Mary Winston
Year: December 27th, 2005
Location: Dallas,Texas
Interviewed by: Blackburn, Henry
Abstract
Mary Winston was captured by the American Heart Association early after getting her doctorate in nutrition. She was the great facilitator, tireless, devoted, and deeply knowledgeable, leading the AHA nutrition recommendations and policy over crucial years in CVD epidemiology and prevention. This interview illustrates her quiet leadership in developing the AHA Nutrition Committee’s powerful consensus statements that moved national and food industry policy. There is a bit of nostalgia for the days of the early AHA diet reports, and the heady relations with media when the AHA was in New York City and headed by Campbell Moses. But she remained in a long tenure and continued the Nutrition Committee’s solid work under large changes in AHA management.
She backed off saying that AHA was slow in getting on the diet-heart bandwagon, showing how consensus was achieved among multiple specialties by hard work, mutual respect, and new evidence. We would like to hear more about the AHA heart labeling program, but basically she shows how AHA efforts led to the FDA food labeling and contributed to the US Dietary Guidelines largely through the Nutrition Committee’s hard work and credibility.
She recounts how issues were resolved in committee, without people having to resign; she gives insights into the battle with the Egg Board, the Meat and the Dairy Council, and the Salt Institute, and some of the hostility she parried from them. She traces the evolution of the sat fat, poly fat, mono fat ratios, the constancy of the diet cholesterol recommendation, and the special attention to pediatric issues, the elderly, obesity and diabetes.
One senses how the association has become larger, less intimate, more ‘bottom-line’ driven, less medically directed, less public health oriented, more PR focused. The community of expert volunteers over the years has recognized Dr. Winston as a central figure and trustworthy public servant for the AHA. It credits her with its leadership on public and medical policy for American eating patterns. Interview by Karen Ross. (HB)
Quotes
“Well, I think what it did being in touch with them [in industry], you know, when the scientists get together sometimes they’ve operated primarily in an ivory tower and this did, I think, really make them understand how important public policy is and you really can’t just sit there and say the public should do this and this and this without realizing what they’re doing to the industry and is it harmful, is it necessary for them to be harmful to them. I think we were always able to find a reasonable compromise and the fact that they were always running after me to hear them, you get used to that and it becomes more of a challenge and exciting than anything else. And you begin to understand where they are coming from. But I cannot say that it affected our policy ever. And I think many of them said they knew that. They actually respected us more for that. They knew that we would be more than happy to talk with them and work with them, but there was a line we would not cross and they knew that.”
“At one time we had a restaurant program and the AHA affiliates really were the ones who went out and got restaurants to join the program and label menu items as being more acceptable, preventative of heart disease, than others. But then when we went back and looked at it we found out that the wait staff were really ruining the so-called “healthful” menu and would do their best to convince clients they ought to order a rich dessert. So we finally decided that that actually was going on to such extent that it really was going to harm our reputation rather than help it so we stopped it. But I think now nationally that it probably wasn’t a bad thing to do because of all the things the American Heart put out and the all the publicity, some of them, as you probably know, tried to do it on their own. They would offer some more choices. And everybody is more knowledgeable, too. And chefs would learn how to make things tastier. At one point when they tried to do that because we had a Board policy that any meeting we had anywhere at any hotel we signed with had to agree that they would serve fat-modified meals. Well, as it turned out the food was bad, but they’ve gotten really good now because they have more and more respect for the public.”
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