The “Big Meal” news story that ran on ABC was, as Dr. Mike Eades explained quite thoroughly, a load of bologna passing for health and nutrition advice. I’d like to say that’s a rare occurrence. I’d also like to say I’m 30 years old, with 10% body fat, a full head of hair, and enough money in the bank to conduct a hostile takeover of Microsoft … but I’d be lying. Bad nutrition advice is everywhere.

I bookmark a lot of health and nutrition articles I find online, figuring I may write about them later. After the “Big Meal” story, I decided to go through them and pick out a few, separating them into the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I like ending on a positive note, so we’ll save the Good for last.

THE BAD

Surprising Good-For-You Foods!  Well, I’m pretty sure you can guess what their definition of “good for you” is. Here are some choice quotes:

Cream-Style Corn: There was cream in your grandma’s recipe, but the liquid in today’s cans is actually a component of the corn kernels themselves and other ingredients such as starch. If you look at calories and fat, canned cream-style and whole-kernel corn are identical.

Ahhh, that explains why the obesity epidemic that ravaged the country in the 1950s is just a bad memory now. Silly ol’ Granny cooked with cream. (Can’t you just hear her yelling, “Jed! Go milk one of the cows so I can put some cream in yer vittles!”) Nowadays, being so much wiser, we cream up those starchy corn kernels by adding still more starch … kind of like they do at feed lots to provide us with well-marbled cows.

One large egg is a significant source of a number of vitamins and minerals, and contains only 75 calories and 5 grams of fat. Moreover, most of this fat is the healthy, unsaturated variety. (Eggs are high in cholesterol, but the chief villain in raising blood-cholesterol levels is not the cholesterol in our diets, but in saturated fats.)

Boy, they had me going for a minute, actually praising eggs. Then they had to go and point a finger at the chief villain. And by the way, that last sentence makes no sense. It’s not the cholesterol in our diets, but in saturated fats … ? Huh? If the cholesterol is hiding inside saturated fats (and probably wearing a fake moustache so we don’t catch on), how does it get into our bodies if not through our diets? Do we fall asleep and accidentally snort saturated fat particles floating around in the air?

Saturated fat doesn’t raise cholesterol. It raises HDL, which isn’t actually cholesterol, but a protein that carries old cholesterol from your tissues to your liver. High HDL is desirable. So snort that saturated fat out of the air and don’t feel guilty about it.

Chicken thighs: They are higher in fat and calories than breasts, but as long as you remove the skin and any excess fat, economical thighs fit into a good-for-you diet.

I sometimes eat chicken without the skin, but only because my daughter steals it when I’m going to the refrigerator for more butter. She loves the skin. Why? Because it’s fatty, and her little brain wants the fat. So does yours.

The Healthiest Carb You’re Not Eating. This writer heard about the wonders of whole grains at a conference. As she explains, “I was so blown away by the accumulating evidence of their protective effect against chronic disease that I made a beeline for the grocery store when I got home and purchased a box of the one brand of whole grain pasta I could find.”

In the studies that blew her all the way to the grocery store, researchers had one group eat white-flour products, while the second group consumed whole-grain products. The people who ate whole grains ended up with a lower rate of diabetes, among other ailments. So the researchers came to the obvious conclusion: whole grains prevent those diseases.

Anxious to repeat this rock-solid logic, I had one group of men smoke unfiltered cigarettes for 10 years, while a second group smoked the filtered variety. Turns out the men smoking the filtered cigarettes had a lower rate of lung cancer. This proves that filtered cigarettes prevent lung cancer. We should be passing them out in schools and using them to treat anyone who’s been exposed to asbestos.

5 Things You Need to Know About Dieting. Shape magazine promised to “set the record straight” about what fills you up. Here are some quotes:

Know this: It’s not the fat in foods that makes you feel full. That greasy cheeseburger will leave you feeling full all day, so it’s worth the splurge, right? Wrong! Fat is the slowest food component to clear the stomach, so for years it was assumed that fatty foods slowed digestion and kept you feeling full longer. Recent research proves the proportion of sugar and fat has little or no differences in satiety ratings. In fact, protein tends to leave people feeling more satisfied than either carbs or fat. The problem with fat is that it has more than twice the calories of protein or carbs.

That must be some interesting recent research, because a ton of old research demonstrates pretty clearly that given exactly the same number of calories, the higher the carbohydrate content, the hungrier people will be. Even the low-carb skeptics admit that people on low-carb diets end up eating less, which is why they call it “a low-calorie diet in disguise.” They just can’t seem to explain how the disguise curbs hunger. Perhaps hunger pangs are afraid of strangers wearing fake moustaches or other disguises, assuming they might be cholesterol preparing to hide themselves inside some saturated fats.

Know this: Low-carb diets don’t flush calories from the body. Proponents of low-carb diets claim you can excrete fat fragments (called ketones) in urine on this type of diet, essentially flushing calories out. But a study at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg found no correlation between urinary ketone levels and weight change in women on low-carb diets.

Okay, they actually have a point. For all the good he did, I blame Dr. Atkins for the misconception that a positive reading for ketones in the urine automatically means you’re losing weight. It doesn’t; it simply mean you’re primarily burning fat for fuel. If I eat a big, fatty meal, I will get a positive ketone reading without losing weight, because my body has no need to tap my fat stores.

But here’s why ketones are good: Your brain prefers them for fuel, as do many other organs. And if you’re burning fat, it means your body isn’t relying on glucose, which in turn means your insulin levels are going to be lower. Then when you do need to tap your fat stores, they’re open for business. Otherwise, you can semi-starve yourself, and your body will respond by slowing your metabolism.

THE UGLY

5 Sauces to Avoid at All Costs. This author provides helpful suggestions for cutting the flavor out of the sauces you like. Some examples:

Low-fat Alfredo. Add two cups of plain soymilk (the thicker consistency mimics Alfredo) to a pot over low heat. Stir regularly to prevent sticking. Don’t bring milk to a boil. Add 1 tablespoon of dry milk powder, 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper to mixture. Continue to stir until cheese is melted and milk is thickened. If mixture is not of the desired consistency, add dry milk powder and stir until dissolved. You’ll slash the fat calories by more than half!

Brilliant idea. While taking in a load of pasta to spike my blood sugar, I like to offset the effects by filling my body with soy and screwing up my thyroid. (I love alfredo sauce, so when I whip up a batch, I pour it over spaghetti squash or French-style green beans.)

Healthier alternative (to real salad dressing): Canned vegetable stock. Place in a pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with 1/4 cup of cold water until dissolved. Add this mixture to the boiling liquid. This will thicken the stock and create the same consistency as high-fat, oil-based dressings.

Boy, doesn’t that sound delicious? Vegetable stock, with corn starch to thicken it up. This will also thicken your blood as your liver takes the starch and converts it to triglycerides. And by the way, without fat, your body won’t be able to absorb the fat-soluble nutrients contained any vegetables you put on your salad. So let’s see … none of the flavor, few of the nutrients, and a big load of triglyceride-raising starch. Pass me the Caesar dressing, now!

THE GOOD

Yes, there is a good, in a lovely article titled Does Fat Make You Fat?  Here are some samples:

The fat-free craze didn’t begin in the ’90s though. For decades, scientists were warning of the dangers of fats. Saturated fat was deemed a killer, clogging the arteries and causing our pants to get tighter.

Never mind that for thousands of years indigenous cultures ate animal fat at nearly every meal and only in recent times had obesity become a problem and heart disease become a #1 killer.

It didn’t work. We are fatter and sicker than ever before. Many of us - myself included! - ended up with dry skin, constipation and a cold feeling in our bones. Our bodies’ need for fat manifested itself in magnificent cravings we satisfied at 3 a.m. with french fries and Ben & Jerry’s.

When I started eating more butter and taking fish oil, my skin really showed a difference. Lines in my face actually went away!

Bravo! I’m 50 years old, and I barely have any lines in my face.  A year ago, I was carded while buying wine in a grocery store in Tennessee. When I asked the clerk if he was kidding, he said, “Sorry, we have to card everyone under 40.” I would’ve kissed him, but they frown on that kind of behavior in the south.

Now here’s the irony of the good, the bad, and the ugly: The bad and the ugly articles were provided by health magazines … Prevention, Men’s Health, Shape, etc. The good was featured in something called Women and Co., networking for the career-minded woman.

So we’ve got actual health nuts out there reading articles telling them to cut the fat and eat corn starch and pasta and soy milk. They’ll end up with arthritis, snap a ligament lifting weights at the gym, develop Type II diabetes while recovering in an easy chair and eating soy milk-smothered pasta, then wonder what the heck happened.

Meanwhile, career-minded women who want to network more effectively are learning they should be eating plenty of natural fats. They’ll be elbowing the health nuts out of their way as they power along to their next big meeting, looking fabulous in their business suits and their wrinkle-free skin.

I just hope the fat-eating career women network their way into taking over a few media empires. Then they can kick the health reporters’ tired, wrinkled butts.

A reader named Jane sent a link in a comment to a video of CSPI’s latest bologna-on-parade. Her link was to a Canadian TV story, the one below is to the ABC version:

Notice that ABC, like most media outlets, insists on referring to CSPI as a “consumer group.” No, they’re a bunch of vegetarians pushing a vegetarian agenda.

I replied to Jane that there’s so much wrong in this story, it deserves a full post. For one thing, you are much more likely to suffer a heart attack after a high-carb meal than after a high-fat meal. That’s not in dispute.

Well, it turns out Dr. Mike Eades already took this load of bologna and ground it up in his own post. He explained the science (and lack of it in this news story) better than I could, so I urge you to read his article.  Here’s a sample:

It’s pretty impressive when the lab tech holds up the tube of blood taken after the meal and compares it to the one taken before the meal.  There is a lot of fat swimming in the serum, that’s for sure.  What the producers of this piece (and, sadly, the doctors commenting although they should know better) want you to take away from all this by the way they set it up is that all that saturated fat went directly into the blood.  And how can you argue with them?  It’s there for all to see.

Problem is, that’s what blood samples look like after almost any meal, especially one that contains carbohydrates.  The fat you see isn’t the fat the two reporters ate; it is the fat the liver has made from the carbohydrate.  It’s the same picture a tube of blood would show after either of the two doctors had eaten a high-carb, low-fat lunch.

If you find yourself scratching your head and wondering how so many people can still believe the Lipid Hypothesis despite all the evidence against it, now you know … medical reporting in much of our media is just plain awful.

Pretty funny, eh? But according to the latest health scare, our bacon-loving lady could be on her way to an early grave.  Here’s the headline:

Eating Animal Fat May Lead to Pancreatic Cancer

Oh my gosh! I eat a lot of animal fat … I can feel my pancreas swelling up with tumors as I write. I’ve been issued a death sentence, and I know it’s accurate because – hold onto your seats, now – the article included the magic words study finds right there in the sub-headline.

And what an amazing study this has turned out to be.  So far it has indicated that being overweight in middle age will kill you, a lack of physical activity can increase your odds of breast cancer, red meat will give you colon cancer, alcohol can lead to pancreatic cancer and fruits and vegetables may protect against lung cancer … uh, but only in men. The study also achieved the amazing feat of indicating that dietary fat may lead to breast cancer – but red meat doesn’t.

Considering how many headlines this study has already produced – with more sure to follow – I’m going to suggest you memorize the name:  The NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. I’m also going to suggest that when you spot an article that cites this study, you bookmark it, download it, print it, and then use the pages to paper-train a puppy.

NIHARP (my shorthand) is one of those big, expensive studies that enables researchers to analyze data, publish research papers, give speeches, and otherwise pay their mortgages for years without ever seeking another grant. In fact, as the media likes to repeat over and over, this is THE LARGEST STUDY OF ITS KIND.

Wow, that must mean we’re looking at some rock-solid science here, right? Hardly.

Because NIHARP is typical in many ways of the studies that scared people away from fat, it’s worth taking a closer look. I downloaded quite a few study documents, including the original food survey, and I’ll try to explain the weaknesses of studies like this while keeping the statistical geek-speak to a bare minimum.

My girls have recently become huge fans of The Sound of Music.  So, as the song says, let’s start from the very beginning …

Throughout 1995 and 1996, the investigators mailed a food-frequency questionnaire to 3.5 million members of the American Association of Retired Persons, all aged 50 to 69, who lived in six states (California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, Louisiana), plus two metro areas (Detroit and Atlanta.) The authors said they chose these areas because they have high concentrations of retired people. I’m guessing that if people retired in California or Florida, it was for the weather, whereas if they retired in Detroit, they couldn’t afford to move.

Here’s the first big problem with the study (the largest of its kind!): the survey itself. In order to determine what people eat, the investigators sent them a list of 120 foods and asked them to answer questions like this:

Over the last 12 months, how often did you eat the following foods? (Ignore any recent changes.)

Whole milk (4%), NOT in coffee, NOT on cereal:  Never | 1-6 per year | 7-11 per year | 1 per month | 2-3 per month | 1-2 per week | 3-4 per week | 5-6 per week | 1 per day | 2-3 per day | 4-5 per day | 6+ per day.  Portion size:  less than ½ cup | ½ to 1 cup | more than 1 cup.

Breads or dinner rolls, NOT INCLUDING ON SANDWICHES:  Never | 1-6 per year | 7-11 per year | 1 per month | 2-3 per month | 1-2 per week | 3-4 per week | 5-6 per week | 1 per day | 2-3 per day | 4-5 per day | 6+ per day.  Portion size:  less than 1 slice or roll | 1 or 2 slices or rolls | more than 2 slices or rolls.

Mayonnaise or mayonnaise-like salad dressing on bread:  Never | 1-6 per year | 7-11 per year | 1 per month | 2-3 per month | 1-2 per week | 3-4 per week | 5-6 per week | 1 per day | 2-3 per day | 4-5 per day | 6+ per day.  Portion size:  less than 1 teaspoon | 1 to 3 teaspoons | more than 3 teaspoons.

Ground beef in mixtures such as tacos, burritos, meatballs, casseroles, chili, meatloaf:  Never | 1-6 per year | 7-11 per year | 1 per month | 2-3 per month | 1-2 per week | 3-4 per week | 5-6 per week | 1 per day | 2-3 per day | 4-5 per day | 6+ per day.  Portion size:  less than 3 ounces | 3 to 7 ounces | more than 7 ounces.

Could you answer a survey like that accurately? I couldn’t. In fact, I didn’t. When I was working for the National Safety Council, some genius in management decided everyone in the company should fill out a survey like this one. On a whole lot of the questions, I needed a box labeled “I have no freakin’ idea.” But there wasn’t one. So I did what all my pals at work did: I guessed.

And I was 25 years old, not 65. My memory was sharp then and it still is, but I couldn’t tell you what I ate last Tuesday, never mind last February. Of the nearly 3 million people who received the NIHARP survey but didn’t return it, how many do you suppose looked it and mumbled, “I have no freakin’ idea,” then tossed it in the trash?

But around 600,000 people did return the survey, which leads to the second problem:  this is a self-selected group that doesn’t mirror the general population.

In the baseline data, it’s obvious that compared to the general population, the survey group is far more likely to be white (over 90 percent), well educated, and non-smoking. The authors admitted they were concerned about the low response rate (about 17 percent), but managed to discern that “a shifting and widening of the intake distributions among respondents compensated for the less-than-anticipated response rate.”

In other words, they declared this cross-section of the population varied enough for a study and decided to keep going.  (Gotta pay that mortgage, you know.)

Here’s the third problem: the self-selected group was winnowed down even further by the investigators.  Yes, it’s common practice to try to dump incomplete or suspicious data, but in explaining how they determined if a survey was sufficiently complete, they stated, “In calculating our initial cohort sample size of 350,000 we focused on a single nutrient, dietary fat.”

Hmmm … sounds to me like they already had an opinion about which nutrient would wind up being linked to cancer. If they could determine how much fat you ate, you were in.  Why fat? Why not sugar, or white flour, or corn flakes?

Nearly ten years after the first survey, the authors mailed a similar questionnaire, along with others that asked about exercise, smoking and medications. Then they compared the respondents’ diets with their rates of various diseases, focusing primarily on cancer. That’s where they came up with all the crunchable numbers.

So how well do numbers like these crunch? That’s the fourth big problem: they don’t crunch very well. They’re more on the squishy side. In one of their many papers, here’s how the researchers evaluated the accuracy of their own food-intake data:

For the 26 nutrient constituents examined, estimated correlations with true intake (not energy-adjusted) ranged from 0.22 to 0.67 … When adjusted for reported energy intake, performance improved; estimated correlations with true intake ranged from 0.36 to 0.76.

So what does that statement mean? Here’s what a site that explains statistics in plain English has to say about correlation:

Correlations of less than 0.1 are as good as garbage. The correlation shown, 0.9, is very strong. Correlations have to be this good before you can talk about accurately predicting the Y value from the X value.

If you want to think of it visually, a correlation of 1.0 gives you a perfect trendline: if smoking absolutely, positively causes lung cancer and is absolutely, positively dose-dependent, then you could plot the number of cigarettes smoked per day against the incidence of lung cancer, and you’d get one of those lines that starts at zero in the lower left and zooms straight to the upper-right corner.

But for this study, the estimated correlation (after being adjusted upwards) is between 0.36 and 0.76. In other words, the investigators themselves estimate that the accuracy of their food survey is somewhere between lousy and decent. Well, decent might be stretching it. The same analysis of their own study included this statement:

However, previous biomarker-based studies suggest that, due to correlation of errors in FFQs and self-report reference instruments such as the 24HR, the correlations and attenuation factors observed in most calibration studies, including ours, tend to overestimate FFQ performance.

So the lousy-to-decent estimate might be overestimated. Kudos to them for saying as much. And yet from this data, they’re going to look for correlations between diets and diseases and write a slew of research papers on what they find.

Which brings us to the fifth big problem:  the associations you find when looking at data depend largely on the associations you seek. In a study like this, you gather a huge amount of data, then you ask the data some questions. How you ask the question affects the answer.

Some months ago, the researchers asked this data if there was an association between red meat and colon cancer, and wouldn’t you know it, the data answered “yes.” At least that’s the story that made the headlines. But the truth is, the question they asked went more like this: “Do people who eat a lot of steaks, hot dogs, hamburgers, sausage, pizza, cold cuts, bacon and deli sandwiches have a higher rate of colon cancer?”

Grouping all those foods together under the label “red meat” confounds the question – and it wasn’t necessary to confound the question. In the food survey, “steaks” is a separate item. If you really want to know if red meat causes cancer, why not simply ask, “Do people who eat a lot steaks have a higher rate of colon cancer?” Maybe they did ask that question. Maybe they didn’t like the answer, so they asked it again and included pizza and hot dogs.

Here’s another strange grouping: the food survey lumped butter and margarine together as a single food item. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I read that one. Talk about confounding the data! Butter is natural. Margarine is a processed frankenfood. The only similarity is that people spread them on toast. You may as well lump cigarettes and carrot sticks together because they have the same shape.

Even when researchers ask well-designed questions, there’s the “don’t ask, don’t tell” problem: there may be associations lurking in the data that no one is looking for. When Ancel Keys cherry-picked six countries and went looking for an association between fat and heart disease, he found it. But the same overall data showed a much stronger association between sugar and heart disease … and an even stronger association between television ownership and heart disease.

Which brings us to the sixth problem: Associations are only useful for providing clues. They don’t identify the cause. There’s a strong association between obesity and type II diabetes. Does that mean being fat causes diabetes? Nope. It could mean diabetes makes you fat. Or, more likely, it could mean obesity and diabetes are both caused by excess insulin. You get the idea.

Considering that the animal fat will kill you! message has been around for more than 30 years, it’s highly likely that people who eat a lot of pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, bacon, sausage and deli sandwiches are the “non-adhering” types Dr. Mike Eades wrote about awhile back. (Or, as I call them, “people who don’t give a @#$%.”)

Those same people may also consume more sugar, more white flour, more high-fructose corn syrup, more cough syrup, etc. – which is not much of a stretch, when you consider that pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers and deli sandwiches are all served with a load of starch. But as far as I can tell, the NIHARP investigators aren’t asking questions about sugar and starch.  So far, they seem interested in discovering that animal fat is dangerous, while fruits and vegetables will save your life.

The next time you see yet another paper from this study (the largest of its kind!) generate yet another round of alarmist headlines about the possible dangers of animal fats (and you will), keep this in mind about The NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study:

What we’re looking at is 1) a survey study with a low response rate that 2) required old people to accurately recall what they’d eaten in the past year (twice), which then provided data that is 3) almost certainly polluted by self-selection and confounding variables, and is 4) being analyzed by researchers who indicated from the beginning that their main concern is dietary fat, all for the purpose of 5) identifying associations, which don’t tell us very much anyway.

Other than that, it’s a fine piece of work. Now go fry up some bacon, and don’t worry about your pancreas.  But try to avoid throwing the pan out the window.

(Hat tip to Mike Eades for Twittering the video.  I nearly did a spit-take with my coffee.)

Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa recently wrote an op-ed piece to explain how Congress is going to design a new and improved health-care system that will take care of everybody while focusing on preventing diseases. 

I’ve copied some quotes from Harkin’s op-ed, which are in italics.  My comments on the quotes aren’t.

With the Senate health committee convening daily to craft a comprehensive health reform bill, the basic outline of this landmark legislation is now clear.  Yes, it will ensure access to affordable, quality care for every American.  But, just as important, it will hold down health care costs by creating a sharp new emphasis on disease prevention and public health.

When politicians talk about holding down costs, it’s time to hold onto your wallet.  When Medicare was enacted in 1965, it was projected to cost $12 billion in 1990.  The actual cost in 1990 was $107 billion.  The congressional budget-crunchers were only off by 792 percent.

We spend a staggering $2.3 trillion annually on health care - 16.5 percent of our GDP and far more than any other country spends on health care - yet the World Health Organization ranks U.S. health care only 37th among nations, on par with Serbia.

I’m not happy with our health-care system either, but the World Health Organization’s rankings are waaaaay skewed.  (Honestly, would you rather be taken to an emergency room in the U.S. or Costa Rica?)  I looked up how they calculate those rankings and will write about that - plus more about health-care costs, etc.  - on the TomNaughton.com blog, probably next week.

How can this be so?  The problem is that we have systematically neglected wellness and disease prevention.  Currently in the United States, 95 percent of every health care dollar is spent on treating illnesses and conditions after they occur.  But we spend peanuts on prevention.

I agree; we medicate symptoms instead of preventing diseases in the first place.  Hey, maybe this Harkin fellow is onto something …

Consider this: Right now, some 75 percent of health care costs are accounted for by heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and obesity.  What these five diseases and conditions have in common is that they are largely preventable and even reversible by changes in nutrition, physical activity, and lifestyle.

Yes!  These are the “diseases of civilization” and they can certainly be prevented.  Go, Harkin, go, Harkin, go, Harkin, go!  Maybe I’ll move back to Iowa, where I spent much of my childhood, just so I can vote for Senator Prevention in the next election.

Listen to what Dr. Dean Ornish told our Senate health committee: “Studies have shown that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90 percent of all heart disease.  Thus, the disease that accounts for more premature deaths and costs Americans more than any other illness is almost completely preventable, and even reversible, simply by changing lifestyle.”

AAAAAAAAAARGGGGHH!!!  Cancel that move back to Iowa.  Senator Prevention is quoting Dean Ornish, one of the biggest promoters of grain-based, lowfat diets.  This is the same diet recommendation that triggered the rise in obesity and the epidemic of diabetes we see today.

We also have to realize that wellness and prevention must be truly comprehensive.  It is not only about what goes on in a doctor’s office.  It encompasses workplace wellness programs, community-wide wellness programs, building bike paths and walking trails, getting junk food out of our schools, making school breakfasts and lunches more nutritious, increasing the amount of physical activity our children get, and so much more.

Ah, yes, that’s why our grandparents were lean and had a fraction of the Type II diabetes rates we see today:  it was all those wellness programs, bike paths, walking trails, and federal school-lunch programs.  Boy, if we just hadn’t gotten rid of those programs, we’d be in fine shape today.

Winston Churchill famously said that “Americans always do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.”  Well, we’ve tried everything else, and it has led us to bad health and the brink of bankruptcy.

Yes, we have tried everything else … like federal nutrition guidelines pushing a lowfat diet, a federally-designed Food Pyramid, a school-lunch program that’s required by law to follow that pyramid, and a federal committee that declared dietary fat and cholesterol to be the cause of heart disease.

Okay, enough of the Harkin quotes.  You can read his full op-ed here.  The point is, nothing’s going to change.

Preventing heart disease, obesity and diabetes is a great idea.  But if you think solid advice on how to do it is going to come from the federal government, you must have been asleep for the past 30 years.  It was yet another Senate committee, plus the USDA and FDA, who told us to avoid fat, eat lots of whole grains, and go on low-fat diets.  The federal committee that was just assembled to re-write the federal nutrition guidelines is comprised of the usual suspects: so-called experts who think the key to health to simply eat less and cut back on fat. 

And let’s think a bit about Senator Harkin himself.  He’s a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.  That means he’ll be deeply involved in any new health and nutrition guidelines that are woven into the new health-care bill.  He’s also the senior senator from Iowa - you know, the state that grows all that corn we learned so much about in the documentary King Corn. 

Mountains of federally-subsidized corn are the reason you find high-fructose corn syrup in pretty much everything these days.  Cheap corn syrup is the reason 7-11 can sell you a 44-ounce Big Gulp that costs less than a bottle of carbonated water, and fast-food restaurants can hand you a cup the size of your head and let you have unlimited refills.  Dirt-cheap corn is also the reason ranchers don’t raise their cattle on grass anymore.

So … what do you suppose the odds are that Senator Harkin’s committee will conduct an exhaustive study of what’s causing obesity, diabetes and heart disease, then announce an end to all federal corn subsidies? 

What are the odds that the USDA - whose mission is to sell grains - will announce that putting breads and cereals at the base of the Food Pyramid was a dumb idea? 

What are the odds that the hundreds of scientists who work for the National Institutes of Health but have lucrative contracts with pharmaceutical companies will stand up and declare that cholesterol doesn’t actually cause heart disease and the anti-fat campaigns where misguided?

Yes, our health is declining and our health-care system is an expensive mess.  Kids are becoming insulin-resistant now, and nearly one-quarter of all senior citizens have Type II diabetes - and that figure doesn’t even count the millions of pre-diabetics who are nonetheless suffering the health consequences of producing too much insulin.

Thank God the federal government is going to do something about it.  They did such a bang-up job last time around.

A friend of mine sent me an Associated Press article about how cows are contributing to global warming.  I couldn’t decide at first whether to post my reply here or on my other blog, but ultimately decided it was more appropriate for TomNaughton.com. 

You can read the post here if you’re interested.