My old stomping grounds (for only two years), The Associated Press, is at it again. Whenever some government pronouncement about cholesterol or fats is sounded, AP quotes the positions of official medical sources, completely ignoring the discordant voices in American medicine. The news organization follows this practice even though the medical establishment has been proven wrong time and again, and has had to concede that the contrarians were right all along.
Transitioning out of trans fat
Mary Clare Jalonick
A few days ago, the Food and Drug Administration declared that trans fats shall no longer be allowed in the processing of food because of the solid evidence that they contribute heavily to heart disease. And AP medical writer Mary Clare Jalonick duly reported the development. So far, so good.
Then the story took this turn: “Trans fats are widely considered the worst kind of fats for your heart, even worse than saturated fats, which also can contribute to heart disease.” And a sidebar went further, saying, “Unsaturated fats: The good fat. Doctors say most of the fat people eat should be this kind.”
Doctors say? Surely the AP writer knows that the medical schools teach next to nothing about diet and nutrition. She wrote that “the good” unsaturated fats include soybean oil and corn oil. These highly processed oils, it should be noted, are ubiquitous in salad dressings. In fact, every alternative physician tells us that our diets are far too high in these fats and too low in saturated fats. But Jalonick wrote that saturated fats “raise bad cholesterol and can contribute to heart disease. Sources include high-fat dairy products and meats, ice cream, and palm and coconut oils.”
Low-fat foolishness
Dr. David Brownstein
Dr. David Brownstein, who lectures to physicians internationally, wrote this: “For more than 50 years, we have been told to eat a low-fat diet to lower the risk of developing heart disease. We followed that advice and lowered our fat intake, and now we have an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes directly caused by low-fat dietary recommendations … My research has clearly shown that low-fat diets not only promote obesity and diabetes, they can also cause harmful nutrient imbalances. The consequences of a low-fat diet can be severe, including higher rates of immune dysfunction, cancer, and chronic illness. We were designed to utilize dietary fat for maintaining our cell membranes and to provide the body with the crucial nutrients it needs to optimize the immune system. I can make it simple for you: Avoid all low-fat food sources.”
Dr. Al Sears
Dr. Stephen Sinatra
Dr. Brownstein is far from alone among leading physicians who promote saturated and monounsaturated fats in our diet. Dr. Stephen Sinatra recently came out with a best-selling book favoring these fats. Dr. Al Sears, a leading anti-aging physician, also takes that position, as do Drs. Mary Dan and Michael Eades, obesity doctors who also authored a best-selling book extolling saturated fats, and Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, a Danish physician/researcher who has authored books trumpeting the health benefits of these fats and their cousin, cholesterol.
Mega analyses ignored
Drs. Mary Dan and Michael Eades
Dr. Uffe Ravnskov
Jalonick surely is aware of the 2014 best-selling book by journalist Nina Teicholz, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, which she wrote after losing weight while writing review of restaurants that served such fat-rich foods. Jalonic has to be aware of the huge mega analyses concluded in 2014 and 2010, which found that high consumers of saturated fat had no more instances of heart ailments than did low consumers of the fat. These weren’t individual studies. They were studies of studies – about 70 in the latest one and 22 in the earlier one. The studies were done over periods of a number of years. The 2014 mega analysis was reported in the prestigious
Annals of Internal Medicine, and in turn announced in the New York Times and Time magazine, and on CNN and MSNBC. Yet Ms. Jalonick cites only the now-debunked views of the medical establishment. If she were balanced in her reporting, she could write, for example: “Doctors have long said, though many challenge the assumption and research has questioned it, that saturated fat consumption should be minimized.” That, at least, would present both viewpoints.
Coconut oil greases the noggin
Ms. Jalonick cites palm and coconut oils as ones to be avoided because they contain high amounts of saturated fat. But even conventional voices are beginning to change their tune on coconut oil and saturated fat, the New York Times reported. The oil, high in lauric acid, increases the body’s production of both LDL and HDL, but the proportion of health-inducing HDL becomes greater, and it is the ratio of the two that is important. Coconut oil was demonized decades ago by the food industry because it was cheaper, and thus more profitable, for producers to promote vegetable oils, such as the corn and soybean oils given thumbs up by Jalonick. It was a propaganda fraud. As the website Natural Mentor says, “Coconut oil is like high-octane fuel for the brain, and it’s remarkably effective at preventing the cerebral inflammation that can lead to the development of worsening of cognitive disease.” It’s been documented that a female physician fed her Alzheimers-stricken husband coconut oil, and his condition dramatically improved in a matter of weeks.
Alternative therapies? Naturally.
Dr. Brownstein is one of a plethora of doctors whose frustration with the lack of efficacy of many, if not most, standard therapies has led them to natural alternatives. Brownstein, director of the Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield, Mich., began searching for a way to cure his father’s heart and obesity problems without the conventionally prescribed drugs, which weren’t working. With natural therapies, his father’s heart was made well in short order. In his latest newsletter, he wrote that his medical school training included a single three-hour lecture on nutrition, in which the professor insisted that vitamin deficiencies were a thing of the past. He began to do research, and discovered that poor nutrition was behind a myriad of health problems.
A deficiency of vitamin A, for example, is deleterious to many functions in the body, and it is found only in animal food products, the best being butter, cod liver oil, eggs and whole milk.
Important studies continually show that most Americans suffer from multiple nutritional deficiencies, Brownstein wrote. “To improve your condition, it is best to work with a holistic practitioner who can check your levels and guide you on how to optimize your nutrition.”
Doctors say?
Brownstein makes no bones about it: “Most conventional healthcare practitioners do not have the proper knowledge to guide you.”
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