California Bill Would Ask Docs to Study Effects of Food on Health

The California Senate’s Business, Professions and Economic Development
Committee has reportedly passed a bill (S. 380) that would permit the
Medical Board of California to “set content standards for any educational
activity concerning a chronic disease that includes appropriate information
on the impact, prevention, and cure of the chronic disease by the application
of changes in nutrition and lifestyle behavior.” The legislation would amend
Section 2190 of the Business and Professions Code that deals with mandatory
continuing medical education and authorize the board “to also set content
standards for an educational activity concerning chronic disease, as specified.”
See John McDougall Press Release, May 16, 2011.

Backed by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and the Physicians
Committee for Responsible Medicine, the bill was evidently authored by John
McDougall, a physician known for emphasizing the role of diet in preventing
chronic disease. McDougall currently appears in the film “Forks over Knives,”
which apparently “examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of
the so-called ‘diseases of affluence’ that afflict us can be controlled, or even
reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.”