Parrot

Here's an article that I think illustrates sensationalism and food scares very clearly: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...0424?hub=Health Excerpt: Betsy, you should enjoy picking on this one. I've read at least one blogger ranting about how the effects were probably due to carbohydrates instead of fat. I don't know about that, but it is one of the things that indicates to me a lack of consideration for all confounding factors. It seems that the only confounding factors they even considered were Sodium and Potassium. Couldn't they have put a little more effort into this? What would be more convincing is if they made some sort of special breakfast nutritional bar. Make 2 kinds, with the same level of nutrients and everything - the only variation being the amount of fat in each. And seriously, this study SHOULD have been double-blind! That's just common sense! Neither the researchers nor the participants should have known whether they were testing the high-fat breakfast or the low-fat breakfast. Science has constantly shown us that health affects can be severely affected by the psychosomatic effect. If people know that the experiment is about the negative effects of a high fat meal, and they know that they've just had a high fat meal.... well, you do the math! Here's another cute trick: They tested the High Fat breakfast first! Why didn't they think to at least randomize the order for each participant? Of course the stress tests are going to yield completely different results the second time around simply because the participants have experienced it before and know what to expect! And then they come out and say that an average of 25% increase in blood pressure is "a whopping effect". News Flash: Blood Pressure can vary by as much as 40% during the course of a day! This 25% increase is statistically insignificant! This study is clearly deeply, deeply flawed. And yet just about everybody has been re-printing it without question! These scientists should know better.... but they don't. Journalists should be more critical.... but they aren't. Doesn't this clearly illustrate how bad science and fear mongering are trying to make you afraid of your food? Next time you see fear mongering headlines, I encourage you all to look at them with a critical eye.

Really? That's good to know. Where do I find them? (I've never seen any)

Not to mention that dimmer switches will be a thing of the past.

Well, there have been some religious books considered to be holy written in more recent times. The Mormon's have the book of Mormon. The Babis have The Book of Certitude, The Hidden Words, and a few others. Scientologists have Dianetics and some other stuff written by Hubbard. The thing is, even since before the Holy Bible was officially put together from the random selection of books that make up it's parts, people have emphasized the importance of age as being critical. Older, more ancient documents were considered to be naturally more reliable than more recently written work. A certain document called "Shepherd of Hermas" almost made it into the Bible, but was rejected in part because it didn't have the same authority of age as the rest of the books. I think that's just the way things go. As a society we respect religious books more if they were written a long time ago. But that doesn't mean that there aren't books any written today that won't become well respected religious literature in a couple hundred years.

Betsy, please forgive me for not addressing this post earlier, somehow I missed it in the midst of responding to your other posts. I wasn't able to view the page that you sent me to, but I did have a look at the realfoodnutrients.com website. It doesn't look very trustworthy to me. They make a lot of unsubstantiated claims and use a heck of a lot of junk science to back them up. Oh, and they're trying to sell me something. What a surprise! The idea that carbohydrates cause diabetes is just another version of the "sugar causes diabetes" myth (simple sugars being our most popular carbohydrate - and the form that all carbohydrates are broken down into). This myth is officially rejected by all diabetes organizations (The Diabetes Society, The American Diabetes Association, etc... ) The truth is that medical science hasn't been able to figure out what causes insulin resistance. What we do know is that obesity has been associated as a risk factor, and a lot of speculation has resulted from that. But no credible doctor or scientist will make the statement that diabetes is caused by carbohydrates. I was unable to find the original article comparing the Atkins diet plan. However, here is some information from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_Nutritional_Approach Some of the documents in support of the Atkins diet note that when carbohydrates were reduced, "study subjects spontaneously reduced their caloric intake" Apparently the Atkins diet naturally causes people to eat less. There have been several reasons advanced for this, some of the most vocal critics of the Atkins diet suggest that the simple restriction of food choice is enough to account for a reduction in calories. In any case, there's a lot of debate out there over the safety and effectiveness of the Atkins diet. Medical professionals seem to be split on this. I think it's a good thing that the Atkins diet is challenging common medical beliefs, but in the end it hasn't been proven to be any more effective at long term weight loss than any other diet. Although I do really like the fact that Atkins has pissed of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Well, perhaps I'm misinformed. I haven't been doing as much research on specific diet plans. I assume you're referring here to my statement about the Atkins diet being low in calories. I don't believe I said, though, that Atkins requires counting of calories. I read that information a while back in an article comparing different diet plans and noting that Atkins dieters lost slightly more. One thing that was noted in addition was that the Atkins dieters did consume a low amount of calories. I'm sure that was as a result of other factors though rather than by any conscious effort on the dieter's part. I'll see if I can't find that article once more for you.

Betsy, I know EXACTLY what you mean. It's confusing as hell, isn't it? But we know its a sad truth that you just can't trust the headlines to give you the full story. If you want to know what's really going on you have to do some digging. And even then you're not guaranteed to get your hands on absolute truth... but I figure that with research you can at least back up what you're trying to say. I've come to exactly the same realization. Here's how I look at it: We're all full of it, every single one of us. Even the experts can't be trusted to always be right. You're correct not to take what I have to say unquestioningly, I'm just some dumbass trying to promote the truth as I see it. I'm not always right, there's no reason to expect anybody to trust me just because I say so. The best thing I find is to just tell the truth as you see it and let people decide for themselves. If you're interested in a subject, do your research. But be sure to take everything you read with a grain of salt, including opinions that agree with yours. That's the standard I try to go by. It doesn't mean that I'm not a dumbass, but at least I'm a more knowledgeable dumbass. I think that's the best any of us can really expect to aspire to. In thinking about this I've been creating a set of rules for myself in order to try and weed out the truth from the fiction. My rule #1 is to be suspicious of fear-mongering. And this "obesity epidemic" positively reeks of fear mongering. But yeah, in the end it is completely your choice to make as to what you believe. I hope I've at least given you something to think about, though.

Betsy, you are a woman after my own heart. I also feel the need to research information on interesting new claims right away after I hear them. I read through this article you found. It seems to give a well rounded review of what people have been saying about the study. Like I already mentioned, some people have criticized them for not taking some things into account or question some of the confounding factors that they did take into account. It seems to me to be a lot of quibbling over small details. But I don't think anybody has insinuated that these figures aren't based on solid data. And this study definitely did take into account a lot of confounding factors that were negligently absent from the earlier study. I think it's fair to say that even if the study didn't take into account all causes of death, that if being even slightly overweight were as harmful to your health as some would have you believe that we would see a corresponding increase in mortality from this study. The fact that we don't is very telling. If you don't mind, I'd like to address a couple of sections from this article you quoted: This seems to me to be an attempt at a straw-man argument. That's the logical fallacy of trying to put words into your opponent's mouth that they've never said in order to rebuke them on a position that they've never held. I don't believe any of the pundits that are happy about this study believe that we shouldn't make an effort to eat healthy foods. As far as I know, nobody's taking this study as a green light to pig out on nothing but donuts and cheesecake. But I think it's safe to say that there is no such thing as an "Obesity Epidemic" and that efforts trying to fight this non-existent threat are thoroughly misguided. This is, of course, referring to the study that purported to show a 61% increase in diabetes between the years of 1991 to 2001. The problem with this study is that it was done entirely through telephone interviews. Many factors can account for huge skewing of that data. Even just the fact that people are becoming more aware of diabetes can account for higher reporting of it in telephone interviews like this. Luckily, we have actual data on this based on blood samples and laboratory results, not self-reported telephone interviews. This data comes from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). It is much more accurate, and according to the CDC: "indicate that the prevalence of diabetes, either diagnosed or undiagnosed, and impaired fasting glucose did not appear to increase substantially during the 1990s." For my money, I'm trusting the actual laboratory statistics over some half-baked telephone interview scheme.

Hey Betsy, good to see somebody challenging my claims. I always do research before saying these things, but I definitely appreciate that you want to see my sources and make up your own mind. If you want to really dig into this study I recommend this article by Sandy Swarc, whom I have a great deal of respect for and have mentioned before: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=042505D If you want to look at the technical release, here's a small page on that from the Journal of the American Medical Association: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstr...ourcetype=HWCIT It's a little dry and technical. But the authors interestingly also speculate that "The impact of obesity on mortality may have decreased over time, perhaps because of improvements in public health and medical care." I will note that some people have questioned some of the steps they've taken in order to account for a variety of confounding factors. But most agree that their stance on their methodology is defensible, and that these numbers are a huge improvement over the big 400,000 screw-up.

Some more facts for you all to consider: In the wake of the ridiculous 400,000 deaths per year fiasco (really just a lie masquerading as science), there has been some actual good science done on this subject. Katherine Flegal, a senior research scientist with the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics authored a study along with David Williamson, Barry Graubard and Mitchell Gail. This study is acknowledged for using scientifically solid data and methodology, including accounting for many confounding factors that were blatantly overlooked in the previous study. Guess what the study found? Being in the "overweight" category, having a BMI between 25 and 30, actually correlates with a higher life expectancy. That's right, people who are considered "overweight" are less likely to die in any given year than people of "normal" weight. In fact, being "overweight" saves approximately 86,094 lives per year! This is solid science, not the sensational and speculative weak correlations that you see splashed across the headlines. Our bodies store fat for a reason, being 10 or 20 pounds over the arbitrary BMI cutoff point for "overweight" is not a reason to panic - it's a reason to celebrate! In contrast, the risks of being underweight (BMI less than 18.5) accounts for the most pronounced risks of mortality. This is especially true for people over 60, where we see a 200% increase in mortality over "normal" weight, and a 266% increase in mortality over "overweight" people. Obesity only even catches up to these figures for younger individuals with a BMI greater than 35 (approximately 8% of the population). Obesity does have it's health concerns, especially extreme obesity. But the science is continually showing us that our focus is directed inappropriately on this matter. We need to sit up and take notice!

I believe you have your facts a little mixed up Betsy. Nobody has managed to link diabetes with carbohydrates. I would say that Atkins is a fad diet just like all the rest. The reason that it works like it does is mostly because it's low in calories. There are some body chemistry issues that may cause a small degree of extra weight loss, but overall this is just another band-aid fix for weight issues just like any other diet. And studies of "which diet is best" are notoriously unreliable. Another study done recently showed that the Weight Watchers diet came out on top. I don't mean to play "Dueling Studies" with you here. But I think it's pretty clear that in any discussion of which diet plan is the best, that the truth really isn't that straightforward. As for health, all fad diets are pretty much a wash when it comes to long term safety. I wouldn't really single Atkins out because it's just like all the rest in that regard. Cutting out vital nutrients is bound to be unhealthy for you, but the point is really moot since few people are able to stick to any of these diets long enough for long term studies to measure their health. I will give the Atkins diet a little bit of credit though. Atkins successfully challenged the main stream diet and medical industry's long held mantra of "LOW FAT, LOW FAT, LOW FAT!!!". It's really made a lot of difference in the way people think. It's a really good thing that people are starting to realize that fat isn't necessarily bad for you. And nobody would have taken the studies seriously showing the health benefits of Omega 3 Fatty Acids before Atkins came along.

I would like to take this opportunity to recommend to you all a website run by one Sandy Szwarc, BSN, RN, and CCP. She is a registered nurse with a biological science degree and over 28 years in neonatal intensive care and emergency triage; medical outreach education; health communications; and research. She is also a certified culinary professional, with an expertise in nutrition, cooking and food safety. She is an experience researcher in many health areas, including obesity and weight issues. She works as a contributor to science and policy institutes in Washington, DC, and is an award winning journalist. Her articles are quite eye opening, I would recommend having a look: http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/ Here is an excerpt from her introduction:

I want to address some of the things that have been said in a few of the recent threads. Overweight people have been categorized here as disgusting, delusional, unhealthy, lazy, and lacking in discipline, common sense, and education. These are all broad stereotypes that if you assigned them to any other group of people you would be labeled a racist. But somehow we consider it okay to say these things about fat people because "it's for their own good" and "they brought this on themselves." You don't have to find fat people attractive. But please, can't we recognize that these are actual people? Human dignity is not reserved solely for the thin. My mother taught me to treat people with respect. If you see an "overweight" person somewhere, you don't know anything about that person except for their body shape. To paint that person with these attributes based on so little is a grave injustice, and a firm example of our society's unhealthy obsession with body shape and size.

Well, I'm not going to start preaching to you about what kind of foods you should be eating. There's a lot of conflicting information out there, and you've made your own choices as to what you think is best. I know that there are so many studies trying to tell us that this, that, or the other food is really good for us. You're right, we can't take heed of every single one. But I think we should make an effort to at least stick generally to healthy eating guidelines and get foods from each of the food groups. LOL - they contain 53g of carbs per cup, you know.

My thoughts exactly, but I'd get stoned for saying I'd never date a fat girl... but I wouldn't. So bring on the stoning. I disagree with a lot of what has been said here, and I'll eventually get around to addressing everything. But perhaps it would surprise you to know that I don't disagree with this. Everybody has a preference in the type of person they're attracted to. If you're not attracted to fat people it's pretty much the same as not being attracted to thin people, tall people, short people, redheads, brunettes, blonds, or any number of attributes. So I'm not going to stone either of you for this. You're not attracted to overweight people, and nobody can force your libido to react when it doesn't want to. I do find RB's stereotyping of overweight people morally reprehensible, but as far as sexual attraction goes I have no complaints if either of you find certain body types more desirable than others.