Henry Blackburn on Ancel Keys

I'm going to make an exception to the general rule here of not blogging on articles in the media.  This is an important read and I don't want those who don't interact with me on social media to miss this.

Long time colleague of Ancel Keys, or A. Ben as I have nicknamed him (affectionately!) here, Henry Blackburn has apparently had enough of the Big Fat Smear Campaign masquerading about as "science journalism".  

In defense of U research: The Ancel Keys legacy

The renowned scientist has become the
target of a high-fat “smear” campaign.

Pseudo-Credentialed Practioners in the IHC ~ Part I: Intro and the Caltons

One of those "inside jokes"
that will makes sense by
the end of this post!

It's not like I need to start another series, but I have just reached the tipping point with all the nonsense being circulated around this community in the name of science and medical advice.  I cannot think of anything in real life that is so messed up as these unpara-professionals pretending to be "experts" and giving out potentially harmful advice to people they will never even meet or even exchange a meaningful email with.   

When I say "unpara" I am referring to the fact that not only are these self-described experts not paraprofessionals (e.g. a paralegal has some formal training in the law, but they cannot practice it;  nurses are licensed medical professionals, but are nonetheless not trained to practice medicine), but they don't have any professional relevance at all.

Calories ... and Taubes, NuSI, Ludwig & Co.

Preface

This is going to be a bit of a ramble ... one of those "oh the odd coincidences of blogging life" type posts.  It was brought on by my post citing ItstheWooo's use of traditional ELMM methods to lose and control her weight and her irrational -- I think we're up to five posts now -- tirade in response.  I'll have more to say regarding this and specific defamatory comments published on her site, but for now, here's how it started.

When Kosloff posted the 11 "experts" post, it got rather more roundly shared about the internet than usual thanks to someone's brain fart over at Whole9.  Now Kosloff didn't see fit to actually link to the sources of his copious quotes (bad Yalie), but I recognized my wording amongst Wooo's diatribe:

The Glycemic Index, Carbs & Protein, and Weight Loss

Hey all ... just a quick note. It's been one of those weeks and all where I've started like a half a dozen blog posts and gotten distracted or needed to do some "cleanup" on them so I've held them in the draft bin. Lots going on in real life in addition to the online side. But as often happens when I'm writing about a topic, a related paper pops up and something catches my eye. Such was the case when I looked into some of Dr. David Ludwig's work on the glycemic index for background on a post, and another study was mentioned along with his work.

Studies such as this one from Ludwig -- High Glycemic Index Foods, Overeating, and Obesity -- and, frankly, common sense to a degree -- paint high glycemic index foods as "bad" because:

The rapid absorption of glucose after consumption of high-GI meals induces a sequence of hormonal and metabolic changes that promote excessive food intake in obese subjects.

And this makes sense, and it actually does happen in a subset of the population.  Eat high-GI carbs, blood sugar spikes, insulin spikes (probably slightly delayed as the beginning of "IR"), blood sugar plummets below baseline and hunger ensues.

More words of advice from an expert on "food addiction" and such ...

I eat cookies every day!

(note:  Italics are Eades response)

The problem with The Calorie Myth (Smarter Science of Slim) by Jonathan Bailor

A few days ago, I alerted the blog on actions taken by Quest Nutrition vis a vis some videos they had partnered with Jonathan Bailor on.    In the comments section, Kevin posted a link to Bailor's response to the situation.   His main response was:

The calorie myth is the idea that we must consciously count calories to avoid obesity and disease.

To which I would respond that perhaps he should have titled his book The Calorie Counting Strawman.   I cannot think of a single person who believes that the laws of thermodynamics do indeed apply to the human body, myself included, who also believes people MUST necessarily count calories.  Not a one.  I believe that one would be hard pressed to find a person amongst the successes in the National Weight Loss Registry who will say that calorie counting is a requirement, even if they, themselves, must count calories in order to maintain their personal achievement in that regard.

Unclogging Drains ~ Odds and Ends Including: Kudos to Quest and Thermodynamic Denialism

Those who don't Facebook perhaps missed one of the best things to happen in a long time in the nutritional world.  You see, Quest Nutrition had teamed with Jonathan Bailor to produce a video series:  The Quest to End the Calorie Myth.  I didn't get to watch the video, but apparently we get yet another rehash of the clogged sink nonsense from Bailor.  Alan Aragon discusses what went down

Welp, science won today, and here are the Cliffs of what transpired:

• Quest Nutrition decided to do a video series with Jonathan Bailor, a program manager for Microsoft who recently authored a diet book.
• Bailor spewed a colorful bounty of nonsense involving "hormonal clogging" and claimed that quantity of calories doesn't matter, but quality does.
• The Quest audience has a high concentration of folks who value scientific evidence, and a resounding uproar ensued. No attempt was made by Bailor to defend his position when challenged by myself & many others on Quest's page.
• The vid contained absurd claims such as, "Those sugar calories cause a hormonal clog that makes it difficult for your body to burn fat, regardless of how little you eat or how much you exercise." This angered the crap out of people who are actually educated in nutritional science. 
• Quest Nutrition saw the mounting dislikes & contempt for the video, and decided to take it down.

Words of advice from an "expert" who demolishes CICO

Note:  Regular bolding is the original author's emphasis, red or blue bolding is my own added emphasis.   I also believe the ******* are Fitday or somesuch online logger the host site must auto-edit out of posts there.

Written 7 years ago to the day:

I've been low carbing for over 4 years, and in that time I've done different things.

To lose most of the weight, before I reallly felt comfortable enough to experiment with different things, I stuck with basic Atkins induction, I followed it exactly, never cheating, and the weight just melted off. I was never hungry, and it just happened. Early on, I wouldn't even eat tomatoes or onions because I was afraid they were too sweet. The only side effects I had was that I was often tired and I would have heart palpitations... but I think that's pretty normal considering how fast I was losing weight and how I wasn't eating much (as a result of losing weight / fat so fast).

Quotable Quotes: Taubes the Radical!

Seth Roberts:  But you'd seen Nobel-Prize-winning physicists get it very wrong.

Gary Taubes:  But what they were getting wrong were subtle; yes, they'd believe incorrectly that they'd discovered elementary particles, but what they were doing was a real subtle game. What they were misinterpreting were extraordinarily subtle aspects of the data.  

This obesity screw-up is fundamental; it’s like a grade school error in the interpretation of the laws of thermodynamics.  

And I made it as well, up until five years ago. I never thought differently. 

But what radicalized me is that they don't care.  If they successfully ward off my threat to their beliefs, then I'm in a very dangerous place.  Then it's, like I said, where I end up a bitter demented old man, one of those guys who's muttering to himself all the time that they, the establishment, didn't listen to him…

---

I don't mean to wish ill on a person, but if he doesn't end up a muttering demented old man, it means that fantasy wins out over fact, and sensationalism over science.  

Shananigans ~ How Not to Respond to Being Caught Faking Something

So ooooooooo .....

I wrote a post a couple days ago calling out Dr. Cate Shanahan for her blatant misrepresentation of Ancel Keys and his part in the advocacy of a low fat diet.  One could write volumes on the problems with Shanahan's "science" and ideas, but hopefully this overnight guru phenomenon -- because some minor celebrity shill kingmaker deems them so -- is on the outs.  One can only hope.  

The first image included in that post was this one below.

Figure in Deep Nutrition