Skeptic Project

I know this post may piss off a few of you, but here goes...

Did you know the lipid hypothesis, the idea that high cholesterol is caused by saturated fats and it causes heart disease is bullshit? That's correct, it is! The belief that eating right means eating whole grains and low amounts of eggs, meat, etc is completely wrong, in fact the opposite is true!

But what is my word? Nothing! I don't even have a college education, so instead I'll give you the resources to learn from more credible individuals.

Video

In your face introduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WA5wcaHp4 /> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFQc2kxm9c

Fat Head
A great movie that starts as a sort of response to Supersize Me, but then turns out to provide a lot of logical and scientifically sound evidence that it's grains, starches, high sugars, and processed vegetable oils that's bad for us, not eggs, meat, and so forth as we've been told for about 40 years now. The film has been discussed before on this site.

Buy it:
http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Head-Tom-Naughton/dp/B001NRY6R2/</p>

Or if you live in a county where you can't get it or watch it, then download it:
http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Fat-Head-2009/43585420553e64abc47e734fd890022b50f8c5b9101d</p>

Fat Head's YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/fatheadmovie - it contains a lot of material from the film as well as more.

Books
http://www.amazon.com/Know-Your-Fats-Understanding-Cholesterol/dp/0967812607/<br /> http://www.amazon.com/Ignore-Awkward-Cholesterol-Myths-Alive/dp/1453759409/<br /> http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Science/dp/1400033462/</p>

Blogs

From actual doctors:
http://primalmeded.com/</p>

From non-doctors, but still smart people:
http://www.fathead-movie.com/</p>

From asshole body builders:
http://freetheanimal.com/</p>

People that actually eat like this
http://nuclearfuzzgrunge.com/tlcm/</p>

Of course none of the things above are peer reviewed papers, but they do provide information and links to studies, publications, and so forth, so I won't reinvent the wheel here, this is just a basic overview.

Vegans and vegetarians talk a lot of shit about eating meat; of course, why wouldn't they? They have a belief system, typically based on care for animals rather than science, and they often go to great lengths to try to convince us that it's bad to eat meat or in the case of vegans, anything that comes from animals.

Myth #1: Human beings are the only apes that eat meat.
Fact #1: Nearly all apes eat meat, all great apes in fact eat meat as well, even chimpanzees are known to have hunting teams, and sometimes they even eat each other.

Myth #2: Eggs are bad because they're chicken menstruations.
Fact #2: Only mammals menstruate.

I had some others in mind but I didn't write them down, if you know of any to contribute, please do!

Before and after a switch to raw veganism

Science, what's that?

I checked out a couple of the links but not everything because I'm aware of most of the points that were touched on. Just an anecdote and some thoughts. My brother had a weight problem until he went on a no sugar diet. What's amazing is how small his range of food choices are. Any sugar that is in anything like milk or peanuts or even carrots that exceed it's fiber amount is canned. The guy is just shedding pounds, he eats all the fat he wants. I do road bike racing and it's an endurance sport, sometimes we consume 4000 calories in a day of riding. Without sugars and starches during a ride and recovery afterward we'd be total wrecks. I think that a combination of docile lifestyle and sugars is becoming more and more obvious as an unhealthy way. Sugars are for burning energy, if there's no reason for burning energy stick to fats and proteins. On the extreme end the top pro's in endurance sports have every calorie down to a science. Some of them do become vegetarian. A few that come to mind are Triathlete Scott Tinley, Tour de France cyclist and US Time Trail champion Dave Zabriske and 1980's Tour de France racer Dave Millar. The thing that Zabriske said is it helps give him a focus to diet and make the right choices, not a word about animals.

Excellent topic!

Here is a great book on the subject that I recently picked up:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702

Gary Tabues was criticized in the latest skeptic magazine (yeah that book)

It was in the skeptic magazine. If you like, I can scan that article and email you

I think an even more woo-woo diet than raw veganism is one that's advertised in a flyer on a bulletin board outside my office. It goes one step further than just raw veganism...it proclaims that unless you learn the 'acid/alkaline balance of food for proper digestion' you will not digest food properly, you body will accumulate toxins, and you will not be able to function properly. It also includes a diagram of the digestive system to appear scientific.

Yea, last I checked Gary Tabues' theories along with diets like Atkins are not looked at as the mainstream view. Don't forget to be skeptical just because it says something completely different to what the The Raw Food diet advocates.

Here's what seems to be a good critical responce from weight expert Dr Yoni Freedhoff.
http://www.weightymatters.ca/2011/01/book-review-gary-taubes-why-we-get-fat.html

The Real Roxette, I will send it at some point today.

Roxette, if that's all you got out of the article I suspect you couldn't have read it properly.

Where does he say low fat causes health problems? Does he say that you can eat all the saturated fat you want and this and high cholesterol isn't linked to heart disease after all and doesn't make you fat? I'm pretty sure if you read the article he even says that you can eat high carbs and loose weight, so long as its calorie controlled. I don't understand how you managed to get out of this that he agrees with you?

That's becuase there's a big difference between advocating low carb and what you, Fat Head, Taubes and Atkins are saying. Kind of like me saying I agree we should eat mostly vegetables, and then if you said that's the same as veganism. Supersize Me may have contained BS methods, but films like FatHead seem to contain similar amounts of BS, appearing to represent two extreme sides of reality.

Did you happen to read any further than the first sentence?

And I guess I am a vegan because I think we should eat mostly vegetables I suppose, right? But thanks for admitting you didn't actually read it, makes me wonder why you wanted the article from Skepic Mag if you're just planning on ignoring it all anyway.

And btw since you only have a few fringe credentialed experts that seem to agree with you, you are in fact voicing a conspiracy theory no different to any other, including Raw Food Veganism.

Also, here's Freedhoff's summation at the end of the article. I know its longer than a sentence which means you'll probably ignore it but I'll post it anyway. It amazes me that you think he agree's with you despite him saying that Taubes (and therefore people who use the same arguments as Taubes) is promoting "pseudo-science" and who argues his points like he's a "Grade 9 student writing a high school science project". Oh yes, he just can't stop gushing about Taubes' wonderful theories!

.... Why We Get Fat is certainly a book that will appeal to the masses as it pseudo-scientifically preaches that carbs are a magic food and that if you eat almost none of them - the diet he recommends includes 20 grams (less than an ounce) a day - you'll magically lose weight. Perhaps more appealingly, Taubes and Why We Get Fat also preach that you can eat as much fat and protein and you want and you'll never gain. Of course that's pretty much identical to the original Atkins' diet, and virtually all of the diets that Taubes himself references. [...]

At the end of the day Why We Get Fat's likely fate is to serve as the book for the next century's Taubes to point at, just as Taubes pointed at Banting's, in discussing how science has overlooked the horrors of carbs. Nothing new to see here, it's just another magic diet book.

The question that bothered me most throughout the book wasn't about carbs or thermodynamics, but rather why has Taubes chosen to argue his points like he's a Grade 9 student writing a high school science project rather than a well respected, scientific journalist? Some have suggested it's simply to sell books and have acerbically changed his name to Gary Taube$. I don't know, I think he was probably already doing pretty well for himself before this book was published. Perhaps the best explanation for why Taubes seems to have abandoned thoughtful journalism in place of this mess is his comment near the end of the book,

"One problem here is that when people, experts or not, decide to review the evidence on an issue dear to their hearts (me included), they tend to see what they want to see. This is human nature, but it doesn't lead to trustworthy conclusions."

Well said, and readers of this book, are best advised not to forget it.

This upcoming derailed and wasteful topic brought to you by Ed, responsible for former wonders such as:

http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/forums/topic/macdonalds-prices-may-rise<br /> http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/forums/topic/i-used-to-think-drug-legalization-was-a-good-thing</p>

Great a dope smoking vegan who opposes fast food is going to educate us all on what he thinks is best in regard to diet. We should feel blessed.

Hey Eric, I neither smoke dope and I'm not a vegan, in fact I'm not even a vegetarian. Cheers. I am also happy to have been proven wrong about the dangers of cannabis, I've said so before too. No idea where you got the idea I was a vegan though, I believe even in that thread you linked to I said I liked to eat at McDonalds and love Big Mac's.

The mainstream does agree with me... that's my question to *you.*

Hey Eric, I neither smoke dope and I'm not a vegan

I apologize, I misread on the vegan thing above. As for the dope smoking, you've mentioned many times on this forum that you in fact smoke marijuana, were you lying?