I’m starting to wonder if the editors of medical journals schedule a yearly Meat Causes Cancer! issue …something like their own equivalent of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.

Our cover model this year is pancreatic cancer, folks — and as you can see, she’s a hot little topic!  We don’t want to start any rumors, but we have it on good authority she’s often seen in the company of some beefy hunks.

The hot little topic made a splash in the media last week, with headlines and opening paragraphs like these:

Bacon eaters warned of cancer risk

Eating two rashers of bacon or one sausage a day can increase the risk of a deadly form of cancer by almost a fifth, according to a new study.  New research by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm has found that eating 50g of processed meat a day can increase the risk of pancreatic cancer by 19%.

Processed Meat Could Raise Pancreatic Cancer Risk

Some possible bad news for all the bacon lovers out there.

A new review in the British Journal of Cancer suggests a link between processed meats — like bacon and sausages — and an increased pancreatic cancer risk. In particular, eating an extra 50 grams a day of processed meat — or about a sausage — is enough to raise pancreatic cancer risk by 19 percent, BBC News reported, while an extra 100 grams of processed meat a day could raise the cancer risk by 38 percent.

“The authors of this study have suggested that one of the reasons could be that some of the chemicals that are used to preserve processed meat are turned in our bodies into some really harmful chemicals which can affect our DNA and increase the chance of cancer,” Jessica Harris, health information manager at Cancer Research UK, told Sky News.

Holy jumpin’ jiminy!  A 19% increase in risk – that’s almost a fifth!  Better drop that bacon right now, Mister.  You don’t want to mutate your DNA and roll the dice with a 19% increase in the odds you’ll die of pancreatic cancer.

I tracked down the full study, and it was pretty much what I expected:  a meta-analysis of several other studies, all of them based on food-recall surveys.  So let’s put on our Science For Smart People hats (mine is cone-shaped; you can choose your own) and ask some critical-thinking questions:

Q: Was this an observational study or a clinical study?

A:  It was a meta-analysis of 11 observational studies, the kind where the researchers pool the data and crunch the numbers.

Q:  Did the researchers control the variables?

A:  No, because they couldn’t.  They were dealing with data published by other researchers who may or may not have done a good job controlling their variables.  As the authors of the current study noted:

Our study has some limitations. First, as a meta-analysis of observational studies, we cannot rule out that individual studies may have failed to control for potential confounders, which may introduce bias in an unpredictable direction. All studies controlled for age and smoking, but only a few studies adjusted for other potential confounders such as body mass index and history of diabetes. Another limitation is that our findings were likely to be affected by imprecise measurement of red and processed meat consumption and potential confounders.

Let me put that into plain English:  Our findings are meaningless. The studies we analyzed were based on food-recall surveys that are notoriously inaccurate, and most of them didn’t control for body mass index or diabetes, which essentially means they didn’t control for intake of sugars and refined carbohydrates.

Okay, folks, move along; nothing here to see.

…

What, you’re still here?  Then we may as well continue.

Q:  If A is linked to B, is it possible that they’re both caused by C?

A:  Yes, of course it’s possible.  As the researchers noted above, “All studies controlled for age and smoking, but only a few studies adjusted for other potential confounders.”  Since processed meats are often served with a big wallop of refined carbohydrates – pizza, burritos, deli sandwiches, etc. – it’s entirely possible that people who consume more processed meats have higher rates of pancreatic cancer (if that’s even the case) because they also consume more white flour.

Q:  If A is linked to B, do we see that connection consistently, or are there glaring exceptions?

A:  We can answer that question by looking at the charts from the full study.  This one shows the change in the relative risk of developing pancreatic cancer from consuming an additional 120 grams of red meat per day:

A relative risk of 1.0 is neutral – no change in risk.  Below 1.0 means lower relative risk and above 1.0 means higher relative risk.  The horizontal bars represent the range of values that fell within the “confidence interval,” the black squares represent the average relative risk for each study, and the white diamond in the last row represents the overall average obtained by pooling data from all the studies.

The first thing that jumped out at me is that in four of the 13 studies analyzed, the relative risk of developing pancreatic cancer was lower for the people who (supposedly) eat a lot of red meat.  I wouldn’t call that a consistent result.  If some studies show higher risk and some studies show lower risk, I’d conclude that we’re looking at the wrong variables.

But through the magic of statistical analysis, the researchers pooled the results (from studies that often failed to control the variables) and declared that consuming 120 grams of red meat per day raises your risk of developing pancreatic cancer by 13%.

Now here’s the change in relative risk from consuming an additional 50 grams of processed meat per day:

Nine studies, and in three of them the relative risk of developing pancreatic cancer was lower for people who consumed more processed meat.  Once again, that’s hardly a consistent result, but the researchers pooled the data in order to declare that processed meat raises your risk of pancreatic cancer by 19% — which leads to our final question.

Q:  What was the actual difference?

A:  Almost nothing.  That’s the short answer.  Now for the longer answer:

Scientists like to cite relative risk instead of absolute risk because relative risk sounds far more impressive.  Suppose that when I lived in sunny California, my odds of being struck by lightning were 1 in a million.  But now that I live in Tennessee, suppose the odds are 1.5 in a million.  That’s a 50% increase in relative risk … but a meaningless increase in absolute risk.  The actual difference — the change in absolute risk –  is 0.5 in a million.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the age-adjusted annual incidence rate of pancreatic cancer is 13.6 per 100,00 men and 10.3 per 100,00 women.  We’ll split the difference and call it 12.15 per 100,000 people.  Expressed as a percentage, here are the odds that you’ll be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year:

0.0122%

Just barely over one-hundredth of one percent.  Now … let’s set aside the fact that this meta-analysis was 1) based on observational studies that 2) used unreliable food-recall surveys and 3) produced inconsistent results.  Suppose we choose to believe that processed meat really and truly causes pancreatic cancer at the increased rate found by pooling all that data, but we keep on eating our bacon anyway.  Here are the odds, expressed as a percentage, that we bacon-eaters will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year:

0.0145%

And here’s the actual difference between those two numbers:

0.0023%

Well, maybe you’d prefer to deal with lifetime odds instead of annual odds.  Okay, fine.  According the National Cancer Institute, the lifetime odds of developing pancreatic cancer in the U.S. are 1.45%.  If eating 50 grams per day of bacon or other processed meat really and truly (and all by itself) raised the rate by 19%, your lifetime odds would be 1.70%.

Here’s the actual difference between those two numbers:

0.25%

Enjoy your bacon.

Suppose you were reading the health section of a newspaper looking for ideas on how to lose weight, and you came across an article that started like this:

Whether you are just starting a New Year’s diet or struggling to maintain a healthy weight, a provocative new study offers some timely guidance. It isn’t so much what you eat, the study suggests, but how much you eat that counts when it comes to accumulating body fat.

The findings are the latest in a string of studies to challenge claims that the secret to healthy weight loss lies in adjusting the amount of nutritional components of a diet—protein, fat and carbohydrates.

I don’t know about you, but I’d assume that provocative new study involved adjusting the nutritional components of a diet – protein, fat and carbohydrates.  Let’s check:

In the study, to be published in Wednesday’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, 25 young, healthy men and women were deliberately fed nearly 1,000 excess calories a day for 56 days, but with diets that varied in the amounts of protein and fat.

Hmmm  … it appears that the provocative new study which supposedly proves the secret to healthy weight loss isn’t a matter of adjusting the ratio of protein, fat or carbohydrates is

1)  a study of people who intentionally gained weight instead of losing weight

which

2) manipulated the balance of fat and protein, but not carbohydrates.

Let’s read on:

While those on a low-protein diet—about 5% of total calories—gained less weight than those on a normal- or high-protein regimen, body fat among participants in all three groups increased by about the same amount. Typical protein consumption is about 15% of calories, while the U.S. government recommends it make up between 17% and 21% of total daily calories.

The findings suggest that it matters little whether a diet is high or low in fat, carbohydrates or protein, it’s calories that build body fat.

It matters little whether or a diet is high or low in fat, carbohydrates or protein?  I must be missing something here … did the researchers change the ratio of carbohydrates in the diet nor not?

The patients in the Pennington study ranged in age from 18 to 35 and had BMIs between 19 and 30. (Between 25 and 30 is considered overweight.)  They lived at the center’s metabolic unit for between 10 and 12 weeks and were fed the 1,000 extra calories a day for the final eight weeks of their stay. Carbohydrates were held steady at about 41% to 42% of calories while fat levels varied with the protein regimen.

Brilliant.  Study subjects were put on three different diets designed to induce weight gain, the carbohydrate ratio was virtually the same across all three groups, and yet media health reporters are telling us the provocative study proves that manipulating the fat, carbohydrate or protein content of a diet won’t help us lose weight.

After eight weeks, all participants in the study gained weight. The 16 men and nine women made similar gains. The low protein-diet group gained about seven pounds, about half the 13.3 pounds added on by the normal protein participants and 14.4 pounds put on by the high protein group.

If you read the full study (which I did), you’ll learn that the low-protein group didn’t gain as much weight because – despite overeating by 1,000 calories per day – they lost muscle mass.  The other two groups gained muscle mass, with the high-protein group gaining the most.  I’d say that’s an important difference.  Losing muscle mass is a great way to slow your metabolism.  Gaining muscle mass raises your metabolism.  The results listed in the study seem to confirm that point:

The low protein diet had 6% of energy from protein, 52% from fat, and 42% from carbohydrates. The normal protein diet had 15% of energy from protein, 44% from fat, and 41% from carbohydrates. The high protein diet had 26% of energy from protein, 33% from fat, and 41% from carbohydrates.

Overeating produced significantly less weight gain in the low protein diet compared with the normal protein diet group or the high protein diet.  Body fat increased similarly in all 3 protein diet groups and represented 50% to more than 90% of the excess stored calories. Resting energy expenditure, total energy expenditure, and body protein did not increase during overfeeding with the low protein diet.  In contrast, resting energy expenditure and body protein (lean body mass) increased significantly with the normal and high protein diets.

Elsewhere in the study, the researchers provide more details:  the low-protein group lost an average of 1.5 pounds of lean body mass, while the high-protein group gained an average of 7 pounds of lean body mass.  When you overeat by 1,000 calories per day and still lose muscle, you know it’s a lousy diet.

The effects on metabolism may not have produced significant differences in fat accumulation in the short duration (less than two months) of this study, but I suspect that since the low-protein group was losing muscle mass, we’d see more of a difference over time.  Interestingly, the researchers didn’t say exactly how much extra body fat each group gained.  They only told us the difference wasn’t significant:

The overall increase in fat mass for all 3 groups was 3.51 kg (95% CI, 3.06 to 3.96 kg) from baseline and was not significantly different between the 3 groups (P = .89), although the low protein group added on average more than 200 g of fat (about 2000 kcal).

I also found these paragraphs interesting:

With the low protein diet, more than 90% of the extra energy was stored as fat. Because there was no change in lean body mass, the 6.6% increase in total energy expenditure reflects the energy cost of storing fat and is close to the estimate of 4% to 8% for fat storage derived by Flatt. With the normal and high protein diets, only about 50% of the excess energy was stored as fat with most of the rest consumed (thermogenesis).

The extra calories in our study were fed as fat, as in several other studies, and were stored as fat with a lower percentage of the excess calories appearing as fat in the high (25%) protein diet group.

I’m confused … if the low-protein group stored 90% of their extra energy as fat, while the other groups only stored 50% of their extra energy as fat, how did they all end up gaining the same amount of body fat?

Maybe I’m just not getting the math involved, but never mind.  Even if all three groups did gain the same amount of body fat, this study doesn’t really tell us anything about how to effectively lose weight, and it certainly doesn’t prove anything one way or another about the effects of manipulating the carbohydrate content, since the carbohydrate ratios were virtually identical.

Another researcher who commented on the study in a Reuters article put it nicely:

Donald Layman, a food science researcher at the University of Illinois in Urbana, said it’s difficult to see how the findings apply to a general population that isn’t being overfed such a protein-deficient diet, in the case of the low-protein group.

“It’s an interesting scientific study, but from an obesity standpoint, I don’t think it tells us anything,” he told Reuters Health.
Bingo.  Even if the protein ratio made little or no difference on fat accumulation in an over-eating study conducted in a metabolic ward, most of us aren’t trying to get fatter.  We’re trying to get leaner.  And we don’t live in metabolic wards where our meals are prepared for us and every calorie is tabulated.  We live in the real world where we don’t (and can’t) count every calorie, and where the amount of food we eat is determined by our appetites.  Protein is satiating.  When we eat higher-protein foods, we tend to eat less.  When we eat high-carb meals, many of us find our appetites going all out of whack, and we eat more.

The lead researcher for the study was George Bray, who seems to have dedicated his career to proving that the federal government’s dietary guidelines are correct – and if he has to cleverly design studies to achieve that goal, or write conclusions that aren’t backed up by the actual data, by gosh he’ll do it.

It was Bray who conducted the study on salt restriction that I mentioned in my Science For Smart People Speech, the one in which a drastic reduction in dietary sodium produced a whopping two-point drop in blood pressure.  Based on that meaningless result, Bray concluded that sodium restriction is an effective means of controlling hypertension.  (Say what?  Two points is a meaningful reduction in blood pressure?  I don’t think so.)

Here’s Bray offering his conclusion from the latest study:

“If you over-eat extra calories, no matter what the composition of the diet is, you’ll put down more fat.”

Really, Dr. Bray?  If you wanted solid scientific evidence that the composition of the diet is meaningless, why was the ratio of carbohydrates the same in all three groups?  Since you blasted Gary Taubes in your review of Good Calories, Bad Calories, we know you’re well aware of the hypothesis that it’s carbohydrates, not protein or fat, that promote fat accumulation … so why didn’t this provocative study include a group that restricted carbohydrates?  After all, none of the low-carb diet gurus recommend anything close to a ratio of 40% carbohydrates.

I think the answer to that question can be found near the end of the study.

This study was supported in part by the US Department of Agriculture.

“It’s no accident that we’re drug oriented, really. The drug companies got us that way and they’d like to keep us that way.  It’s a simple thing. They start you early with the oral habit. Little orange flavored aspirin for children. (pop, pop) Two in the mouth, son. Something wrong with your head? (pop, pop) Two in the mouth. Remember that:  head, mouth. (pop, pop) These are orange; there’ll be other colors later on.”
– George Carlin

I’m wondering what color the drug companies will choose for children’s statins.  Maybe they’ll produce cherry-flavored pills shaped like the American Heart Association’s logo.  Two in the mouth, son.

I was hoping against hope the anti-cholesterol hysterics would never be foolish enough prescribe statins for kids, but a recent news article suggests that’s where we’re headed:

More children should be screened for high cholesterol before puberty, beyond those with a family history of problems, according to wide-ranging new guidelines expected from government-appointed experts who are trying to prevent heart disease later in life.

Any call for wider screening is likely to raise concern about overdiagnosing a condition that may not cause problems for decades, if ever. Yet studies suggest that half of children with high cholesterol will also have it as adults, and it’s one of the best-known causes of clogged arteries that can lead to heart attacks.

High cholesterol is one of the best-known causes of clogged arteries?  Well, in that case, obviously most people who suffer heart attacks must have high cholesterol.  We’ll come back to that.

About a third of U.S. children and teens are obese or overweight. And government studies estimate that about 10 to 13 percent of children and teens have high cholesterol — defined as a score above 200.

Yup, that’s how high cholesterol is defined, all right.  It was defined that way for an important scientific reason:   the average cholesterol level among (non-statinated) adults is around 220.  By defining a normal cholesterol level as high, the National Cholesterol Education Program (whose members nearly all had consulting contracts with statin-makers) turned millions of adults into instant patients.  Now the statin-makers want to tap the kiddie market too.

A key change will be more aggressive recommendations for cholesterol screening and treatment in children, including a change in “the age at which we feel we can safely use statins,” said Dr. Reginald Washington, a pediatric heart specialist in Denver and member of the panel.

I wasn’t aware that the safety of statins for children was based on feelings.  I was thinking perhaps there should be some hard evidence involved.

The pediatrics academy already advises that some children as young as 8 can safely use these cholesterol-lowering medicines, sold as Lipitor, Zocor and in generic form. They are known to prevent heart disease and deaths in adults and are approved for use in children.

Statins are known to prevent heart disease and deaths in adults?  Let’s see what the science has to say on that.  Here’s the conclusion of a meta-analysis on the usefulness of statins for primary prevention – that is, preventing heart attacks in people who don’t already have heart disease:

A new meta-analysis of statins in the primary prevention of heart disease has not shown a significant reduction in all-cause mortality.

Here’s the conclusion of a similar study:

In patients without CV disease, statin therapy decreases the incidence of major coronary and cerebrovascular events and revascularizations, but not coronary heart disease or overall mortality.

Statins may slightly reduce your chances of having a heart attack (if you already have several known risk factors), but they don’t reduce heart disease or overall mortality.  So when a journalist tells you statins are known to prevent heart disease and deaths in adults, the journalist is making a statement that simply isn’t true.

Statins are worthless for primary prevention.  So at best, the kids would be taking a powerful drug they don’t need.  At worst (and I expect the worst), the statins would starve their brains of cholesterol and destroy the mitochondria in their muscles – at exactly the time when their brains and muscles are developing rapidly.  This is a disaster waiting to happen.  With their brain development stunted at an early age, the only career paths open to these kids will be running for Congress or working for the FDA.

But there aren’t big studies showing that using them in children will prevent heart attacks years or decades later.

Well then, by all means, let’s start giving statins to kids based on nothing more than anti-cholesterol hysteria  — and our feelings.  We needn’t bother waiting for those big studies.  To paraphrase George McGovern, we don’t have time to wait for every last shred of evidence to come in.

I said earlier that we’d come back to the statement that high cholesterol being one of the best-known causes of clogged arteries.  If that’s true, then we’d expect most heart-attack victims to have high cholesterol.  But that simply isn’t the case.  Several months ago, I posted about a study showing that nearly three-quarters of heart-attack victims have normal or even low LDL levels – and course, it’s LDL that statins beat into submission.

If you look at heart disease rates and cholesterol levels around the world, you won’t find any correlation whatsoever.  The French and the Swiss both have average cholesterol levels over 230.  They also have the first and second lowest rates of heart disease among industrialized nations.  Russians have an average cholesterol level of 190 – below that magic number of 200.  Russians also have the highest rate of heart disease in Europe.

In another recent news story warning that (eek!) up to one-fifth of people with heart disease aren’t being good little patients and taking their statins, the truth about cholesterol and heart disease slips out again  — although that wasn’t the intention of the article:

More than one in five people with heart disease aren’t getting life-saving statin drugs despite guidelines saying they should, a new study shows.  Researchers looked at nearly 39,000 people who had experienced a heart attack or undergone heart surgery, and found about 8,600 people weren’t prescribed the cholesterol-lowering medications.

Notice the reporter couldn’t resist referring to statins as “life-saving.”  Bias?  What bias?  We don’t see any bias.

Now for the paragraph where the truth slips out:

“Our study shows that half of untreated patients had low LDL levels,” said Dr. Suzanne Arnold of Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, who worked on the new findings. “This supports the assumption that some doctors may not think patients with low LDL levels need lipid-lowering medication,” she told Reuters Health.

The patients in this study were people who already had a heart attack – and half of them had low LDL levels.  If high cholesterol is one of the best-known causes of clogged arteries, then how the @#$% do we explain away the fact that at least half of the people who suffer heart attacks don’t have high cholesterol?  And how on earth do we justify giving statins to kids just because they have “high” cholesterol?

But even in people with low LDL cholesterol, statins can provide a benefit, according to Arnold. “Statins do more than just lower cholesterol,” she said. “They also play a role in reducing plaque and inflammation in arteries. That benefits people regardless of their cholesterol levels.”

Here’s a crazy idea, Dr. Arnold:  Given what you just said, perhaps high cholesterol isn’t the problem.   Perhaps inflammation is the problem, and the only reason statins provide any benefit at all is that they lower inflammation.    We don’t need drugs to reduce inflammation.  We can do that with a proper diet.  Beating down our cholesterol levels isn’t a benefit of statins; it’s a nasty side-effect.

In some people, statins can cause muscle pain and stomach problems such as nausea, gas, diarrhea or constipation. And their long-term effect on muscle tissue is unknown.

Yes, determining the long-term effect of statins on muscle tissue is tricky, especially since so many older people take statins.  As my mom discovered, if you’re a senior citizen who takes statins and you complain to your doctor about muscle pain, your doctor will probably attribute the pain to old age.

So here’s what we need to do:  Let’s prescribe statins to a whole generation of kids.  In just 20 years or so, we’ll finally know the long-term effects of statins on muscle tissue.  I’m sure all those 30-year-olds in wheelchairs will be glad to know they contributed to medical science.

The Older Brother’s oldest son (a.k.a. my nephew Eric) recently annoyed his (morbidly obese) doctor by refusing to take statins after a lab test flagged his total cholesterol as “elevated.”

Some snippets from an email Eric sent me:

The nurse called last night while I was driving home and only gave me my triglycerides and cholesterol readings, followed by the doctor’s (5 feet tall and a good 275lbs) recommendation to take a statin.

After verifying that she heard me correctly that “I’m not going to take a statin” and then informing me that cholesterol can lead to heart disease and stroke, I again declined and told her I would talk further with the doctor, recommending your movie and a couple books.

I called this morning to have the full results faxed to me.  After getting that fax from the machine with my greasy, McMuffin-without-the-muffin fingers (didn’t have time to make eggs this morning or a protein shake), I plugged them into excel to share.

Eric is 26 years old and (like his younger brother the Ranger) a strong, muscular guy who’s in excellent shape.  Here are the cholesterol numbers that prompted the obese doctor to recommend a statin:

Total Cholesterol:   219
HDL: 61
Triglycerides:  55
LDL:  147

The LDL, of course, is a calculated figure.  For those of you who don’t already know, LDL is usually calculated using something called the Freidewald Equation, which looks like this:

LDL = Total cholesterol – (HDL + (Triglycerides/5))

As Dr. Mike Eades explained in one his posts, the Freidewald equation has been shown to over-estimate LDL levels in people whose triglycerides are low.  The Freidewald equation also “rewards” you for having higher triglycerides – not something you want — by producing a lower calculated LDL figure.   Let’s create a couple of fictional examples to demonstrate:

Patient One
Total Cholesterol: 200
HDL: 45
Triglycerides:  150
Calculated LDL:  125

Patient Two
Total Cholesterol: 200
HDL: 50
Triglycerides:  70
Calculated LDL:  136

The most useful indicator of heart-disease risk you can extrapolate from a lipid panel is the ratio of Triglycerides/HDL.  You want that ratio below 2.0, because a ratio below 2.0 is a pretty good indicator that you’re mostly producing large, fluffy LDL.  At 3.0 or above, it’s more likely you’re producing small, dense LDL.

Patient One’s ratio is 3.33 — not horrible, but certainly not what I’d consider good, either.  Patient Two’s ratio is 1.4 –  pretty darned good.  Patient Two clearly has a much better cholesterol profile.  But because Patient Two’s calculated LDL (which is likely overestimated anyway) is above the supposed magic number of 130, she’s the one who’ll get a lecture from her doctor along with a recommendation to go on a low-fat diet – which will probably reduce her HDL and raise her triglycerides.

Eric’s Triglycerides/HDL ratio is 0.90 … in other words, it’s outstanding.  Even if his LDL is really and truly elevated, it’s almost certainly mostly the large, fluffy LDL.  That type of LDL not only isn’t dangerous, it protects us against infections and cancer, at least according to Dr. Uffe Ravnskov’s reading of the data.

And yet a doctor wants this strong, active, sports-nut of a 26-year-old man to go on statins because his total cholesterol is 219 and his calculated LDL is 147.  If Eric did go on statins, the only beneficiaries would be

• Pfizer
• The pitchers on opposing softball teams who would no longer have to watch Eric belt their fastballs over the fences

It’s a sad situation when we have to ignore our doctors’ advice in order to stay healthy.

Look as if the grain-industry people have been trolling the internet attempting to trash Wheat Belly, the outstanding new book by Dr. William Davis.  How else do you explain an Amazon review written under the title The David Koresh of Medicine.   Notice that the review doesn’t dispute any of the facts or science presented in Wheat Belly:

The author has no credentials, no credibility, just a small cult of terriby misinformed followers. Don’t be fooled by the high volume screech against wheat and grains.

I have to admit, it didn’t occur to me when I recommended Wheat Belly that Dr. Davis has no credentials.  I assumed being a doctor who’s seen the benefits of a wheat-free diet in thousands of his own patients counted for something.  I also figured that after poring over hundreds of studies on wheat’s health effects and thoroughly researching the history and genetic structure of wheat, Dr. Davis was qualified to write on the topic.

Allegations of “secret ingredients in wheat” to make you eat more, or comparisons to cigerettes. Seriously?!

Apparently the wheat lobby doesn’t require its job applicants to pass a spelling test.  Are cigerettes similar to cigarettes?

Dr. Davis never claimed there are secret ingredients in wheat.  He didn’t (as far as I know) don a Ninja costume or disguise himself as a plumber and break into the headquarters of Wheat , Inc. to pilfer documents.  He simply described, based on published documents, how wheat has been modified during the past 50 years.

For over 8000 years wheat has sustained and grown human kind …

Eight-thousand years ago, humans (some of them, anyway) consumed Einkorn wheat.  The main similarity between Einkorn wheat and today’s mutant wheat is they’re both called “wheat.”  We also call both Thomas Jefferson and Adolph Hitler “humans,” but they produced rather different effects on other humans.  What we ate 8,000 years ago has nothing to with the health consequences of eating a highly modified variety of wheat that’s only been around for the past 50 years.

And wheat didn’t “grow”  humankind.  Wheat shrunk humankind.

… oh and it tastes good when mixed with a little water and yeast.

That explains why nearly every brand of bread includes high fructose corn syrup high on the list of ingredients.

Every nutritionist and serious medical professional will tell you that bread is the most economical and safe source of essential nutrients.

Every one, seriously?  That’s odd … I seem to recall a lot of conversations and interviews with nutritionists and medical professionals who agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Davis — who, despite having a good sense of humor, is a serious medical professional.  So serious that he wrote a book about wheat.

In fact, bread is handed out in natural disasters because it sustains life without food safety issues or requiring refrigeration.

Tell ya what:  if I’m ever starving because a tornado wiped out all the refrigerators within a 50-mile radius, I’ll eat some of the bread FEMA hands out.  But the fact that bread doesn’t require refrigeration doesn’t in any way prove it’s good for us.  Coca-Cola and heroin don’t require refrigeration either.

And now, suddenly it will kill you. Comical!

No, today’s mutant wheat doesn’t kill you suddenly.  It’s more like slow torture.

This book is such a bone headed, misinformed way to just scare people into not eating.

Now wait a minute, Buster!  Dr. Davis is 100% in favor of people eating.  He just doesn’t want them eating a mutant grain product that will make them fat and sick.

As for secret ingredients, humm, apparently the author is ignorant of the food laws that regulate everything that goes into food and on food labels.  Unlike some enforcement agencies, the FDA has some serious teeth behind its enforcement.

Well, that certainly negates all the studies demonstrating the negative effects of wheat that Dr. Davis cited in Wheat Belly.  If the USDA and FDA are on the beat, mutant wheat (which is heavily subsidized by the same government that funds the USDA and FDA) simply has to be safe.  That’s why they conducted all those tests on the stuff to make sure it wouldn’t cause any … no, wait a minute.  Nobody ever conducted tests on mutant wheat to see if it’s fit for human consumption. Okay then, we’ll just have faith the USDA and FDA can tell if a food product is safe by looking at it.  That works for me.

As for frankenwheat, again seriously?! Wheat, due to its ubiquitous presence in the world is treated as sacrosant from any GMO research or development.

I see.  So when wheat went from being a wispy plant that couldn’t be harvested until it was five feet tall to a short, stubby little plant that’s harvested when it’s two feet tall — all in just the past 50 years –  that was a natural mutation, was it?  Boy, evolution works really, really quickly.  I wonder what all those plant geneticists on the Monsanto payroll are doing all day.  They’re probably just sitting around, playing poker and thinking, “Geez, I wish they’d let us develop some kind of hybridized new seeds that the company could patent and then force farmers to buy by threatening to sue them if some of those seeds blow onto their farms and start growing even if the farmers didn’t want the seeds in the first place.”

If you need real, science based information on healthy eating, check out [...] and leave this book and its cult in the compound.

I’ll try to read [...], but when I searched for […] on Amazon, all that came up was a kids’ book titled “Dot and Dash play Dot-Dot-Dot.”

I was hoping the grain lobby wouldn’t find out about our cult.  For those of you who haven’t been recruited yet, we have a secret handshake that requires a lot of flexibility in the fingers — that keeps out the grain-lobby infiltrators who are suffering from wheat-induced arthritis.  At our meetings, Dr. Davis sacrifices a goat and then we all spend hours enjoying ritual dancing around a bonfire on our pain-free legs.  Sometimes we even dance naked.  It’s not a sexual thing, you understand … we just like showing off our rash-free skins.

I’m sure this campaign by the grain industry will succeed.  Any day now, Dr. Davis will have a conversation with a patient something like this:

“So how do feel after being wheat-free for the past two months?”

“Well, Dr. Davis, I lost 25 pounds, my psoriasis cleared up, my arthritis went away, I’m sleeping better, I’m not depressed anymore, I think more clearly, and I stopped wheezing.”

“Excellent!  So you’ll continue avoiding wheat?”

“Of course not.”

“But—“

“Wheat has been sustaining humans for 8,000 years, Dr. Davis, so it has to be good for us.  Besides, I don’t want to end up spending all day the airport banging on a tambourine and selling flowers to passengers.”

“But I never asked you to– why are you sticking your fingers in your ears?”

“What?”

“I said, WHY ARE YOU STICKING YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS?”

“My de-programmers told me not to listen to you.”

Here are some recent emails I’d like to share.  I’ve edited them down a bit, but otherwise they’re exactly as they arrived in my inbox.  Since most of the text in this post is from the emails, I’m flipping my usual rule for quotes:  the emails I’m quoting are in black text; my comments are in maroon text.

Nutrition for Preschoolers – email from Andrea

I have worked in education my whole life, and just had the opportunity to spend a day observing in a local daycare and preschool. It is run by careful, goodhearted, conscientious people — who are dead wrong. If you’ve got time, the story is below.

I spent the day in a preschool class for 3- and 4- year-olds. The children came in between 7 and 8 in the morning after a breakfast that, according to the 18 children I talked to, was made of starch and sugar, maybe with some skim milk, but usually juice. By the time they got to class, their blood sugar was tanking and their moods were already affected. But that’s okay! We gave them skim milk and sugar cookies for a snack at 9! They were hyperactive until they crashed and the behavior problems stacked up.

At noon they were fed skim milk, tater tots, canned peaches in heavy syrup, and a sandwich made with white bread, plastic cheese, and a slice of bologna. They crashed shortly after. Fortunately, it was nap time, which was two hours. They needed it, but were groggy, unhappy, and very, very difficult on both ends of their nap. Of course, they got another snack once they were all up. This time it was fruit juice, crackers, and cupcakes!

They got to go out for playground time after their snack, and they ran around like crazy for the first half hour, all manic fun. The second half hour was filled with minor scuffles, complaints of tummy aches, and lots of crying. After playground time, it was just a blur of teacher yelling “no” or “sit down” and the children screaming, crying, and pitching fits. I finally had my fill and concluded my visit around 5, spoke with the Director, and was free at last!

What I learned from my experience–other than that I will never, EVER be a preschool teacher–was that these kids’ bodies and minds were being horribly abused.  Their “bad” behavior was either hypoglycemic grumpiness or hyperactivity. There were minor issues with discipline, but the root problem was lack of good nutrition.

What hope do children raised in such environments have? Children deserve better care. And I am not blaming the daycare. It was a good place, with good people and a stellar reputation. They do their best and keep the kids as well-behaved and cared-for as possible. They are doing their jobs and following the rules. The rules must change, because they are killing us all.

Amen, Andrea.  As a father of two girls, I can assure you that even kids who live on a near-paleo diet can throw temper-tantrums and become scatter-brained now and then … but it’s now and then.  When we allow our girls to eat sugar and other junk on special occasions, we pretty much count on a crash or a meltdown occurring within the next hour.   As one of the doctors pointed out in The Sugar Trap, after the sugar causes a blood-sugar crash, you’re not talking to a functioning brain anymore — you’re talking to a spinal cord.

Almost 60 pounds lighter in four months – email from Alex

I’ve been heavy since 3rd-4th grade.  I remember my doctor, during my high school physical, saying “You know you’re big right?” and, in my opinion, being a little rude.  I have tried several times to lose weight and each time I’ve only been able to stay motivated for a week or two and never really lost anything.

On Saturday 3/19/2011, my sister and her husband were over for a movie night. They suggested your movie (because they had seen it once already and liked it) but at the time we decided to go for something a little lighter and I decided I’d watch it later instead.  Well, long story short, they left, and at about 3:30 am Sunday my eyes were closing and I said “Oh, I should watch Fat Head.”  I started watching and didn’t have any trouble staying awake.  At that point I told myself I would change my eating habits.  My wife and I woke up the next morning around 10 a.m. and the first thing we did was watch your movie again.  She agreed it was great and that we should start eating better.

Well, here we are in early July and my wife and I are still staying strong.  We have completely changed our eating habits and lifestyles.  I follow what you did in the movie by cutting my carbs and keeping them around 100.  I’ve also moved away from sugary and processed foods in general.  I currently weigh 199.3lbs and I’m still losing 1-3 lbs/wk.  I went from stretching a XXL shirt to make it fit to comfortably wearing a large, and from being tight in size 44 x 32 pants to comfortably wearing 38 x 32s. Among other things, we’ve taken up running, regularly dancing using our Wii, and now have learned to enjoy things such as yard work.  We are planning on running our first ever 5k in Sept and, while I don’t have much hope of placing or anything yet, I have confidence I’ll do pretty well.

I hope you don’t mind my long-winded email, I just figured you probably would like to hear good feedback and I definitely wanted to thank you.

I don’t mind at all, Alex.

Alex was kind enough to send some pictures of his progress.  The first pictures, when he weighed 256, are a little fuzzy, but you get the idea.  Look at him now at 199 pounds.  How’s that for an impressive body transformation?

The calorie-equation freaks will no doubt insist that Alex lost weight because he consumed fewer calories than he burned, and of course that’s true – I’ve never claimed otherwise.  But as he explained in the email, Alex tried losing weight many times before and failed.  So there are two possible explanations: 1) For most of his life, Alex didn’t have the character to stick with a diet, but suddenly developed character after watching Fat Head, or 2) The diets Alex tried before caused him to ended up feeling starved so he gave up, while the low-carb diet allowed him to eat less without feeling hungry and fatigued, so he stuck with it.

I don’t think it’s a matter of character.  I think it’s a matter of biochemistry.  The “character” part of it is in being willing to give up the foods you like once you realize they screw up your biochemistry.

A biologist changes her mind – email from Lorraine

The last week of April I was home – bored and depressed.  This was the usual night for me since I put on over 60 pounds.  I would just sit on my couch watching movie after movie.  Luckily, I discovered your documentary on Netflix.  April 27th was the night you changed my life.

I was always a thin child, but in my junior year of high school I gained about 40 pounds.  After being teased and bullied for my weight gain, I resorted to unsafe diet pills (ephedra) and over-exercised (approximately 1-2 hours a night).  I’m embarrassed to admit that I even resorted to throwing up on occasion.

I lost the weight and went back to 110 pounds, but I was tired, hungry, weak, and experienced heart palpitations.  I wasn’t aware of this at this time, but I could have caused severe damage to my heart.  I was able to maintain my weight for two years, but it was a constant struggle.  I received my A.S. in nutrition and dietetics, and thought I knew it all — calories in/calories out, fat is bad, salt is bad, meat is bad, and so on.  Our entire curriculum was based on the guidelines set forth by our government.

I eventually had a change of heart and went to pursue my B.S. in biology.  Over the course of four years, I slowly but surely regained the weight and then some.  I started a new diet almost every two weeks, but always failed.  I wrote down everything I ate and counted every little calorie to make sure I consumed 1200-1400 calories a day.  I worked out approximately 6 days a week.  I just gained more weight.  I had never felt so frustrated in my life, because I knew exactly how much I was eating.  I began to accept the fact that my thin days were over and I was just meant to be a heavy woman.

By April 2011, I was 25 years old and 171 pounds. I was depressed, antisocial, and I just wasn’t my normal self.  I gave up on living. I missed birthdays, social events, vacations,  and New Years Eve parties because I did not want my friends to see how big I had become.  Additionally, I turned down dozens of dates.  I knew I couldn’t be in a relationship if I didn’t love myself.  I lost two years of my life in hiding.

And then I watched your film.  I couldn’t believe it, because it went against everything I had learned in school.  Being a biologist, I checked and rechecked a lot of the research in your film.  I studied the pathways of the hormones and other metabolic processes.  I couldn’t believe how all this information is just simply ignored.  I ordered some of your recommended books such as Atkins, “Good Calories Bad Calories,” and “Protein Power.”  I studied the low-carbohydrate lifestyle as if it were a college class.  I realized that all the calorie-counting in the world would have never helped me.  I was addicted to carbohydrates and I had no idea.

I followed the Atkins diet because I needed some guidelines to get me started.  At the time, the low-carb lifestyle was a new concept to me.  Now I write to you a little over 4 months later and 33 pounds lighter.  I am 138 pounds and still dropping.  I went from a size 14 to a size 6.  I graduated with my biology degree in May and a new lease on life.  I was able to lose 33 pounds without feeling hungry, weak, or resorting to unhealthy dieting methods.  I am no longer depressed and chronically bloated.  I don’t count calories, I have more energy, and I am no longer starving myself to lose weight.

It is because of you that I am living my life like a 25-year-old should.  I am confident and happy.  I still have more weight to lose; however, this is the first time in my life I can confidently say that I know I can lose the weight and keep it off forever.  Now I work full-time as a secretary and a research assistant in a lab.  I am currently shadowing a physician, and I applied to graduate school to become a physician’s assistant.  Four months ago I dreaded going to my interviews, but now I actually look forward to them.  I hope to one day be a successful PA with a family of my own.

I have never written anyone before, but I needed to tell you my story.  I know you must get e-mails like this all the time, and I don’t expect a reply.  I just needed to thank you from the bottom of my heart.  God bless you and your beautiful family.

Sincerely,

Lorraine

God bless you too, Lorraine.  Good luck with your career – and enjoy those new clothes!