Loved the DVD and just found your blog. Lost 20 pounds since last week of June just by cutting carbs (no one at work believes it, though). Got a question, if I may: did you try to get an interview with the CSPI pests for the movie? I would have loved to see them explain their 180 on making restaurants ditch tallow, then later slamming them for using trans fats, the only alternative. Thanks, DLM

Nope. The film was self-funded, I had limited resources for traveling and shooting, so I elected to focus on the people whose ideas I supported. Would’ve been fun, though.

You just neatly summarized my next post.

Yup, it’s annoying. Just to try to find lard or coconut oil at your average grocery store.

Hyperlipid is an excellent site. It’s now on the blogroll.

My point exactly. It’s one of the reasons I have so much respect for people like Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades and Dr. Al Sears. They have strong opinions about what we should eat, but they’re against laws and regulations that try to harass people into following any particular diet.

Basically a woman lived off Red Bull for 8 months and ended up in hospital, no surprises there.

It goes on to say that she maintaining her figure now, but still has some problems from the Red Bull.

What is she using to maintain her figure? A Weight Watchers diet! Look at how much better she is because of the Weight Watcher’s diet!

I found comment #41 on that article particularly disturbing.

Good grief! Of course she lost weight; with no protein in her diet, her muscles shrank, in addition to losing fat. And talk about screwing up your insulin levels …

I also hope people figure out that the results come from the absence of refined carbs, not the presence of raw vegetables. Unfortunately I think few people have the Sherlock Holmes tendency to notice what’s missing rather than what’s present. I think the tendency will be to credit the vegetarian diet rather than the absence of fries and soda.

I don’t think these raw fooders have awareness of the health of bison hunters, or the fact that the phenomenal evolutionary success of humans is due to bison hunting, not veggie-crunching. Do they ever wonder why chimps never wrote a symphony?

Don

True, but let’s give the chimps credit; they never wrote food-label laws, either.

I watched the clip. I guess I’d have to call it the Dean Ornish method: cut out the things that are killing you, such as smoking, add in some vegetarian meals, then credit the vegetarian meals when your health improves.

Obviously, if these morbidly obese people developed diabetes by living on french fries and soda, then switching to a diet limited to raw vegetables will help, but it’s because they dropped the fries and sodas, not because they went vegan. I just hope the people who see this film figure that out.

Have any of these goofs considered the fact that type II diabetes was virtually non-existent among the buffalo-hunting tribes?

And you’re right, Gabriel Cousens looks emaciated and ill.

Here’s the link to Raw for Thirty: http://www.rawfor30days.com/trailer.html

I have a copy of My Big Fat Diet, recording Wortman’s work with the Namgis tribe. I like the film overall, but one thing bugged me: The producers interviewed the conventional dietitian/nutritionist who opposed the diet and spouted numerous falsehoods about low carb diets and “arterycloggingsaturatedfat” several times, but only interviewed Stephen Phinney rebutting her claims once. So in the end it looked to me like the producers were favoring the conventional view that the Big Fat Diet might work for a short time but it will kill you in the end.

I could hardly believe the tenacity with which that woman clung to the view that the Big Fat Diet would eventually have long term unfavorable effects, despite the fact that several of the Big Fat Diet participants had been following her Pyramid Scheme Big Bread Low Fat Diet for a long time and only getting fatter and more diabetic as a result. It’s as if the brainwashing she received in her training made reality invisible to her.

Anyway, love to read your take on the “raw” footage.

Don

I’m guessing that since the producer works for Canadian television, she was covering her @$$ by interviewing someone to spout the conventional wisdom. I’m biased, but given the results of the Big Fat Diet, I think most viewers would conclude the lowfat mantra-spouter ended up looking ridiculous.

Thanks for the links; I’ll check them out.

Here’s the trailer, Raw For Thirty Days: http://www.rawfor30days.com/trailer.html

I have My Big, Fat Diet (video) featuring Dr. Wortman and his work with the Namgis people in Vancouver, WA area, showing how a low carb diet reversed diabetes among them. However, that film has this uninformed “nutritionist” repeatedly questioning the “safety” and “long-term effects” of a diet full of “arterycloggingsaturatedfat”, with only one brief rebuttal by Stephen Phinney, so it seemed the producers valued the opinion of this uninformed nutritionist over those of Wortman and Phinney (the ones with the facts straight).

Never mind that some of the participants had previously been eating the nutritionist’ s “recommended” low fat high carb diet and getting fatter and more diabetic as a long term result. It bugs me that these “nutritionists” warn about the long term effects of low carb diets while seemingly unable to acknowledge the obvious long term effects of the Pyramid Scheme they recommend.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the “raw” footage.

Don