They’re finally letting the egg back into the good graces of government nutritionism, long after it had become clear that the cholesterol scare was unfounded [Washington Post] Again and again, health guidelines promoted by Washington have pushed Americans from safer toward less safe food choices, and from long-familiar foods that came to seem too rich or indulgent (butter, animal fat) toward alternatives about which far less is known. [Michael Brendan Dougherty, The Week] More: “Worth remembering that, if they had the power in the 1980s, the public health lobby would have forced us to eat a diet they now say is bad.” — @cjsnowdon
However bad a nutritionist Uncle Sam may be, of course, he is unlikely ever to be as bad as the science-impaired, self-proclaimed Food Babe Vani Hari [The Atlantic (“There is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever.”), Orac/Respectful Insolence, Advertising Age, earlier] If only the public health establishment worked as hard to counteract the notions spread by Hari as it does to inscribe whatever its current set of food enthusiasms may be into coercive government policy! More: Michelle Francl, Slate.
P.S. At Scott Greenfield’s suggestion:
6 Comments
This is really quite silly. There was a consensus that cholesterol causes heart disease. The matter was settled. The debate was over. And now you say we are to give in to some skeptics?
I for one am glad that the government, which of course pushed a carbo-loading food pyramid for many years, is on the case of the “obsetiy epidemic,” and placing the blame where it belongs — on private companies like Coke and McDonald’s, of course.
“There is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever.”
Since all foods, even 100% natural foods are completely made up of chemicals, what does Ms Vani Hari eat, unicorn farts?
For DEM:
My favorite cartoon shows two matronly women standing outside a car with a flat tire. The car hood is up, and one woman says to the other “There is the air filter, but I don’t know what to do next.”
I understand that reduction of cholesterol is based on the observation that blood plaques have components similar to cholesterol.
I am not surprised that the complexities of digestion and blood chemistry make the cholesterol theory naive. Data should rule. If countries without cholesterol concern have the same heath status as us, then our cholesterol concern was misplaced.
Guess Ms. Hari never took high school chemistry. Because, the last I looked, everything is made up of chemicals and some of the naturally occurring compounds she likes to thing are good just because Mother Nature made them are poisonous.
@William Nuesslein,
“I understand that reduction of cholesterol is based on the observation that blood plaques have components similar to cholesterol. ”
Actually, blood plaques have actual cholesterol in them. However, cholesterol is ubiquitous in the body, so this is neither surprising nor informative.
Cholesterol is a hormone (a steroid) necessary to proper muscle function. You need so much of it that it is the only hormone in your body that can be manufactured by every cell in your body. There is very likely a point where low cholesterol levels would be immediately fatal but no one is studying that end of the equation.
[…] “Worth remembering that, if they had the power in the 1980s, the public health lobby would have forced us to eat a diet they now say is bad.” [Christopher Snowdon, earlier] […]