I was listening yesterday to Samantha Heller who has a show on Doctor Radio on Sirius/XM. She's a RD and Fitness Expert. She had as guests Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Michael Crupain who wrote the recently release book, "What to Eat When: A Strategic Plan to Improve Your Health and Life Through Food." They had some excellent recommendations on meal timing, emphasizing that a healthy breakfast to ensure Circadian rhythms coincide with the release of Insulin and Cortisol. So, they recommended a morning meal and a larger meal at lunch followed by a healthy, small portion meal at dinner. I can agree with that; although I don't eat early in the morning. They also emphasized that it's extremely important what we eat, and they recommended a healthy, plant-based or Mediterranean diet as the best choices with plenty of healthy fish (salmon) for protein fortified with healthy grains, legumes, and olive oil. I understand that there are many who can achieve health with these dietary approaches. They also recommended to cut out sugar. I can agree with that as well. They then went on to highlight T. Colin Campbell's "The China Study" as the epitome of good eating research and findings along with recommending we NOT eat red meat or dairy. To these two "experts," a low carb or ketogenic approach would have been heresy whether or not one included dairy.

A few observations:
1) Recently, we are hearing more and more from the plant-based advocates considering the recent EAT-Lancet paper and other dietary recommendations.
2) Red meat is still characterized as unhealthy and Roizen even stated that consumption would shorten lifespan. This is based on no, zero rigorous studies that can definitively isolate red meat as a health risk.
3) Nothing they stated on the radio show was based on anything other than epidemiological information. They were never asked, but I'm guessing they couldn't cite any RCTs that could get to isolating red meat as a causative factor of poor health. It's all correlation with so many confounding variables involved that we're still making up stuff that's interpreted as facts.
4) Why the dairy negative bias? It appeared to fit into the logic that saturated fats are bad, so dairy falls into that category.
5) They vilified coconut oil and characterized it as very dangerous since MCTs can cross the blood-brain barrier and bring inflammation and other deficits to brain functioning. While they didn't come out and state it (at least during the time I was listening), the implication of coconut oil consumption is that it plays a role in developing AD, dementia, and other neurological conditions due to its consumption.

Needless to say, I am startled at how the nutrition camps have set up, and some are unwilling to admit that epidemiological studies can't be used to indict any food as a root cause to poor health. Rather, they have their preferences and biases and conveniently use weak information as gospel to support their preferences. I can see the drumbeat starting to result in a broader effort to discourage red meat consumption to the point where it will become a political issues with tax and farming control costs being debated. We could see a rise in prices of those foods that fall under the category as being health risks, and we've already started to see that campaign.