Good to see ya’ll back from the wilds of Europe

The quote above got me to thinking; do you still believe supplementing with the oils is very helpful? What about the Carlsons Cod Liver oil?

Hi Daryl–

It depends on what the underlying diet is.  If one doesn’t eat a lot of omega-3 rich foods, i.e., fatty fish, then it helps to supplement.  If I had to take only one omega-3 supplement it would be krill oil, but I don’t have to take only one, so I take krill and fish oil at least 4-5 times per week.

Cheers–

MRE

It is absolutely precisely the right size.  Happy reading.

Cheers–

MRE 

Curious to read Tabues, will wait for paperback or the library though. Commuting with hard cover tomes is a pain.

I am curious about how it all began. Once upon a time, Banting was dieting. Somewhere around 1950 or so, it seems things changed, and we got the lipid hypothesis. Somehow, this became an idee fixe, and it must have been fairly quick. I wonder, what was at the root, and why the sudden change in the tune of the chorus. Was it fast? Is there a vast, scary conspiracy? Or is it just a simple idea (fat makes fat… everytime I think of this, I think of old school Susan Powter’s rag about Low Fat Pig), gone way out of control (I’m stilling thinking of Powter, who might be the Courtney Love of the diet scene).

As we danced a while ago around doctoral business models, I wonder. A commenter above suggested that a physician’s incentive system is broken. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, since seeing “Sicko.” It’s not that I want an all out NHS. It’s just that I feel like we’re getting the short end of the stick, unless you happen to be very rich or employed by someone very generous (I haven’t had to test the limits of my insurance company’s generosity, but the tax payers are apparently a very generous employer). I digress. One of the foreign docs they talked to, I think in London, was doing very well for himself as an NHS doctor. I don’t know that he was typical or cherry picked, but the brief description of the incentives seemed to align the doc’s financial interests with his patient’s health interests. Ultimately, as economists, we know that incentives are what really matters. And really, I think a system that doesn’t attempt to align the two major stakeholders’ incentives is at least partially broken.
(Of course, I say this from the point of view of a patient, not a doc or a big business (pharma / managed care / agri / insurance).)

If you’re curious to know how it all began, the Taubes book is for you.  It will tell you in detail how it all began. 

I have an important question. For me at least. I eat a fair amount of nut butter (almond, cashew) and have tinned sardines each day for lunch (I like them!).

Going by what I know, I am not sure if this is a good idea.
1. The nutter butter being processed may mean more peroxides occur.
2. The tinned sardines are not fresh, although sealed. Could those fish oils have gone rancid? hard to tell since it smells like sardines.

regards
col

Hi col–

If the nut butters are simply nuts ground into a butter it’s not much different than eating the nuts.  All the components that give the fats stability within the nuts are still there in the butter.

You don’t really have to worry about the sardines because they’re canned fresh and kept from the air in an impervious tin, so they can’t really go rancid.

Eat away.

Cheers–

MRE 

I avoid ALL polyunsaturated fats that come in bottles.  Polyunsaturated fats that are in their native state, i.e., as seeds, meats, plants, etc. are okay because the substances found along with them in the seeds, nuts, meats, etc. help stabilize them.  The only polyunsaturated fats I eat that come in supplement or bottled form are fish oils or krill oil and I don’t eat a whole lot of that.

Cheers–

MRE 

Change or add one letter in a word and give it a meaning:

Bozone (n): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, fortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future

Ah, Bozone.  So that’s what causes it.

Cheers–

MRE 

“The first principle [of science] is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

This quote comes from CalTech commencement address he made in 1974 on the subject of scientific integrity. It’s also known as his “Cargo Cult Science” talk which I think, though I may be wrong, you (Dr. Mike) might have brought up before in your blog? I did a search and couldn’t find it, but it might be from your older blog format. If you haven’t you can find an adaptation of it here:

http://music.ls.huji.ac.il/members/nachum/feynman.html

It speaks well to what you’ve been saying about science’s ability to blind itself, or just miss the point all together.

I’m an engineer and I have the quote above pinned to the wall of my office, just as a reminder.

Hi Ogden–

I’ve read the Feynman quote many times; Taubes mentions it in his book.  It speaks to something we all need to be on the lookout for: the ease with which we can all indulge in self deception.

Cheers–

MRE 

You remind me of one of my favorite quotes from Jonathan Swift, who said that happiness is the state of being well deceived.

There are a couple of other reasons why the lipid hypothesis has such fanatical adherents in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, why scientifically trained people ignore and deny the science that proves the lipid hypothesis wrong, a subject I plan to develop at essay length given the time. These reasons are psychological and religious, not scientific.

First, the psychological reason. When people get up in the morning and look in the mirror, they have a name for what they see in themselves that they don’t like: fat. They then project that dislike of themselves onto fat in the environment and blame it for all the world’s ills. So fear and hatred of dietary fat is a projection of self-hatred.

The religious reason has to do with a persistent strain of American Puritanism. According to this religious idea, virtue comes from self-denial and sin comes from self-indulgence. As George Bernard Shaw once said, people think they’re being virtuous when they’re merely uncomfortable. So being overweight is sinful because it comes from excess. Dieting, then, becomes a religious exercise in becoming virtuous, i.e., thin, through self-denial. Low fat dieting fits this mold because, as many have pointed out, it means rejecting all kinds of foods that please us. Along comes Atkins, who says: No! Becoming thin, i.e., virtuous, has nothing to do with self-denial, but with achieving satiety. For this, Atkins was attacked with all the ferocity of Torquemada persecuting heretics, for heretic he certainly was.

The lipid hypothesis is another case, I’m afraid, where neurosis and religion trump science.

All the best,

Chuck Berezin

Hi Chuck–

Interesting theory.  I’ll be eager to read the full essay.

As you’ll see when you read Taubes’ book, at least in the case of the scientists involved, it was more fearing to go against the herd that was stampeding off the cliff.

Cheers–

MRE 

Hi John–

There is the same level of evidence that fat causes prostate cancer that there is that fat causes breast, colon and all the other cancers it has been blamed for: in a word, none.

Cheers–

MRE