Tag: Hilleboe

Misconceptions of Denis Stewart

Denis Stewart is a herbalist from the Hunter Valley (NSW, Australia). He is an associate professor at University of Newcastle since 2002. He founded the Southern Cross Herbal School in the late 1970s.

He presents a weekly radio show on 2NUR FM, a Newcastle-based radio station, on health topics.

I am concerned about some of his material. I posted Denis a (real) letter and sent an email without receiving a response. I also sent an email to 2NUR FM listing some concerns.

Below is a list of some of the concerns that have not been addressed.
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14 November 2017
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
The Big Fat Surprise

An article relating to Nina Teicholz book, The Big Fat Surprise, was printed in the Australian on 29th December 2014. Unfortunately, it is largely a repeat of misinformation and misunderstanding of the history of diet and cardiovascular research that is found in popular books and websites.

Whilst the current western diet is appalling and contributes to our poor health, it is absurd to contend that we have been lied to by the government, nutritionists and researchers. The contention that saturated fat from animals is actually quite good for you and cholesterol isn’t really important is simply wrong and not supported by research.
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12 January 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
Heart of the Matter – ABC Catalyst

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Catalyst program series produced a 2 part program collectively titled Heart of the Matter. The programs are titled Dietary Villains and Cholesterol Drug War. These programs were aired in October 2013.

The presenter and co-producer is Dr Marianne Demasi. The medical experts interviewed include Dr Michael Eades, Dr Jonny Bowden and Dr Stephen Sinatra. Science and medical writer Gary Taubes was also interviewed.

The views presented are based on popular books stating that we has been following the expert medical advice for the past 20 years (or 30, 40 or 50 years) and we are unhealthy than ever. They claim that there is a conspiracy to hide the truth concerning health, fat and cholesterol. These popular views are based on myths, fabrications and a distortion of the facts.
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3 November 2013