Tag: mediterranean diet

• Ancel Keys and the High-Fat Diet “Experts”

  Popular commentators frequently accuse Keys of manipulating data in his 1953 paper, Atherosclerosis, A Problem in Newer Public Health.

  This study is sometimes referred as the Six Countries Study. A number of popular commentators think this is the Seven Countries Study— they count England and Wales as two countries.

  This paper was presented in Amsterdam in 1952 and in January 1953 in New York.

  Far too much attention is paid to one page of a minor discussion paper written in the early 1950s. Keys writes,

  “The fact that the present high rate from degenerative heart disease in the United States is not inevitable is easily shown by the comparison with some other countries.”

  This was the purpose of the paper.

  Read more ➱

  24 July 2018

• Eye Cataracts and Diet

  There are four eye disease in the US that accounts for 75% of the cases for blindness and 85% of cases of visual impairment for adults 40 years and older in the US.

  Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), cataracts, diabetic retinopathy – blood vessels in the retina leak fluid or bleed caused by diabetic complications and glaucoma - slow clogging of the drainage canals which results in increased eye pressure.

  The effect of diet on eye health is much greater than expected given the amount of attention paid to the effect of sunlight on both our eyes and our skin.

  Read more ➱

  17 July 2018

• Ancel Keys did not manipulate his data

  Popular commentators frequently accuse Keys of manipulating data in his 1953 paper, Atherosclerosis, A Problem in Newer Public Health.

  This study is sometimes referred as the “Six Countries Study”. A number of popular commentators think this is the Seven Countries Study— they count England & Wales as two countries.

  This paper was presented in Amsterdam in 1952 and in January 1953 in New York.

  Far too much attention is paid to one page of a minor discussion paper written in the early 1950s. Keys writes,

  “The fact that the present high rate from degenerative heart disease in the United States is not inevitable is easily shown by the comparison with some other countries.”

  This was the purpose of the paper.

  Read more ➱

  28 May 2018

• Robert Lustig and The Men Who Made Us Fat

  Robert Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. He specializes in childhood obesity and studying the effects of sugar in the diet. He is the director of the UCSF Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health Program and a member of the Obesity Task Force of the Endocrine Society.

  Unfortunately, much of what he says is simply wrong, which given the amount of media exposure that he receives, is deeply worrying.

  Read more ➱

  26 February 2018

• 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.

  Read more ➱

  14 November 2017

• Eggs are Not OK

  Australians’ usual egg consumption is a document prepared by researchers at the CSIRO. The CSIRO is the premier Australian government-funded research organisation.

  The conclusion of this document states:

  Eggs provide a low cost, convenient source of protein and other key nutrients. Our results [from the Healthy Diet Score survey] suggest their inclusion in the diet is associated with a higher diet quality, in particular higher consumption vegetables and lower consumption of discretionary foods.

  This document is a marketing document. It needs a lot of imagination to make such a conclusion from the CSIRO’s published research papers. This conclusion also contradicts a number of other studies that show consuming eggs is detrimental.

  I sent an email on 28^th October 2017 to the lead author of this document, Dr Gilly Hendrie. Hendrie is also the lead author of a number of journal articles relating to the Healthy Diet Index. A copy of this email can be found at CSIRO Healthy Diet Score and Egg Consumption in Australia.

  The response will be published when it is received.

  Read more ➱

  1 November 2017

• The Pioppi Diet

  The Pioppi Diet movie and book by Aseem Malhotra, a London cardiologist and Donal O’Neill, an Irish film-maker that receives a great deal of publicity. A review in the British Journal of General Practice quotes Professor Dame Sue Bailey, the Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, who describes the book as a “must have for every household and a must read for every medical student and doctor”.

  Andy Burnham, current (2021) mayor of Greater Manchester and former UK Secretary of State for Health writes,

  This book has the power to make millions of people healthier and happier.

  Pioppi is a small village on the Tyrrhenian Sea which is located on the west coast of Italy. It is approximately 150 km (90 miles) south of Naples. Ancel and Margaret Keys resided here for over 25 years. Martii Karvonen of Finland and Jerimiah Stamler of the USA are other well-known medical researchers who resided in the village.

  Malhotra is a keen high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet advocate and is desperately trying (unsuccessfully) to merge his opinion into a distorted view of the Mediterranean diet.

  Read more ➱

  3 October 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.

  Read more ⇛

  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.

  Read more ➱

  12 January 2015