The organization that trains registered dietitians invests in food companies making products that cause chronic disease.

This stunning conflict of interest rarely makes headlines. Yet it fundamentally undermines the nutrition advice millions of Americans receive every day.

Most people trust registered dietitians as the ultimate authorities on nutrition. Their extensive education and clinical experience seem to qualify them perfectly. Yet what if their training is fundamentally compromised?

The story of Michelle Hurn, a registered dietitian who abandoned everything she was taught to save her health, reveals uncomfortable truths about the profession and its approach to nutrition.

When the Healer Must Heal Herself

Michelle Hurn became a registered dietitian in 2009 after battling severe anorexia nervosa as a child. She weighed just 57.5 pounds at five feet tall at her lowest point.

Following conventional treatment protocols, doctors placed her on seven different medications. The prognosis was grim: even if she survived, she would never be "normal" - just a high-functioning person with an eating disorder.

For years, this prediction held. Despite following standard dietary guidelines and becoming a dietitian herself, Hurn continued struggling with anxiety, depression, and food obsession.

The breaking point came in 2019. Her health collapsed while training to qualify for the Olympic trials in marathon running.

"I went from being able to run 20 miles to I couldn't run two," Hurn explains. "I was eating about 400 grams of carbohydrates at the time. Sports dietitians told me to eat more, and things went from bad to worse."

Desperate for relief, she tried the carnivore diet for 30 days. The results transformed her understanding of nutrition and her health.

The Corporate Capture of Nutrition Advice

Hurn's experience isn't an isolated case. It reflects a systemic problem within the dietetics profession.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), the world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals with over 100,000 credentialed dietitians, has been documented as accepting at least $15 million in corporate funding from the food, pharmaceutical, and agrochemical industries over a six-year period.

Even more troubling, documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that the Academy invests funds in shares of food companies like Nestlé and PepsiCo, whose products have been associated with health concerns.

This creates an impossible situation. How can an organization objectively evaluate the healthfulness of foods when it profits from their sales?

"It's a very corrupt institution," Hurn states bluntly. "They came out with an article this last year. Not only are they sponsored by, but they are investing in Nestle and high sugar foods."

This conflict of interest manifests in the dietary advice of millions of Americans, including those with severe metabolic conditions.

The Eating Disorder Misdiagnosis

Perhaps nowhere is this problem more evident than in the treatment of eating disorders.

Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder, with more people dying from it than from schizophrenia or other psychiatric conditions.

Despite this alarming statistic, the standard treatment approach has a poor track record. Over 50% of patients relapse after treatment.

Hurn suggests a provocative explanation: many cases diagnosed as eating disorders may be responses to food intolerances.

"I think one reason people starve themselves, and there are many different reasons... it hurts," Hurn explains. "When I was in treatment and I was fed the standard American diet, I suffered so badly. I had so much bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, literally bent over."

Research has suggested that certain people diagnosed with eating disorders may have undiagnosed food intolerances, leading to avoidance behaviors that are misinterpreted as disordered eating.

The standard treatment approach compounds the problem by forcing patients to consume foods that cause physical distress.

The Bioavailability Blind Spot

Another critical gap in conventional dietetic education concerns nutrient bioavailability—how effectively the body can absorb and use nutrients from different foods.

"That is not taught to us as dietitians," Hurn reveals. "I had no idea how powerful animal-based nutrition was compared to plant-based nutrition. I had been taught it's about half a dozen others. As long as you're getting enough, you'll be fine."

This oversight has profound implications. While dietitians are taught that plant and animal proteins are interchangeable, the research tells a different story.

Animal proteins contain all essential amino acids in highly bioavailable forms. They also provide critical nutrients like vitamin B12, heme iron, and DHA that are absent or poorly absorbed from plant foods.

For someone recovering from an eating disorder, these nutritional differences can be life-changing.

The Carbohydrate Paradox

Perhaps the most striking contradiction in conventional dietetic practice involves carbohydrates.

Hurn points out dietitians readily acknowledge lactose intolerance, recommending that patients avoid milk sugar. Yet when it comes to glucose intolerance (essentially what type 2 diabetes represents), the standard advice is to continue consuming carbohydrates and manage the resulting blood sugar spikes with medication.

"If you're lactose intolerant, you can't tolerate milk, you wouldn't be like, 'Well, let's have milk five times a day, and we'll give you a lactose pill,'" Hurn observes. "You'd be like, 'No, just avoid that.'"

This inconsistency becomes particularly problematic when treating conditions like eating disorders, where the standard high-carbohydrate approach may worsen symptoms for many patients.

A New Paradigm Emerges

Emerging research suggests that low-carbohydrate, animal-based diets may offer hope for previously intractable conditions.

A case series published in the Journal of Metabolic Health documented several patients with severe anorexia nervosa who achieved remission lasting 1-5 years on a high-fat animal-based ketogenic diet, with weight gain of over 20kg each and significant improvements in anxiety and mental well-being.

Hurn's personal experience mirrors these findings. After adopting a carnivore diet, she went from being unable to run to completing ultramarathons (races longer than 26 miles). Her crippling anxiety subsided, and she began sleeping normally.

"I went from having paralyzing anxiety to being calm, sleeping," she recounts. "Like many people, I became both angry and curious, like, what is this? As a dietitian, why hasn't anybody taught me?"

The answer may lie in the conflicts of interest that permeate nutrition education and policy.

The Species-Specific Diet

A fundamental concept missing from conventional nutrition education is that humans, like all animals, have a species-specific diet.

"Every species has a species-specific diet," Hurn explains. "As humans, we seem to really struggle wrapping our heads around the fact that humans have a species-specific diet, too."

This perspective challenges the prevailing "everything in moderation" approach taught to dietitians.

"It's interesting because it's [applied to] every disease state," Hurn notes. "You would recommend that for everything from a child who is failing to thrive to someone who's dying of diabetes. Everything in moderation. You would never do that for a doctor. You wouldn't prescribe the same surgeries for everything."

The one-size-fits-all approach fails to recognize individual metabolic differences and ignores the evolutionary context of human nutrition.

Moving Forward: Practical Implications

For those struggling with eating disorders, metabolic conditions, or general health concerns, several actionable insights emerge:

1. Question the "everything in moderation" dogma. This approach ignores individual metabolic differences and food intolerances.

2. Consider food intolerances as a potential factor in disordered eating. Physical discomfort from certain foods may drive restrictive behaviors.

3. Recognize the superior bioavailability of animal-based nutrients. These foods may be particularly valuable for recovering from malnutrition.

4. Understand that carbohydrate tolerance varies widely between individuals. Some people simply don't process glucose efficiently.

5. Support food banks with protein donations. As Hurn notes through her "Protein Project," food banks are often overwhelmed with carbohydrate-heavy donations while lacking essential protein sources.

A Call for Integrity

The path forward requires greater transparency and integrity in nutrition education and policy.

Dietitians like Michelle Hurn lead this change by questioning their training, examining the evidence, and prioritizing patient outcomes over industry relationships.

For consumers, the message is clear: nutrition advice from registered dietitians, while valuable in many contexts, should be evaluated critically, especially when it conflicts with your body's signals or fails to produce results.

The human body knows what it needs. Sometimes, the most profound health transformations begin when we listen to it more carefully than conventional wisdom.