Tag: gi

• BMJ Editorial – Are Some Diets “Mass Murder”?

  Richard Smith’s wrote an article Are some diets “mass murder”? in The BMJ on 15 December 2014. He uses a work of a popular commentator to reach his conclusions in this article. Smith's claim that Nina Teicholz’s The Big Fat Surprise, demolishes the hypothesis that saturated fat is the cause of cardiovascular disease fails with just a little scrutiny.

  Richard Smith is a British medical doctor and a previous editor of the BMJ (previously the British Medical Journal). He worked for the BMJ for twenty-five years (from 1979 to 2004) and was editor from 1991 to 2004.

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  8 July 2017

• Deception from The BMJ

  On 24th September 2015, BMJ issued a press release titled BMJ investigation questions expert advice underpinning new US dietary guidelines. The press release stated:

  The expert report underpinning the latest dietary guidelines for Americans fails to reflect much relevant scientific literature in its reviews of crucial topics and therefore risks giving a misleading picture, an investigation by The BMJ has found.

  The BMJ Investigation was an article written by Nina Teicholz in response to the above report. It was not a BMJ investigation. Why is The BMJ press release stating that they, The BMJ, performed an investigation when it is clear that this is not the case.

  This article was fully funded with a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (www.arnoldfoundation.org).

  The Laura and John Arnold Foundation provided the seed funding for NuSI, the organisation founded by Gary Taubes and Peter Attia to promote low-carbohydrate nutritional science.

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  27 June 2017

• What is the natural diet for humans?

  What is the natural diet for humans?  This is a common question but — we evolve based on behaviour and our behaviour may have a number of consequences, some beneficial and others not so much.

  Giraffes have long necks, not to enable them to reach leaves high in a tree, but because males fight using the necks.  Males with the longest, strongest neck wins. It does make life more awkward when eating grass or drinking from a water-hole in the evening.

  Evolution is based on changes that enable us to pass on genes for future generations.  If a genetic change affects cholesterol metabolism and causes an increase in heart disease this may not be relevant in evolutionary terms because heart disease usually affects people later in life.

  It still may have an impact on human society because of the important influence of grandparents involved in child-minding and their importance as a repository of knowledge.

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  16 November 2016

• Macadamia and Cashew Dukhah with Australian Bush Spices

  Dukkah (pronounce the u as in duke, dū’ka) originated in Egypt.  It is made a mixture of seeds, nuts various roasted nuts and spices. It can be used as a topping over salads, pasta or anything else that takes your fancy.

  The recipe below uses Australian spices but you can try any spice, herb or nuts that takes your fancy.

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  4 November 2016

• Liver Cleansing with Olive Oil

  The internet has numerous pages advocating an Olive Oil – Lemon Juice Liver Cleanse or Detox. The purpose of the exercise is eliminate gallstones from your gall bladder. The instructions vary but lemon juice and olive oil are featured. Apple juice and Epsom salts are sometimes involved.

  This procedure results in numerous green stones passed in the faeces in the following morning.

  Unfortunately, the exercise does not remove gallstones and has the potential to cause nausea, severe abdominal pain and may even lead to surgery to remove your gall bladder. It also leads to a false sense of security, giving rise to the belief that you have solved your gallstone problem.

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  13 May 2016

• Worried about whether you should be eating eggs?

  The Australian Heart Foundation has the following comment regarding eggs.

  Worried about whether you should be eating eggs? They're really nutritious and it's fine to have them regularly as part of a healthy diet. Eggs contain good quality protein, 11 vitamins and minerals, and are a source of healthy fats including omega-3 fats. One egg has about 5 g of fat – but most of this is unsaturated, a fat that you need to be healthy. An egg contains only about 1.5 g of saturated fat and no trans fat. As part of a healthy balanced diet you can eat up to 6 eggs each week without increasing your risk of heart disease.

  However, according to the Physicians' Health Study, doctors consuming 7 or more eggs per week had a 31% increase in all-cause mortality compared with those consuming less than 1 egg per week. With diabetic physicians, the association was much higher with the increase in mortality doubled.

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  21 February 2016

• Polyunsaturated Fats Cause Cancer – LA Veterans Trial

  The Wadsworth VA Hospital in Los Angeles operated a home where male army veterans resided. The meals were provided by one of two dining halls.

  Men in dining Hall A continued their usual diet. The “saturated animal fat and hydrogenated shortening replaced with vegetable oils in the experimental diet” for the diets provided in dining Hall B. Low fat diets were not considered because such a diet required “gastronomic sacrifice”. The total fat content of the 2 diets were the same, providing 40% of the total energy. (Diets of 40% fat cannot be considered a healthy diet.)

  This study is sometimes used to "prove" that a polyunsaturated fats promote cancer.  A reading of papers from the trial shows that this is not the case.

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  5 April 2015

• TIME Magazine Article – Eat Butter

  It is with alarm that I read Bryan Walsh’s article Ending the War on Fat that was published in TIME magazine on 23 June 2014.

  According to Walsh:

  Keys' work became the foundation for a body of science implicating fat as a major risk factor for heart disease. The Seven Countries Study has been referenced close to 1 million times.  But Keys' research had problems from the start.  He cherry-picked his data.

  If the book has really been "referenced close to a million times", it means that it has been referenced close to 80 times every day, including weekends, since the book was published in 1980.

  Walsh claims that Keys “cherry-picked” his data.  It is evident that Walsh has confused with Keys’ 1953 paper Keys’ paper, Atherosclerosis, A Problem in Newer Public Health and his later study Seven Countries, A Multivariate Analysis of Death and Coronary Heart Disease.

  Walsh fails to elaborate on how Keys “cherry picked” his data. Commencing in 1957, the Seven Countries Study studied 12,763 men in 16 regions in seven countries. What data was omitted from this study? How was the data “cherry-picked”?

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  11 July 2014

• Interview with Karo

  Karo Tak is a wonderful, passionate yoga teacher, vegan cook, animal activist working with the "Sea Shepherd Organisation".

  She visited Maitland recently to teach a vegan cooking class at "Organic Feast - East Maitland".

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  21 May 2014

• MRFIT Study – What did it tell us?

  The Australian Broadcaster ABC televised the program Heart of the Matter Part 1 - Dietary Villains on Thursday, 24 October 2013. This program listed the MRFIT study as more evidence that cholesterol is not implicated in heart disease.

  The Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT) was a coronary heart disease prevention trial that was conducted at 22 US clinical centres (18 cities) from 1973 to 1982. The multiple risks evaluated were elevated serum cholesterol, elevated blood pressure and cigarette smoking.

  A number of popular commentators use this trial as proof that cholesterol is not implicated in heart disease.

  The tobacco industry also used the results of the MRFIT study to argue that smoking is not harmful.

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  30 April 2014