Q1 2008 #1 best seller

While working on the next post about low-carb and calories it dawned on me that I hadn’t posted the best seller list for the first quarter of 2008. I decided to take a break from the serious stuff for a bit, go through the Amazon.com records, and whip it out.

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If you are anything like I am, you’ve probably found yourself wondering how on earth people can cling to the low-fat diet when all the data out there shows it is vastly inferior to the low-carb diet in virtually all parameters. If you’ve had great results yourself with a low-carb diet, you’ve also probably wondered why it is so hard to persuade others to try it. And you may have asked yourself – as I have asked myself – why every little study that comes out purporting to show that low-carb diets are somehow dangerous gets media coverage out the wazoo while studies showing the superiority of low-carb diets are ignored.

If you have pondered all this, have I got the book for you.

A few weeks ago I followed the recommendation of one of the readers of this blog and purchased the book Mistakes Were Made, (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. This book gave me the answers to all the above questions. The good news is that now I know why people have the prejudices and biases they have. The bad news is that now I know how really difficult it is to change them. The sort of good news is that I can keep a watchful eye on my own tendency (which is inherent in everyone) not to slip into the same prejudiced, biased way of thinking myself.

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Now that Kevin Trudeau’s book Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You To Know About has hit the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list for the past few weeks, the media is starting to sharpen their knives for him. If you don’t know who Kevin Trudeau is, you don’t watch much television because he is all over the airwaves with an infomercial about his book, which is about how the government, the drug companies, physicians, people who sell vitamins, insurance companies, grocery stores, the list goes on and on, are all out to get you. Who can you trust? Mr. Trudeau, of course. He tells you so right on the infomercial. According to him, he is the only true source of honest information out there. And for only a small monthly fee, Mr. Trudeau will provide you with the unvarnished truth as he sees it. As Dave Barry says: I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. Watch the infomercial yourself.

Just to see what all the fuss was about I got a copy of the book and read a little here and a little there and found it to be in part a jihad against the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in part a collection of a host of “cures” for various disorders, most of which, in my opinion, are hogwash.

The parts about his dealings with the FTC and FDA I found interesting and true, at least according to people I know who do know how the system works. I’ll blog on Trudeau’s ongoing battles with these two government agencies sometime down the road and just stick now to my impression of the contents of his book from a health and scientific perspective.

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