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The Independent
28 minutes ago
- The Independent
FACT FOCUS: A look at RFK Jr.'s misleading claims on US dietary guidelines and Froot Loops
The food pyramid that once guided Americans' diets has been retired for more than a decade, but that has not stopped President Donald Trump 's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from regularly criticizing the concept. He often highlights the pyramid, misrepresenting dietary standards and criticizing health initiatives of the Biden administration. Such claims were featured in a video aired Tuesday, before his appearance on Fox News ' 'Jesse Watters Primetime.' Here's a closer look at the facts. KENNEDY: 'The dietary guidelines that we inherited from the Biden administration were 453 pages long. They were driven by the same commercial impulses that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid." THE FACTS: The original food pyramid did not mention any specific products. But at the very top, it recommended that oils, fats and sugar be consumed 'sparingly.' Grains such as bread, cereal, rice and pasta were on the bottom tier, where six to 11 portions a day were recommended. The current dietary guidelines are 164 pages long, not 453. They were released in December 2020 during Trump's first term, along with a four-page executive summary. A scientific report used to develop the dietary guidelines is published every five years by an advisory committee. The latest report, released in December by the Biden administration, is 421 pages long. Trump's first administration released an 835-page scientific report in July 2020 that informed the current guidelines. 'The dietary guidelines include several documents, including a scientific report which summarizes the scientific evidence supporting the dietary guidelines,' said Laura Bellows, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University. 'It can be long due to the comprehensive nature of the document. That said, these findings are distilled down into concise guidelines that are foundational to the creation of consumer information and educational materials.' Experts said that Froot Loops, a breakfast cereal, would have fallen into multiple categories under the pyramid concept, offering vague guidance to consumers. 'It's a bit trickier than just one grouping,' Bellows said in an email. She said Froot Loops 'would fall more in foods that we should 'moderate' ... but does contribute to the grain group.' The cereal is high in sugar, she added, but does have fiber and other key nutrients. The Agriculture Department introduced an updated pyramid guide in 2005 that incorporated new nutritional standards. It retired the pyramid idea altogether in 2011 and now uses the MyPlate concept, which stresses eating a healthy balance of different foods based on factors such as age and sex. MyPlate recommends making half of the grains one eats in a day whole grains and cutting back on added sugars. Similar to the food pyramid, this puts Froot Loops, which has whole grains and added sugars, in both categories. 'MyPlate, not the Food Pyramid, has been the visual graphic for the US Dietary Guidelines since 2011,' said Bellows. 'So, referring to the 'top of the pyramid' is a dated reference.' Kennedy's other criticism of Froot Loops has focused primarily on its manufacturer's use of artificial dyes to enhance its color. He has made getting rid of artificial colors in foods an important part of his 'Make America Healthy Again' plan. Asked for comment on Kennedy's remarks, the Health and Human Services Department said work is on track to release the final 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The agency said Kennedy is committed to ensuring those guidelines 'are grounded in gold-standard science and reflect a clear focus on healthy, whole, and nutritious foods.' ___
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Federal investigators demanded details on transgender patients from at least 1 hospital
When the U.S. Justice Department sought information from doctors and clinics that provide gender-affirming care for young transgender patients, officials weren't just asking for policies. They also demanded information about individual patients. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced in a statement July 9 that the department had sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that provide the care. The request represented an elevation in President Donald Trump 's administration's effort to halt the medical treatment for transgender youth, even in states where it's legal. Bondi said the requests were part of investigations into 'healthcare fraud, false statements, and more.' No charges have been announced so far, but the probes have had a chilling impact on the availability of care. Specifics of the requests were not made public until a court filing in a separate lawsuit this week. Advocates say the requests are invasive and unnecessary. 'It turns doctor-patient confidentiality into government surveillance,' said Jennifer Levi, GLAD Law's senior director of Transgender and Queer Rights. At least one of the requests seeks names and social security numbers of patients The subpoena sent to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on June 11 was included in a legal filing Monday in challenges from the states of Minnesota, Oregon and Washington to the administration's attempts to bar the treatment for patients under age 19. The 18-page document demanded an expansive list of documents be provided. Among them: Documents to identify 'by name, date of birth, social security number, address and parent/guardian information' patients who were prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy. The requests also covered personnel files for various categories of hospital employees, information about patient intake procedures and about which insurance billing codes the hospital used for gender-affirming care. The due date listed was July 9. It's not clear whether subpoenas sent to other providers were identical. Neither the hospital nor the Department of Justices responded to requests for comment on Thursday. Gender-affirming care has emerged as part of a political and legal battle Gender-affirming care includes a range of medical and mental health services to support a person's gender identity, including when it's different from the sex they were assigned at birth. It encompasses counseling, medications that block puberty and hormone therapy to produce physical changes as well as surgeries to transform chests and genitals, though those are rare for minors. Most major medical groups say access to the treatment is important for those with gender dysphoria and see gender as existing along a spectrum. While there's wide, if not universal, medical consensus, the political situation is contentious. Since 2021, at least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the care for minors, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June affirmed the states' right to have such policies, at least under certain conditions. Trump has signed one executive order defining sex as only male or female — and as unchangeable — and another that seeks to end federal funding of the care for patients under 19. He's also sought to bar transgender military service members and keep transgender athletes out of certain sports competitions. And the administration released a document that questions the standards of treatment for transgender youth and suggests relying solely on talk therapy rather than medical interventions. The investigation is one reason some clinics have halted the care At least eight major hospitals and hospital systems announced in July that they were stopping or restricting gender-affirming care, even though they're in states where it is not banned. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is not among those that have announced they're curtailing care, though a place it has referred patients for surgeries — Penn Medicine — said in May that it would no longer perform them on patients under 19. A group of Democratic state officials across the country are suing the Trump administration, claiming it is intimidating healthcare providers to stop the care. GLAD Law's Levi said the investigation is just one of many factors that have led providers to change their policies. 'It's chilling,' she said.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Michael Göpfert obituary
My husband, Michael Göpfert, who has died of cancer aged 77, was a consultant psychotherapist and child psychiatrist in Merseyside. In 1985 he set up a new psychotherapy service at the Royal Liverpool hospital, with integration at its heart, ensuring that therapists from different disciplines each had some training in another therapeutic method. Michael saw that separating adult and child services when a parent had a severe mental illness meant that the effect on the children was often missed. He was an early proponent of this neglected area and edited the book Parental Psychiatric Disorder (1996). He worked closely with Barnardo's Young Carers and its Keeping the Family in Mind service in Liverpool, now well established but innovative when it began. Michael also trained medical students in communication skills, supervised many psychiatric trainees and brought cognitive analytic therapy training to Merseyside. He was always prepared to take on difficult issues that others avoided. Michael was born in Munich in the postwar years, the youngest of the four sons of Herbert Göpfert, a publisher, and his wife, Hildegard (nee Klaiber). As a teenager, he lived in the Bavarian Alps where he felt at home, climbing, walking, swimming, and playing the piano and the harpsichord. He wanted to be a pianist, but when he was 20, his mother died suddenly and he lost direction. He went on to study nursing, then medicine, and became part of the political youth movement confronting the legacy of nazism. Alienated by the oppressive culture in Germany and attracted by the NHS and new developments in community psychiatry, in 1978 he moved to London for training. He completed child psychiatry training in Toronto, where he also discovered the Canadian wilderness, kayaking and First Nations culture. He found that most adult psychiatrists did not even know if their patients had children, a finding repeated when he returned to the UK, and this sparked his interest in parental mental illness. He took up the post in Liverpool and made Merseyside his home, while also studying for a master's in family therapy at the Tavistock Institute in London. Michael had grown up not knowing anyone Jewish and with the Holocaust never talked about. He lived with the huge guilt that many young Germans felt at that time. At the Tavistock he met me, a child of German Jewish political refugees. We both came to understand more the position of the 'other' and how victim and perpetrator roles could alternate. We married in 1989, and I moved to Merseyside to work as a child psychiatrist. There our three children were born. Michael loved music, cycling, foraging and baking – after retirement in 2010 he set up a community bakery. He restored and developed all our family homes. In recent years we lived between Liverpool and north Wales; in Wales, Michael rediscovered some of what he had missed from Bavaria, and there, as a legacy project, he planted a field of truffle trees. Michael is survived by his children, Anya, Max and Leo, his grandchildren, Aria and Luca, his brothers Dieter and Christian, and me.
