Gary Taubes: MIND and the Media : LC Research/Media Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

#1 ^

Sun, Oct-08-23, 00:33

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

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Gary Taubes: MIND and the Media

Sharing Gary Taube's latest post on Unsettled Science:

Quote:

MIND and the Media

Further Lessons from a Negative Trial

A common theme in nutrition science: Nothing seems to change.

The healthy diet messages and narratives we hear today are remarkably similar to those 50 and 60 years ago when governments and health associations first got into the business of disseminating dietary guidelines. We’re still being told to eat mostly plants, whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and legumes, to avoid saturated fats and cut back our consumption of red and processed meat. That the promulgation of this dietary philosophy coincides with unrestrained epidemics of obesity and diabetes has always been a problematic sign. But who knows? Maybe this thinking is dead-on and we’re just doing a poor job of implementing it.

Another possibility is that this conventional conception of a healthy diet is seriously misguided – hence the epidemics--but remarkably resistant to evidence or arguments against it. This latter possibility is the conclusion I came to early in my research on nutrition and chronic disease. The last several months and recent reports in The New York Times and elsewhere have given us a wonderful opportunity to examine this resistance as it happens. It’s like getting to watch how the immune system of a living organism responds in real time to the appearance of a threat.

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#2 ^

Sat, Oct-14-23, 06:19

WereBear

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This blew me away:

Quote:

Practical considerations of what is too loosely defined as the “public health” have consistently been allowed to take precedence over the dispassionate, critical evaluation of evidence and the rigorous and meticulous experimentation that are required to establish reliable knowledge. The urge to simplify a complex scientific situation so that physicians can apply it and their patients and the public embrace it has taken precedence over the scientific obligation of presenting the evidence with relentless honesty. The result is an enormous enterprise dedicated in theory to determining the relationship between diet, obesity and disease, while dedicated in practice to convincing everyone involved and the lay public, most of all, that the answers are already known and always have been – an enterprise, in other words, that purports to be a science and yet functions like a religion.

Add in the fact that now we know the dietician industry was started by the same people who brought us Kellogg's, and is ITSELF a religion (Seventh Day Adventist,) and we see the true dimensions of the problem.

This is where the science went!

The study of cognitive dissonance started with a group who invested a lot on their mutual beliefs, only to have a make or break moment that did not happen. Fewer than expected left the group as a result. The remaining members reassembles all the beliefs so they can continue.

Essentially, so they weren't wrong. Refusal to admit they were wrong is such an enormous motivator in some people's behavior. Especially defensive organizations that are lying.

The endless tide of money that convinced us to eat this way in the first place is still working overtime to keep us convinced. I think it's starting to erode, though. In the meantime, things will continue to be chaotic.

For myself, watching others find healthful ways to live, it keeps converging on how we were fed over-flavored cheap carbs as nutritious, hydrogenated oils as heart healthy, and sugar as harmless fun.

More and more people are catching on to that. Like me at dinner with my health conscious aunt, startling her about her plate of pasta by saying, "I look at bread and pasta as something whose only nutrition is what our government adds to it, to avoid an epidemic of pellagra."