At 03:37 PM 10/26/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
I would not be surprised if they eventually discover that power
lines are also deleterious. That is another thing that skeptics have
dismissed. It is foolish to imagine that we understand biology in
any depth. Cancer has increased in all age groups despite the "war
on cancer." Something has to be causing it. Probably, many different
things are.
Most likely from my own study: the "civilized" diet, most notably the
dependence upon rapidly digestible carbohydrates that cause insulin
to rise, with many deleterious consequences.
Gary Taubes did some damage, perhaps, with his book on Cold fusion.
But, with his career established, he went on to bigger and better
projects, where, instead of attempting to debunk a few relatively
isolated and already beseiged experimental scientists, an easy
target, he took on major lobbies and the conventional wisdom about,
first, salt in the diet, and then, most recently, the alleged
scientific consensus that appeared in the 1970s that fat was bad for
you. "Good calories, bad calories" is the latest book, and it's
excellent. Dense. About one-third of the book is footnotes, and the
reporting is quite good. We got screwed over, in the 1970s, by a
coalition of naive do-gooders and large commercial interests and drug
companies. Against them: the meat and dairy industry. Let me see,
which one of these would I expect to win in a contest where money
literally talks?
Lucky guess.
(The original human use of mass-production was agriculture, and
supporting large populations with high density was made possible by
grain and the processing of grain. But we did not evolve with that as
the basis for our diet, and there is ample evidence that the
introduction of process foods -- which mostly means, first of all,
high-carbohydrate foods -- causes massive increases in heart disease,
diabetes, and cancer, the so-called "diseases of civilization." While
contamination of the environment by carcinogens may certainly be
having an effect, and power lines and such might be making a
contribution, the elephant in the living room is high carbohydrate in
the diet. There is a known mechanism as to how this would increase
cancer rates dramatically, having to do with the preferred metabolism
of rapidly-multiplying cells. Ah, well, so many topics, so little time.)
There is another analogy to cold fusion, by the way. Cold fusion was
rejected "by scientific consensus," in 1989-1990. However, research
continued, and the weight of publication in peer-reviewed journals
rapidly came to favor the legitimacy of the field. Yet the
"scientific consensus" lumbered on unmoved.
Same with the fat hypothesis. That fat is bad for you, more recently
modified to "saturated fat is bad for you," was never actually
proven, just as cold fusion was never actually debunked. It became
very difficult to fund research that might contradict the fat
hypothesis, work was suppressed actively; it was considered
"irresponsible" to publish something that might weaken the
hypothesis. After all, people might stop avoiding those high-fat
foods, and "millions might die."
But some research did continue to be published, and, by the early
2000s, increasingly appeared in the most reputable journals. And,
even though some of this research radically undercuts the arguments
for "fat is bad for you," they are met with "not proven." Even though
the original "fat bad" hypothesis was never proven. It was argued
then, by proponents of a low-fat public policy, that, sure, it wasn't
a scientific certainty, but the required human studies would be
difficult and very expensive, there was no money for it, and,
meanwhile, millions might die. (Obviously, there was a reason to
suspect fat, there was a famous epidemiological study comparing the
diet and heart disease rates for various populations. Later,
apparently, found to have been cherry-picked. Populations that would
have led to different conclusions were excluded.)
And, of course, "How could it hurt?"
I'll say how. It wasn't said then. Fat is necessary for human
nutrition. Don't get enough fat, you get sick, fairly quickly.
Carbohydrates are not necessary for human nutrition. We actually
don't need them at all, it's been shown. They are an optional food.
We apparently need fat and protein, and then certain other nutrients
are important. Rumor is that Vitamin C is only necessary if carbs are
the basis of the diet, as with the famous "limeys," i.e., British
sailors living on crackers who at limes to prevent vitamin C
deficiency.. But, in fact, we know very little about nutrition that
is truly solid. There is no money for the research. There is money in
research for drugs to fix diseases caused by poor diet.
(And we blame the common poor diet on ... poor people, of course!
Poor people eat cheap food. What's that? Mass-produced, highly
processed, easily storable food. I know, I go into a convenience
market, practically everything there is inedible if I'm avoiding
carbs, as I do. I can buy some packaged nuts. I could buy a cup of
coffee and mix it with heavy cream. I suppose I could buy some beef
jerky, though they tend to put sugar in it, it isn't much. Argghh.
Carb calories, to keep starvation from the door, are much less
expensive than fat and protein calories. However, the good news is
that fat sates, it suppresses appetite, so even though fat is higher
in energy content per unit weight, one needs to eat much less,
appetite for fat is naturally controlled. Eat carbs, something else
happens. Insulin spikes, to clear the poisonous glucose -- if the
level goes too high, as it will without insulin -- from the blood by
storing it as ... fat. The insulin keeps on working beyond necessity,
for a while, so blood glucose goes low -- if we don't have ketone
metabolism activated, which is probably true for 95% of people almost
all the time -- and we become hungry quickly, meanwhile having gained
the stored fat. Carbs are cheap fuel, but they are low quality. Damn!
Don't you hate it that high-quality food is more expensive?)
Ah, I got started!
