Transcript of Episode 21: Proposed FDA Nutrition Label Changes and RDI CODEX
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Warren Phillips, David Asarnow and special guest Scott Tips.
Warren: Hello everyone, welcome to Cellular Healing TV, episode 21. We have a really special show for you today, broadcasting live from – was it London, Scott?
Scott: No, it's Paris.
Warren: Paris. Still, in Europe. Scott Tips. Dan, I would like you to introduce Scott. You have been talking to him and Pat Carol about what's going on and how valuable their foundation, federation is. We're going to get into some really good topics on the new FDA label law changes. Scott is on the forefront of protecting our rights in the natural health world and protecting the rights of natural health doctors across the country. Scott is an integral part behind the scenes, and some of the backbone of why we are able to do what we do, and protecting our ability to do what we do. We're really honored and blessed to have him on the show today. Thank you Scott. Dan, I'd just like you to speak to that.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, no, Scott's a crusader for health freedom, hence the Health Freedom Federation. Yeah, you really are a crusader for health freedoms, no doubt about it. We couldn't be more appreciative for what you do. I think that's the purpose of having you on the show, is because people need to know what you're doing behind the scenes, what's going on behind the scenes. There's been so much – and people talk about the Codex bill. A lot of people don't even know if it's real, I think especially the public, in what's happening. Something new is happening now and Scott, we want you to share that with our audience, just even in label laws. That's all coming out of this Codex, so you might want to spend just a few minutes explaining that and what's going on there, and then we'll get to the new news.
Scott: Sure, I'd be happy to. Thank you for that, Dan. The problem that we face these days is everyone in the world wants to harmonize to an international standard, to an international guideline. At the National Health Federation, we've been attending, and actually actively participating, at Codex Alimentarius meetings for really almost 20 years at this point. What we've found though is that over that time frame, the U.S., and particularly the Food and Drug Administration, has been striving at governmental levels, at bureaucratic levels, to take us up to, or more accurately, down to, the lower standards of Codex, in an attempt to drive international food trade throughout the world. Codex Alimentarius, which was founded 51 years ago in 1963, was set up for the ostensible purposes of protecting the consumer and eliminating international barriers to trade. Here we are 51 years later, and their emphasis is really not so much on protecting the consumer, but it's in eliminating the barriers to trade. It's all about trade barriers and very little about protecting consumers. You see this in the new food labeling proposed rule making that the FDA launched. When the FDA proposes a change in its regulations, it has to give notice of that through the Federal Register. It launched this real glitzy thing in late February with even Michelle Obama, and Dr. Hamburg, who's the head commissioner of the FDA, announcing how great these new label changes are. In doing so, they made extensive changes, or proposing that extensive changes be made to the labels, some of which are good, but most of which are very bad. If you look under the covers, you will see that the changes that are bad are really far outstripping those very few ones that could ostensibly be called good. This is what we're facing. I don't know if you want me to get into the nitty gritty details of what they're proposing, but everyone who's listening to this program has until August 1st this year to submit comments saying thumbs up, thumbs down, or giving suggestions or whatever to the FDA, either online or by snail mail. You can do that. The deadline was to have been June 2nd, but they extended it to August 1st. As you go through this discussion, you'll see that it's very well worth your time to make some suggestions or comments to the FDA. It may seem inconsequential, and in a way it probably could be, but if there are enough of us out there throwing a thumbs down to this, then the FDA will take a second look at it. At least they'll feel constrained to take a second look at it. This is all very important.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, and I think we want to hear some of those things so people can make an opinion, right? I'm sure most people don't know at this point, what's coming down the pipe.
Warren: It happens lots. These negative effects, these label laws, highly put us at risk, and what it allows some of these companies like Monsanto to do on the GMO side. What is this going to unravel in our lives?
Scott: Those are both excellent questions, or several questions, really. What it does is – you know how you can distract people. You can either highlight something else while the magician is doing something over in the other corner, or the other part of his hand is doing is hiding some event, or you can do it by misdirection. I think what the proposed label rule-making is, and this is both for food and for supplement labels, is it's a lot of slight of hand, it's a lot of misdirection, and it's a lot of nutritional ignorance. Going through the list as you asked, here's what we're really looking at that these people have done. Keep in mind, they have the nutritional knowledge of a ten year old, basically. They may seem smart, they may in fact be smart, but their nutritional knowledge is way behind most of the people watching this program. Overall, the FDA Deputy Commissioner Michael Taylor, he's in charge of this. In fact, I used to sit next to his wife, Christine Taylor, at the early Codex meetings in Germany, just as a by the by. He thinks that these changes, at least the FDA thinks, that it will help address obesity. What have they done? They want to drive attention to calories and serving size, so they have redone the label. I don't know if I can show it here. Maybe I can, and this will help the listeners. This is from our magazine, the National Health Federation magazine called Health Freedom News.
Warren: Yeah, we can see that Scott. It's great.
Scott: In here is my article on the subject. You can see, for the audience, the label on the left is the current way that it's done. It's called a Nutrition Facts Panel. I'm peeking over the edge so I can see, too. The one on the right is what they propose. The first thing that strikes you probably most —
Warren: Calories.
Scott: That's what they're trying to emphasize. The problem, as you all know, losing weight isn't just about calories. Losing weight is about a whole bunch of other things, including what calories are you consuming. Dr. Pompa can speak about this for days at length, so I don't pretend to has his level of knowledge on it. I do know, the simple fact is, it's not all about calories. The other thing you'll notice here is they will add in, and I can't quite see it from my angle, but in there, they will talk about added sugars. What is the importance of this? With added sugars, the importance is – I'm going to put this down to save my hand from —
Dr. Pompa: Scott, one thing I noticed right off the top was – okay, calories was the first thing. The next thing was total fat, and the next thing was cholesterol. We always say it's always 180° opposite of what the government tells us. There's proof positive, right there. Calories, fat, and cholesterol, top three things, top useless information. Oh, and the top best things for you is fat and cholesterol, to make you normal. People try to reduce it to that.
Scott: You're absolutely right. I totally agree with you. You actually took a little bit of my surprise thunder there, but I'm glad you did.
Warren: It shows you how clear it is to someone who watches Cellular TV, goes to its supports, and reads your magazine, that it's on this topic. That's why we're doing this. It makes so much sense, because that's going to drive sales of pharmaceuticals. I won't do that, but just to show the example, they're saying calories up here, right? Meanwhile, they're trying to distract you from the truth. Calories, calories, calories – truth is down here. You never see the truth. You never see the healthy thinks, and it drives, honestly, sales. I'm going to stop talking, but.
Scott: Right there, it talks about how many servings per container. Dr. Pompa was right to say, and you too, to say that it's really about looking at the calorie count, but they also are emphasizing the number of servings per – let's see if I can do it there – the number of servings per container. They think that's important, too. To a certain extent, they are right, because the serving sizes, before, were really undervalued. They'd have one container, a small container of ice cream, that was considered to be two servings. In fact, everyone knows, people sit down and they will eat it, typically, all in one serving. I'm talking about those small containers, not the large, quart-size containers. Even then, people eat a whole container of those They're driving in a better direction there for the servings per container, but frankly, people don't pay much attention to it. I'm even one who – and here I am, I do food and drug law, and especially with an emphasis on labels, and I don't really pay attention to serving sizes. I don't think most consumers pay attention to it, either. In this case, I think it's a bit of a swing and a miss by the FDA, to even though it's – I hate to say well-intentioned, I don't really give them good intentions, or at least think that they'll have good intentions in anything they do. In this case, perhaps, they did. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. It's also overshadowed by everything else. They've said that they want to update the serving size requirements to reflect the amounts that people currently eat. Given the huge sizes of Americans these days, I think that is true. They can be commended for that particular part. The problem really comes, and you also noticed on that label, that the new label mentions added sugars. They didn't have that before, so what they're talking about, of course, is where sugar is added, but not artificial sweeteners, believe it or not, that's not included under added sugars because that's a zero-calorie thing. Under this new regime that the FDA is proposing on labeling, they're misdirecting people's attentions to calories and making sugar the bad guy. Which, of course, it is, but there's a badder bad guy on the street these days, as we all know, and that's the artificial sweeteners, like aspartame and sucralose. If there was anything that would drive me to eat sugar now, it would be aspartame and sucralose, just out of the greater fear of what aspartame and sucralose does to you when it breaks down into methanol in your brain and helps kill off brain cells, leads to the formation of formaldehyde in the body, and helps promote cancer. As bad as sugar is, it's probably 10 fold safer, 100 fold safer than aspartame or sucralose. What does this new proposed label do? It paves over that. This is getting to your point, Warren. It paves over the bad things about aspartame and the advantame that's up and coming on the horizon. It's probably because of the influence of the industry, the influence that the industry has on the FDA. It'll have the public looking in the wrong direction, looking for added sugars, instead of also looking for zero-calorie artificial sweeteners. When the typical average consumer picks up a bottle and looks at it, they'll pick up a bottle and they'll look at it and they'll look at the label. They'll see one that says added sugars, they'll see another and it'll say zero but it'll be full of aspartame, pick up another one that might have sugar in it and it says 10 grams, or whatever it might be. They'll go, “I'm not going to do that, I'm going to take the zero one, because it's healthier.” It's going to push consumers into the direction of making bad health choices. This is something that we need to stop. The other thing that it does, the new label, is it deletes the listing “calories from fats.” That's okay, except for one thing. Given the FDA's fixation on spotlighting total calories, this deletion is a little curious. On the other hand, the FDA thinks that polyunsaturated fats are God's gift to mankind. We really don't know what to make of this, other than we need to recognize that the type of fat, rather than the amount, is the key. Maybe we can look at this as mixed blessing. Maybe by removing “calories from fats,” this part of the label, the FDA's doing us a favor. They are having fluoride to be declared on the label, but they think it's a good thing, not a bad thing. They aren't doing it for those who would prefer to avoid fluoride, they're doing it to encourage people to consume it. Of course, those of us who know better will go the other direction. In a way, this again is a mixed blessing. It's good for us who want to avoid it. Other people may be drive to do it, to consume that product, because it has a higher amount of fluoride in it and they think, mistakenly think, that they will be preserving their teeth, when in fact —
Warren: Oh, wow. This is scary to me. If you understand marketing and you look at – most people don't think like us, right? The things that they're highlighting – calories, cholesterol, sugar, and fluoride, most of the culture is going to buy the lowest calorie, the lowest cholesterol, and the things that contain fluoride. What that's going to do to manufacturers is for them to try to sell more, they're going to try to create lower calorie, lower cholesterol, and products that contain fluorides, because that's – the masses, the 95% or 90% of the world, is going to drive that. Our food is going to become increasingly toxic. They're going to sell more toxic foods, really hurt the population more, making them sicker, which the drug companies and medical monsters of this world understand. The drug companies know that their drugs kill people. I talk to people in the industry, and they know it, and they don't care, honestly, because they run it like a business. In business, you don't care. This is massive, Scott.
Scott: It is. You actually said that better than I would've. It is a problem. Most consumers, when they go to a label, they don't know, for example, that – Vitamin A's at 60 mg a day or 90 mg a day, as the FDA actually would have it, is not going to really help them. They'll see the 100%, or whatever percent it is of the Vitamin C content, and they will think that they have made a good choice. I love what you're saying about – not that I love that it will happen, but I love that you brought it out, that this will drive industry to conform to it in order to promote products, to the larger market. That's exactly what will happen. Another thing that goes along with that is – and this is really the key, after all, of that, is they're deemphasizing some nutrients. Gone from a position of prominence on the label will be – let me see if I can hold this up again – will be Vitamins A and C, and instead, will be Potassium and Vitamin D. Let me see. I have to do this a certain way so I can see this. You'll notice the old label talks about Vitamin A, Vitamin C, there below the heavy horizontal bar in the middle, you'll see Vitamin A, Vitamin C. Then on the new label, to the right of it, under the heavy horizontal bar, you see Vitamin D and you see calcium, you see potassium, but you no longer see Vitamin C.
Warren: Oh, that's maddening, because that's drug companies again. They want you to get, for bone health – and it's just all the things that they, it has nothing to do with it. It's not calcium deficiency.
Scott: Exactly. Magnesium is more important than calcium in the typical American diet, as you all well know. Vitamin D's important and I'm glad they're showing that, and potassium is, of course, beneficial in helping to lower blood pressure, as even the FDA says, but is it really a good thing to dethrone vitamins A and C? These can still be voluntarily declared by manufacturers, but the point that you brought up, Warren, is an excellent one. That is, why do it? The labels are getting crowded enough as it is, and some may choose to do so, but if push comes to shove and they have to put other stuff on the label that is mandatory, then this will be the first to be ditched. Also, the other thing they're doing is, you know how we are all used to thinking of Vitamin E, Vitamin A, in international units? I'm so used to thinking of taking 5,000 international units of Vitamin D3 a day. Those will be gone under this proposed rule-making as well. What they propose to do, in some sort of Euro-trash move, is to move it to the metric system, as is used here in Europe. To be fair to the FDA, that is consistent with the rest of the label. You don't declare Vitamin B1 in international units, you do it in milligrams. Others you do in micrograms, and so on. It is a move towards consistency. It will just require an adjustment in our thinking, like if we had to convert to the metric system for miles per hour or something instead. To be honest, I'm so in love with the international units that I take this as a personal attack against me by the FDA. Of course, it isn't. It will allow more consistency on the label, and after we get used to the transition, it'll probably be fine, and we'll have forgotten the international units. Here's the important thing about this. The important thing is that it's harmonizing to the Codex standards. In fact, all throughout their 109 pages of proposed rule-making, the FDA mentions Codex Alimentarius multiple times. You'll notice, also – by the way, just as a little aside, so I don't forget it, they make no mention of GMO labeling on any of this, or in any of this proposed rule-making. Where's that? If they want to protect the consumer or have them be more knowledgeable, why not have included that in the proposed rule-making? They didn't. Getting back to the harmonization thing, it's important to know, while everyone was really focused on the flurry of format changes and the replacement of this wording and the fancy new look, there the real danger was, in microscopic detail, was the fact that the FDA is harmonizing our vitamin-mineral levels, the nutrient reference values, or the RDAs, the recommended daily allowance, the recommended dietary intake, RDIs, mostly down to Codex Alimentarius levels. Not 100%, not entirely, but mostly. I call on those dirty sneaks, because that's what they are – they're dirty, sneaky people. They have all the flash and cameras on the label change – “Oh, look how much better it'll be. The consumer will read it better,” but there hidden in the fine print, under the staple on the contract, is the dirty part. The dirty part is that in eight of those vitamin and minerals, they are lowering – for example, in the case of Biotin, the B vitamin, they're lowering it by 90%, just so it can match the Codex level. Three of the vitamins and minerals are already approximately at Codex levels. Not exactly, but almost. They haven't touched those, but eight have been lowered to Codex levels. That would include Biotin and it would include the B vitamins, which they're lowering down. The other thing – here's the list. Maybe I can go back to the camera again and you guys can see. Here's – sorry, here's the list. A little harder to do. Maybe I need to do it like this. There's a little list, and there is a long list. They have increased certain things, like Vitamin C. Instead of it being the 60 mg a day, very generous 60 mg a day that Codex has, they do propose raising it to 90 mg. That's a step in the right direction, but as we all know, 90 mg is nothing. That's ridiculous, actually. Concurrently, at the Codex meetings, which we've been going to, as I said, for nearly 20 years, and I myself, personally, for 15 years, the last 5 years has witnessed a big battle over the Nutrient Reference Values, which are just basically the – there are a few differences, but basically, the Codex Alimentarius version of RDAs or RDIs. These changes are just following in line with what the FDA announced back on October 11, 1995, where they said that their intention was to harmonize to international standards. That has never changed. That has been their goal, and that is what they're doing. If the rest of the world had higher standards than the U.S., allowed higher potencies than we did here, then that would be a good thing. The fact is that most of the countries of the world, most of the member states of Codex, don't understand the benefits of supplements, do not understand, even, basic nutrition. They certainly, if anything, have a very high anti-supplement mentality that is pro-drug and anti natural health remedies. That's the problem. When we harmonized all these to these international standards, we're harmonizing to a lower level of health, a lower level of nutrition. We just cannot do it. It's just the wrong way to go. What these people are doing at FDA is trying to sneak it in through this proposed rule-making, where most of the pages talk about, “We're going to declare calories in a more prominent position, we're going to add in added sugars. All of that's bad, as was pointed out by Dr. Pompa and Warren, but the real kicker is this harmonization. I guarantee you, at the Codex meetings, we will see the FDA trying to get Codex to go to what the FDA has proposed here for the vitamin-mineral levels. If they can't get it, then I guarantee you you'll see another proposed rule-making that will say, “Oh, we need to lower these vitamins to X, Y, or Z, whatever X, Y, or Z has been decided upon by Codex.
Warren: If we're trying to harmonize to these international standards – and if you look at the EU, they don't allow GMO. If we're harmonizing, why wouldn't we harmonize on all fronts, and at least not allow GMO? It's like taking what I want, but leaving the things we don't want.
Scott: Yeah, that's a very good point. Monsanto has great pull at Codex meetings. You're right to ask those questions. It is very inconsistent, but they shrug it off at the meetings. They have no problem with it, whether it's pushing ractopamine-doped meat onto the European market and the like, or GMO. As you know, the European Union pays a heavy fine because they lost the WTO trade dispute on allowing GMO foods into the European Union's market. They paid – and I apologize, I forget what the amount is, but it's clearly 150 million euros a year to keep GMO foods out of the market, as their trade sanction. It is true. Why is the U.S. not picking and choosing when you have 90%, probably 92% of the U.S. population not desiring to eat GMO foods. Yet here you have the U.S. representative at the Codex meetings pushing GMO foods, these toxic, ractopamine-laden foods and the like. It's usually, by the way, excluding the UK, because it's a member of the European Union, it's usually these Anglo-Saxon countries that are behind all these unhealthy standards, primarily Australia. Somewhat New Zealand, but principally, Australia, the United States, and Canada. Those are the ones who really are opponents at the Codex meetings. I've even gone up to the Russian delegate at one point, when he was opposing ractopamine-doped meat – this is sort of the Arnold Schwarzenegger, steroid-like that's drug given to animals to make them beefier, meatier, and less fat, to have less fat. I went up to the Russian delegate and said, “It's a sad day when you speak more on behalf of the American consumer than the U.S. delegate does.” It's true. He laughed a little bit and said, “Thank you.” I did that at a Codex Alimentarius commission meeting two years ago, when there was the big fight over ractopamine. We have another one coming up, by the way, in Geneva, in mid-July, that I will be going to. The fact of the matter is that here we are with these proposed label changes, which I again, encourage everyone to go to the FDA's website and to – in fact, you can actually just go to www.regulations.gov and then look for the comments section. Then you put in this docket number, which is FDA-2012-n-1210. It's almost the same as 2012, you just change the numbers around. Anyway, that's the docket number you want to go into and submit your comment. You have until August 1st to do that. Will it make a difference? We don't know, but it won't hurt. If there's enough of a public outcry over this, then it'll be a good thing. If you go to our NHF website, www.TheNHF.com, that is T-H-E-N-H-F dot-com, and we have there, probably on the homepage – if not it will lead you into the section where we even have a written comment that you can cut and paste and plug into and link directly to this comments section of the FDA.
Warren: That website, Scott, your website is TheNHF?
Scott: Yes, dot-com. We couldn't get NHF.com, so we had to put an article in front of it. We put the. TheNHF.com. We're in the middle of redoing our website. It'll be a lot perkier by the end of June 2014, but it will still do the job for this purpose.
Warren: The best website on the internet because of the content that you have, and I would encourage the viewers to go there and make a donation. I know that many of our doctors did. We had you speak live at our last seminar, and once they heard what you do behind the scenes for us, they were very giving, to help support what you do. You need supported massively. You need to be introduced on more shows like this to get the message out there. I want to have Dan have some final comments here Scott, but I'm really fired up, because based on what I know about again, marketing, and what doesn't work, just from hanging out with all these doctors, and listening to Dr. Pompa speak on these topics, even the RDI thing – and I'm a black-and-white guy – the RDI thing is a huge issue, too. I know that when our clients take an RDI to a physician, a medical doctor – who's not really trained in nutrition, they don't get any nutritional training, so it's to no fault of their own – they'll be like, “Holy Cow, this is ten times the RDI. You shouldn't take that!” It's going to drive people away from taking active doses that they need to change their body chemistry and to push their nutrient pathways in the right way, which work in with enzyme production and brain function and cellular energy, and all the things in Dr. Pompa's 5R's. This is a massive epidemic. They're driving people away to becoming sicker, to becoming more dependent on drugs. This is not on accident, it is on purpose. Everything they do is with a purpose, and it's down to driving money. You have to remember, the government is a long-term vision. The things that they've been doing, they've been doing for hundreds of years. Even when they give other countries like Dubai all this access to money, long-term, they're going to win. The government is very slick, and they're putting a longer-term strategy, which will benefit their pocket book, or their JD-partnered pocket books, i.e. drug companies, Monsanto, things like that. This is on purpose.
Scott: Yes, well I agree 100% with what you just said there, Warren. I think that's what's been going on here, and what will still go on here. It'll get worse. It's actually snowballing. It is a problem. We have the upcoming fight. I appreciate your mentioning donations, because that's what gets us to these meetings. Your people at that Atlanta conference were so gracious and so generous. Actually, it's probably the most generous group of people in terms of donations to us, in terms of joining, at the highest level, our membership, joining as a member. You can do it at $36 a year, you can do it at $200 a year. Most of your people picked the $200 a year. They didn't pick the easy way out. They did the way that would support us and send us to these meetings. The next meeting where we will be arguing on the NRBs, at the Codex level, that is, it will be in Bali, Indonesia. It's a key, critical, lynchpin, pivotal meeting, because this is where they will decide on a lot of the nutrients. We have to have our ducks in order, and we need to be going in very well educated and prepared for this. That's what we're doing. We've been preparing for this kind of a meeting for years, and have been at it each and every year. Bali, and that's not a cheap flight, that's not a cheap trip. We do need donations, so thank you for having mentioned that. I wasn't sure if I could mention it, so I'm glad you did. Thank you for that.
Warren: You should be flying first class, Scott.
Scott: I wish I could, but we don't. We always go —
Warren: I know you don't, you should, because things like the National Cancer Society and the Breast Cancer Awareness, those CEO's are funding research that doesn't get to the cause. They do some nice things for people, but on the back end, that money is not being justly used. I know that every penny that comes to your organization's being justly used, and not just funding private jets, and things like that. This is huge, Scott. I know people watching this show will go to your website and donate at TheNHF.com. Dan, you've been listening to this. I know you've had some thoughts stirring around a few times, and I'd like you to wrap this up and share what's on your hear, as Scott shared some information that really got me fired up about what's going on with this new label law change. Man, it's sad.
Dr. Pompa: Scott, I just wish we had a little more time where you could talk more about what really is going on there. This is just, as of lately, what you've been battling for the last 15 years, really, is more about our freedom to hold onto supplements, to be able to get supplements, that we don't have to go get a script for supplements. Isn't that really where the bigger battle is, and really where they would love to take it? When we hear that oh, you know, we could lose this freedom, people don't understand how it close it was at a few times. Literally, it was down to a few votes.
Scott: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. At one point, there was – not many people know this. At one point, Representative Claude Pepper, who's now deceased, but was the democratic representative out of Florida, was going to pass a bill – this was in pre-internet days, where it would be illegal to ship vitamin and mineral supplements or dietary supplements in general through the U.S. Post Office. Absolutely illegal. He had the votes to do it. We had our lobbyists try to lobby him. He wouldn't budge. Finally, our former president of NHF, Maureen Sullivan, flew to Washington, tried to meet with him personally to get him to withdraw the bill, which had a very high chance of passing – this was in the 1980's, early 1980's. He refused to meet with her, but she made friends with the secretary. She found out when he was going back to southern Florida for his spring break or recess, and she booked a seat – these were the days when you could do this – she booked a seat right next to him. She flew with him all the way down and his ear the whole trip. By the time he got back to Florida, the plane landed, he had changed his mind. A week later, he withdrew the bill.
Warren: How is Maureen Sullivan doing?
Scott: She's no longer with us, unfortunately, but her legacy lives. A lot of people either love her or you hate her, it depends. She was a black-and-white gal. She really had her heart in it. This wasn't the only time that she made a difference for everyone. Does anyone know what happened or give her credit for it? No. I didn't even know the story for years. That's what happened. They're little things like that that make a difference. You're absolutely right on that Dan, that there's a lot to be done. It's really about the individual's right to control his or her destiny and and his or her health. We've got to take charge of ourselves, and as you teach in your seminars, and I very much hone in on this, because I appreciate it so incredibly much, you teach personal responsibility. The flip side of freedom, the flip side of the coin, is personal responsibility. You can't just sit back and wait for government to take care of you, or Big Daddy or Big Momma, you take care of yourself. You do it through education, and one of the best places is through your seminars. I noticed that when I was there. The other is to read widely and use a discerning mind, and don't just accept government propaganda, or mainstream media propaganda, that you see, which whoever the latest doctor guest is on Dr. Oz or on Oprah Winfrey – although I guess she's off the air now, isn't she? I don't know. Anyway, I don't watch much mainstream television. You really have to use programs like this, your seminars, other seminars like yours, for people to really know what's going on and to know how to take care of their health, especially in these challenging times, where – it's not like our grandparents' time, where they weren't as – in a way they were, but not to the extent that we are – where we're inundated with contaminants and toxins raining down on us, in our water, in our food. What are they doing at the same time? They're lowering the nutritional content of our foods and our supplements. That's not allowing our bodies to protect ourselves, at the same time as we're getting inundated with a tsunami of bad toxins.
Dr. Pompa: One final note before we have to go. What are the chances of them succeeding, taking supplemention – we have to go through a medical doctor and get supplements – greater control, to the point where we don't have that freedom anymore?
Scott: The beauty of the United States, and it's true in South Africa as well, those two countries are the holdouts in the world. If you go to a South African health food store, you'll think you're in an American one. Maybe even better than an American one, because they never banned tryptophan there. Of those two countries, we're the last holdouts, Canada having sold out through Health Canada, its FDA equivalent. I think the odds, to be honest, are really stacked against us, but I still think we'll prevail. It's not going to be a slam dunk, and there may be a period of time where things are reduced, but the beauty of America is that more than half of the population takes supplements, so they keep having to inundate us with this propaganda to convince us that supplements are either dangerous, worthless, or you'd be better off with drugs, like the annual flu shot or the like. I think we'll go through some rough times, but I think there is light at the end of the tunnel. Ultimately, we'll prevail. Enough people will rebel if they conform to this. You see it happening in other arenas of political life, with people getting increasingly discontent. Just look at what happened with Eric Cantor, who got voted out of office on that immigration issue – or not voted out of office, but at least he lost the primary, earlier this week, I think it was. People are taking note. The nice thing about supplements is, in the same way that social security is third rail politics, supplements are the fourth rail of politics, and there are a lot of very powerful and influential people, as well as the mass of people, who are in favor of supplements, despite the propaganda. I think they have a real tough road to hoe here, but they're trying to get at it through gradualism, through lowering the public's favorable perception of supplements. That's why people like you Dan, you Warren, you David, and many others, are so incredibly important. You're educating them as to the true value of taking charge of your health and going forward. That's really where it's at.
Dr. Pompa: The power's always in the people, and their strategy is to educate people that vitamins are dangerous. When you go into a hospital and there's an emergency, believe it or not, the first thing they start asking people is what supplements they're on. It's true. I've witnessed it several times. Even the emergency, the EMS people that approach a situation, if someone's in an anaphylactic situation, they literally start asking if they've had St. John's Wort supplements. The strategy's obvious. You see one more thing out there, why supplements are dangerous. Meanwhile, drugs are in the top three killers in America and we're not hearing anything. Yeah, we just have to keep putting out an opposite message, obviously, and the power is in the people. Scott, we are thankful for you, that you are on the front lines, literally, for these causes that we've just mentioned, and holding on to something that's near and dear to us, because we got our life back through supplements and utilizing natural health solutions. If we lost that, it would be a different world, that's for sure. Thank you for your efforts in fighting for the truth.
Scott: Thank you, because our efforts wouldn't get out there and be noticed but for people like you, especially you, and what happened at the Atlanta seminar, and what's happening in the future, and Warren's good advice for us, as well, to help make us, the National Health Federation, that is, more visible to the public and get our message out there. I really appreicate all that you do, too.
Dr. Pompa: Yeah, well, I hope people donate. If they value what they're putting in their mouth, supplements, food, then donate, if you appreciate that freedom. Thank you, Scott.
Scott: Thank you.
Warren: Thanks, everyone. Thanks for watching the show. Definitely go to his website, TheNHF.com, and share this Cellular Healing TV, CellularHealing.tv, as well, for our next show, coming up next week. Scott, we'll bring you back on. Thank you so much for your time, broadcasting live from Paris, not London. We love and appreciate you and what you do for us, again. Dan and I got our lives back, like you said, with these supplements. Who are we to wipe out the legacy and the future without fighting back, because folks that are suffering and need real food and real nutrients that cause your body to heal itself are much need. Our bodies have been healed this way. We need to fight so that the future can do the same. Thank you so much.
Scott: Thank you.
Warren: Take care, everyone.
