A call for an impartial scientific review of government guidelines.
They’re currently worse than useless.
Category Archives: Culinary
The Calorie
Counting calories is mindless, and generally useless, if not actually counterproductive. The calorie counts on fast food menus are pretty much meaningless.
The Key To Coffee
The mineral content of the water? I could see a market for specialty waters for brewing.
Fish Oil Substitutes
Omega 3 fatty acids from GMO plants. I wish there was better data on just how effective Omega 3s are.
The Food Fight Over Government Nutrition
No, the Republicans aren’t “politicizing it”:
For decades, the government has advised Americans on what they should eat. The advice isn’t just advisory; it drives everything from school lunches and agricultural subsidies to marketing for those bowls of candy we call breakfast cereal. But the science behind this enterprise has always been shaky.
Yes. And Michelle’s lunch program continues to constitute literal, physical child abuse.
The Low-Fat Diet
…will be viewed by history as the worst fad diet ever. And yet Michelle’s school-lunch program continues to abuse millions of children.
Top Nutritionists Attempt To Reach A Consensus
…and end up in a food fight. This would be funnier if it didn’t have such profound implications for health. I don’t know why anyone pays attention to that quack Dean Ornish. It was low-fat recommendations like his that almost surely killed my father thirty-five years ago. I enjoyed this, too:
In the spirit of the conference, he did make a concession: Red meat, a staple of a Paleolithic diet, “is a real problem” due to its carbon footprint, said Eaton, and he proposed a more sustainable Paleo diet that instead derives its protein from plant sources, poultry, and seafood.
Because nothing is more important when it comes to nutrition than carbon footprint. And this:
Those who follow a low-glycemic diet might eat, for instance, pasta but not bagels, parsnips but not potatoes, grapes but not raisins.
Bagels are worse than pasta? Who knew?
From Hunting/Gathering To Farming
Yes, humans evolved in the age of agriculture.
Per the end of the piece, this doesn’t really invalidate the paleo diet theory. It makes sense that we would have adapted to milk; it’s a useful high-protein food source. There would have been less evolutionary pressure to be able to handle grain, because the ill effects don’t occur until later in life, past child-bearing age.
Treating Brain Cancer
After quitting my job, I decided to study for a Master’s degree in Nutritional Therapy. As I got deeper into my course work,I was shocked to discover that everything I had learned during my undergraduate studies was either false, misleading, or outdated information.
It’s an anecdote, but a pretty powerful one. The ignorance about nutrition in the health-care field is probably killing thousands.
Coffee
A daily habit may contribute to longevity.
That’s why I choke down the swill ever morning. I’ve never found any other reasons to do so.
Speaking of my apparent imperviousness to caffeine, I was staying with an old (in both senses of the word) friend in Seattle last week, and he noted that since he’d gone more paleo in his diet, he noticed much less of a caffeine effect from morning coffee or evening tea. I started drinking it after I’d changed my diet as well, so maybe carbs enhance it. Actually, someone should do a study on that.