Seventh Day Adventist Studies

• Moderation is a Fatal Thing

  Everything in moderation is a near unanimous response by health professional, health support organisations and media commentators to solving our health crisis.

  The same argument was used in in the 1950s and 1960s to convince people to reduce smoking. After all, you would not want to deprive people of the “solace, relaxation and enjoyment to mankind” that smoking has provided for more than 300 years. These days, doctors do not suggest that people reduce smoking but to stop.

  One problem is that moderation cannot be defined. One person may consider a hamburger or packet of cigarettes a week as being moderate. This can easily become two hamburgers a week or just one more cigarette.

  Doing things in moderation does not change a habit. To change a habit requires consistency and commitment over a period of several weeks or months.

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  5 January 2019

• How do Your Genes Affect Obesity and Diabetes

  The purpose of the DIETFITS Trial was "to determine the effect of a healthy low-fat (HLF) diet vs a healthy low-carbohydrate (HLC) diet on weight change and if genotype pattern or insulin secretion are related to the dietary effects on weight loss".

  It a popular area of research to determine if there are genetic causes of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, depression and any other illness or condition that is plaguing our society.

  This area of research ignores the fact that often our genetics does not determine health outcomes.  Ignoring this will not solve the problems of our society's rapidly failing health.

  The conclusions of this paper are:

  In the 12-month study, there was NO significant difference in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet compared with a healthy low-carbohydrate diet.

  Neither of the 2 hypothesized predisposing factors [genotypes] was helpful in identifying which diet was better for whom.

  Frequently the problem is not that complicated.

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  7 November 2018

• William Roberts – The cause of heart disease – It is the cholesterol

  Dr. William Roberts is a leading cardiovascular pathologist. He is the current editor (at 2018) of the American Journal of Cardiology— a position he has held since 1982. He has published over 1,500 articles. He has been located at Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute and Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas since 1993.

  Dr. Roberts was the editor of a series of books titled Cardiology which were published annually from 1982-1999.

  Dr. Roberts has advocated and practiced consuming a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based diet for over 50 years.

  He believes that there is only one cause of atherosclerosis - “It's the cholesterol, stupid!”

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  4 June 2018

• The Ketogenic diet slays the opposition? – not true

  An article titled, How the Keto diet – even without exercise - slays the opposition, by Derek Beres was published on Think Big website on 11th December 2017.

  The Gibas study quoted by the article claims that ketosis is a useful and valid tool to control metabolic syndrome, diabetes and obesity.

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  2 March 2018

• The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What We Eat – A Review

  Alan Levinovitz is an assistant professor of Religious Studies at James Madison University, Virginia.

  His book, The Gluten Lie: And Other Myths About What We Eat, “takes on bestselling physicians and dietitians, exposing the myths behind how we come to believe which foods are good and which are bad—and pointing the way to a truly healthful life, free from the anxiety of what we eat.”

  Whilst the book was fascinating in describing how easily it is for society to be deluded about food issues, the book adds several misconceptions of its own.

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  16 February 2018

• CSIRO Healthy Diet Score and Egg Consumption in Australia

  In May 2015, the CSIRO (Australia) Healthy Diet Score survey was launched. This survey describes Australian’s self-reported diets and their compliance with the Australian Dietary Guidelines. As at June 2016, more than 85,000 people have responded.

  This survey was used to justify the “Eggs are OK every day” campaign. This is despite the fact that the only measurable health outcome was weight status and despite the fact that there is only a fair correlation between two different self-reported dietary surveys that were performed a week apart.

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  27 October 2017

• Do vegetarians live longer?

  On 2nd February 2017, Melody Ding, a senior researcher from the University of Sydney published an article in The Conversation titled “Do vegetarians live longer? Probably, but not because they’re vegetarian”. Her preferences were revealed early in the article when she writes, “vegetarianism and its more austere cousin, veganism, are becoming increasingly popular”.

  A person calling a vegan diet austere does not know how to cook.

  There is overwhelming evidence that vegans (and particularly whole-food, plant-based vegans) live longer and healthier lives.

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  13 September 2017

• DASH Diet and Blood Pressure

  The concept that diet and blood pressure are linked has been discussed since at least the 1920s. In 1926, Donaldson noted that “vegetarians, we believe, run a consistently lower blood pressure than those who use flesh foods."

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  22 October 2016

• How do we know what we know?

  Many “facts” have a long history of discovery, with a sometimes bitter and acrimonious debate before a final acceptance.

  In Life, the Universe and Everything (part of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series), Douglas Adams explains our inability to take in new information as a result of the Someone Else's Problem field. Effrafax of Wug utilised the SEP field to create an invisibility device that would run for a hundred years on a single torch battery.

  It relied on people's inability to see anything that they do not want to, were not expecting or cannot explain.

  We obtain our information initially from parents and from interacting with the world around us. We learn that fire is something that should be avoided if we put our hand in it.

  As we grow older, we learn from other people, reading, school, television. Observation is not always a reliable guide. It is obvious that the sun and the moon revolve around the earth - we see the sun rise each morning in the east and set at night in the west.

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  14 April 2016

• Why are there so many points of view regarding nutrition?

  There can be a tendency for researchers and commentators to become attached to one particular area and not be able to see the relationship and interconnectedness with the different aspects of the same disease.

  Also, much research is focused on individual components of nutrition, such as individual minerals, vitamins, or components such as fats or saturated fats.

  Once again, researchers can become attached to one particular element of nutrition. We search for the magic supplement or the one miraculous cure.

  Nutrition is the result of endless number of components in food. Health is the result of the relationship between all that we eat (and absorb during digestion), our relationships with others, the community that we live in and the world that we inhabit.

  Looking at individual components of food in isolation can never give a complete picture.

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  4 May 2014