# Food for Thought



## Lalla (Jul 30, 2013)

Eeek, I've never started a new thread, and know that this will throw cats amongst pigeons, but I am SO convinced that this is truly truly important that I will risk bringing down the bricks on my head that it might provoke!! Though I truly hope that if you actually read the book and/or watch the films you will be convinced; the scientific evidence is really massive, impressive and important.

We all talk a lot on this forum, and rightly so, about the health of our dogs and the food that we give them. This is about food generally - has bearing on how we feed our dogs, too, but is specifically about the horrible, horrible misinformation that we humans have all been peddled for too many decades now, and please, please let us all begin to wake up to what has been done to us. I've just read a book by Robert Lustig, who is a paediatric endocrinologist. It is a life-changer. Certainly, for any of you out there with children, it is a wake-up call. It is a wake-up call to us all. The book is called "Fat Chance - the bitter truth about sugar"; an easier way of getting the information is to go to YouTube and watch either a long and quite tough lecture by him called "Sugar, the Bitter Truth" (



) or there are a series of short films, each about 10 minutes, "The Skinny on Obesity" on 



These short films are easier, have helpful graphics, and are equally informative.
Please do consider watching them, I promise you that they will make you think very hard about what you are eating, and will change your life if you take the message to heart. This is really really important!!!!


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## davetgabby (Dec 29, 2007)

thanks Lalla, I will get to it when I have some time, hopefully soon.


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## gelbergirl (Jun 9, 2007)

good stuff. I watched the short.


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## davetgabby (Dec 29, 2007)

likewise. And the scary thing about this is the fact that we know we're killing ourselves, and yet we quite often do nothing. Quite a pessimistic view on society. I don't know if i'm up to the hour and a half video.


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## Lalla (Jul 30, 2013)

Thanks so much for watching any of it, Dave and Gelbergirl; I am so sure that this will one day change how we all think about what we are doing to ourselves; or rather, what is being done to us. I used to have a very, very dear, very old friend (he was 92 when he died a few years ago) called Richard Doll (look him up if you have time, he's really interesting!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Doll); Richard was a physiologist and epidemiologist and one of the first people to make the connection between smoking and lung cancer, and subsequently served as an expert witness on many cases, both in the US and in the UK, against the tobacco companies; he told me, not long before he died, that if he were a lawyer he would get onto learning as much as he could (especially in the States - we in the UK just follow suit, like copycats) about the AMA and the USDA guidelines on food (particularly the food pyramid and how hopelessly wrong it is), and prepare for the absolutely (in Richard's opinion) inevitable plethora of lawsuits against the powers that be that would be forthcoming once the public properly understood how hideously they had been misled; and then against the food manufacturers who have been adding sugar to everything, in particular the soda manufacturers. It is scary stuff, especially for our children. The biochemistry is tough going (in the long lecture) but more digestible (so to speak!) in the shorter films and actually fascinating, if only in the reassurance that it has been done, and we do know for sure that this is sound evidence. Anyway, I am pathetically grateful to anyone who takes the trouble to take this stuff on board, I feel so much healthier myself for having utterly changed my life since first I watched these talks, read his book, and read others (Gary Taubes especially). Amazing life-changers. Makes one evangelical, sorry!!!


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## emichel (May 3, 2012)

Amazon.com: The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health eBook: T. Colin Campbell, Thomas M. Campbell II, John Robbins, Howard Lyman: Books

Amazon.com: Eating Animals eBook: Jonathan Safran Foer: Books

Amazon.com: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto eBook: Michael Pollan: Books


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## Lalla (Jul 30, 2013)

I hadn't seen the TED lecture (by the by, SO many of these TED lectures are completely wonderful - what an incredible resource YouTube is, and how great to have such easy access to so much brilliant stuff); it's pretty much saying (when it isn't just doing the debunking bit) what Robert Lustig is saying, at least on the topic of sugar. And he agrees with her on any of these gimmicky diets that can, at least on some levels, be saying fundamentally good things, but in ways that set out to be marketable. I had a look at a few of the Paleo sites that are upset about what she says, but as far as the point I'm making goes, she agrees with Lustig. I haven't read the other references, though have read quite a lot of debunking of The China Study; there seem to have been statistical errors in the analyses done that should give one pause for thought, but which I'm not qualified to unravel. I believe that its main premise is that too much protein is responsible for cardiovascular problems. Some of that research is, I think, based on the massively flawed Seven Countries study of Ancel Keys which saw fit to exclude any country that disagreed with his hypothesis - seriously disgraceful science and one of the main causes of the obesity epidemic today; it was originally the 22 Countries study, but those that didn't fit Ancel Keys's view were dropped, including the Inuit diet which, until relatively recently, was exclusively meat and fat - the Inuit ate no fruit or vegetables of any kind and were almost entirely free of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and many other diseases that they now, having adopted a Western diet, suffer from. There is SO much really interesting information to be found, some of the research very recent; the real trick is to check any author's vested interests - they are sometimes truly shocking. Robert Lustig's plea is fairly straightforward and is not espousing any particular 'diet' (in the faddish sense of the word) - eat as little sugar as possible, eat no trans fats, eat far more fibre (that is why whole fruits are fine - the fructose is packaged by nature with enough fibre to protect you). Above all stop drinking sodas and fruit juice. And losing weight makes you want to exercise, not the other way round; he is a true champion of exercise for good health, but NOT for losing weight - it doesn't work if you understand why the 'one calorie in/one calorie out' theory is flawed.


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## Ruthiec (Jun 18, 2013)

Hi Lalla,

Thanks for posting all this. I watched all the short videos and am now watching his lecture in about 20 min slots. All very interesting. I was familiar with much of it but it's a great reminder / reinforcement for someone who has a very sweet tooth 

The whole exercise focus is such an issue - I have watched programs like biggest loser and it drives me mad. I'm fortunate only to be a few kilos overweight but if I had an obesity problem there is no way I would put myself through the exercise torture programs like that suggest is necessary. So I would give up. 

Luckily a few years ago I got introduced to a different eating approach - pretty standard - cut out all the rubbish carbs, eat less starchy carbs, particularly at night, only have fruit at breakfast, eat regular small amounts of protein and eat as much veg as you want. Then allow yourself a day a week where you eat some of the "bad foods" so you don't feel you are in a constant state of deprivation. I love my free day and the rest is now just how I eat - not a fad diet but a much healthier option. I lost quite a bit of weight and apart from getting in a 30 min brisk walk a day, did no extra exercise.

Oh dear, it's only 7.30am and I'm on my hobby horse again. But thanks for posting. We must care about our own health if only so we're fit and healthy to love and care for our pups.


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## Lalla (Jul 30, 2013)

Hi Ruthiec, thanks for taking the trouble to watch the films, even though you obviously do all the right things anyway; isn't it funny how people are resistant to helping themselves? I think in many ways it's the fault of diet books and fads. It's exactly like clicker training our dogs with the wrong protocols - if we set them up for success, they'll succeed. When we get it wrong (timing, expectations, environment, whatever variable we have misjudged) they will fail. And we do that to ourselves all the time. Diet fads set people up for failure, in my opinion (and experience) - you just can't keep them up. Exercise has been co-opted into the mix the wrong way around - it is SO important, but so useless for weight loss that people give up on something that matters and the vicious cycle begins. I can so understand resistance now to ANY new information, which is why it is so sad that the actual science goes un-noticed in the pushiness of agendas that, if they are money-makers, will inevitably triumph because someone is pushing so hard with his vested interest at stake.
And it's a very good point you make that at very least we need to keep healthy to walk our dogs - which will, in turn, make us healthier. As will their company and the joys that they bring into our lives.
Oh, and it's very nice to share hobby horse stables! and not quite 7am here in the Uk, so I'm on mine early, too!!


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## Lalla (Jul 30, 2013)

Someone sent me a brilliant article on "Lifestyle and nutritional imbalances associated with Western diseases: causes and consequences of chronic systemic low-grade inflammation in an evolutionary context"; (catchy little title, I know - the nature of scientific papers, I guess!) I've tried to find a link on the internet but failed, it's supposed to be "Available online at www.sciencedirect.com" but I can't track it down. Anyway, it is saying pretty much all that Robert Lustig is saying but in a far more scientific paper-ish way, and suggests that the only hope for us all to enjoy better health, particularly as we get older, is to reconsider our Paleolithic genes, to understand why we have evolved the way we have, and the urgent need to rethink our destructive modern eating habits. The authors (Begoña Ruiz-Núñeza, Leo Pruimboomb, D.A. Janneke Dijck-Brouwera, Frits A.J. Muskiet) have gone into metabolic syndrome, and why it is compromising us all, in exhaustive detail. There is fascinating research into the need for glucose in the development of our large brains, and other reasons for how we differ from other primates in our physiology. I have this faint hope that we are beginning to come a bit nearer to reaching the critical mass required to actually begin to get this utterly vital message across. The more of us who begin to notice what is out there, take it seriously ourselves, and above all take it seriously for our children, the more likely we might be to be able at least to help ourselves and our own families. And eventually to change how government thinks about the terrible advice we have been given for so long.


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