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The dietetic lobby must be thrilled.
We say it’s time to fight.
Action Alert

A new Senate bill, dubbed the “Older Americans CARE Act,” was introduced last week by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). It would create funding for programs that give support and provide services to the elderly; those services can be provided by “a nurse, registered dietitian, case manager, health coach, or social worker.” Note that “nutritionist” is absent from that list.

Only Registered Dietitians, under this bill, would be eligible to provide medical nutrition therapy (MNT) to patients for the management of chronic disease. Any federal legislation/program that creates a monopoly for dietitians, especially in connection to MNT, is a bad precedent.

This is just the latest in an ongoing pattern of special interests trying to carve out unique privileges for dietitians, as we saw when we lobbied to amend the Treat and Reduce Obesity Act. We found that particularly galling because the dietetics lobby receives funding from junk food companies like Coca-Cola, Hershey, the National Dairy Council, Mars, and PepsiCo-the very agents of the obesity epidemic. Furthermore, they have conducted continuing education courses sponsored by Coke in which RDs are told that sugar, artificial colors, and nonnutritive sweeteners are perfectly fine for children, and concerns to the contrary are merely “urban myths”!

The exclusion of nutritionists places this new bill at odds with other federal laws. As the Board for Certification of Nutrition Specialists says in its letter to Sen. Merkley:

• Medicare recognizes “other nutrition professionals” as providers of MNT. 

• “Other nutrition professionals” are recognized in the Affordable Care Act, and are recognized by a growing number of states.  The Centers for Medicare and

• Medicaid (CMS) ruled in May of this year that qualified nutrition professionals be recognized as equal to registered dietitians in eligibility for hospital staff appointments, and for prescriptive diet authority in hospitals (in accordance with hospital policy and state law).