et al. Clinical benefit of a short term dietary oatmeal intervention in patients with type 2 diabetes and severe insulin resistance: a pilot study. Exp Clin Endocrinol Diabetes. 2008;116(2):132-134. Storz MA, Küster O. Hypocaloric, plant-based oatmeal interventions in the treatment of poorly-controlled type 2 diabetes: A review. Nutr Health. 2019;25(4):281-290.

** National Institute of Health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4707300/#:~:text=In%20the%202 nd%20century,sweet%20taste%20of%20the%20urine.

2023.02 Plant Based Treasure Valley Points of Progress

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HS AP student: Research on Inflammatory Properties of Diet. See Handout

VegNews

● Colorado’s cattle-free “ industrial-scale “Mega-ranch” was just opened in Thornton, Colorado by Meati.

● Meati plans to produce “meat” from mycelium, the root-like structure of a fungus.

● Just one tablespoon of fungi spores is capable of producing the whole-food protein equivalent of hundreds of cows in just a few days.

● Meati’s products include vegan whole-cut steaks and carne asada, along with plant-based alternatives to chicken cutlets in classic and breaded varieties—which are now being made more efficiently than their animal counterparts at the company’s new Mega Ranch.

● Tyler Huggins, CEO and co-founder of Meati, grew up on a bison ranch. With $250 million in funding to date for Meati, Huggins is redefining what modern ranching might look like.

● Meati’s new Mega Ranch near-continuously produces mushroom meat, with a target of producing 45 million pounds annually once the facility is fully operational by late 2023.

News from PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine)

● PCRM is actively involved in stopping “unethical” experiments by Elon Musk’s Neuralink on monkeys. PCRM and the University of California (Davis) are in litigation over release of videos and photos. The USDA is actively investigating violations of the Animal Welfare Act by Neuralink.

● PCRM billboards in states with highest prostate cancer (Utah, New Hampshire, Mississippi and Wisconsin) urge people to Ditch Dairy to protect against Prostate Cancer.

● Vegan diet rich in soy reduces hot flashes in women by 88%.(PCRM.org/HotFlashes)

● Swapping Animal Products for Vegan Diet Reduces Harmful Compounds (AGEs or Advanced Glycation end-products).

● AGEs (Advanced glycation end-products) cause inflammation and oxidative stress, which can lead to Type 2 Diabetes and Heart Disease.. They are also linked to weight gain.

● High amounts of AGEs are found in meat and dairy ( the Standard American Diet).

● Our bodies have the ability to process and render harmless small amounts of AGEs.

● A new PCRM study of 244 people found that eating a vegan diet reduced the amount of AGEs consumed by 79%.

● Participants were randomly assigned to either a control group (no changes made to diet) or to an intervention group (who ate a low-fat vegan diet) for 16 weeks.

● About 55% of the reduction of AGEs in the plant-based group was attributable to the reduction in meat intake, 26% to decreased dairy intake and 15% to decreased consumption of added fats.

● See PBTV website: AGE Presentation, December 2019.

News from Medscape (Medscape is a website that provides information for clinicians)

Contrary to common belief, potatoes do not have a negative effect on blood glucose levels and can actually help people lose weight, according to researchers at Louisiana State University's Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

This is a summary of the article, "Low-Energy Dense Potato- and Bean-Based Diets Reduce Body Weight and Insulin Resistance: A Randomized, Feeding, Equivalence Trial," published in the Journal of Medicinal Food on November 11, 2022. The full article can be found on pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

● Potatoes are filled with key nutrients, packed with health benefits, and do not increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, as has been assumed.

● People tend to eat the same weight of food regardless of calorie content to feel full, so by eating foods that are heavier in weight and that are low in calories, you can reduce the number of calories you consume.

● Study participants found themselves fuller, more quickly, and often did not even finish their meal when the high-calorie items of their meals were replaced with potatoes.

● Participants were overweight, obese, or insulin resistant, but their blood glucose levels were not negatively affected by the potato consumption, and all of those involved actually lost weight.