Category: diet

It’s Not A Diet, Actually

Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, ‘No thank you’ to dessert that night. And for what?! 

― Erma Bombeck

In a previous post, I mentioned seeing an old, sugar-addicted friend who had some snarky things to say about my dislike of sugar. That’s a common reaction from some people. Whether they label it “Atkins” or not, they treat what I’m doing as “a diet.”

I dislike this.

There are several reasons why.

This is your last chance to go over to awkwardfamilyphotos before I get into it. Run.

Continue reading It’s Not A Diet, Actually

MCT Oil

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

― Aristotle

You may recall that back at The Beginning I mentioned drinking a version of “bulletproof” coffee. As I mentioned then, the real thing is done with MCT oil, but I was using plain old coconut oil and dodging spears from the Bulletproof Faithful for my heresy.

Then a few posts back, I went on and on about coconuts and coconut oil. If you recall, I mentioned that drinking coffee with butter and coconut oil resulted in feeling full and energetic. When we ran out of coconut oil and then got some more two weeks later, I was able to narrow down that it was likely the coconut oil that made the biggest energy difference.

Continue reading MCT Oil

Holy Partially-Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Batman!

Tradition is an explanation for acting without thinking.

–Grace McGarvie

He’s at it again! SOMEONE STOP HIM.

I’m talking about Dr. Oz trying to scare you about eating high fat foods. This time he was on with Piers Morgan talking about the untimely demise of an actor: James Gandolfini. Mr. Gandolfini died recently of a massive heart attack.

First I would just like to say that I find it highly reprehensible to use the tragic death of a relatively young man–who left behind a widow and two children, one of them an infant–in this way. Mr. Gandolfini’s death also apparently occurred while he was on the toilet, something which hardly anyone would even know had not Mehmet Oz (which is an awesome name for a comic book villain, by the way) told the entire world about it on Piers Morgan’s show.

Continue reading Holy Partially-Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Batman!

Sugar

I love to eat–Kit Kats or cookies-and-cream ice cream. I need sugar like five times a day. –Kim Kardashian

Doesn’t that quote rattle your brain a little bit?

I mean, would anyone argue that a diet like that is healthy? I don’t think so. And yet do people publicly denounce Ms. Kardashian as unhealthy, or suggest she needs to change up her diet? No. Why not?

Dare I suggest it’s because she’s not fat?

Continue reading Sugar

Pardon Me; Your Bias is Showing 2

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

― Michael Crichton

In the previous post I got all worked up over a news article claiming that eating red meat raises the risk of developing diabetes. I may still be slightly worked up, so you might want to go have some chocolate and get back to me tomorrow.

The article was biased from the outset, was not a real “study” at all, relied on notoriously inaccurate data, and ignored important variables altogether. Not to mention that no hypothesis was formed for the purpose of testing and truth-finding. No, we skipped that inconvenient step completely and just jumped to calling it a full-fledged theory and telling everyone how to eat based upon it.
Continue reading Pardon Me; Your Bias is Showing 2

Paging Dr. Oz…

Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory—let the theory go. ― Agatha Christie

“Paging Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz to the ER, stat.”

Nurse, what’s wrong?

Doctor, thank goodness you’re here. One of your patients is doing very poorly.

Oh no! Which one?

Lipid H. Po. Thesis

NO!

Continue reading Paging Dr. Oz…

ຕີເນດ

One of these nuts is a meal for a man, both meat and drink.

– Marco Polo

I’m going to talk for a little bit about the glories of the coconut. Feel free to turn away at this point.

I never grew up eating them. East Tennessee is remarkably free of coconut trees. I saw some in China when I moved there, but I didn’t know much about them, didn’t know how to open them, and didn’t really bother looking into it.

Then in the course of studying up on my high fat, moderate protein diet, I kept running across coconuts and coconut oils. Lots of people swear by it for energy, for skin care, as a cancer cure, as an HIV cure, for curing the plague, for regrowing limbs, etc. Some of the claims were so far fetched that I didn’t pay much attention to this little fruit.

But I did note in my reading that some of the people groups whose traditional diets involved very high levels of saturated fat–and yet who did not have heart disease, obesity, diabetes, or cancer–got their saturated fat from a daily diet of coconuts rather than seals or cattle. The Tokelauan diet in particular was over 50% fat, most of it saturated. If you look at the very end of the study I linked to, you see that when the Tokelauans migrated to New Zealand their overall and saturated fat intakes sharply declined: and then they started developing arteriosclerosis.

Continue reading ຕີເນດ

Calories In, Calories Out

If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you’re not familiar with the term “calories in, calories out,” or CICO, it refers to the dearly held belief that somehow the laws of thermodynamics demand that if we eat X number of calories (energy in) and expend Y number of calories (energy out) that our weight will change by Z according to how much we over- or under- ate our caloric needs. This formula is trotted out as the ultimate answer for obesity.

And it’s idiotic.

Continue reading Calories In, Calories Out

The China Study

China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.

–Charles de Gaulle

And that’s about the quality of the information we can glean from The China Study.

The China Study is a book by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell that purportedly proves without a doubt that the eating of animal foods causes all the chronic diseases of civilization, like heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. It’s supposedly based on the results of the China-Cornell-Oxford Project which was, interestingly enough, directed by T. Colin Campbell and involved China, Cornell, and Oxford. As you can probably guess, the study followed Chinese people in rural areas of China and recorded what they say they ate, when they got sick, and how they died.

And The China Study is pretty much the “inspired by actual events,” made-for-TV movie version of the China-Cornell-Oxford project.

Now if you haven’t heard of this book, you obviously don’t have any vegan friends because this is their favorite thing in the world besides tofu. This proves, proves mind you, that if you get cancer it is entirely your own fault for insisting on eating chicken.

Continue reading The China Study