Low carbers: critical thinkers and a bulwark against illiteracy
Seattle skyline from the plane window as we flew in a couple of days ago
I’ve long thought the critical thinking skills of the majority of Americans have been decaying over time. More and more people seem to accept whatever they hear from a television commentator or a newspaper reporter without ever considering that whatever they’re hearing may be incorrect. In many ways we’ve become a nation of sheep, and kind of stupid sheep, at that. When I ponder on this, I always think of my favorite George Carlin quote:
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Forget for a minute the notion of overall intelligence and think of nutritional intelligence only, then apply Carlin’s reasoning. Think of someone you know who has what you would consider an average amount of nutritional knowledge, then realize that half of the US population has less nutritional knowledge than that. And they don’t care.
Whenever I think about George Carlin and my favorite quote of his, I’m always reminded of my next favorite quote:
I do this real moron thing, it’s called thinking, and I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.
Sadly, in our culture, thinking is becoming more and more of a moron thing.
A reader sent me an opinion piece on the state of American intelligence and critical thinking that I want to share. There are a couple of paragraphs in this essay that I especially thought hit the mark.
We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities
The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying.
I had never been on the website where this piece appeared, so I had no preconceived notions of what the article was going to be about when I started reading it. As I read it, however, I started suspecting that the writer was from the far right, then I started thinking he was maybe a libertarian. After reading the piece, I checked the guy out only to discover that he is an avowed socialist. Who would’ve thought it? At any rate, whatever his own political views, I think he hits pretty close to home with his essay. The vast majority of people don’t want to think for themselves – they want to be told what to do. And what they want more than anything is to be entertained. And the more passive the entertainment the better. How many Americans do you know that, given the choice, wouldn’t rather veg in front of the TV than read a book? Even an easy, fun-to-read book? It’s just too much work. Why learn when it’s so much less difficult and so much more fun to be passively entertained. It’s so much easier to sit in a comfy chair and let the talking heads do your critical thinking for you. It is a sad, sad state of affairs.
But, there is hope. At least among the tribe of low-carb dieters there are some readers. A lot of readers, in fact. And most people who do read develop better critical thinking skills than those who don’t.
Before I get to how I know low-carbers are readers, at least as compared to low-fatters, let me digress a little to discuss bestseller lists, a subject near and dear to my heart. (Especially since, with your help, I hope to be back on one again soon.)
There are countless bestseller lists. Practically each newspaper has it’s own. If you make it on to the bestseller list of some rinky dink local paper, you are a bestseller. I’m not kidding. When you see the term ‘bestseller’ or bestselling’ applied to an author – as in ‘Bestselling author Dr. Michael Eades’ or ‘the bestselling book Protein Power’ you can figure that Dr. Michael Eades’ book Protein Power made it onto the bestseller list of some small, regional newspaper. If a book makes it on to the bestseller list of a larger newspaper, one that has a bit of national circulation, then that book is said to be a ‘national bestseller,’ a term frequently used. I don’t know what makes a paper fall into the ‘national’ category, but they all know in the publishing biz. The Denver paper, for example, is considered a national paper, so if your book makes it onto the Denver Post, then you are not just a bestseller, you are a national bestseller.
The Big Daddy of all the bestseller lists (at least in the US) is the New York Times bestseller list. Every author wants to figure a way to weasel onto this list. Why? Because all the book stores key off the NY Times list, especially the big chain bookstores. All the books on the NY Times list get moved to the front of the store and discounted. Which, of course, increases their visibility and sales. Which tends to keep them on the list even longer, perpetuating the cycle. Which is why everyone – including yours truly – wants to make it onto the NY Times bestseller list. Once there, you stay for a while. And once there, for ever after your are a New York Times bestselling author. Not just a bestselling author or a national bestselling author, but a by God New York Times bestselling author.
With all the folderol that goes with the New York Times bestseller list, you would think that it would at least semi-accurately be a measure of how many books of any title are actually sold, but it’s not. For that you have to go to the USA Today list. A less prestigious list in terms of what you can say about yourself, but vastly more important in terms of tracking book sales. Here’s why.
The New York Times list is divided into multiple categories by type of book (fiction vs nonfiction) and by cover (hardcover vs softcover). Even the softcover category is divided into trade paperback and mass market paperback sections. (Trade paperbacks are those that are the same size as a hardcover book; mass market paperbacks are the small ones you find on racks that you think of as paperback books.) The number of categories of books has expanded with the whining of authors wanting to get on the list. It used to be that there were fiction and nonfiction lists. All the self-styled ‘serious’ nonfiction authors had to compete with diet book authors (God forbid) and other lesser authors of how-to and self-help books and usually came up short. The Times caved and started a new category called Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous so that these serious nonfiction authors wouldn’t have to mingle with (or, more importantly for them, compete with) us more low-brow types in the self-help section. Since there are multiple categories of NY Times bestseller lists, all you can really do is compare books within a given list. There may be 20 times more of the #4 book in the Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous list sold than the book that is #1 on the nonfiction list, but there is no way to know this. But you can find this out from the USA Today list.
The USA Today bestseller list published every Thursday lists the top 50 bestselling books based on sales irrespective of category. If your book is #1 on the USA Today list, that means more copies were sold than any other book. You want to be on the NY Times list for the prestige but you want to be on the USA Today list because it means you’re selling a whole lot of books.
Last week USA Today published a list of the top selling 150 books of the past 15 years. Considering that there are several thousand new book titles published each year, the USA Today list represents the bestselling books out of some 50,000 to 75,000 titles published over the past decade and a half. That’s thousands of different titles. Some of these titles had small print runs of only a thousand or so copies while others – The Da Vinci Code and the Harry Potter books, for example – had print runs in the millions, making this list represent millions and millions of books sold.
Taking a quick look at the list is enlightening. Of the 150 bestsellers over the past 15 years, nine of them are diet/nutrition books or six percent. When you take a look at these specific diet/nutrition titles, a trend emerges.
#2 Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution
#58 Dr. Atkins’ New Carbohydrate Gram Counter
#61 The South Beach Diet Good Fats Good Carbs Guide
#87 You: On a Diet
#121 Sugar Busters!
#129 The Ultimate Weight Solution
#130 Protein Power
#143 The Zone
As you can see from this list, seven out of the nine books are low-carb (or semi-low-carb) books. The two that aren’t (#87 & #129) were by celebrity authors who were given their starts and shamelessly promoted by Oprah. (Also, as an aside, if you take the time to pull down the Amazon pages of all these books, note which one has the highest star rating. 
)
The other books on the list had to make it their on their own without Oprah’s help. And, in fact, with Oprah openly saying that low-carb diets are bad. I think the fact that there are so many of these books on this list says a lot about low-carb aficionados. At the very least, it says that low-carbers buy books and they read. Where are all the low-fat books on this list? There were a gazillion published over the past 15 years. Some made the NY Times list. But where are they now? Where are Ornish’s ultra-low-fat books? Not a single mention. Yet you see him all over the place in the media. I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about what all this means. But remember, low-carb books outsold The Da Vinci Code and a bunch of the Harry Potter books, all of which were quite the bestsellers. If you add up all the low-carb books and counted them as one, that book would have been #1 on the list. Quite an accomplishment for a discredited diet theory, I would say.
Think about all the negative press reports low-carb diets and meat-based diets get, and yet people continue to buy and read low-carb books. My take is that there are still some thinkers out there who don’t let the media lead them by the nose and who want to take responsibility for their own health and well being. And I consider it a good sign. At least when the revolution comes, it will be lead by those who follow low-carb diets because they may be the only thinkers left.
A bit of housekeeping. MD and I are in the midst of three major projects right now, requiring travel all over the place, and time is at a premium. I just looked and there are almost a hundred comments undealt with in the queue right now. I’m going to make my way through them, so don’t despair if you’ve been waiting. But for the next bit – at least until we get through this crunch time – I’m simply going to post any future comments as they come in. I don’t have time to answer them individually. When the time frees up, I’ll probably start back. But until then, don’t feel slighted if your question just gets posted as it comes in.
(Hat tip to Dave Dixon for the essay at the start of this post)
Yes, I am a critical thinker, all stemming from my discovery of Protein Power more than 10 years ago.
My question is off-topic, and if you don’t have time to respond, I’ll understand.
After hobbling around for several months on a bum knee, I went to the orthopedist. He said maybe a torn menisucus, but nothing showed on the x-ray or MRI. Then I went to physical therepy. He had me step up on an 8″ step, and I went down in agony. “Well, if it wasn’t torn before, it is now.” Grrrrr.
So, I had arthroscopy. Turns out there are no tears, just some arthritis that he cleaned up.
I’ve been low-carbing for more than 10 years now (I’m 54 now), and staying away from wheat for the most part. I also weight train, and will be upping my routine as soon as I heal from the surgery.
Here’s the question.
What else can I be doing to stop the further advance of the arthritis? Is there anything that I can do to build bone? Supplements? I’m on bio-identical HRT (drops).
Calcium? Magnesium? Mega doses?
Any insight you could provide would be helpful.
Thanks in advance!
I would make sure to get enough magnesium and especially vitamin D3. You live in Maine where the sunlight is weak, even in the summer. I would add at least 5,000 IU vitamin D3 per day.
As a casual Canadian observer of my neighbours to the south I can say that while Obama’s nowhere near perfect he’s a helluva lot better from a critical thinking point of view than a McCain/Palin ticket. I, as a non-partisan observer, am quite relieved that Sarah Palin will be nowhere near the nuclear launch codes anytime soon. At least the Obamas make it hip to be erudite (mind you, I’m as wary of the bailouts as anyone!)
I do feel we low carbers seem a little better read overall when it comes to nutrition. We’ve learned to challenge our, and much of society’s preconcieved (and poorly concieved) notions about diet. We use our head, rather than just judging from raw emotion that leads to anthropomorphizing and other missteps in cognition (I should know, I went almost directly from vegetarianism to low-carb.) Perhaps we’re less likely to become Scientologists as well? ; D
Well, don’t be surprised that a socialist would care about whether people are critical thinkers anymore. I think part of Marx’s original point was that it was stupid to treat the proletariat like unthinking animals because they were/are anything but, and have just as much right to the fruits of their labor as anyone else. Too bad that got lost in the shuffle. I don’t think what gets passed off as socialism anymore is usually in any way deserving of the title. (Command economies are an especial joke. Too bad it’s not funny.)
I will have to respectfully disagree with your inference that one must be a reader to be a critical thinker. Critical thinking is a skill anyone can learn no matter what their primary method of receiving information. We were social animals well before the advent of the written word and you don’t go thousands of years as a social animal if you don’t learn to sort the B.S. from the truth early on.
I think whatever is wrong with society now runs much more deeply than that. The central problem, as I see it, is that despite our efforts and claims to the contrary, most human beings are concrete thinkers. We are more likely to believe the evidence of our senses, even when those senses are dulled, than we are to believe statements that we perceive as disconnected from reality. So the person who believes he has had a personal experience with God is more likely to be religious, and the person who has had a close brush with death more clearly understands that he is mortal. Before then, reference to either is nothing but empty rhetoric.
Toss in the fact that as social animals we are always looking to someone else to set the example for how we should behave. I think this is less about small-mindedness or laziness than it is simple instinct, one of the few we have left (or will acknowledge, anyway).
And some of us have gotten smart enough and learned enough by now to be able to manipulate these things. It’s called “marketing.” And TV has made this easier than ever. Think about it. It’s not just images, it’s moving images. The people in the moving images might as well be in the same room as you. Your hundreds-of-thousands-of-years-old brain, which evolved looking at actual, living, breathing, moving people, has no evolutionary experience with images of living, breathing, moving people on the TV or in a movie. While your intellect may tell you the moving pictures aren’t real, your primitive brain tells you a different story.
Marketing people know this. That’s how any number of public institutions, from Hollywood to the White House (no matter who’s in it), get away with lying to us. Until a person has experience with being lied to and screwed over, his default assumption about other people is that they are trustworthy, because we couldn’t be social animals if we didn’t first assume the best about one another. Think about who falls for Hollywood and government crap. It’s not the cynics.
I wouldn’t be so hard on folks who are ignorant. They simply don’t know. God knows that even with everything I have learned I still sometimes wish with all my might that the “experts” were right about something I know they’re wrong about. It can be hard to let go and rely on yourself when people who promised to be there for you disappoint you again and again. I would guess some of these ignorant people are also frightened of the unknown.
Hm, here’s a thought for you. Maybe it seems like more smart people read low-carb books because all that protein and fat makes their brains work better?
Before I started experimenting with low-carb (I’m ashamed to say I haven’t made the switch permanent yet), I would have the most horrific mood swings and brain fog. Once I started it was like being on anti-depressants but without the zombie-ness and I still had my sex drive intact. (TMI, sorry.) The smartest animals by IQ, which I have no idea how they test for it, seem to be carnivores or meat-favoring omnivores. Go figure.
IMNSHO you have to be pretty intelligent to be as stupid as some people. Think about it, whenever you discover a fact, information or evidence you need to parse it against your current collection of stereotypes, soundytes and memes, then when you find it doesn’t mesh with your current preconceptions you need to develop a plausible explanation as to why it is wrong in order to reject it.
A bit like you do with scentific papers, only in exact reverse.
Two of the most “intelligent” people I know have hardly any academic qualifications between them. One is a company director (and owner), the other is an artist. Both have the ability to see and respond to the world as it actually is and act accordingly, an uncommon skill nowadays.
Taubes’ book is called Good Calories Bad Calories in most markets but has been renamed The Diet Delusion in the UK. I wonder how that affects its position on bestseller lists?
I feel a little pandered to as well, but I do think there’s some truth to what you write. I’m another fan of John Taylor Gatto and I enjoy John Holt as well. We are choosing to homeschool our children, not because we have a religious-based opposition to public schools, etc. but because we don’t think that education today produces critical thinkers. I don’t care as much about what facts my children memorize, as much as I care about my children being able to find good, solid sources of information that they can analyze with a critical eye and then discuss and write about the topic.
My husband is wrapping up a PhD right now in Chemistry. After a few years in industry, he decided to go back and get his doctorate. About 2-3 years ago when he was teaching a sophomore/jr. level undergrad chemistry lab, it was amazing to me that his students would actually hand in lab reports without even including a discussion section. Somehow they couldn’t understand how not bothering (or being capable of?) discussing your results might not warrant an A or B on a lab report. This isn’t even just a gen chem course. It is a chemistry course in a major research institution. Sigh. Are these tomorrow’s future scientists?
For all that we might be critical thinkers, some of us manage to combine that with a hefty dose of superficiality… Some low-carb proponents just don’t look very good (I’m flashing on Mary Enig after seeing “Fat Head”), especially when compared to some of the raw food folks… I agree that low-carb is the way to live – I’ve gone from being a vegan to rendering my own lard – but I not only want to be healthy, I want to look healthy and glowing, too! Do you have any tips from all the individual adaptations to the low-carb way of life that you’ve come across to share with us? Thanks for your wonderful blog!
It was interesting to me to see that they split off diet and advice books from proper, serious non-fiction books. If asked to name the most important books I’ve ever read, in the sense of the ones that changed my life, I’d cite Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Obviously the latter would be classed in the “proper” books list yet they’ve been equally influential to me. And to my thinking, not just my body in the Atkins case!
I wonder if the compilers think diet books are ephemeral, that they’re the latest trendy thing and once they’re off the list they’ll vanish into oblivion when the next big diet comes along? So that even though they sell in millions, they’re soon forgotten.
I just read this article on Science Daily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090407130905.htm
“Too Much Protein, Eaten Along With Fat, May Lead To Insulin Resistance”
I understand that they tested rats to see how they responded which obviously would give bogus results, however, along with the “Meat is Deadly” fiasco recently, this study doesn’t really do much for the low-carm community. What’s your view on the study?
Stu
I’m curious about the article Stu posted as well. Is the key w/ protein/fat not being a problem *not* eating beyond satiety? I have PCOS and respond well to metformin, but am not overweight and don’t technically test positive for insulin resistance. The fat/protein possibly leading to IR still confuses me. I know for me, eating fat/protein definitely makes me feel better, but I want to make sure i’m not increasing my IR.
OK Doc, help me understand this from Stu’s link: if eating a high fat and lots of BCAA (meat) beyond daily needs means increasing IR in rats per this study, then are we humans different from rats in this aspect? When we eat high fat & lots of meat to lose weight, our IR is reduced — right? Is it the overeating of either one or the other that causes this effect? Or is this a rat-only response. I guess what I’m asking is whether you’ve seen any human studies that suggest this or did you observe it in your practice? Like Beth, I’d sure hate to be increasing my liver cell IR as I lose weight.
I understand that daily exercise helps reduce IR, so I faithfully climb on my exercise bike and pedal away for 30-50 mins every day in 2 sessions (easier since I was laidoff — can I call this a benefit of being laidoff? *G*). I just started r-lipoic acid @ 50 mg/day to see how my gut likes it (goal is 150-300 mg/day)…had a bad reaction several yrs ago but that was to the mixed R and S form. I’ve also been talking benfotiamine (300 mg/day) that following 1st 150 mg dropped my bedtime BG by 30 pts and next morning BG by 18 pts…*sigh* hasn’t repeated since…BUT my mood is improved (being laidoff usually makes me seriously depressed yet I’m not) and my systolic is 12 pts lower.
I’ve seen it in practice, and it’s in the medical literature. Everything you read about rat studies can’t be applied to humans.
Haven’t read the original paper so I’m hypothesising, but rat chow is usually high carb. So probably what they are doing is adding more protein and more fat to an already high carb diet. This don’t work! See certain similar human research.