Dietary advice divides us – but we should stand together and change them

Who are we to blame when the world seems unreasonable? Because we have created a way of being together, where we throw with reproaches, and where finding someone we can scold is the best way to a good press story – and the only way to awakening and action. And where taking responsibility for reversing a clear mistake is the same as taking the blame for the mistake.

Today it’s me who scolds.

Not on named persons or bodies, but on a responsibility vacuum and an inertia that costs life and joy of life every day. Let’s take each other by the hand, forget all about whose fault it is, and see to it that the problem is solved. We do not have to put the arsonist in the leg lock until we call 112 and put out the fire.

The health paradox

The time has come for us to stand together and see to it that the greatest health paradox in recent times is rectified. The paradox that creates the biggest and most serious clash with both patient safety, equality in health, health ethics – and biological reasonableness, which I have witnessed in my lifetime! The paradox of a continued disease-promoting dietary practice for people with diabetes 2 and insulin resistance two years after unequivocal professional consensus at international level:

We serve a diet that imparts unstable blood sugar to all diabetics and insulin resistant in the country’s public institutions, while scientific consensus is blood sugar stable food through starchy vegetables, moderation with added sugar and refined grains and focus on unprocessed foods. And the diet is served in full accordance with the national dietary guide’s daily dietary suggestions.

While desserts seem to be a human dish, cabbage and fresh vegetables are not.

Why does a pharmacist interfere with food?

I am a trained pharmacist. And I’m trained as a pharmacist. In my traditional industry, the pharmaceutical industry, we are used to reacting promptly if there should be the slightest sign that medication creates the least patient safety risk. We are trained in that mindset from the first day of study. And just a likelihood of serious side effects means drugs promptly stop development or withdrawal from the market. Without regard to the financial interests of the producer. Thats how it should be. That’s the way it is. It’s a matter of course in my industry. And that, of course, is also one of the reasons why medicine is expensive.

But in the wake of this, of course, the entire pharmaceutical industry is the victim of an almost obvious discredit as an amoral profit-focusing industry. No one seems to blink their eyes at all as they attribute to the pharmaceutical industry the worst possible intentions. As a matter of course. A discrepancy that stands in stark contrast to the diligence academics in the pharmaceutical industry control over drug use. Let me tell you what it is: I have never met anyone on my path in the pharmaceutical industry who did not always think patient safety first in their meaningful work.

One day I make an untraditional choice and get up from my good chair in the pharmaceutical industry.

Because I experience a paradox in Denmark. Because I experience that we are medicating a misunderstanding. Because I experience that it is easier to get medicine than biological knowledge as a citizen in Denmark. Because I experience a health mood that can not be reconciled with my view of humanity: A mood that indicates that the Dane does not want his own health. And because the Dane does not want his own health, it does not pay to give professionally updated dietary advice. Nobody listens anyway.

I can not reconcile with that mood. And 5 years of travel on the high seas between the drug and diet continents has shown me that you can not either!

No man’s or every man’s land

And on my journey in the Land of Nobody or Allemands between the pharmaceutical industry and the diet industry, I have been surprised. The diet industry actually has a far greater impact on our health than the pharmaceutical industry. But the diet industry does not seem to take itself as seriously as we do in the pharmaceutical industry. Because in the diet industry, there is no prompt withdrawal of recommendations that compromise patient safety and cost lives. To a far greater degree than any drug has done in my lifetime, I have to repeat.

And my analysis tells me that the problem is allowed to escalate because no one has the responsibility and the competencies to change it. The responsibility infrastructure that the solution to the problem needs is simply not established.

No one wants to fly over the territory of others, and therefore no one takes responsibility for closing the blind spot between nutrients and drugs: the health biological effects of food in the human organism. And the consequence is – with a repetition from before:

We serve a diet that counteracts a stable blood sugar in the country’s public institutions, while scientific consensus is blood sugar stable food through low-starch vegetables, moderation with sugar and refined grains as well as a focus on unprocessed foods. Our inertia costs lives. We can not be that familiar.

And through the patient-centered spectacle lens from my pharmaceutical formation, I can not create focus in the image that emerges. What has prevented the Ministry of Health or the National Board of Health from reacting? Is that our territorial consideration? Is it because diet falls under the Ministry of Food and Medicine under the Ministry of Health? Or is it because we do not see the problem as seriously as I have outlined it here? Is it because the National Board of Health does not know the concept of insulin resistance? Is it because the Danes themselves want to choose the Kronikervejen – and is the Kronikervejen a human right?

Or is it a completely seventh image that I simply can not create?

As a curious immigrant to the food industry, I experience – wherever I go – a definite indifference regarding. updating dietary advice for people with insulin resistance, diabetes 2 and inflammatory diseases. Indifference and inertia cost lives! Not only because old guidelines mean that disease-promoting diets are served in public institutions in Denmark, but also think about what role model the health system is. Since no one in their wildest imagination thinks that disease-promoting food is served in a Danish hospital, yes, then of course you go home and eat the same as you were served in the hospital. This means that you completely avoid the enormous health-promoting effect that real food has on real people.

Dietary advice should be a professional recommendation. But the recommendation should not be confused with diet dictatorship, because all adults have a free choice of food. Which preferences we each want to spice up the professional recommendations with is irrelevant. We cannot incorporate preferences into professional advice.

I have been angry, disappointed and disillusioned. But most of all, I have wondered.

And I have not at one time met a single person who wants something bad for someone. The only thing I meet is a lot of dedicated people working on just their cause. But everyone is waiting for everyone. No one is responsible. Or no one dares take it. Or no one has an incentive…

Within the last year, I have been reassured several times that the Clinical Dietitians ‘Union (FaKD) is responsible for updating the dietitians’ framework plans for dietary advice for people with diabetes. And that the National Board of Health would then incorporate the framework plans in the diet handbook, so that new knowledge comes to life in Denmark. But nothing has happened yet, and I have been asked several times by FaKD members if I know when the National Board of Health updates the dietary guidelines, so that the framework plans could be updated in line with this…

Yes, you read that right: The organization that others expect to have the server right in the game about the new dietary advice against diabetes asks a random diet debater 😉 if I know when the new principles will come.

In recent years, the Diabetes Association has waited so patiently for official diet updates that many citizens have lost confidence in the association’s intentions. But from 2019, the association has now stepped into its work clothes to create knowledge about different dietary principles against diabetes 2.

What are we doing to solve the problem?

I have written to the Minister of Health, the Danish Parliament’s Health Committee, FaKD, the National Board of Health and the Diet and Nutrition Association. They have all kindly reassured me that it will probably come. They have all carefully and patiently described the process.

But with my pharmaceutical formation, I simply can not live with it going so slowly!

There has been an error. It needs to be corrected. The responsibility for utilizing diet therapy must be prioritized. An active, interdisciplinary counterpart to the Danish Medicines Agency should be created, which prioritises diet therapy and diet education with dedicated efficiency and a pharmaceutical view of patient safety. And the unit should have the willingness of a privately employed pharmacist to stay an extra hour at work to look after the patient’s interests

The responsibility should not be loosely placed with a professional group that does not receive funds to prioritize the work, and where participation in the working group constitutes a voluntary effort.

Diet therapy has a low priority in the Danish healthcare system. Imagine if we gave diet therapy the priority it deserves. Then society could save a lot of money on treatments and the pharmaceutical industry could afford to develop effective medicines against even more serious diseases.

I believe in a future where we take diet as seriously as we take the drugs we are world champions in developing in Denmark.

Here you got the pharmacist’s health view.

And if you’re interested, you can also get my unofficial dietary advice, which I launched a year ago when my patience ran out.

It is dietary advice that looks after the interests of biology in the insulin-resistant body. Dietary advice that can be a game changer for people. Dietary advice that, in terms of health, is in line with the publicly available scientific consensus, which can be read by professionals and utilized by professionals’ acquaintances. When I write my dietary advice, it is my desire to create equality in health. For it can not wait any longer. It’s inhuman.

Thanks for reading.

And thank you for doing your part to make Denmark a better place to be. For both sick and healthy. For you who have a good time – and you who do not!