Your Health & Government Policy

How Government Policy Shapes Wellness

Government health agencies, such as the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US, wield immense influence over which substances and practices are accessible for public health.

While these agencies claim to protect citizens, critics point out that their policies often favor large pharmaceutical companies and restrict access to promising alternatives—sometimes with unintended, detrimental effects on public wellbeing.

The Food Pyramid: A Government-Endorsed Problem

For decades, the food pyramid guided Western diets by recommending high intake of bread, cereals, grains, rice, and pasta, forming the base of the pyramid.

This advice, now heavily criticized, promoted an excess of carbohydrates while limiting dietary fats—a combination linked to poor nutrition, spikes in type 2 diabetes, obesity, and chronic disease rates.

Experts and medical associations repeatedly warned that this approach was overly simplistic and could spur harmful health outcomes. The pyramid failed to acknowledge that not all carbohydrates or fats are nutritionally equal, conflating healthy fats with harmful ones and pushing refined grains over whole foods.

Regulation That Favors Pharmaceuticals

The TGA (and FDA)  are tasked with ensuring the safety and efficacy of medical products but are 96% funded through fees from pharmaceutical companies —a structure that critics say risks impartiality. This deep financial industry tie can result in:

• Preference for drugs and treatments backed by large-scale trials (often only affordable by big pharma)

• Banning or restricting promising non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as peptides, certain vitamins, neuroenergetic compounds, many other health products, and red light therapy—even when emerging evidence suggests they may benefit health.

Many natural substances or therapies face tougher regulatory scrutiny or outright prohibition, resulting in limited consumer access unless these products are funneled through the pharmaceutical industry’s pathways.

Natural vs. Synthetic: Form Matters

Natural substances often work better in the body due to bioavailability and compatibility. For example, natural folate—present in leafy greens and legumes—is directly usable by the body and crucial for DNA synthesis and cellular health.

In contrast, synthetic folic acid, found in supplements and fortified foods, requires enzymatic conversion to become active. Many people cannot efficiently convert folic acid due to genetic differences, potentially leading to unmetabolized folic acid in their bloodstream and associated health risks. 

Such examples highlight why nature-identical forms are often better utilized than synthetic analogs.

The Impact: Limiting Health Choices

Government health policy and its regulatory frameworks have, intentionally or not, steered public behavior toward certain industries and away from alternatives that may align better with biological needs.

The legacy of the food pyramid and the dominance of pharmaceuticals offer cautionary tales about the need for truly objective, evidence-based health policy.

ACTIONABLE ITEMS:

1. Ignore most Government health advice

2. Focus on natural foods and substances 

Stay healthy and happy  !

(This is NOT medical advice - purely looking at science, evidence, history, human physiology to discover the truth)