Posted on 07/21/2011 2:35:09 PM PDT by nralife
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.”
Diamond Foods must not have made proper payments to the Obama regime.
I am so ashamed.... LOL
Keep your hands OFF my walnuts.
I’m glad, too. I bounce between three groceries (Marsh, Walmart & Kroger) and Amazon, but it’s worth it. My twins are part of the crowd, as well as two of my brothers.
If the size and scope of government were halved overnight, I suspect I owuld notice everything quickly getting better.
I have been alternating between walnuts, almonds and pecans for years, when it came time to switch back to walnuts I could not find them on the shelves, now I know why I guess.
The FDA are nuts.
Walnuts ARE drugs, so is water.
I learned in school, back in the olden days, that ANY substance that has an affect on the body is a drug.
The FDA is WAAAAYYYYYY out of line on this one.
When will this insanity stop and when will people demand that that beast be starved?
Ping to one of the most absurd things I’ve heard in a long time.
Anyone see any place to cut the government here?
These are your nuts they're talking about!!
Yep, I’m an addict- a walnut addict! There’s just no hope for me.... Oh Mr. Obama, help me with my affliction, oh dear!!
(not intended to mock addicts of narcotics or alcohol, etc..)
Me too! I have 2 big trees just full of them!
Now I’m jonesing for some walnuts. Wash them down with another health beneficial drug: oxygen.
So this fight is still continuing? 9 years, and counting...but there’s no waste in our lean, mean, fat-free government!
Oh, and like any good government document, this is less than half of it; the whole thing, governmentese and all, is at the furnished link below.
All us FReeper garden types need to be aware of what we say or write about our stuff, if selling it at a roadside stand or the local farmers markets.
Qualified Health Claims: Letter of Enforcement Discretion - Nuts and Coronary Heart Disease (Docket No 02P-0505)
July 14, 2003
Mr. D. J. Soetaert
President
International Tree Nut Council
Nutrition Research and Education Foundation
2413 Anza Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
RE: Health Claim Petition - Nuts and Coronary Heart Disease
(Docket No. 02P-0505)
Dear Mr. Soetaert:
This letter is to notify you of our decision with regard to the health claim petition you submitted on August 28, 2002, on behalf of the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation. This petition requests that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorize a health claim about the relationship between the consumption of nuts and reduced risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) on the label or in the labeling of whole or chopped nuts and certain nut-containing products. Your petition identifies peanuts and nine tree nuts (i.e., almonds, Brazil nuts, cashew nuts, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachio nuts, and walnuts) as appropriate for your requested health claim. Specifically, your petition requests that FDA authorize the following two model health claims for these nuts and certain nut-containing products:
“Diets containing one ounce of nuts per day can reduce your risk of heart disease.”
“Eating a diet that includes one ounce of nuts daily can reduce your risk of heart disease.”
FDA filed the petition for comprehensive review on December 6, 2002, in accordance with section 403(r)(4)(A)(i) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) (21 U.S.C. § 343(r)(4)(A)(i)). The initial deadline for FDA’s response was March 6, 2003. After mutual agreement, the deadline for the agency’s response was extended to April 20, 2003, and finally to July 17, 2003.
Based on our review of the scientific evidence, we conclude that there is not significant scientific agreement that consumption of nuts may reduce the risk of CHD. Consequently, we cannot authorize a health claim by regulation pursuant to section 403(r)(3)(B)(i) of the Act (21 U.S.C. § 343(r)(3)(B)(i)) and 21 C.F.R. § 101.14(c).
However, we conclude that that there is a sufficient basis for a qualified health claim about nuts and reduced risk of CHD. Therefore, FDA has decided to consider the exercise of its enforcement discretion with regard to the following qualified health claim and disclosure statement, where applicable, on the label or in the labeling of certain nuts cited in your petition and nut-containing products as presented below:
“Scientific evidence suggests but does not prove that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts [, such as name of specific nut,] as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease. [See nutrition information for fat content.]”
In the above claim, use of the bracketed phrase that refers to the name of a specific nut is optional. Also, as further discussed in this letter, the bracketed disclosure statement about fat content is applicable to “whole or chopped nuts” but not to “nut-containing products.”
Reports point to the FDA and other regulatory agencies working on BANNING ALL sales of herbal supplements, including ALL vitamins or any herb used to replace Obamacare type prescription drugs. For instance used to enhance sleep like Melatonin (among myriad examples).
The “walnut” matter is just a use of regulations to achieve something like this, to begin doing so, using a long standing technical regulation to achieve it.
Apart from bizarre restrictions on growing food for yourself and remain independent, the inability to use supplemens to heal yourself puts you at Obama’s mercy there too.
Gradually you have to turn to him at every turn to survive and either obey or not receive his beneficent bounty you must have to exist!
Anyone who can’t discern the “Arbeit macht frei” down the road apiece is purposely hiding their eyes.
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