People have a strong tendency to latch onto the tiniest things that validate a strong belief, even in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, rather than give up the strong belief. If the preponderance of evidence pointed to a high fat/high protein diet preventing or reversing serious illness such as heart disease or diabetes, I'd willingly give up my belief that a whole foods plant-based diet does what the large body of evidence states it does. But I've yet to see anyone here, with their strong opinions and bloggers opinions to back them up, step up to the plate and post a mere handful of valid studies (not funded by for-profit organizations that stand to benefit from the results or publication) demonstrating this. What I have seen is a lot of commentary about what bloggers have to say about studies, diets, nutrition and health, and a lot of junk science in general. And no one here criticizing The China Study has read the book! The WAPF is sponsored by purveyors of meat, fish and dairy products and many of their members are meat and dairy farmers. Could this possibly influence the information they're disseminating? What's truly pathetic is that Sally Fallon, WAFP co-founder and president, has degrees in English and wrote two cookbooks with the other WAPF co-founder Mary Enig. This makes her qualified to provide nutritional advice to the public? Then we have Stephen Byrnes, formerly on the WAPF Board of Directors, writing The Myths of Vegetarianism (which contains blatant lies) and closing with: "The author would like to thank Sally Fallon, MA; Lee Clifford, MS, CCN; and H. Leon Abrams, Jr., for their gracious assistance in this paper. This paper was not sponsored or paid for by the meat or dairy industries." Oh really? The WAPF gets funding from its members (many meat and dairy farmers) and its sponsors (meat and dairy producers). Followed by: "About the Author: Stephen Byrnes is a naturopathic doctor and registered nutritional consultant who enjoys robust health on a diet that includes butter, cream, eggs, meat, whole milk dairy products, and offal." Dr. Stephen Byrnes suffered a stroke on June 10, 2004, and passed away on Thursday, June 17th, 2004. He was 41 years of age.
I like to share useful information to help dispel myths and misinformation, especially when it's regarding a subject about which I'm both passionate and qualified to discuss. I'm a nutrition mentor for a certified clinical nutritionist and health coach and I have over six years of experience as a nutrition researcher. Wow, guess that makes me at least as qualified as Sally Fallon to provide nutritional advice to ya'll. All this nutrition research, chart analysis and listening to my voice is making me hungry. Time for a "fourth meal"...
Better than having none at all. Vegan BBers was the highlight. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...ed-fat-is-not-the-cause-of-heart-disease.aspx
What possibly could be the purpose of body building? I always got excellent results from my DEFAULT one.
"We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact. "I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled ¡°opinion makers.¡± Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol. The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice. It Is Not Working! These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated." (SNIP) "Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped. Inflammation is not complicated ¡ª it is quite simply your body¡¯s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial" (SNIP) "What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods." (SNIP) "Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone." (SNIP) "What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels. While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator ¨C inflammation in their arteries. Let¡¯s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6¡äs are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell ¨C they must be in the correct balance with omega-3¡äs. If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation. Today¡¯s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That¡¯s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today¡¯s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy" http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/10/18/heart-surgeon-admits-huge-mistake/
Well, you are right, Mercola is certainly not an argument. "Dr. Mercola and the Weston Price Foundation flood the internet with their saturated fat is good for you message. They produce articles with supposedly scientific references that either quote the same bunch of people (each other), ignore a ton of modern reputable research, or distort what was said in the study, claiming saturated fat is okay and not related to heart disease." Quote from The Meat and Butter Diet.
I have no faith in Mercola. His site came up during my google search and he is posting links to the study. Perhaps you've heard of Reuters. You can't be this ignorant. http://tinyurl.com/3b5xzqf
Excellent information, with ample scientific evidence backing it. Cholesterol accumulating in the arterial walls to form plaques and pustules is indeed the result of inflammation caused by refined foods and by a heavy load of cholesterol from animal foods and refined fats (oils). (For those who think refined oils are heart healthy, a tablespoon of olive oil restricts blood flow 31% for up to six hours after consumption; the same oil eaten with a salad still reduces the blood flow, though not as severely. The reason the Mediterranean diet slowed the progression of heart disease was despite the oil not because of it; the diet is very rich in vegetables and whole grains. This diet does not arrest or reverse heart disease the way the low fat whole foods plant based diet does, it merely slows the progression.) Bad cholesterol is the body's way of responding to inflammation caused by a poor diet. Remove the inflammation and things are set right again. Refined "foods" (nutritionally void addictive calorie bombs is my term for them) are deadly, even if they are non fat. The "low fat" diet tested in most of the studies you see in the popular media is actually rather high fat compared to a whole foods plant based diet, which ranges from 10-15% calories from fat. These "low fat" studies recommended fat intake below 30% and the subjects generally cheated and ended up consuming more than this. The diet didn't focus on whole foods, either, and so included many unhealthy low fat and non fat foods as Dr. Lundell describes. What I don't care for about Dr. Lundell is that he has no studies to back up his claim that his diet (which emphasizes lots of "good" fats, low carb intake, and allows meat and dairy) can arrest or reverse heart disease. There is no research demonstrating this. It takes a lot of time and effort to conduct such a study (Ornish studies spanned over 30 years; Esselstyn's 20 years). Dr. Lundell wants to sell books and has no time to put together a valid study, so he discusses some real science, then sells a book with a diet that does not arrest or reverse heart disease. You have to purchase his book or reports to discover his method of allegedly preventing and reversing heart disease. The PCRM physicians provide their diets for preventing and reversing heart disease (and other illnesses) on line for free and have the valid, long-running studies to back up their talk. http://kickstartdev.pcrm.org/mealplan/index.cfm http://www.drmcdougall.com/free.html http://www.managercomplete.com/engine2/recipes.aspx Dr. Mercola hasn't conducted or published any studies. If the way of eating he promotes is so healthy, why does he sell so many supplements? The meat/dairy promoters are all over how evil the vegan diet is because after several years a B12 supplement is recommended, yet Atkins, Mercola, even the "natural" Dr. Weil, sell dozens of supplements to ensure good health. Uh, what's wrong with the food? Why is it lacking in so many nutrients? And why do you have joint pain, and immune problems, and digestive troubles that require these natural health remedies? I don't see any of the PCRM physicians selling supplements. Dr. Mercola (who encourages butter, egg, raw dairy and meat consumption and believes soy is poison) is in business to make money from web site traffic and the sale of products. http://products.mercola.com/ http://www.cheap-tanning-bed.com/ http://products.mercola.com/wholesale/ Dr. Campbell responds to Dr. Mercola: http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/09/dr-campbell-responds-to-dr-mercola.html "On one final point, those who lament a "serious flaw" in The China Study mostly limit their arguments to the China project itself, as if this is all there is in our book. It is not. It is only one of the eighteen chapters. These critics fail to note what Tom and I tried to do in writing the book. It was simply to tell the story in a way that I myself learned it, by using as much as possible my own first hand research and policy experiences that persuaded me, then let readers decide for themselves. We simply asked that the reader to "try it" before making his/her final opinions. If my long years in research have told me anything that's really important it is that we should be interpreting scientific evidence not as an absolute truth but as a component of a wider message within context. Deciding what is supposedly absolutely true is great for making money but it is not for making health." - Dr. T. Colin Campbell Got that? The China project that the critics keep harping on as providing no proof of a link between a diet high in animal foods and disease is only ONE of the 18 chapters in the book. It was a huge and comprehensive study, but it isn't the core of the book, despite the book's title being The China Study.