A Nutritious Belief

Belief. It's an interesting thing. I once naively thought that it was only in religion that one found this thing we called belief. It seems however that belief extends to other categories of thought where it really has very little business being, like politics, science and nutrition. Unlike the intangible, these are subjects where FACTS should speak for themselves, leaving no room for belief.

That people can be shown concrete, scientific evidence to the contrary of what they think is true, and not change their mind, is to put it mildly, absolutely mind-boggling.

I used to think that eating fat would raise your cholesterol and give you a heart attack. I believed it because that's what organizations like the American Heart Association tell you, and well, you would think that scientific research in the 20th (and now 21st) century was high enough that they really did know what they were talking about. Unfortunately, they don't know what they're talking about, and it is almost unbelievable to say that an absolute fraud has been perpetrated not only on the American people, but the people of this entire planet. I suppose that it's irony that they chose to represent what we should eat by a pyramid, appropriate in that it surpasses the ponzi scheme carried out by Bernie Madoff by light years. And it's worse than that though, because whereas Bernie swindled people out of their money, the AHA and others have swindled people out of their lives.

I just got through reading a book by a Swedish doctor named Uffe Ravnskov called "Fat and Cholesterol are Good for You". He had written another that is now out of print ten years ago that I missed, and is now expensive to buy, called "The Cholesterol Myths." I already knew that they had the diet we should be eating all wrong thanks to Gary Taubes, who I personally think deserves a Nobel Prize.

The "research", and I use that term very lightly, carried out on the effects of cholesterol on the human body, is blatantly unscientific and in some of the studies seems to be an outright scam by the pharmaceutical companies so they can sell you expensive statin drugs.

So why am I writing about this on a blog dedicated to the absolute madness that politics and religion cause on otherwise seemingly rational people? Well, that same madness extends to other areas of our life as well. It goes back to belief. People have been indoctrinated to believe that fat is bad for them. They have been brainwashed to believe that high cholesterol will kill them. And then they're confronted with the fact that none of what they've been told is true, and only a few change their minds! Most stick their heads in the proverbial sand, for whatever reason, and continue believing what they've always believed. I'm sure most of the researchers do this because if they published literature to the contrary, they'd lose their soft funding from the food and pharmaceutical industries.

If you read the news and look into some of the studies they quote about nutrition, you will find that in a lot of them they use no control group. Or they don't isolate one variable, they have five or more variables and yet they pick the one they want and go with it. I'm not even a scientist, and from my limited science classes in college, even I know that this is bad science! And the research is equally bad, something I know a bit more about. When you write about something, you really ought to present opposing viewpoints, even if it's only a small mention in your paper, especially on subjects where things are really controversial. But these researchers who write up reports on these studies choose only the ones that agree with what they want to say, and ignore anything else. They also ignore the numbers. They'll dump out half a study and only use the part of it that they like if necessary. What kind of science is that? The answer is, it isn't science. It's fraud is what it is.

And our government, that is supposed to protect us from snake-oil salesmen, has been suckered in to buy up all that snake-oil as well. Our representatives, like our doctors, get told by the pharmaceutical companies what drugs are good for us, and what kind of research (on their terms) needs to be done, and that's how it goes. Your doctor doesn't know jack about the real effects of medication on you. S/he's too busy running a practice and keeping up with paperwork to read any journals. Reps from the pharmaceutical company come by the office and tell him or her how their drugs are so good for you, the patient. And they buy it, hook, line and sinker and then prescribe it to you. Maybe that's okay for short-term medications, like something you take to clear up an infection. But we're talking long-term drug use here, and without any really long-term studies. Most of the studies were for five years. The pharmaceuticals are advocating that everyone, even children, be on statins. Besides the fact that in almost all of their studies more people died in the treatment group than in the control group, and besides that fact that people (especially women) with higher cholesterol live longer, what are the effects of shutting down a normal biological process in people starting at a young age? No one really knows because no such study has been done, but I daresay it probably isn't a good outcome.

Cholesterol is important. It repairs damage. Fat, especially saturated fat, is important for brain development and function. Did you ever wonder why there has been an increase in ADHD? Or an increase in obesity? The correlation is inverse with the low-fat diet craze. But that's another post.

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." --Morpheus, The Matrix

The Food Police

I always say it's a slippery slope when you start having the government or any other organization tell us what we should be doing, believing, wearing, etc. Well, how do you like being told what you should eat? The city of San Francisco is moving toward banning toys in childrens' meals at restaurants, if they don't conform to a certain "standard", because truly, as a parent, you aren't fit to make decisions for your children. I think it's an appalling situation when a small group of people can take all the fun out of life. I suppose that's what happens when you found a country with Puritans. If it tastes or feels good or is fun, then by god it must be bad for you and you must be saved from yourself!

I suppose on the face of it, urging children to eat "healthier" sounds like a good thing. Except you have one problem. And that is that the government's current suggestions for how to eat healthy are anything but. Read Gary Taubes book "Good Calories, Bad Calories", if you dare, and you will see why. It is a book that will make you so angry you won't be able to see straight. These "scientists", (and I use that term very loosely), researchers, dietitians, and doctors have had evidence for the entire last century that sugar is what makes you fat and causes diabetes, and that fat is what we should mostly be eating, but since Ancel Keys decided to publish his absolutely skewed results that fat is bad for you and causes heart attacks people have cut back on the fat and increased consumption of carbohydrates, and have gotten heavier because of it.

In fact, hunter-gatherer type people who do not consume sugar and carbohydrates, and get most of their food from animal sources, have no evidence of heart disease, diabetes, or get this, cavities. I knew that ages ago and wondered why. I remember reading that paleolithic people didn't have cavities, or dental caries, but that agricultural people who ate grains did. And people knew this a hundred years ago! And if you think about it, it makes sense. Ten thousand years ago, what do you think people ate? They ate meat most of the time. They didn't have refrigerators or grocery stores. They didn't wander down to the market and buy leafy greens and fruit. They only ate vegetables and fruit when it was in season, well, actually, IF it was ever in season.

In 1908, a man named Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent ten years living with the Inuit* who did not eat anything but meat (because they had nothing else) and they were all very healthy people. When he returned to New York the doctors didn't believe him. He spent an entire year eating nothing but meat under observation to prove that it was healthy. There are also various accounts of doctors who lived among native populations in Africa and South America, who saw that the native populations did not have any evidence of any of the "Diseases of Civilization" (meaning heart disease, diabetes, etc) until they adopted a western diet high in sugar and refined carbohydrates.

After the McGovern committee on the Nutrition Guidelines in 1977, it pretty much became gospel that fat was the cause of heart attacks and any researcher who dare say otherwise was pretty much tossed out on the street. Kilmer S. McCully was one such researcher. He insisted it was an amino acid deficiency that caused heart disease. For his trouble, he was denied tenure and had trouble finding another job because Harvard had blacklisted him.

And another reason the government shouldn't tell us what to eat (as if you need another reason), is because their definition of "obesity" is absurd. Most of us think that people are obese when they're very round, like a woman who weighs say, 300 lbs. Well, the government has a different idea. You're probably considered "obese" if you're a pant size too big. That's because they grade obesity and overweight by the BMI index, which doesn't take into account muscle mass or bone structure. So if you lift weights, you're probably obese too.

What all this boils down to, is that your health is your business. If you want to eat McDonald's every day (and lose weight LOL), that's your prerogative. If your children beg you to go to McDonald's on a regular basis and you cave, it's not the government's responsibility to babysit you as you let your children eat junk. But I suppose that's California for you.** As a commenter on a forum said, and I found it quite amusing, "they don't call it the land of fruits and nuts for nothing." Sorry if you're from there. Really, I am.

*A wacky site I know, but they have posted the original article from Harper's by Stefansson LOL

**My mother-in-law bought a handgun, and it had a warning on it put there by the State of California that "children are naturally drawn to guns". Naturally? Really? Maybe they're drawn to a hot burner on the stove too. Are you going to put warnings on everything? Or should parents teach their children not to touch things they shouldn't. What this is, is an abdication of parenting and the teaching of your children about what is allowed, or not allowed, and what is safe or is not safe. It's also an abdication of common frickin' sense.