The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is threatening to send a blogger to jail for recounting publicly his battle against diabetes and encouraging others to follow his lifestyle.
Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. The law states “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”
Steve Cooksey has learned the definition is expansive, at least as the state board sees it.
When he was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein “Paleo” diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.
But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey’s blog—Diabetes-Warrior.net—violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to “practicing nutrition,” the board’s director says, and in North Carolina that’s something you need a license to do. Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his three-year-old blog, he can be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.
Speaking Out Attracted Attention
In January, Cooksey attended a nutrition seminar at a church in Charlotte. The speaker was the director of diabetes services for a local hospital.
“She was giving all the wrong information, just like everyone always does—carbs are OK to eat, we must eat carbs to live, promoting low-fat, etc.,” Cooksey said. “So I spoke up.”
After the meeting he handed out a couple of business cards pointing people to his website. Three days later, he got a call from the director of the nutrition board.
“Basically, she told me I could not give out nutritional advice without a license,” Cooksey said.
He said she also told him that his website was being investigated and gave him some suggestions about how to bring it into compliance. If he did not go along, he was told, the board could file an injunction and “essentially shut the website down,” Cooksey said.
First Amendment vs. Licensing Board
Charla Burill, the board’s director, said it’s not necessarily against the law to give your sister or your friend nutritional advice, and it’s not necessarily against the law to use a blog to tell people what they should eat. Where it crosses the line, Burill said, is when a blogger “advertises himself as an expert” and “takes information from someone such that he’s performing some sort of assessment and then giving it back with some sort of plan or diet.”
The board’s review of Cooksey’s website shows several Web pages marked in red ink by the director.
“If people are writing you with diabetic specific questions and you are responding, you are no longer just providing information—you are counseling,” Burill wrote. “You need a license to provide this service.”
The board also found fault with a page titled “My Meal Plan,” where Cooksey details what he eats daily.
In red, Burill writes, “It is acceptable to provide just this information [his meal plan], but when you start recommending it directly to people you speak to or who write you, you are now providing diabetic counseling, which requires a license.”
Disclaimer Dismissed
Cooksey posts the following disclaimer at the bottom of every page on his website: “I am not a doctor, dietitian, nor nutritionist … in fact I have no medical training of any kind.”
But Burill said the disclaimer may not protect a nutrition blogger from the law.
“At least you’re not trying to mislead the public, but you’re trying to get the public to trust you,” Burill said.
According to Burill, if Cooksey refuses to come into compliance with the law, the board could file for an injunction.
First Amendment Rights
Declan McCullagh, a CBSNews.com expert on online free speech, says the board probably is violating Cooksey’s First Amendment rights.
“The First Amendment says state and federal governments ‘shall make no law’ abridging freedom of speech,” McCullagh said. “It doesn’t say ‘except for what annoys the North Carolina Board of Dietetics and Nutrition.”
McCullagh pointed to a sentence in Cooksey’s blog the board didn’t approve of: “I do suggest that your friend eat as I do and exercise the best they can.”
“If that language appeared in a book or a magazine article, do you think the board would complain?” McCullagh asked. “How about if someone said that to a friend over dinner at a restaurant? Of course not. But because it’s on the Web, they seem to think that the First Amendment no longer applies.”
Cooksey says the board has violated his freedom of speech and done a disservice to the people of North Carolina. He says all he’s trying to do with his blog is provide an alternative to the nutritional advice pushed by mainstream sources on what they say people should be eating.
Cooksey said he’s seeking legal assistance in case the state decides to take further action against him.
