Yes, you can contact the show directly or use the "independent mediator" by contacting the Ombudsman:

https://help.npr.org/customer/portal/emails/new?i=8

I just thought the license route would get more attention. At one point in my long sad search for a career, I was a journalist.

The search for a career is a journey. I marvel at the abilities of a journalist, far beyond my own innate abilities. Hope you found your niche!

Years ago I was on a diet very similar to the one being touted by NPR. I ended up at 225 pounds. All the whole grains and vegetables and fruit and beans that I ate did nothing to keep me from gaining weight. After going on low-carb e, I ended up at 170 pounds and feeling much more energetic with much better blood chemistry.

I was upset and a little surprised reading the David Ludwig quote, until I figured out he ain't Robert Lustig.

And whoops, I made another mistake. It's 4:30pm here and I just realized I forgot lunch; I guess those two carefully undrained bacon slices and carefully undrained egg cooked in 1/4 inch fat have held me quite nicely today. Which, as I think of it, has a NPR angle on this way of eating. Low Carb, less waste. Save the environment, skip the paper towels.

The flaw in this stupid premise is that beans and grains are loaded with carbs and will cause weight gain or prevent any weight loss. There's no way around it. I have experimented with all of these techniques and cannot touch beans or grains without completely sabotaging my weight loss. I am not going to try out any more theories. I will stick with what works. No grains or legumes.

I could put this response recently from Dr Davis on any number of current threads about pushing grains...


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mm5_...eature=youtu.be
Phytates...to say nothing about lectins

More fake news.

I suspect you've got your tongue in cheek, but I actually believe this to be true. The amount of vegetables, legumes, grains, and fruit required to eat to satiety is enormous. Eating a low carb, primarily carnivorous diet, I make fewer trips to the grocery store, fewer trucks have to bring in produce, my fridge is opened fewer times, less water is used to wash my food, etc. etc. Until I see a study taking all the never considered factors into account, I will assume that the advice that vegetarianism will save the planet is as fake as the food pyramid.

I don't want to be too harsh with Dr. Ludwig--he did do those studies looking at metabolic rate on a low carb maintenance diet versus a higher carb diet that I'm so fond of. In his case, I sort of doubt that he's involved in a "push back" although NPR might be--more of a push in the same direction, but somewhat weaker. :lol: But maybe sufficient for some, especially if they're not in trouble yet. Maybe beans and brown rice would have worked for me if I'd never considered the indivisible unit for cookies to be a row.

i just say no to gluten.

Good points, teaser, and I always considered Ludwig as having a rational approach to this topic. I'm not sure whether this is more reflective of an NPR agenda or his, I believe it's more of the former. The conflict comes about when one positions recommendations to apply to the world population knowing full well that all cannot afford to eat many of the most nutrient dense foods available, and the cost of enabling that is prohibitive. That is likely the underlying agenda in some of the mixed messages.

Quality, not just quantity.
 

These are factors which are so important, and completely ignored by the mainstream of nutrition. They have no concept at all of anti-nutrients. They honestly think “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” :lol:

I have read a lot of interesting information about this, especially about the bio-availability. There’s detectable nutrients in so many foods which turn out to be not bio-available once they are consumed. Just like Calories In/Calories Out, such “science” mistakes what they discover, in isolation, in the lab, simply does not translate inside the complex biology of an actual body.

I think about how my gluten free journey began: I never ate very much gluten, carb count-wise; a bite of something here, a low carb wrap there. I would have said my digestion was stellar, especially when I added probiotics. It took the concurrence of a snug pair of pants and a low carb wrap for lunch for me to notice that my abdomen was puffing out; to the point where I had to unbutton the pants.

Before, overweight and wearing baggy clothes, I never would have noticed it.

But now that I had experienced it, and thanks to the work of Dr. Davis, whose blog I was reading even before the Wheatbelly book came out, I went gluten-free; and my body responded in amazing ways.

• I got a "healing glow" from my entire digestive system. It was happy-warm, it radiated well beling, and it created a new threshold of understanding how it got upset. Like so many of us on the SAD, we had gotten so used to feeling crappy we lost track of what "feeling good" felt like. It set a new standard of wellness for me.
• This extended to increased sensitivity. From painless bloating, I found that a small amount of gluten now set my stomach on FIRE. I learned to back off foods that "should be okay" like buffet pot roast, which was likely soaked in wheat concoctions, and signaled distress within a few bites. Backing off now saved me a lot of grief later.
• This extended to foods I hadn't been suspicious of before. I had previously thought my attempts to climb the Atkins carb ladder failed because of the carb content, but even controlling carbs, my new and improved digestive system now reacted to beans, certain vegetables, and artificial sweeteners with clear signs of gastric distress.
• I became fiber-sensitive, and the less fiber I ate, the more my digestive system improved in all signs of its functioning.
• "Cheats" changed their tone and rewards. Now, I wasn't "getting away" with anything, no matter the carb count, portion size, or number on the scale.

But as long as someone keeps “trying to do it right” they will never get these signals. They will wind up like so many of the elite athletes Mark Sisson (who used to be one of them) writes about: racked by inflammation, training harder and eating “more healthy,” and then falling into metabolic syndrome with serious illnesses.

I agree. To me, this is a classic example of good intentions paving the road to hell.

Because it is ultimately about the agri-business agenda. In my small, rural, neck of the woods, which has dramatic terrain changes and a short growing season, there are still sustainable farms with humane and ecologic approaches to food I wind up buying and eating.

We live in a time of malnutrition, unemployment, and and issues with sustainability. Why not support such farms for everyone who is interested? With modern conveniences now available, farming does not have to be the boring struggle and isolated existence that once drove off all but the most stubborn and motivated. We don’t have to subsidize giant corporations that reduce everything to profit blocks that is ruining the planet and most of its living species.

There is a better way.

This is one thing I like about intermittent fasting--as Dr. Fung always points out, it can be combined with any and all diets. We can't suddenly have enough non-carbohydrate foods to feed the world. And the world's population isn't going to diminish anytime soon. Nor do I think that it should diminish, lots will disagree. But one way or the other, we have to deal with what's doable and likely.