So you might know the in depth inquiry on transfats, I dredged the archives of the genius, the Milloy.
My father the physician, an Iowa farmboy, was always mad that the food nannies condemned butter, eggs and red meat–he was right–they are nutty obsessives who need to manufacture scares.
I believe that ridicule is a very potent rhetorical device, but I will spare you my Don Rickles attack on nutritionists. They have enough trouble trying to pretend to do important things like advising on eating healthy.
Nutritionists help diabetics and people with specific dietary needs, but offer no scientific basis for “eating healthy” except they could say–eat a variety, it’s probably better for you, even though some people do well with no variety–wadduino? Nutritionists in many cases are a not so funny version of Seinfeld’s food nazi.
Ascherio and Willett and their group of data dredgers take the reputation of Harvard into the mud on a regular basis mining questionnaires for “associations” and then putting the positive associations with some political cache’ up with their claim that the study was statistically significant without an adjustment for multiple inquiry. My goodness they have gall and sometimes the “associations” are not only small but ridiculous.
Milloy’s alert on the trans fat ban crusades.
http://junkscience.com/2011/05/04/why-illinois-proposed-ban-on-trans-fats-should-be-stopped-fact-sheet/
Click here for more fun, courtesy of the Milloy.
http://junkscience.com/mcjunk-science/
Well if you want the best science overview (real rigorous science) versus what is in the media at the current moment pro or con on what is or isn’t a ‘healthy diet’ I recommend Dr. Stephan Guyenet’s “Whole Health Source” blog. There is a LOT of stuff…old and new studies. There is most certainly a proposed mechanism by how high consummtion of Omega 6 pressed seed ‘vegetable oils’ promote inflammation. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/search?q=eicosanoids
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/search?q=eicosanoids
I just noticed that they replaced the obese woman who served as the US Surgeon General for the last 5 years – all the while lecturing us on how to eat, forcing schools to serve “healthy” lunches etc.
He biography brags ; “…Her vision paper, The Surgeon General’s Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation (2010), showed Americans how to choose nutritious food… She was an active supporter of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! (2010) initiative for children…”
With her gone, there finally is progress on the obesity epidemic.
I’m not sure that I am in alignment with those crying “obesity epidemic”. I graduated High School in 1956 and there were a lot of fat girls then. Does anyone know how they actually measure current obesity? Is it the same way they measure current global temperatures?
One thing i neglected is that trans fats are important for good cooking and the result of this disruption of supplies is lousy pie crusts and other baked things. Can’t make croissants for example. My very good cook wife considers the impact a major problem for cuisine and good cooking. Can’t make tortillas, frostings, lots of problems. May end up with a black market for shortening and lard if the nannies have their way. Imagine, going to jail for lard and shortening violations.
It seems to me that if you casually follow the nutrition experts you travel in a circle. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils have been around for about a century, going in and out of popularity. They’ve gone from what you could get during WWII to our health savior from death from animal fats to really dangerous stuff. They don’t change from health to unhealth as frequently as eggs. It also seems that the obesity epidemic started with “fat free” and high carb diets.
It also seems that problems with heart disease have decreased and the age of onset has generally increased. http://report.nih.gov/nihfactsheets/ViewFactSheet.aspx?csid=96 It also seems that confounding factors in heart diesease are not considered by the excited reports by the food and health nannies. If I were to make a non-scientific, no statistics, SWAG I might just say that we are living longer than we did 50 years ago and having fewer per capita heart problems while eating transfats and other unhealthy things. I might even wonder if there is some inverse relationship between heart disease and smoking rate.
Salt, eggs, red meat, high carbs, low carbs are good/bad for you. High cholesterol is bad/not bad for you, but bran flakes will/will not fix that for you. Just wait, it will turn out we can’t live without transfats.