N.C. Dietetics Board Goes After Michelle Obama (a CJ parody)



Board ups aggression since court ruling dismissing lawsuit



By Lief E. Green

Nutrition Correspondent



RALEIGH — The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition has decided that First Lady Michelle Obama's advocacy of healthy eating amounts to practicing nutrition without a license, which is illegal in North Carolina.





State Dietetics Board nutrition enforcement officers tried to serve cease-and-desist papers to Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, but were unable to get past Secret Service agents in the Time Warner Cable Arena. (CJ photo by Don Carrington) Buoyed by a recent court decision to dismiss a suit brought against the board by a diet blogger who likewise had been targeted by the state board, officials say they will become even more aggressive toward anyone who gives unlicensed diet advice.



Board Director Charla Burill told Carolina Journal the first lady has been sent a cease-and-desist letter because she gave nutrition advice on one of her many recent campaign trips to North Carolina.



Over the past five years, the nutrition board has investigated nearly 50 individuals or organizations — including personal trainers, nurses, and even Duke Integrated Medicine, a wellness center — that have offered advice about what people should eat.



The board's aggressive enforcement became a national story when CJ reported on the court battle with Steve Cooksey, the Charlotte-area blogger, who sued the board on First Amendment grounds, saying it censored his website when it urged him to remove an advice column from the site.



By singling out the first lady, however, the board has ratcheted its normally aggressive efforts at policing foodie talk to a whole new level. "We normally don't pay close attention to people who live outside North Carolina," Nan E. Staight, the board's director of enforcement, told CJ. "But Mrs. Obama reaches a nationwide audience. She hasn't taken a single continuing education credit program on organic farming, and still she won't keep her mouth shut about mealworms and compost. All this talk about whole grains and root vegetables is getting downright dangerous. We're afraid Sasha and Malia [the Obamas' daughters] might get the frightening notion that they can pack a healthy lunch without first consulting a licensed nutritionist. It's scary, I tell you." Staight said Obama's "Let's Move!" initiative was particularly troubling. The project's website has an entire section about food and nutrition titled "Eat Healthy!"



"The page opens with this sentence: 'Parents and caregivers play a key role in not only making healthy choices for children and teaching children to make healthy choices for themselves,' Staight said. "It offers a set of dietary guidelines. It's completely irresponsible and outrageous for a layperson to say that, and it violates our regulations."



The board attempted to deliver its warning letter to the first lady during September's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, but Staight said the Secret Service rebuffed her enforcement attempts.



Since then, she said, Obama has been careful to schedule campaign visits to North Carolina on short notice so she could land, give a quick pep talk to supporters, and then leave the state before nutrition officers could get to her.



Staight admits the board's enforcement efforts grew more difficult in October as President Obama's campaign saw North Carolina voters warm to Republican challenger Mitt Romney.



"When Obama for America wrote off North Carolina, it became obvious that the first lady wasn't going to return," Staight told CJ in late October. "We're worried, because if Obama loses the election, they're moving to Hawaii, and there's no way we can get her." CJ



