Sorry the delay in posting. After promising I’d get around to doing video posts, I figured I’d best do one. It took me a bit longer than I’d expected to get the graphics and such animated after I had Chareva draw them for me. Amazing how much After-Effects knowledge I’ve forgotten just since finishing Fat Head Kids.
Before shooting, I also decided to order a small, pop-up green screen that doesn’t require me to clear the furniture from a room to set up. Then I decided to do myself a huge favor and order a teleprompter so I don’t have to memorize my scripts. I found a small one that uses an iPhone as the source for the scrolling text. Dang, I love in living an age where all this stuff is available and affordable for us home-studio types.
Anyway, I got one done. I’m aware that Keto Crotch is like sooooo March 2019 and it’s already April. Well, I wrote the script a few weeks ago and just got episode done for the reasons mentioned above. I’ll try to be more timely in the future.
Someone asked if I’d post transcripts. I’ll post what I say in the videos, since I write a script before recording. I don’t have the time or desire to type out dialog from the embedded video clips.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Tom Naughton and this is the Fat Head Report.
Well, the people I refer to as the save the grains campaign reached a new low recently in their never-ending efforts to scare us away from low carbohydrate diets.
Over the years they’ve tried telling us that giving up bread and cereal and pasta will make us fat … or give us heart disease .. or give us cancer.
Well that obviously didn’t work because now they’re telling us that giving up carbohydates will make your privates .. smell bad.
No, not those privates. These privates.
All of sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, there were all these stories about something called Keto Crotch. Which apparently is like really bad breath, only … lower.
And in case you didn’t get the concept, the came up with helpful graphics like these.
And this one, people, I mean seriously?
So what’s going on here? Is this a real thing, or are we seeing an Astroturf campaign? Let’s look at a piece of a TED talk given by a former CBS reporter named Sharryl Atkinson explaining what an AstroTurf campaign is.
So an Astroturf campaign often begins with special interests paying people to put out a message on social media.
And if you look at all these news articles about keto crotch what’s their source? it’s people posting on social media!
This rather disgusting article in the New York Post tells us that keto crotch is a hot topic on message boards, and Twitter.
This site for vegans ran an article saying keto crotch is yet another reason to give up meat – surprise – and what was their source? Once again it was social media.
Probably people being paid to talk about keto crotch on social media.
Here’s part of a different speech by the same former CBS reporter how to spot fake news:
The same stories, using the same sources, even using the same phrases … like keto crotch. Not to mention using basically the same graphics.
A guy on Twitter named John Zahorik listed all these media outlets that ran a story on keto crotch all in the same week.
Does anybody think all these reporters just happened to stumble on the same story at the same time?
Or does this look more like a PR campaign designed to scare people away from low-carbohydrate diets?
And who would design a campaign like that anyway? Now the truth is, and I want to be clear about this, we don’t know.
But as John Zahorik pointed on out Twitter, the Barilla Pasta company and Weight Watchers both use the same gigantic PR firm.
Now you can guess why a pasta company wouldn’t want people cutting back on carbohydrates.
And as for Weight Watchers, how do you think the popularity of the ketogenic diet as affecting them?
Yes, of course Weight Watchers is getting killed by keto. Because Weight Watchers is still pushing the same low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet that a whole lot of us tried over and over and found it simply doesn’t work.
So maybe the big P.R. firm for Weight Watchers and Barilla pasta was behind “keto crotch.” Or maybe not. I don’t know. But I do know something here stinks.
And it’s not your privates.
If you enjoy my posts, please consider a small donation to the Fat Head Kids GoFundMe campaign.
My money is on Weight Watchers, they’ve got the most to lose.
This misinformation campaign seems to be targeted at women. My guess is that this is because:
1. Women are particularly sensitive to the suggestion that their genitalia are giving off an offensive odour – think of all those ads featuring “women’s deodorant”. The ads don’t come out and say that it’s for women’s crotches but they certainly imply it.
2. Usually it’s the woman that determines what the family eat and us weak males just go with the flow. So put the decision-maker off low-carb and you’ve got the whole family as customers for Weight Watchers.
If it is Weight Watchers, consider this: a company largely owned by Orpah Winfrey is choosing to make women feel insecure about their bodies as a business strategy. Oh, the irony.
A friend of mine goes to Weightwatchers and sometimes tells me about the advice they give – just to annoy me. On one occasion she was told that eating avocado is bad because it contains saturated fat, but that grains and carbohydrates are fine because they’re all low-fat. This drivel is still being taught by dietitian in our ‘health’ systems. My friend knows the avocado and grains advice is rubbish, but likes the group support.
On a positive note, in the last two weeks I’ve met two senior nurses in the UK who both regard current dietary advice as terrible and were eating and recommending lower carb. One of the nurses is going to work in diabetes and I was able to point her to Dr Hallberg in the US and Dr Unwin in the UK. Even Public Health England, a bastion of low-fat stupidity, has circulated a video featuring a switched on dietitian and an obese patient with PCOS who made remarkable progress. The video is only 3 minutes long. It’s noticeable that ‘low carb’ is a heresy that can’t be mentioned, but not eating potatoes or pasta is discussed, as is reducing insulin. Progress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec63F-w9mYM&feature=youtu.be
Yes it’s interesting, a small but increasing number of doctors, nurses and even dieticians are coming on board. It took my GP about ten years to realise I’m not killing myself and I turned her on to David Unwin among others. Dr Evidence-Based Macho Man, not so much, he has decided that since I am no longer diabetic or even prediabetic then I never was.
It’s entertaining to see on Twitter and elsewhere that some dieticians are now indignantly claiming that they never dissed low carb diets, but the effect is rather spoiled by their colleagues continuing to attack lowcarb.
Meanwhile EAT-Lancet is back on the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47734296
Old joke, which works best in a Swedish accent
“Hello, I’d like to buy a deodorant!”
“Certainly Sir, ball or aerosol?”
“No, just for under my arms”
In my high carb/diabetic days I was a martyr to fungal infections, and thrush which is pretty diagnostic in males. Like the skin, eye, sinus and gum infections I suspect the blood glucose was a factor in feeding the beasties, and sugar-filled urine too. I find this keto crotch hard to comprehend other than being completely made up.
There have been a lot of stupid headlines over the years that have made me laugh, but this one wins in orginality. It’s too funny to take seriously.
And yet they thought people would believe it …
Thank you very much for providing the full transcript!
Yes indeed, thank you Tom, very helpful!!
“Dang, I love in living an age where all this stuff is available and affordable for us home-studio types.”
A friend of mine is partner in the film distribution company, Abramorama (Ron Howard’s “Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years; Pearl Jam’s “Let’s Play Two”). He has a pat quote for anyone who asks, “How do I become a filmmaker?” His response, “Just say you’re one.” With the technology available today, it’s very easy to become a producer and without having to go to film school.
I have learned that people don’t want to read anymore. They’d rather be shown. This medium will serve you well.
Yup, the whole Adobe Master Suite costs me $55 per month. Add in a bit of inexpensive equipment, and all you need is the willingness to learn how to use the stuff.
You’ve gone to Lynda.com for their tutorials, correct? They did a better job teaching me Final Cut Pro than an instructor did in a three day workshop.
Yup, I used Lynda.com to learn pretty much all the Adobe production software, plus some programming stuff for work. Their instructors are usually quite good.
I’ve taken some of their courses and found them very good. The instructors were engaging, they went at the right pace, and explained things well.
I also appreciate how quickly they release new courses when new versions of software come out.
I can also tell you, from working in sports and newscasting for 20 years, that every TV news outlet subscribes to feeds from sources like CNN, Fox, Tribune, etc. They’ll receive the same story with the same video content, accompanied with a completed script that the producers will often copy and paste into the teleprompter and show run down without editing. More often than not it is because the staff in most stations is so small, they don’t have time to edit. This is why you will see videos on YouTube by conspiracy theorists that show anchors from TV station all across the country reading the same script, word for word.
Satellite has replaced the teletype to get the news, but no doubt that the same thing happened with local radio, and still does. I think the difference between then and now is that corporations who pay the advertising dollars are influencing how things are being reported.
This was clearly a case of reporters passing along what was fed to them.
The news situation is effectively the same as retail – they have their suppliers, don’t seek out independent sources or info and just post what they got.
It’s a good recipe for TV viewer apoplexy.
I nearly passed this by given the date of the post.
Heh-heh … Nope, not a joke.
Good start to your video reports. I look forward to more. As to keto crotch, what a load of baloney! While I admit I do not have a Masters in Crotchology, but I do know that crotches, like other parts of the body, stink if you don’t stay clean. The only truth I find is that I do know when I am eating ketogenically my urine has a stronger smell. That could mean that I/you/they need to take a little more care with hygiene issues. But so far I have not had anyone point at me and whisper “Ugh, he must eat a keto diet”.
Of course, most guys know not to point and make comments about the guy standing at the next urinal.
re: Someone asked if I’d post transcripts.
Since you post these on YouTube, you usually get a machine transcript, with time codes and synchronized highlighting, automatically, although the text can be unsurprisingly somewhat crude.
On the blog inset, click play (▶), then pause. Click YouTube in the lower controls. On YouTube, click … in the second row of lower controls, and select Open Transcript. It has a further control (⋮) to toggle the time codes.
Didn’t know that existed. It is crude. The current transcript tells us about “kido crotch.”
The problem I have with videos is that I read much, much faster than I can watch a video. Additionally, I can listen to podcasts while driving to and from work, but have basically zero time to watch videos. I know many people have switched to producing videos instead of text, but once that happens, I no longer follow them. For instance, Wheat Belly/Dr. Davis, I’ve ceased to follow him and one reason is because he’s switched to videos. (There are other reasons — I don’t like the evidence he uses to support some of his conclusions or advice, for instance — but primarily it’s videos.)
So, while I appreciate your quest to change things and help us navigate through BS studies, if you go totally to videos, you’ll lose some segment of the population, such as me (but maybe you’ll gain other segments — hard to know).
No, I’m not planning to go totally to videos. I’m a big fan of the written word. Like you, I still read more content than I watch.
Same here! The bloggers that have moved to videos and podcasts have lost me.
That’s partly why I’ll do both, but it’s mostly because I still enjoy written words. As I found out when I first tried standup (after I’d published humor in newspapers and magazines), what’s funny to read and what’s funny to hear or see are related, but still different. A lot of the humor I’ve written for this blog wouldn’t translate to video.
I prefer to read them too, but as far as Dr Davis videos go, you can download them or simply do something else while you listen to them. You don’t have to watch something just because it’s on video.
On Youtube you can adjust the speed up to double, which greatly increases the information per unit of time.
Do you take a hit of speed first?
I love it! I’m the type of person who usually looks for the transcript when I come upon a video blog or podcast. I just don’t have the time. But now I’m starting to think I just don’t have the time for boring videos. I love your style and will always watch a Tom Naughton video.
Thank you.
There is a youtube commentator that I like who sometimes does videos with newscasts (including local news across the US). He will layer them so they all spill into each other…all the same talking points and phrasing. Even though it is 20 different broadcasts it all sounds like one. It is disturbing.
Yup, when you see stuff like that, you know the news organizations are taking their cues from someone else.
Increasingly “journalism” constitutes “publishing the press release”. End of.
Another thing I’ve noticed – when they have the likes of Aseem Malhotra on TV they will also have a dietician “for balance”.But when they have a dietician on they do NOT invite Aseem “for balance”.
“We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity.”
The Outer Limits came true. da-de-dah dah, da-de-dah dah . . .
Ahh, The Outer Limits. Fond memories from my youth.
Then there was John Brunner
“Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassium sulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt.
Amen.”
He got a lot right in his dystopias but completely missed out on metabolic disease, it simply wasn’t a thing back in the sixties and seventies
See my post above. I describe why that is. 20 years of broadcasting experience.
Very good job, Tom, but I have to admit that I much prefer the straight written version. Something written to be spoken must flow differently from something written just to be read, as a close friend of mine learned when she joined Toastmasters. I’d say there are extra nuances, an extra grace, with the “just for reading” version. Also, in your regular blogs you embed the graphics and much quoted material. But as long as you keep posting the scripts, I’ll keep on reading your blog.
Very interesting stuff about the AstroTurf campaign and the use of social media and newsfeeds. It was kind of a light bulb moment for me — Aha! So THAT’S why this nonsense shows up everywhere all at once only to be replaced in two weeks by other simultaneous nonsense! Like Stuart, my money’s on WW as the perpetrator of “keto crotch.” Their whole premise is that you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight, and my sister did and just reached her goal a few weeks ago, and I’m proud of her for sticking to it. But as I keep telling her when she nags me to join WW, eating whatever I want will do nothing toward fixing my basic problem, which is metabolic syndrome. Also, I think she’s lost some muscle — when you lose “weight” you do; I want to lose fat, not just weight. I can only do that when I eat plenty of protein and steer clear of those delicious carbs. And that’s something I can do without paying WW a fortune for their meetings, for access to their website with points counts for different foods, and for their apps. The calorie/carb/protein/fat counts for just about every food on the planet, including those purveyed by all the major restaurant chains, are available online for free.
Sharyl Attkisson has given several interesting speeches on fake news, Astroturf campaigns, the lack of journalistic ethics in recent years, etc. I was intrigued enough to order her book “The Smear” on Audible.com.
Yes, we must all keep in mind that we want to lose fat, not lean mass, except for loose skin.
I’m with you.
I prefer a written post but will read a transcript. I probably won’t watch a video (but I will perhaps listen to a podcast – I have a list of those, but it depend very much on the length/layout of the pod. And some just don’t have the voice/sound equipment to do them in a wothwile manner.)