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Great article on Medscape by George D. Lundberg with a short video included
Hello and welcome. I am Dr George Lundberg, and this is At Large at Medscape. Today I am in my angry-old-man persona. I often write about nutrition and disease. And I usually admit in advance to knowing little about nutrition, much like most of my physician readers.
It has been 11 years since independent investigative science journalist Gary Taubes published his best-seller, Good Calories, Bad Calories,[1] after 15 years of serious study, enabled by that amazing new tool, the Internet. Turns out, it's not fat that makes us unhealthy. In 640 total pages with 459 notes, 1700 references, and 924 Amazon customer reviews, Taubes demolished what the medical, scientific, and nutrition fields (since at least the 1960s) had spent countless billions of dollars building and profiting (but also dying) from: the fat food theory of the causation of "diseases of human civilization"—atherosclerosis, coronary artery heart disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, stroke, cancer, dementia, and even osteoporosis and arthritis.
As the ultimate insider (me: organized-medicine member since 1967; JAMA journals editor for 17 years; faculty at University of Southern California, University of California, Northwestern, Harvard, Stanford) through that entire time, I am struck by how the ultimate independent outsider (Taubes) could look at the same mass of information all the rest of us had access to and come to such different conclusions.
In addition to the newly comprehensive access provided by the Internet, science-educated investigator Taubes also brought the open and questioning journalist's mind, unfettered by the conflicts of traditional scientific education; professorial authoritarianism; established career path dogma; addiction to grant support; the limits imposed by establishment peer review; the medical publishing business; need for and love of medical money and collegial esteem; opportunities for vast commercialization; invidious government power and political "scientific" positions; mass production and marketing of professional and consumer products; plus advocacy groups and influence.
Big Public Health. Big Farming. Big Agriculture. Big Government. Big Academia. Big Industry. Big Marketing. Big Advertising. Big Advocacy. Big Medicine. Big Publishing. All were marching to the tune composed by what they thought—in good faith, I believe—was good science.
And it wasn't all bad science. The massive effort at culture change—stop eating this, that, or the other fat—was excessive, considering the meager amount of supporting data. The unintended effects were so extreme and went so unrecognized because of this huge effort based on what had become dogma: that eating fat is bad (9 calories per gram vs 4 calories for protein and carbs). The laws of thermodynamics—calories in, calories out—had been everything in weight control.
As the scientist, medical journal editor, insider, I was even involved in the mass "Campaign Against Cholesterol,"[2] led by the American Medical Association, doing everything we could from within organized medicine, and using many industry partners who, of course, stood to profit via their new low-fat products.
Real-world application is where the science, and especially the public health, communities failed. They did not keep their eyes open to the evolving real-world experience. They did not challenge the dogma and prevailing practices as the truth became more and more obvious during the mass-fattening of the population in the developed world.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/900495?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=138287PY&impID=1721278&faf=1
Hello and welcome. I am Dr George Lundberg, and this is At Large at Medscape. Today I am in my angry-old-man persona. I often write about nutrition and disease. And I usually admit in advance to knowing little about nutrition, much like most of my physician readers.
It has been 11 years since independent investigative science journalist Gary Taubes published his best-seller, Good Calories, Bad Calories,[1] after 15 years of serious study, enabled by that amazing new tool, the Internet. Turns out, it's not fat that makes us unhealthy. In 640 total pages with 459 notes, 1700 references, and 924 Amazon customer reviews, Taubes demolished what the medical, scientific, and nutrition fields (since at least the 1960s) had spent countless billions of dollars building and profiting (but also dying) from: the fat food theory of the causation of "diseases of human civilization"—atherosclerosis, coronary artery heart disease, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, stroke, cancer, dementia, and even osteoporosis and arthritis.
As the ultimate insider (me: organized-medicine member since 1967; JAMA journals editor for 17 years; faculty at University of Southern California, University of California, Northwestern, Harvard, Stanford) through that entire time, I am struck by how the ultimate independent outsider (Taubes) could look at the same mass of information all the rest of us had access to and come to such different conclusions.
In addition to the newly comprehensive access provided by the Internet, science-educated investigator Taubes also brought the open and questioning journalist's mind, unfettered by the conflicts of traditional scientific education; professorial authoritarianism; established career path dogma; addiction to grant support; the limits imposed by establishment peer review; the medical publishing business; need for and love of medical money and collegial esteem; opportunities for vast commercialization; invidious government power and political "scientific" positions; mass production and marketing of professional and consumer products; plus advocacy groups and influence.
Big Public Health. Big Farming. Big Agriculture. Big Government. Big Academia. Big Industry. Big Marketing. Big Advertising. Big Advocacy. Big Medicine. Big Publishing. All were marching to the tune composed by what they thought—in good faith, I believe—was good science.
And it wasn't all bad science. The massive effort at culture change—stop eating this, that, or the other fat—was excessive, considering the meager amount of supporting data. The unintended effects were so extreme and went so unrecognized because of this huge effort based on what had become dogma: that eating fat is bad (9 calories per gram vs 4 calories for protein and carbs). The laws of thermodynamics—calories in, calories out—had been everything in weight control.
As the scientist, medical journal editor, insider, I was even involved in the mass "Campaign Against Cholesterol,"[2] led by the American Medical Association, doing everything we could from within organized medicine, and using many industry partners who, of course, stood to profit via their new low-fat products.
Real-world application is where the science, and especially the public health, communities failed. They did not keep their eyes open to the evolving real-world experience. They did not challenge the dogma and prevailing practices as the truth became more and more obvious during the mass-fattening of the population in the developed world.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/900495?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=138287PY&impID=1721278&faf=1
