Kristine, good and interesting find, and I wanted to do some research, as the Pennington name is related to the fertilizer company (
https://www.pennington.com/). My findings indicate it appears worse than simply the people that brought you the DASH diet. The CICOpaths comment is very apt.
This is long, but it illustrates the new order we are facing in terms of how healthy lifestyles will be described, recommended, funded, and treated:
Pennington Biomedical Research Foundation claims conducting research in 3 primary areas:
Regulating Fat Storage
Our Biological Research Team discovered a new gene that communicates from the brain to other organs to regulate fat storage, a finding that has important implications for the development of interventions to prevent obesity.
Drug Discoveries bold is added for emphasis
Our Integrated Physiology and Molecular Medicine Lab team discovered the first evidence that a chemical compound named BAM-15 could be an effective drug for treating obesity and related diseases.
DASH Diet
We co-developed the DASH diet and subsequently proved that the high-vegetable diet is as effective as certain medications that help lower blood pressure. U.S. News & World Report selected DASH as the #1 diet for diabetes as well as the #1 overall diet in America for eight of the last 10 years and the #1 diet for healthy eating for 2020.
Here is the link to their Board of Directors (see the professional backgrounds of each):
https://pbrf.org/?page_id=1237
The Executive Director is John Kirwan. Here's some of his background and professional interests:
"John Kirwan, PhD, executive director of Pennington Biomedical Research Center, is an internationally renowned obesity, diabetes and nutrition scientist whose professional expertise includes over 30 years of research, teaching and service in the obesity and diabetes fields. His exceptional record of excellence in diabetes-related research, including the discovery that type 2 diabetes can often be cured by surgical alteration of the intestines and stomach, made him the perfect choice for taking the lead at Pennington Biomedical in January 2018.
Kirwan leads an internationally acclaimed biomedical research program focused on diabetes, obesity, nutrition and exercise. He is currently Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on 10 U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, and to date, he has generated more than $50 million in research funding, most of which has come from NIH and the food, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries. He has published more than 200 scientific papers related to diabetes and metabolism in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Diabetes and Diabetes Care.
Most recently Dr. Kirwan served as the director of the Metabolic Translational Research Center and professor of molecular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. He also held faculty appointments at Case Western Reserve University as a professor of physiology and of nutrition.
Kirwan received his clinical physiology training at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO.; his PhD in human bioenergetics at Ball State University, Muncie, IN.; his master's degree in exercise biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.; and his bachelor's degree (Hons) from the University of Limerick, Ireland."
Here's a full link on the lad:
https://www.healio.com/news/endocri...hn-p-kirwan-phd
Here are excerpts from a recent interview (bold is from me):
https://www.healio.com/news/endocri...hn-p-kirwan-phd
What area of endocrinology most interests you right now and why?
Kirwan: I am intensely interested in three specific areas at this time.
The first is bariatric surgery because of its profound effect on type 2 diabetes. Not only are we discovering that bariatric surgery has the ability to reverse type 2 diabetes in over 75% of the cases, but we are also seeing that it can reduce hypertension and the overall medication burden on diabetic patients. There are risks to surgery, of course, so we are also assessing long-term safety outcomes.
The second area I’m particularly interested in is transgenerational obesity and potential solutions to break the obesity cycle . . .
Third, we understand that exercise improves glucose control in individuals with type 2 diabetes, but we are not sure exactly how the effect works . . . More importantly, this information has given us the data we need to replicate that effect in the body with drug therapy — instead of depending on skeletal-muscle signaling.
Simply, it will help us design an “exercise in a pill” for those who cannot easily incorporate exercise into their daily lives.
And . . . here is one of his most recent research publications:
A Whole-Grain Diet Improves Whole-Body Protein Turnover Compared to a Macronutrient-Matched Refined-Grain Diet in Adults with Overweight/Obesity
https://academic.oup.com/cdn/articl..._2/1661/5845610
Being a skeptic can often spur us to reveal things we should know about. If PBRF is funding the new wave of health and nutrition, I'll be watching closely, as deep pockets will influence many in the medical and nutrition communities and drag along the media for news (marketing) purposes. Just wait for it. Talk about conflicts of interest, this is a vertical plan for the new world health order.
Edited to add: Link to John Kirwan interview.