December 13, 2005
All that oat bran was for nothing.
A study shows that eating a lot of fiber doesn't do a damned thing to protect you from colon cancer. I wonder what other health advice we're going to a lot of trouble to follow or feeling bad about not following we'll be told eventually really doesn't help at all.
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I'm not sure what we will have wasted our time doing, but I'm pretty sure Lileks will write a book about that list. :-)
Well, I know for sure that butter has been unjustly vilified, as has red meat. The main studies that showed saturated fats as being very damaging to the arteries unfortunately mixed saturated with trans fats -- that's a big no-no, and as we know now, it's the trans fats that should be avoided at all costs.
Common sense goes a long way, here. Before fake fats and the recommendation to eat less meat, people had way fewer heart attacks...
The cholesterol boondoggle is another one. At least one long term study (The Framingham Nurses study, maybe? I can't remember the specifics) actually shows a protective effect for higher cholesterol, but nobody in the drug industry talks about it.
Eat real (unprocessed, unadulterated) food. Move. Use your brain. Live a good life, die when you're supposed to. It's not that complicated.
No deep fat? No hot fudge?
Heh. Grains have for years been "associated" with lessening incidence of colorectal cancer. The authors of this study say this is most likely wrong. But they nonetheless advocate keeping up high intake because of similar "association" with heart disease[s] and diabetes.
If anybody (and I mean anybody) tries to come between me and chocolate, then they will see a sudden trough in their standard of health. Chocolate is my insulin. And none of this Hershey pish either. That's not chocolate - that's a decades long practical joke.
brian o'connell alludes to this, but I'm going to make it explicit: Woody Allen made the definitive comment on this over 30 years ago, in his science-fiction spoof Sleeper.
In the following snippet of dialog, two medical doctors, two hundred years into the future, are examining the grocery list of the man from the 1970s whom they've just thawed out:
Dr. Melik: [puzzling over list of items sold at Miles' old health-food store] ... wheat germ, organic honey and... tiger's milk.
Dr. Aragon: Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible!
Good health as an end in itself has become for many life's highest virtue. Pursuit of longevity has become law in many countries, where smoking is increasingly banned, and previously private concerns have transformed into "public health" matters.
The director of the NIH has declared that obesity is a “public health emergency,” and in England there is a proposal for a “national nutrition strategy”, including an independent agency with regulatory powers. A “fat tax” and legislation on the food industry controlling product development, marketing and pricing goals has been proposed.
In an increasingly medically intolerant culture, the information on fiber ought to worry people. Our new state religion, Good Health, has lots of "facts" that simply aren't true.
Reminds me of Woody Allen's character in Sleeper when he finds out in the future that candy bars are health food.
I guess the old maxim "moderation in all things" still has some validity.
HaloJonesFan: ha, ha. Only not.
If you, or anyone in the mainstream media, or most medical professionals, actually did buy the book, and then bothered to read it, you'd see that low carb diets only restrict carbohydrates severely for a very brief period (2 week "induction"), followed by a period in which high fiber (there it is again), low sugar vegetables and fruits are staples of the diet.
And Dr. Atkins' heart attack was the result of an infection he had had years earlier, and was not the result of arteriosclerosis or high cholesterol.
I'll step off the soapbox now; as someone who has been following a low carb diet on the advice of my doctors for about 6-7 years now, I tend to get uppity when people spout off about them without knowing what they're talking about.
If you spend 45 minutes a day panting hard, five days a week, your body will eat what it needs.
I figure I'm gonna die someday. Personally I'd like to die reasonably healthy, if you understand what I mean by that.
So I'll skip the tobacco, addictive drugs and the vast majority of alcohol.
The rest... I'm gonna enjoy life. I've personally thought the whole cholesterol thing was a boondoggle for quite awhile now.
Actually, what if I said "B.C.E." offends me? Would you stop using it?
Anyway - can we not just agree that moderation has always been the standard? And focus on any single factor is just bound to be wrong? And most journalists don't know how to read scientific studies anyway, in order to analyze them and report them to us?
Not to mention, most of these "XXX is good for you" or "XXX can prevent YYY" studies are done in reverse. You ask people with various health conditions to recount, in retrospect, what and how they eat. Or, you look at a group of people who live in some other area of the world (I'm thinking yogurt and the 'stans relating to very old age attainment) and derive conclusions about what "caused" their health to be the way it is. None of this is easily translatable to real life, in any part of the world. And yet we let ourselves be taken in by the reports.
Eh. W/E. I'm staying balanced and eating, in moderation, about anything I want to. I think I'll be ok.
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