Category: nutrition

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.

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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.
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Pardon Me; Your Bias is Showing 1

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

–Konrad Lorenz

It’s science today, folks. If you want to run screaming for the door, now’s the time.

I noticed two headlines in the news today. One illustrates total bias in the way something is reported; the other shows proper scientific reporting of a finding that may generate a hypothesis worth looking at. The first is designed to frighten you, the second is designed to inform you.

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Meow Chow

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.

― Garrison Keillor

Last week the Roommate’s colleague rescued some kittens out of the trash. The poor little things were so tiny that anyone could see they were way too small to be taken from their mother. The lady had heard them crying in the dumpster.

She pulled the pathetic things out of the garbage. The garbage was behind the local restaurant…which didn’t bode well for Mother, I should say.

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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.

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Failure

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

–Mark Twain

The Roommate’s latest suggestion for a post is to reflect on why people might try ditching the gov’mint approved Food Pyramid (we’re 100 certain!) and then after a while give up on this new way of eating.

And by “ditching the Food Pyramid” I don’t mean going on the cookie diet.

As “Dr.” Siegal says, “Hunger Wrecks Diets®©™,” so order all your cookies and shakes now and don’t ever stop eating. That’s the key. And also don’t forget to take all the nutritional supplements, since cookies apparently don’t provide all the nutrition you need.

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A Mess of Greens

I don’t want any vegetables, thank you. I paid for the cow to eat them for me.

–Doug Copeland

I’m going to say some things about vegetables now. It might hurt their feelings, but I’m not going to say it to their faces. I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t repeat it to your asparagus, either. Hang on, here we go:

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Criminal Negligence

That’s not a lie. It’s a terminological inexactitude.

–Alexander Haig

If we hadn’t all been fed a bunch of never-proved hypotheses about fat, calories and exercise as incontrovertible fact; by people who thought we were too stupid to be healthy and wanted to stick their big noses in and tell everyone else what to do, we would never have ended up with something like this:

She seems like a sweet lady, and I’m sure she thinks she’s helping people. But this isn’t useful, it could be dangerous–especially for large people–and she didn’t get thin doing it. She was already thin and is active because she’s thin. She’s not thin because she’s active.

Dare I say it? If God had meant us to prance like horses, He would have given us four legs. We’re not meant to eat like horses, either. Put down that grass drink and go grill up a steak.

 

Plato says he’s hungry

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Insanity

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

–Albert Einstein

I woke up this morning to see similar headlines blasted all over the web. I would love to quote it for you, but I just can’t decide which particular headline to use.

The upshot of all the headlines is that the FDA has finally approved a new obesity drug, Belviq, for sale in the USA. And there are so many things to mock here that my head is swimming. It’s like that time I got dragged to go “fishing” at a fish farm. The pond was about 3 feet deep, 20 feet widem and 10 feet long and contained approximately 1,546,453 fish.

You could just put on your apron, grab one with your bbq tongs, and stick it right on the grill.

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The Best Laid Plans

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

–J.R.R. Tolkien

Especially if dragons make good eating. I’ll have to check on that.

I’ve gotten a few requests to be more specific about what I eat and especially to discuss the proportions and “how to” of it all.

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