Tag: Mediterranean diet

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
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
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
About Richard Harding

I have been a lecturer in nutrition in Newcastle, Australia at WEA Hunter and has been involved in the design of nutrition courses for degree and diploma qualifications in Health Sciences.

I worked in the IT industry since the 1970s as a computer programmer, system designer and project manager for companies such as CBC Bank, National Australia Bank, Burroughs Australia and Unisys working on projects for ANZ Bank, State Bank of NSW, Health Insurance Commission (Medicare), NRMA, Reserve Bank of Australia, City Bank, North Power, Chase Manhattan Bank and ACIRL (Australian Coal Industry Research Laboratories).

I worked as the system manager for a large pathology business that had a network of 10 pathology laboratories, from Coffs Harbour in northern NSW to Sydney - a distance of 500 km (300 miles) which operated online 24 hours a day for 6 days a week.

My website consists of over 140 webpages and with more than 120,000 words. Most are related to health and nutrition with others relating to the environment, agriculture, philosophy and psychology. Many issues that the ancient Greeks wrestled with are still relevant today.
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2 July 2013