An ophthalmologist on what’s driving chronic disease

Dr James Muecke was named 2020 Australian of the Year in recognition of his work to end blindness. He’s also committed to ending our blindness to what goes on in the food industry.

His work has inevitably brought him face-to-face with the consequences of type 2 diabetes, one of which can be blindness.

Last month I mentioned Dr Gary Fettke, a (now retired) orthopedic surgeon whose work also brought him into contact with diabetes through having to amputate the limbs of diabetic patients. But when he talked to them about diet he was summonsed to appear before the medical board to answer to someone from Sanitarium.

Like Gary Fettke, James Muecke has learned that Sanitarium has long fingers in many pies.

I heard him speak this month — interestingly, delivering a version of a talk he’d given to the AMA a couple of months ago. Here’s hoping they were listening.

He talked about Big Pharma and the way doctors are urged and educated to treat diabetes with drugs. The power of diet to impact the disease is dismissed.

Unless by this we mean meal replacement shakes. They’re encouraged, along with bariatric surgery. But helping patients eat a diet of real food (yes, shockingly, one that might include glucose stabilising foods such as meat, eggs and dairy) is off the agenda.

No one’s keen to recommend whole food, it seems; there’s simply no money in that.

Dr Muecke’s information on Big Pharma is a story in itself, one that would curl your tail and whiskers, but I’ll focus here on his insights into the food industry because this dovetails with what I wrote in September.

If you read that article on the Blue Zones and the extraordinary role the Seventh Day Adventist Church plays in these, as well as medical and dietetic training, and the production of processed food alternatives to animal foods through Sanitarium, you possibly won’t be too surprised by what Dr Muecke has to say.

And yet, it is eye-opening, to use a bad pun. Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of it is the way the ghost of Ellen G. White and her plant-based doctrine still looms so large over our lives.

She founded the Adventist church in the 1860s and Sanitarium soon after the turn of the 20^th century, all inspired by visions from God. Dr Muecke points out that in her teens she sustained a nasty head injury, so that helps to explain the visions.

In those, God told her that meat and other animal products were evil, and that fruit, nuts and seeds were the road to purity.

Today, Sanitarium has factories across Australia and New Zealand that manufacture more than 400 products going to over 40 countries.

But it also plays a huge role in ‘education’.

The company provides recipes to patient advocacy groups such as Diabetes Australia and the Heart Foundation, nutrition fact sheets to dietitians and doctors, nutritional education information for teachers, and a health improvement program for the public.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s also the largest provider of health and well-being programs in the workplace through the ‘Vitality Works’ program.

In addition, Sanitarium has sponsored the Australian Primary Nursing Association, so we can reasonably assume what kind of dietary information we’d find in their short courses for nurses on supporting patients with cardiovascular disease, cancer or diabetes.

Dr Muecke also notes that some of the research on red meat is flawed to the point of being laughable. For example, there have been studies on rats injected with a powerful carcinogen then fed meat. And we’re told that meat causes cancer.

The idea that red meat causes bowel cancer dates back to 2001 when it was promoted by the Australasian Nutrition Advisory Council. On its website the Council was described as not-for-profit, and an independent panel of nutrition and health experts.

But who owned the Council? Yes, Sanitarium.

What about the government’s 5-star health rating system? You’ll be astonished to know that Sanitarium’s Weet-Bix and Up & Go breakfast drink receive five stars. We probably all grew up with Weet-Bix; it’s just a shame it’ll spike our blood sugar almost as much as Coco Pops does.

As for Up& Go, it has over 20 ingredients, but the main ones include seed oils, refined flour and sugar. A great ultra-processed start to the day.

Guess who was part of the group who devised the health star system? Sanitarium, of course.

Sadly, that system was designed by the food industry for the food industry. More fool us if we thought it would help us make healthy choices.

Anyway, enough. You get the picture. And it’s not as though Sanitarium is the lone ranger. All of the sugary drink and processed food companies play this game. Sanitarium just happens to be masterful at it.

Oh wait, I forgot. It’s not just that a plant-based diet is healthy for us. It’s also healthy for the planet.

Sanitarium has leapt on board with the fashionable idea that eating animal foods is destroying the environment. We do need to manage the raising of animals and the conditions in which they’re raised far more effectively than we have.

The answer, however, is not the vast mono-cropping operations being undertaken across the country to produce flour, seed oils, soy and sugar for the processed food industry. This degrades our soils and destroys biodiversity.

So what’s driving chronic disease? Dr Muecke believes there are three key factors.

One is religion and the way we still live in the dietary shadow cast by Ellen G. White and the Adventist Church.

Two are financial conflicts of interest. When people writing medical and dietary guidelines are compromised by receiving monies from drug or processed food companies (which are often not disclosed) the results aren’t likely to be in the best interests of our health.

(Of course, in the case of Sanitarium, numbers one and two come together.)

And three, what enables all of it is government apathy. While there’s no insistence on rigour and transparency, and it’s acceptable for conflicted individuals to take up these roles, nothing will change. But let’s not hold our breath waiting for that to change.

PS. Some positive news on the diabetic front is that Diabetes Australia has agreed to the development of dietary guidelines for the diabetic population by the end of next year, and early signs suggest this will be based on scientific information, not corporate sponsorship deals. Given that as we get older, managing blood sugar, and keeping our triglycerides low and HDL high is key to healthy ageing, these guidelines should be applicable to a broad range of people, not just those diagnosed with the disease.

Some of you might remember that a few years ago poor Michael Mosley was at his wits’ end trying to get Diabetes Australia to do this, but he was fobbed off. A pity he won’t be here to see it happen.

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