JUNK: Food, Science, Doctors, Mass Media, oh my!

April 12, 2011 was a good day for all of the above. Which means it wasn’t a good day for you, me or anyone who relies on medical advice derived from bad science, ignorant doctors, or the media that disseminates it without scrutiny.

The day began with a report from my son on how his first visit to a new doctor went. Not well. Naturally, Ms. Doc asked him what he ate to stay so ‘nice and slim’.

“Fat, he said. Saturated. As much as I can eat. Some meat and vegetables, usually with butter or coconut oil melted on top.”

Ms. Doc freaked. Out. She immediately handed him one of the many pamphlets that lined every inch of her waiting and exam rooms. This one was on “Healthy Fats.” The inside was a bar graph of fats, starting with the fat that contained the least saturated fat at the top (and thus, the ‘healthiest’): Canola Oil, and the killer fats — coconut oil and butter — at the very bottom.

On the back of the pamphlet, in teeny, tiny, need-a-magnifier to read it letters was the following: Printed by the Canola Oil Association. Oh. My son said before he left he looked at some of the other pamphlets on a variety of subjects from “good diets” to “good drugs” that Ms. Doc felt contained good medical advice to give to each of her patients. Each pamphlet was printed by the industry promoting the advice, from Diet: Drink fruit juice! Eat grains! — to Drugs: Statins are good! Avandia is good! We have always been at war with Eurasia.

My son tried to tell her about PUFAS. She said she didn’t know what PUFAS were, but said she’d order a lipid panel, which would show her (and of course, ignorant him) how bad his diet is. He then told her that a lipid panel was inadequate to show anything, since HDL and LDL contain many components, not one. HDL has three, some good, some bad. And LDL has five, some good, some bad. To break them down and measure them she would have to order a VAP, or Vertical Auto Panel. She said she’d never heard of a “VAP” and that she was pretty sure there was only one HDL and LDL.

My son, being my son, then tried to explain about Omega-3 fats vs. Omega-6 fats, why saturated fat was good for you if you didn’t eat sugar, which he didn’t, and that all this is completely explained, and then some, in Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories.

“What’s that,” she said. “A book?” My son nodded. “I’m not going to read a whole book!”

Thank you, Ms. Doc. Exit stage left, along with most of the rest of your ‘profession,’ to go read a few more Big Pharma handouts and call it “knowledge.”

But the day got worse. Nightline ran a piece called “Chunky Monkeys,” which they classified as “a story about what happens when you feed our nearest cousins a high-fat, high-calorie diet.” Seems the idiots at the Oregon National Primate Research Center decided to torture a few monkeys by feeding them a SAD (Standard American Diet), and confining them to their cages with the following objectives:

1: To see if they, like their human “couch potato” brethren, would get fat on a high-fat, high-calorie diet. [I’m using the term Cynthia McFadden — and shame on her for being nothing but a tele-prompter reader rather than a journalist — and Kevin Grove from ONPRC used constantly] The monkeys grew morbidly obese, of course.

2: To show that when these monkeys had babies, they passed on not just bad genes but bad social skills. Of course they didn’t mean ‘genes’ per se. They meant gene “switches” that were ‘on’ when they should have been off for health, or vice-versa — turned on via epigenetics — but I doubt if Grove would know about epigenetics even if it appeared on a teleprompter in front of him. Grove then made the hilarious comment that when obese teenage girls are mean to their mothers, it’s the bad diet those bad genes make them eat that causes it.

**3: The heart of the matter: through this research into a high-fat diet, to find a new anti-obesity drug for the pharmaceutical company that funds their torture research.

It took a bit of sleuthing to discover the composition of this high-fat diet, but it turns out the New York Times did a story on ONPRC on February 19, in which appeared:

“The monkey’s daily diet consists of dried chow pellets, with about one-third of the calories coming from fat, similar to a typical American diet, Dr. Grove said, though the diet also contains adequate protein and nutrients. They can eat as many pellets as they want. They also snack daily on a 300-calorie chunk of peanut butter, and are sometimes treated to popcorn or peanuts. Gummy bears were abandoned because they stuck to the monkeys’ teeth.

They also drink a fruit-flavored punch with the fructose equivalent of about a can of soda a day. In all, they might consume about twice as many calories as a normal-weight monkey. Dr. Grove and researchers at some other centers say the high-fructose corn syrup appears to accelerate the development of obesity and diabetes.

It wasn’t until we added those carbs that we got all those other changes, including those changes in body fat,” said Anthony G. Comuzzie, who helped create an obese baboon colony at the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio.”

In other words, this so-called high-fat diet (that contained only 35% fat, which I’m willing to bet were vegetable oils, or PUFAS) was in fact a lethally high-carb, high-fructose diet of the kind most Americans eat because they watch Nightline sponsors’ ads, and visit their very own Ms. Doc’s for medical and nutritional advice. This is the diet ONPRC’s Big Pharma funders would like everyone to continue eating, so they can then sell you the newest diet pill that will let you eat this crap and stay sick forever, while losing a little weight. They say there’s no such thing as a Perpetual Motion Machine, but they are wrong. This little circle jerk will continue forever as far as I can see, with outliers like Taubes, Kendrick, Kwasniewski (and those who read and follow them, like myself and my son) pushed ever farther from it, lest the truth they reveal cost so much as a penny in profit.

Or Power. Yesterday ended with all my “Debunking HCG” threads on a forum being “locked” from further discussion by the moderators. I don’t believe it was from lack of interest from forum members; one of my threads had nearly 600 posts and over 14,000 views. But dare to question authority, or challenge profit (a few members happily sell HCG themselves), or bring actual science to a discussion of a high-fat diet — so-called — or a starvation diet, and various vested interests will not be happy.

Yep, it was a good day yesterday. For them, not you.

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12 Responses to JUNK: Food, Science, Doctors, Mass Media, oh my!

  1. NewMe says:

    Great article. My DH just had a Mr. Doc appt. and when he discussed the fact that he took himself off his statin, his doc was NOT happy. Doc informed him that he just came from a “big meeting” where they were informed that all this nonsense about statins being bad has been circulating and there is nothing to this – Statins are keeping everyone alive! Hooray!! I asked him if he asked doc who sponsored the meeting? no answer….DH did in fact convince doc to let him “try” without statins with a blood recheck in 6 weeks.

    I too am getting tired of explaining to my friends that it is NOT the fat that is killing us…it’s the sugars! I have been off HCG for the past 5 weeks and have stabilized beautifully by following a high fat (although the bulk is avocado/coconut oil/almonds) diet. I have even been able to add small amounts of the starches back in but actually prefer the taste of the fats to sugars/starches. I am now 3lbs below my LIW. I think I have finally found a way to live life…and after 40 years of yo-yo dieting, a way to control my weight – Thank you.

  2. Corbow says:

    It bothers me that your threads on the forum were locked. It wasn’t because you were questioning authority or challenging profit, IMHO, but because the tone was less than civil. For the record, I thought those who attacked your ideas early on were off base. At the same time, I agree with M**s recent assessments about the attitude of the debate.

    That said, I fully intend to continue following your ideas to see where they lead.

    • > It bothers me that your threads on the forum were locked. It wasn’t because you were questioning authority or challenging profit, IMHO…

      I’m afraid I’m in possession of private messages and emails that prove otherwise.

      > because the tone was less than civil.

      That’s easily refuted. The ‘tone’ from forum members when I first posted was far from civil, and that’s being generous to the word ‘civil’. Since no one could refute my arguments or the facts upon which I based my arguments, they simply refuted me. My character, my motivations, my personality, my very existence (as in, How Dare You!). Not only weren’t they stopped, the thread went unlocked (despite the mods trying to have me banned and my threads not just locked but erased) for another month. It’s only as time moved closer to the start date of the experiment that will lay hcg (as a treatment or help in the treatment of obesity) to rest once and for all, that the thread was locked.

      I didn’t mind the attacks, some of them contained so many non-sequiturs they were funny. And aside from the knowledge that my further posts may have helped others decide to heal their metabolisms instead of harming them further with hcg, I don’t even mind my threads being locked. It just gives me more time to devote to writing here. What I find hilarious, though, is the lack of irony among those who were instrumental in locking the thread, preventing me from posting there, are the ones now piling up here to comment about how wrong I am about everything, even my opinion about why the threads were locked. 🙂

      I’d love it if forum members would come here to comment on the threads themselves (like this one, about Junk Science), or who were willing to do sufficient research to come up with facts that refute those I’ve stated here, rather than “well, I just don’t believe what you’re saying.” Instead, here’s a bit of the flavor of those comments, which are mild compared to what was written on the forum itself about me, not my ideas.

      — “you spin things to your favor without bothering with the truth.”
      — “I will continue to follow your blog, I’m very interested, but it makes me leery when you say things that aren’t completely true.”

      Folks, if you feel my facts as stated are untrue, by all means provide substantiating alternative facts to demonstrate that. If you’re right — great! I will have learned something, and so will my readers. However, if what you wish to do is attack me personally, well, you’ve got an entire forum in which to do so.

  3. Ego vs Copernicus says:

    In your enumerated paras: para 2 has a typo “Groves” (instead of Grove). It jumped out at me because I enjoy reading Dr. Barry Groves’ site and surely he would agree with everything you’ve written! 🙂

    With regard to the forum, I’m entertained by the cognitive dissonance on display in the righteous “Why HCG Does Work” thread. Your point, all along, was that hCG is not the active agent in weight loss. The discussion in that thread favoring the addition of fat in Round 2 of the “protocol” is making your point. And still they don’t get it, proving the adage even a blind squirrel can find an acorn.

    • > In your enumerated paras: para 2 has a typo “Groves” (instead of Grove). It jumped out at me because I enjoy reading Dr. Barry Groves’ site and surely he would agree with everything you’ve written! <

      Ack! Fixed, and thank you for letting me know. I must've had Groves on my brain when I was writing, wondering what he would think of that primate ‘experiment’.

      > still they don’t get it, proving the adage even a blind squirrel can find an acorn.

      Given the number of comments rolling in from them here — not about what I just wrote here, of course, but about me personally — apparently they don’t get irony, either. 🙂

  4. roguepirate says:

    and the world is FLAT……. Didn’t you know this??

  5. Blakers says:

    Great post. Now if I can just get a Ms/Mr. Doc to run this long list of tests I need without sighing, complaining, and looking at me like I have three eyes or telling me I’m “wasting money”, then I might have a cessation of the worst symptoms I have ever experienced in my 12 years being a diagnosed hypo, and lose a few pounds in the process. One can hope, right?

    • I hope you can get a Doc to order the tests, but if not you might want to save up and use the links here to order them yourself. Several people have done so already, and results show illnesses ranging from hypothyroidism brought on by thyroid hormone resistance, to Hyperinsulinemia (excessively high insulin levels, which can lead to hypoglycemia). Hyperinsulinemia, which artificially depresses blood glucose levels so that they appear not just normal, but “good,” is very dangerous because the pancreas is constantly churning out insulin, which damages internal organs, builds up arterial plaque and, if left unchecked, can damage the pancreas so severely it can no longer produce insulin. In which case the sufferer must then inject insulin for the rest of their lives. At the very least it makes it incredibly difficult to lose fat, if not ‘weight’ because lipolysis cannot take place in the presence of insulin.

      I see this all the time. When I look at someone who is fat around the middle, and who has trouble losing that fat — yet their glucose readings are good — Hyperinsulinemia should always be suspected. Yet doctors are still so ignorant of this, they look at the fasting blood glucose, or A1c results and decide no further tests are required. That’s how it goes undiagnosed so often. Everyone with fat around their middle should insist their docs run a Fasting Insulin test at every annual physical.

      Here’s more information about why this is so important: http://www.healingmatters.com/hyperin.htm

      • LisaAPB says:

        Thank you for the link. As you can imagine, I’ve been doing a lot of research on this when I have the time! I bought some cinnamon and chromium today to add to my diet. I don’t know if it will help but I don’t think it will hurt. I’m also testing myself for Wilson’s rT3 syndrome which I suspect is another issue. Temps so far have not risen past 97.8 and that is with a coat on!

        Blakers, have the tests done. Don’t ask you doctor, consult with him, and let him know you are taking a more active role in your health. If he will not order the tests, you can get them online, and I would fire him as my doctor. He should be working with you for good health.

        Some of the tests online are reasonably priced, and I will probably use that site again for other tests. For instance, I’d like to see where my vitamin D is because it was very low last summer. I love being able to get the test results delivered to my email.

        • Cinnamon and chromium are good, and you’re probably right that you’ve got WTS. But the real issue is all that insulin, and if you’re not going to take Metformin (generic/cheap and non-toxic even in high doses), changing your diet to one that doesn’t raise the insulin to begin with will probably help a lot though it will take longer.

          You might want to research ketogenic diets, because one that isn’t quite as strict will probably work well for you. As you know, ketogenic diets are now being used in hospitals around the world to successfully treat kids with otherwise untreatable epilepsy. It works so well — far better than any epileptic drug or even brain surgery — that once these kids reach adolescence their epilepsy simply seems to have vanished for good. Keto diets are now in clinical trial for a lot of other diseases too, like some forms of cancer.

          Ketogenic diets are 90% saturated fat, with very modest protein and almost no carb (the one ‘non-essential’ nutrient for humans). You’d probably do as well with 80% fat, 15% protein, and 5% carb from green veggies. A diet like this will raise almost no insulin — not even from protein/gluconeogenesis — and will also vastly decrease the possibility of dropping blood sugar overnight. It should also eliminate your mid-afternoon shakes, because the fat will keep your blood sugar stabilized throughout the day.

          Vit. D is important, but I’d also recommend an iron test. Ferritin (which is stored iron, as opposed to available iron) can often give a ‘false’ high with thyroid hormone resistance, while your actual iron can be very low due to the way your liver is being prevented from getting all the correct signals it needs to handle iron properly.

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