On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 13:15:49 -0500
SeaNymph wrote:

On 8/13/2015 11:02 AM, J Burns wrote:
On 8/13/15 8:31 AM, SeaNymph wrote:
snipped for a bit of brevity

There seems to be a rash of medical reversals lately, concerning
things like milk, sugar, salt, etc. I think that a lot of what we
hear and read is nothing more than fear mongering, based on little
real world facts. That being said, I simply don't think the
government should be telling people what to eat and drink. It's
not their business and when it comes to facts, they aren't exactly
on the top of the believable list, imo.

The problem is the research industry. A scientist has to publish or
perish, or, one like Albert Schweitzer may want to publish so the
public will know what he has learned. He has to publish in certain
periodicals. Many times, they won't publish unless they get the
copyright.

For practical purposes, that can mean the research is unavailable
to the public. Subscriptions are expensive. If you aren't part of
an organization that can afford subscriptions, and you don't have
access to certain libraries, you may be out of luck. Besides, a
corporation or government who found certain information
threatening, could probably bury the research by buying the
copyright. At one time, I think copyrights expired in 17 years, but
now they can be extended for generations.

Schweitzer published a paper saying he'd treated hundreds of
thousands of Gabonese. Their primitive diet looked unhealthful to
civilized people. Besides, it was a tobacco-growing region, and
they smoked so much that he often treated them for nicotine
poisoning. Cancer was endemic in industrial nations; I think colon
cancer was the biggest; yet Schweitzer reported that he didn't see
a single case of cancer for many years, until they began eating a
western diet.

It has been about a century since he published it, but I think it's
still unavailable to the public.

A British doctor began treating Inuits about 1880. They traded for
firearms, ammunition, tobacco, and other items, but stubbornly
refused to buy western food. Their diet included lots of blubber.
For fifty years, he found no cancer and very little heart disease.
IIRC, his first cancer case was in 1930, after they'd finally begun
eating food from industrialized nations.

As of the 1890s, pathologists had been advancing medical science
for a couple of centuries. They'd found infarctions in various
organs, but never a heart. The foremost pathologist in North
America published a paper on the first known heart infarction, in
the 1890s, four years after corn oil came on the market.

I think cottonseed oil came on the market in 1898. The motive was
profit: cottonseed was a byproduct, available for almost nothing.
Hydrogenated cottonseed oil, Crisco, came on the market in 1912,
IIRC. Suddenly there was an epidemic of the strange new disease,
the heart attack. One contemporary writer noted that it happened to
people who ate a lot of pastry.

Cancers increased, especially lung cancer, which had been rare. It
happened to women, too, and they didn't smoke. About 1937, when the
prices of butter and lard jumped, so did sales of vegetable oil and
hydrogenated shortening.

In WWII, Japan cut us off from a traditional saturated cooking oil,
coconut oil. Soy oil took its place. By the end of the war,
vegetable oil was a major, profitable industry. The rates of heart
attacks, cancer, and obesity became alarming and continued to grow.

Now that butter, lard, and coconut oil were again abundant, the
vegetable oil industry set out to discredit them through propaganda
from research not available to the public. They had a scientist try
a diet of fish filets and blubber. I don't think he did it many
days. He announced that his blood analysis showed it was
unhealthful.

That was the start of the propaganda that everybody should eat
vegetable oil because saturated fat caused heart attacks. The
problem was malnutrition, like using a diet of bread and water to
prove bread was harmful. Such propaganda worked in a culture where
the public accepted knowing only half truths because of copyrights.

IIRC, it was about 1970 that Harvard Medical School determined that
partially hydrogenated vegetable oil was deadly to the heart. I'm
sure they weren't the first, but when Harvard spoke, people
listened. Not in this case. The vegetable oil industry had lots
of money for junk science and propaganda.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, founded by a
food-industry lobbyist, kept spreading propaganda that the delicious
traditional fats used by restaurants caused disease, while
hydrogenated soy oil was good for you. Eventually, McDonalds caved
in and switched from tallow to hydrogenated soy oil. When
governments outlawed it, CSPI representatives said they were
ignorant slobs who didn't know any better. The Wall Street Journal
disagreed.

Obesity? According to the USDA, per capita consumption of all kinds
of food except vegetable oil has remained pretty constant since
1940.

Men began smoking less about 1955. Statistics said an individual's
chance of getting lung cancer declined fairly quickly after
quitting, but the rate among men rose for nearly 40 years as
cigarette consumption declined. It began declining about 1992.
Now it's a lot lower, but I think women's rates have continued to
climb. If people who had never smoked often got lung cancer, that
was supposed to be because somebody else smoked.

The Adkins Diet, advocating more meat and animal fat, became
popular in the early 1990s. Probably more men than women were
swayed. Research has shown that saturated fat protects the lungs.
As long as the public were kept ignorant, the vegetable oil
industry could blame cigarettes.

Frankly, I find it tiresome that politicians seems to believe they
know what's best for people concerning everything from soda to light
bulbs. I think there is so much nonsense out there, that I've pretty
much stopped paying attention to it.


What ever the government says is bad for you, immediately go stock up.
If it is food in a few years new studies will show they were wrong.
If it is a light bulb in a few years studies will show the new ones are
poison.

The government has never been correct on any of its doom, death and
destruction predictions.