How Many Died?

At the same time, scientists at the University of Maryland were finishing up some intensive research on the impact of trans fats on heart disease.  Their findings appeared so incriminating for the lab-created substance that it spurred the USDA to run an analysis of the margarines currently on the market, testing them for their trans fats levels - an endeavor other researchers across the globe were also gaining interest in at the time.

The results were grim.  It turned out that the margarine market was a virtual sea of transfats, with nearly every brand, both regular and those promoted for health, containing disturbingly high levels.  According to Light, the head of the USDA's fats lane-who'd spearheaded the analysis-had attempted to spread the findings to other scientists and the public, only to have his efforts thwarted by the steely fist of the USDA.  As she described the sorry scene:

“The head of the fats lab told me that when he attempted to publish a paper with his findings in a peer-reviewed scientific journal .. [the] USDA suppressed it, refusing to allow the information to be published.  This eminent, world-renowned scientist told me, with tears in his eyes, that in his twenty=year career in research, he had never been confronted with such blatant political interference in science.

As disturbing as that interference was, it was hardly surprising.  Partially hydrogenated oils were a sacred cow for food manufacturers:  they were cheaper than animal fats, had a gloriously high melting point, prolonged the shelf life of whatever they touched, and provided just the right consistency to make foods profitably addictive.  That Father USDA had rushed in to protect the food industries favorite commodity wasn’t anything new-just business as usual.  Denise Minger, "Death By Food Pyramid"

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Food-Pyramid-Politics-Interests-ebook/dp/B00HFKX24Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394503651&sr=1-1&keywords=death+by+food+pyramid

From the first strong evidence of the negative impact of trans-fat until the government finally started warning us about same - took 16 years.  In the mean time, the government was steering folks towards margarines with vegetables oils, meaning they were pointing us at the substances laden with trans fats.  Thanks, USDA.

The book's title is: "

How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Have Ruined Our Health"

It is not an exaggeration.  That more folks are not angry is testament to many things.  Our faith in government and our unwillingness to examine the ways government is killing us, the paucity of good science with regards to human health, and our desperation to believe experts - who will tell us anything that makes them feel better.

Lustig, Sugar, Controversy

"Let me tell you what's happening. You're not a glutton. You're not a sloth. But if you eat a lot of carbohydrate or drink those sweetened drinks, the sugar makes your insulin shoot up. You know that ring around your neck? It means your body has chronically high insulin. That's not good. Insulin steals the energy from your blood and puts it into your fat. Say you eat 1,000 calories. Your insulin grabs 500 of those calories and stores them in your fat tissue. And guess what? You're still hungry and you feel tired."
http://www.psmag.com/health/robert-lustig-sugar-obesity-diet-50948/

Here's a guy who's so right, and so wrong:

"All health debacles were originally categorized as personal travails before they were declared public health issues," Lustig writes in FatChance. "What if our breakfast cereal was laced with heroin by some unscrupulous food company?" Whose fault would it be if people became addicted? "Isn't it the role of the government to protect us?" 

Lustig, and many Americans, don't make the basic connection that government is characterized by ineffectiveness, largely because government only has one tool - force backed by violence.  

Our government, in its zeal to protect us is killing us by advocating a diet that was not supported by science (high carb, high industrial seed oil, and until recently, high sugar).  In short (and I blog at length about government and liberty on my other blog, Apolloswabbie) when "we" allow governments to have the power requisite to "protect" us in the way that Lustig imagines, we ignore a fundamental reality - governments serve the politicians that run them, and their political aspirations, and sometimes by accident do us favors as well.  As Thomas Jefferson stated so eloquently, "The government that governs least governs best."

Back to the part that Lustig is right about: 

The event that sparked his insight: "In 1995, when Lustig was a pediatric endocrinology attending physician at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, a group of children with brain tumors set him on his career course. Lustig noticed that, after neurosurgery to remove the tumors, the children showed signs of hypothalamic obesity. Their hypothalamuses were damaged, and as a result their bodies started producing too much insulin. All became lethargic and fat. Then Lustig prescribed octreotide, a drug that blocks insulin. With no counseling or any effort at behavior modification, all of the children started eating less, moving more, and losing weight. According to Lustig, elated parents started calling him, saying, "I got my kid back!" 

A follow-up study, in 1998, showed that insulin suppression using the same medication caused weight loss in 20 percent of obese adults. Lustig concluded that adiposity-fatness-must stem from a hormonal problem, not a behavioral one. In other words, fat people eat too much and gain excess weight because chemical imbalances make them hungrier and lazier than they should be. These hormonal imbalances cause the behavior, not the other way around. So if you want to fix the behavior, you have to fix the biochemistry."

I think Lustig casting his eye towards government to "make it right" is ironic - he'll have far more success, far faster, using his knowledge to help the people directly. When half the population has figured out that sugar and fructose and these other beasts of "civilization" are killing us, government will come along for the ride.

Institute For Justice, My Hero

Peter Attia's cogent summary follows at the link below.  If you read it, you will wonder how it is possible.

After being diagnosed with diabetes, and nearly dying of its complications, Steve did his own research and learned that the high-carb/low-fat diet his doctors recommended may not have been the “best” choice for him.  He adopted a low-carb “Paleo” diet and lost about 80 pounds, freed himself of his medications, normalized his blood glucose, and claims to feel healthier than ever.  Like many of us who have experienced the virtues of carbohydrate restriction, he believes a well-formulated low-carb diet is the simplest, cheapest, and most effective way to treat diabetes.

Of course, as you know, this goes against the conventional wisdom promoted by most licensed dietitians and physicians who advocate a high-carb/low-fat diet and, if necessary, medication to lower blood glucose.

In December 2011, Steve started a Dear Abby-style advice column on his blog to answer reader questions.  In January 2012, the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition informed Steve that he could not give readers personal advice on diet, whether for free or for compensation, because doing so constituted the unlicensed, and thus criminal, practice of dietetics.

The State Board also told Steve that his private emails and telephone calls with friends and readers were illegal.   Violating the North Carolina licensing law can lead to fines, court orders to be silent, and even jail.

http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/how-much-control-should-the-government-have-over-our-health

Harper: "Thank God for Greg Glassman"

The link that follows is a video of a CF Journal interview with Bob Harper, of Biggest Loser fame. I've been enjoying this show for a couple of seasons, and for the same reason that I enjoy coaching people in nutrition and fitness - you can see them transform the defining reality of their lives. They are re-born, almost literally. The compelling element of the Biggest Loser is to see and experience what it's like to have life from death. This interview with Bob Harper is only 10 minutes but it's a remarkable manifestation of Greg Glassman's vision of elite fitness, and even of having CrossFit be the means to transform the state of what is called the "fitness industry" in our country. Here's the full CFJ link: http://journal.crossfit.com/2012/04/bopharper.tpl#comments

Here's a shorter, free version:
Mac: http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFitJournal_BopHarper_PRE.mov
Windows: http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFitJournal_BopHarper_PRE.wmv

If you can put a person that is 200 pounds overweight on a prescription of CrossFit and do better than other traditional training options for the obese - what other endorsement could CrossFit get? CrossFit for seasoned citizens? Yes, it's being done. CrossFit for Wounded Warriors? Absolutely. CrossFit for type 1 diabetics? Yes! CrossFit for kids? Uh huh!!

Why? Why do all these disparate populations train and love the same prescription (constantly varied functional movements at high intensity)? IT WORKS. IT'S THE RESULTS PEOPLE. What has been called fitness training for years is certainly better than nothing, but it pales in comparison to what happens to people who CrossFit. CrossFit makes them look better, sure, but more importantly it gives a practice field for participants to test limits, exceed perceived inability, and maybe more significant – CrossFit workouts seem to a trigger a hormonal cascade that makes us humans feel good. Were we born needing to feel the hormones we generate doing intense exercise? I think it’s at least possible. Jogging gives some of those hormones, as does any activity, but once you’ve tried a few CF workouts – it’s different.

I think Greg Glassman's vision of transforming the fitness industry is well on its way. Next up: the health care industry. Ambitious? Insanely ambitious. How could it be done? First, our health care system does a remarkable job of keeping sick people alive. But it is wretched at keeping people healthy, and at making sick people well. CrossFit can change that. The model of using drugs to treat symptoms of poor health - high blood pressure, dislipidemia, gout, pain/inflammation, blood sugar disregulation (IOW, metabolic derangement) - is a model that assumes the genome was build to fail. It's a model that makes sense if you think this much sickness is "normal." It would be easy to believe that if you were a physician applying the low fat, low salt, fad diet of the last 30 years, and noticing that your patients were not getting better as a result. From that experience, you could think "We have to use drugs, no one will do what it takes to take care of their health." Everyday, CrossFitters buck that set of obstacles and restore health, instead of treating the symptoms of their disease. Our health care system is collapsing under the weight of excessive government intervention, which has led to the low fat fad diet and worse - to the defacto subsidization of a food industry that is making us sick and at the same time the subsidization of the drug industry which helps us to survive (but hardly to thrive) our illness. If you think it's insane and absurd to suggest that CrossFit could save the nation's health care system and our national budget at the same time - well, I do too, but I'm not betting against it either. And I WILL do the microscopic amount that I can to support the potential for change.

I've been thinking "thank god for Greg Glassman" for years. Bob Harper, thank you, godspeed on your mission.

USDA Helps and Hurts

Fascinating angle on the interaction between crony politics and weight gain.  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/22/new-report-links-agricultural-subsidies-to-childhood-obesity/#ixzz1ZHq1YPBG

But the real problem is the fact that the USDA insists on weighing in about what foods are or are not healthy, but lacks to science to back up their assertions.

Finding the Real Killer

Salt War
What if you are a "public health authority" and you are passionate about helping people live longer and better.  You get used to the idea that your job means wielding a clumsy club - for example, you know some percentage of people will die every year from adverse reactions to vaccination, but you believe many more will be saved.  Therefore, you can live with the requirement that people can't send their kids to public schools unless they've been vaccinated.

If you are a parent however, the calculus comes out a bit differently.  Other parents can "protect" their kids if they feel the need to, but you may think that the risk of vaccination exceeds the risk of infection by, for example, measles, mumps or rubella.  You don't care about the odds - you just don't want to be the parent who loses a kid due to an un-needed vaccination, and you believe that for a healthy, well fed kid, most infectious diseases have a relatively low risk of mortality.

What's the point of describing this situation?  The point is to illustrate that the playing field looks differently depending on where you sit.  The link above describes the salt wars - the ongoing battle amongst health professionals and their critics about whether or not salt will make you sick.  Here's the short version of the answer:  if you don't have high blood pressure, salt will not make you sick.  If you have high blood pressure, cutting back on salt will help - but for most with high blood pressure, salt restriction only helps a little (if you want to cure your high blood pressure, try carb restriction - works very well for most folks, because most high blood pressure is a result of excess carb intake and hyper insulinemia.  Once your normalize your BP, you can enjoy your salty food with a clear conscience).

Why's that a big deal?  Because those passionate health professionals have done some interesting math.  If you reduce a population's salt intake enough, you can get an average reduction of that population's blood pressure equal to a percent, or maybe a little more.  If you make some assumptions and do some complicated math, you can predict that the aforementioned salt restriction will reduce heart attacks and strokes by some percent, thus saving lives.  Thus, the passionate health professionals are pushing for restrictive legislation to reduce salt intake (Say What?).

You may or many not have a problem with that course of action depending upon your sense of what the limits of government should be.  I have a significant problem with it, however, because it the government can dictate what you eat based on the flimsy science supporting the case for salt restriction, they can make you do anything they want to.  Nevermind the bizarre logic that allows them to take aim on salt but allow cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, selling gatorade like drinks as a health food, and driving in cars.

I mean if you want to save a bunch of lives, get rid of automobiles and don't let anyone make or sell booze, for crying out loud.

Of course, that's the point - they know they can't get away with taking your car to save your life because we'd all rather be dead than to lose our cars - or booze for that matter.  But they think they can bamboozle you with shady salt science and save some random folks from an untimely death.  At least they mean well.

Read the articles linked above.  Read this gem by Gary Taubes which examines the topic in even greater depth.  Consider that there's evidence that salt restriction may kill as many folks as it saves.

Then ask yourself:  What should the standard of scientific proof be before government may impinge upon your liberty "for your own good"?

I obviously do not think that standard has been met for salt.  Do you?

The Plate

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/06/02/does-the-plate-give-better-dietary-advice-than-the-pyramid/

While I agree that the plate is a better means to represent a desired meal than was the pyramid, especially when the message sender is the US Government who by definition must design a message that can be digested by that 50% of the population which has a below average intelligence, if the message is a bastardization of the science, it should still not be sent.  IOW, this is just "lipstick on a pig".  (I do not mean to belittle the appearance of pigs, but would note that I find the idea of lipstick on bacon is not appealing to the eye or the palate.  Editor's note). 

Please indulge me, dear reader, in a not so bold prediction:  This "plate" will have zero effect on the propensity of the US population to gain an unhealthy amount of body fat, no matter how much money our government, via the USDA, has paid for this product's development, or will pay for its marketing. 

Here's another:  If our Surgeon General follows this eating plan, she will be just as heavy when she leaves office is as she was when she took office.  However, she will actually deserve this fate because she's educated enough to know better.

Here's a third:  at some point, someone in the government will be presented with the fact that grains rapidly raise blood sugars, regardless of their "wholeness" or lack thereof.  Someone will, eventually, announce that grains of any kind have a glycemic impact which is deleterious and particularly to diabetics and pre-diabetics who already have glycemic control issues as their most significant health driver.  No one will be required to take responsibility for the fact that our government has proclaimed all these years that so called whole grains are 'heart healthy.'  Perhaps some will realize how much of the "health care crisis" was created and perpetuated by the USDA driven low fact dogma, but the damage will have been done.

Eades On Taubes

Eades About Taubes' Why We Get Fat

This post by Mike Eades is long and is a good example of Dr. Eades at his best.  I recommend that you read it in full if you groove on understanding how human metabolism works, and why we get fat. 

Here's what he covers:
1.  We get fat from eating more calories in food than we dispose of as calories and waste, but that doesn't tell us anymore than it does to know that a restaurant if full sometimes, and not others, because people come in faster than they can be served, eat, and leave.  IOW - if you want to adequately staff a restaurant, you need to know more than "we have more people we can serve right now."  You need to know why a bunch of people decided to walk in so that you can better plan for the next time.  If you want to eat less than you need to know why you get hungry in order to eat for reduced hunger and therefore less caloric intake and greater energy expended.  In other words, you need to know what foods cause energy imbalance and why.
2.  For many people, the unproved but oft repeated assumption that we just 'eat less and exercise more' becomes worse than not true, because it reinforces choices that will doom almost all the overweight to future failure in weight loss.  A life of trying to restrict ourselves from hunger satisfaction, whilst burning up prodigeous amounts of time working at minimally effective fitness regimes, is at LEAST not optimal.  At worst is a farce, and a special kind of torture for the obese, leaving them feeling as though they are morally inferior and the cause of their own suffering.  Mike Eades reminds us of the old saw "it's what we know that just ain't so" that hurts us the most.  The "calories in calories out" model is a perfect example of that instance.
3.  "Science must be a simple as possible, but no simpler" is a rough quote of a noted philosopher of science which Taubes notes in his incredible survey of the science of diet, "Good Calories Bad Calories."  The calories in calories out model is an example of simplicity gone too far.

An excerpt from Eades' post:
Why can some people eat like crazy and not get fat?  Perhaps because they develop insulin resistance in their fat cells just as they do in their liver cells.  They don’t get fat, but they typically have all the other insulin-driven problems of the obese: high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, increased risk for heart disease, etc.  And all while staying skinny.
How about morbid obesity?  Easy.  Those people don’t develop insulin resistance in their fat cells until late in the game, if ever.  They continue to push fat into the fat cells and become more and more obese until they weight 400-500 pounds or even more.  The average person will finally develop fat cell insulin resistance before the morbid obesity stage.  When this happens, weight and level of obesity stabilize and stay the same, almost irrespective of how much is eaten.
We now know why we get fat.  Excess insulin drives fat into the fat cells increasing the fat cell mass, ultimately leading to the state we call obesity. If we keep walking this progression back, the next question has to be, Why do we make too much insulin?
We make too much insulin because we eat too many carbohydrates, especially sugar and other refined carbohydrates.  With that statement, we’re starting to edge into controversial territory, but it’s only territory populated by the ignorant.  The hard science is emphatic that carbs are a pure insulin play.  Eat them and your insulin goes up.
Some people with a little learning may be quick to point out that protein drives insulin up as well.  This is true, but with a catch.  Protein drives both insulin and glucagon up, so you don’t have the pure insulin effect.  Only carbs will give you that.  With carbs, insulin goes up while glucagon goes down.  With meat and other proteins, the effects of the elevated insulin are muted by the concomitant rise in glucagon. (Glucagon isn’t called insulin’s counter-regulatory hormone for nothing.)

Boiling this down:  You can't eat enough fat and protein to get morbidly obese, but you can easily eat enough carbohydrate, especially carbohydrate and fat, and triple especially carbohydrate and polyunsaturated (aka man-made vegetable fat) oils to get as fat as you want to.  That is, by the way, how they do things in the world of sumo wrestling, in which they average 4000 to 5000 calories per day on a low fat diet (~16% fat). 

As I've heard and blogged many a time, you cannot out train a bad diet. 

If you don't want to be obese and sick (or lean and sick for that matter), eat meat, vegetables, some nuts and seeds, little fruit and starch, and no wheat or sugar.  Work out to cultivate desirable physical capacities like strength, speed, power, coordination, balance, accuracy, agility, flexibility, endurance and stamina.  Keep your workouts short and intense.  Walk for pleasure and relaxation and the inordinate wellness walking seems to deliver.  Learn and play sports.  Don't let your pursuit of the above prevent your full embrace of the zest of life, whatever that may be for you.

A Real Stunner

Government and food labels and advertising - a literal witches' brew.


They may need to do more of that kind of moving. On Oct. 15, Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general, announced that he is launching an investigation into whether the "Smart Choices" label violates his state's consumer-protection laws. "What's so 'smart' about Froot Loops?" he asked at a press conference. If the label is found to be misleading, it will need to be changed, he said.
Read more:  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1931730,00.html#ixzz1HpMqz3Q9


This one is way out there.  I would love to see that court battle as each cites the absurd variety of "studies" out there trying to prove their case.  There's yet to be a serious government agency that will declare that sugar is harmful, so good luck to the AG.  It's bizzaroworld and has been ever since the federal government dipped its toe into the nutrition world, rendering an opinion of what is good for you and what is bad not with a coherent model, and not with scientific proof, but after a series of conflicting testimonies that left the observers confused.  Of course, that didn't stop the geniuses running our government from rendering an opinion.  After all, the people needed their help!

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

Given the impact that the Dietary Goals have on institutional meal plans, publicly funded research, and potentially individuals, what standard of proof do you think the government ought to have to meet in order to issue a recommendation?  I think this paper's abstract explains perfectly clearly why the USDA had no basis, now or 30 years ago, to recommend anything like a high grain, low fat diet.  
 
Concerns that were raised with the first dietary recommendations 30 y ago have yet to be adequately addressed. The initial Dietary Goals for Americans (1977) proposed increases in carbohydrate intake and decreases in fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and salt consumption that are carried further in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) Report. Important aspects of these recommendations remain unproven, yet a dietary shift in this direction has already taken place even as overweight/obesity and diabetes have increased. Although appealing to an evidence-based methodology, the DGAC Report demonstrates several critical weaknesses, including use of an incomplete body of relevant science; inaccurately representing, interpreting, or summarizing the literature; and drawing conclusions and/or making recommendations that do not reflect the limitations or controversies in the science. An objective assessment of evidence in the DGAC Report does not suggest a conclusive proscription against low-carbohydrate diets. The DGAC Report does not provide sufficient evidence to conclude that increases in whole grain and fiber and decreases in dietary saturated fat, salt, and animal protein will lead to positive health outcomes. Lack of supporting evidence limits the value of the proposed recommendations as guidance for consumers or as the basis for public health policy. It is time to reexamine how US dietary guidelines are created and ask whether the current process is still appropriate for our needs.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20888548

SciAM on Carbs

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=carbs-against-cardio


What's the takeaway?  That low fat gig you were pretty sure didn't work, didn't work in these studies either (note, several of the cited studies were observational).  Those who ate the most fat had better health markers than those eating less fat.  In short, these types of results make the government's dietary recommendations look as silly as I've thought they were for years.


But even when they get it right, they get it wrong:
Nobody is advocating that people start gorging themselves on saturated fats, tempting as that may sound. Some monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, such as those found in fish and olive oil, can protect against heart disease.  What is more, some high-fiber carbohydrates are unquestionably good for the body. But saturated fats may ultimately be neutral compared with processed carbs and sugars such as those found in cereals, breads, pasta and cookies.


Of you should eat veggies if you like them, but for the sake of precision, exactly what would it take to prove that 'some high fiber carbohydrates are unquestionably good for the body'?  It would take a very carefully planned and executed intervention study, one that has not been done.  As my friend David "Chef" Wallach said, "As soon as someone claims there is 'proof' in dietary science, you know they have no grasp on what the word proof means."

The finding joins other conclusions of the past few years that run counter to the conventional wisdom that saturated fat is bad for the heart because it increases total cholesterol levels. That idea is “based in large measure on extrapolations, which are not supported by the data,” Krauss says.

One problem with the old logic is that “total cholesterol is not a great predictor of risk,” says Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Although saturated fat boosts blood levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol, it also increases “good” HDL cholesterol. In 2008 Stampfer co-authored a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that followed 322 moderately obese individuals for two years as they adopted one of three diets: a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet based on American Heart Association guidelines; a Mediterranean, restricted-calorie diet rich in vegetables and low in red meat; and a low-carbohydrate, nonrestricted-calorie diet. Although the subjects on the low-carb diet ate the most saturated fat, they ended up with the healthiest ratio of HDL to LDL cholesterol and lost twice as much weight as their low-fat-eating counterparts.

Stampfer’s findings do not merely suggest that saturated fats are not so bad; they indicate that carbohydrates could be worse. A 1997 study he co-authored in theJournal of the American Medical Association evaluated 65,000 women and found that the quintile of women who ate the most easily digestible and readily absorbed carbohydrates—that is, those with the highest glycemic index—were 47 percent more likely to acquire type 2 diabetes than those in the quintile with the lowest average glycemic-index score. (The amount of fat the women ate did not affect diabetes risk.) And a 2007 Dutch study of 15,000 women published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that women who were overweight and in the quartile that consumed meals with the highest average glycemic load, a metric that incorporates portion size, were 79 percent more likely to develop coronary vascular disease than overweight women in the lowest quartile. These trends may be explained in part by the yo-yo effects that high glycemic-index carbohydrates have on blood glucose, which can stimulate fat production and inflammation, increase overall caloric intake and lower insulin sensitivity, says David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Grass On Government Sponsored Lipophobes

And then there’s the edible oil industry. They were quite happy to use the lipophobes’ message to promote their industrial products – corn oil, soybean oil, cotton seed oil, and derived products like margarine and Crisco – at the expense of their principle competition – natural products like lard, butter, and tallow. Their manufactured products were low in saturated fat and cholesterol. The natural animal products were not. This became the focus of their promotional campaigns. The statement of these differences was, of course, true. The health assertions, it turns out, were not. But they weren’t about to let the facts get in the way of a great sales strategy, so in addition to their own product marketing efforts they provided funding to various vegetarian-advocacy groups, disguised as “public health interest groups,” whose messages usually failed to mention either their benefactors or their principle beliefs. More and more heavily processed, plant-based “food” items are introduced every year, all of which tout their “healthfulness” because they’re low in the cholesterol and saturated fat that “has been linked with heart disease.” Yes, they’ve been “linked,” but what does that mean? It’s as truthful a statement as “won’t turn pink in the can!” Our current conventional wisdom is the result of this unhappy mix of ideology, dogma, and politics. 
http://grassbasedhealth.blogspot.com/2010/06/grass-and-cancer.html


The current "conventional wisdom" was empowered by the relative weakness in the science of diet and health. Combine government, weak science, and folks with good intentions and you get the sad tale above. Unfortunately, there's no chance we'll get a conclusive scientific answer any time soon due to the expense and time that would be required to create it.  

Minger 1, USDA 0

Under the subheading called “Needs for Future Research” (AKA “Stuff We Don’t Really Understand Yet”), they wrote:

1. Determine the benefits and risks of MUFA vs. PUFA as an isocaloricsubstitute for SFA. Confirm the metabolic pathways through which dietary SFA affect serum lipids, especially as some SFA (e.g., stearic acid) do not appear to affect blood lipid levels.

Basically, they’re recommending we swap saturated fat for unsaturated varietieswithout being sure what the effects are, and that we slash all saturated fat consumption without being sure whether the reasons are biologically justified. I guess by the time the next tome of guidelines is released, the USDA will get to see whether their lipid recommendations helped or killed us off faster. Welcome to America, land of 300 million guinea pigs.

http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/02/04/the-new-usda-dietary-guideline/

The unfortunate part of the USDA recommendations, to me, is that they bind agents of the government to recommendations derived from immature science.  The more fortunate thing for now is that we can test these recommendations for ourselves using equipment from a 'drug store.'  If you eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar/no wheat, and you blood glucose readings are better, you lose weight, you feel better, your appetite is controlled, and you perform well mentally and physically, forget the USDA, you've already learned what they should.  

Dis-Belief

Breakfast: I found the morning meals (at the lodging facility) less than optimal (i.e sausage and biscuit). Should replace with granola and fruit or cereal.

This was a comment left regarding the meal quality for a conference-like function at my organization.  I was and am stunned.  This person is one of a group of very well educated, very highly driven leaders, and is clearly committed to choosing food to avoid disease, and yet, they could not have a worse concept of what it means to eat 'healthy.'  This is the tragedy of USDA involvement in dietary recommendations from the government.

It should be a crime for the government to make dietary recommendations which cannot be backed by long term intevention studies. 

Government, Food, and Illness

http://jonnybowdenblog.com/why-you-should-never-trust-the-government-about-nutrition/

"Dairy Management teamed up with Domino’s to create new pizzas with 40% more cheese and devised (and paid for) a 12 million dollar marketing campaign for the new creation. People loved the stuff, and sales soared, “by double digits”, according to the NY Times.
"So what’s the problem?

"Well, Dairy Management is actually not a wholly independent consulting firm. It’s part of the US Department of Agriculture."

Interesting when you look to find out how closely tied the government is to those who do the DoA's business.  Strange that the DoA pushes so many products which defy its "dietary recommendations."

One of the the many confounders of dietary research is that "dairy" isn't always "dairy", "fish" isn't always "fish", and "meat" isn't always "meat".

Are we talking about grass fed cow dairy, or grain fed?  Pasteurized or non-Pasteurized?  Grass or grain fed beef/chicken/pork?  Pen raised, grain fed salmon or wild caught?  Most of the nutritional criticisms of any of these products is either valid or invalid based on the answers to the above questions - but I'll guarantee you that virtually none of the epidemiological studies have taken into account the differences in the above - thus, the insignificance of those kinds of studies.  In the mean time, your government continues to spend our money to manipulate markets while pushing scientifically invalid dietary recommendations.