health
Dissed herbing Does a new state law protect consumers from quacks, or target health food experts?
N by heidi kyser
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foods store, and you ask an employee about curing heartburn or lowering your blood pressure with foods or herbal supplements, pay close attention to the answer. A new state law that goes into effect Oct. 1 is intended to regulate dietitians — but could impact the business of nutritionists and herbalists by limiting the advice they can give. At stake is some $50 billion of alternative medicine expenditures in the U.S., according to a May report by Salon. Health care industry website TheMedica.com estimates that, as of December 2008, 38 percent of Americans over the age of 18 and 12 percent of children used some form of complementary or alternative medicine. Ask either dietitians or nutritionists, though, and they’ll say they only want the greater good. “It’s consumer protection,” says Pam Wagner, a registered dietitian and president-elect of the Nevada Dietetic Association, explaining the new law, Assembly Bill 289, which passed in the recent legislative session. According to Wagner, who helped craft the bill, it was aimed only at regulating the dietetics trade by giving the State Board of Health oversight of licensed dietitians. The Nevada group based its bill on a template from the National Dietetic Association, including industry standards and scope of practice. Wagner says those elements “make us different from
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a nutritionist or a naturopath. … Dietetics is evidence-based.” The new law was necessary, she adds, because the national organization administers tests and grants licenses to dietitians, but doesn’t enforce the rules. That’s each state’s job, just as it is with doctors, nurses and other healthcare practitioners. “We’ll be watching to make sure that people maintain their continuing education like they should, that they haven’t operated out of the scope of practice” by doing things such as giving injections, Wagner says. Once the state board gets up and running, it will create an online resource where consumers can find information about licensed dietitians. Assemblywoman April Mastroluca, who introduced the bill, says it will give people “a
level of comfort that these (dietitians) have a certain level of training and have passed certain tests and, therefore, can properly diagnose and counsel them in relation to food and nutrition.” A longtime sufferer of celiac disease, Mastroluca believes the law will regulate dietitians without limiting consumers’ reliance on “nutritionists or holistic doctors or other people whose advice they’ve trusted for many years. … I’ve given many people advice on things they should and shouldn’t eat for celiac disease,” she says. “Why would I support a law that makes that illegal?”
Healthy skepticism Still, some feel the language of the bill is too broad — even after it was amended
What about growing your own food? Hear how on “KNPR’s State of Nevada” at www.desertcompanion.com/hearmore
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Next time you’re at your local natural