Tag: Diet

No food is healthy. Not even kale.

February 2, 2016

““ ‘Healthy’ is a bankrupt word,” Roxanne Sukol, preventive medicine specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, medical director of its Wellness Enterprise and a nutrition autodidact (“They didn’t teach us anything about nutrition in medical school”), told me as we strolled the aisles of a grocery store. “Our food isn’t healthy. We are healthy. Our food is nutritious. I’m all about the words. Words are the key to giving people the tools they need to figure out what to eat. Everyone’s so confused.”

“Last March, the Food and Drug Administration sent the nut-bar maker Kind a letter saying their use of the word “healthy” on their packaging was a violation (too much fat in the almonds). Kind responded with a citizens’ petition asking the FDA to reevaluate its definition of the word.

“If I may rephrase the doctor’s words: Our food is not healthy; we will be healthy if we eat nutritious food. Words matter. And those that we apply to food matter more than ever.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/no-food-is-healthy-not-even-kale/2016/01/15/4a5c2d24-ba52-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html

You Can’t Trust What You Read About Nutrition

January 18, 2016

“We found a link between cabbage and innie bellybuttons, but that doesn’t mean it’s real.”

“Our foray into nutrition science demonstrated that studies examining how foods influence health are inherently fraught. To show you why, we’re going to take you behind the scenes to see how these studies are done. The first thing you need to know is that nutrition researchers are studying an incredibly difficult problem, because, short of locking people in a room and carefully measuring out all their meals, it’s hard to know exactly what people eat. So nearly all nutrition studies rely on measures of food consumption that require people to remember and report what they ate. The most common of these are food diaries, recall surveys and the food frequency questionnaire, or FFQ.”

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-read-about-nutrition/

Book Review: ‘Ending Medical Reversal’ Laments Flip-Flopping

November 2, 2015

“The incremental progress of ordinary science is one thing, as individual treatments are progressively replaced by better variants. We all happily accept that kind of revision. But medical reversal, the authors’ sober term for sudden flip-flops in standards of care, unnerves and demoralizes everyone, doctors no less than their patients.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/science/book-review-ending-medical-reversal-laments-flip-flopping.html?mabReward=CTM

Is Whole Milk Good For Us After All?

October 7, 2015

“Scientists who tallied diet and health records for several thousand patients over ten years found, for example, that contrary to the government advice, people who consumed more milk fat had lower incidence of heart disease.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/biz/for-decades-the-government-steered-millions-away-from-whole-milk-was-that-wrong/2015/10/06/1b6e264aa89b1afcfa28e4450cb29576_story.html?wpisrc=nl_draw2

Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets

August 10, 2015

“Health experts say this message is misleading and part of an effort by Coke to deflect criticism about the role sugary drinks have played in the spread of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. They contend that the company is using the new group to convince the public that physical activity can offset a bad diet despite evidence that exercise has only minimal impact on weight compared with what people consume.”

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/coca-cola-funds-scientists-who-shift-blame-for-obesity-away-from-bad-diets/

Shut Up and Sip: Coffee is neither good nor bad for you. Now you may go.

July 5, 2015

“One day you may read that coffee is bad for your health; the next day you’ll hear that the same cup of java reduces your risk of disease. How can you sort through the complex and often conflicting world of scientific research to make sound health decisions?”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/06/is_coffee_good_or_bad_for_you_the_answer_is_neither.html?wpsrc=fol_tw

Red Meat Is Not the Enemy

March 31, 2015

“We really do need randomized controlled trials to answer these questions. They do exist, but with respect to effects on lipid levels such as cholesterol and triglycerides. A meta-analysis examining eight trials found that beef versus poultry and fish consumption didn’t change cholesterol or triglyceride levels significantly.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/upshot/red-meat-is-not-the-enemy.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Indigenous food systems and nutrition in the spotlight

March 15, 2015

“Indigenous peoples have a long history of food systems depending on the traditional knowledge of their local ecosystems. In addition, they play a vital role in preserving and recovering the natural environment that shaped their livelihoods and cultures for centuries, acting as stewards of biodiversity.”

http://www.slowfood.com/international/food-for-thought/focus/258671/indigenous-food-systems-and-nutrition-in-the-spotlight/q=3F8D64?-session=query_session:42F94E02058bb1E4C6gJ58EB1910

Indigenous Terra Madre Network

“Slow Food believes that it is senseless to defend biodiversity without also defending the cultural diversity of Indigenous Peoples. The right of peoples to have control over their land, to grow food, to hunt, fish and gather according to their own needs and decisions is fundamental to protect their livelihoods and defend the biodiversity of indigenous breeds and varieties.”

http://www.slowfood.com/international/149/indigenous-peoples

http://ifad-un.blogspot.it/2015/02/indigenous-food-systems-and-nutrition.html

What Paul Krugman Could Learn From How Big Government Created The Obesity Epidemic

March 9, 2015

“One of the most frightening forces at work in the world today is the tendency of Big Government toward perversion of science. The scientific method is pristine. Scientists are human, and fallible. The secular beatification of scientists and demeaning of science is a perversion. Better to beatify the scientific method and reserve some skepticism for scientists (and bureaucrats).”

“We are witness to, and victim of, the ongoing perversion of science. The US nutritional guidelines now are indicted as the root cause of many unnecessary deaths. The suppression of the debate over climate change similarly portends much misery. We are enmeshed, in the subversion of science to political ends, in a battle of epic proportions.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2015/03/09/what-paul-krugman-could-learn-from-how-big-government-created-the-obesity-epidemic/