Repeat After Me: An editorial is an Opinion

What can I say?  Hey, FreetheDick isn't the only media whore.  I want readership, too, and was just so bummed when I realized that Dr. Bray did just another "brayscapade" on JAMA without reading and heeding my earlier posts.  OK, maybe I can cut him a break, maybe he just forgot that I told everyone that he shouldn't be abusing his position as editor of a prestigious medical journal by undercutting researchers armed with data that isn't in concert with his position.  Perhaps if he had cut the carbs a bit more, he wouldn't have so much memory loss.

It has become just such a joke, when these crazy, rigid obesity researchers are presented with paper after paper after paper that shows that a low carb diet isn't all that bad, hey, maybe even better, and so try to spin it back their favorite way by using their editorial privilege instead of providing any new data or anything relevant.

Here is the accompanying editorial:  http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199129
It's Bray's way of saying, "Blah blah blah, obesity sure is big and bad, .... hey, shove it, Ebbeling. I am still right despite your fancy new data.  Blah blah blobbity blah blah......in the end, Oh!, it is STILL SO UNCLEAR,...Oh! its WAAAAAY too complicated........ but really in the end, it is still all about calories."

Dr. Ebbeling et al, I hope all this isn't raising your cortisol levels too high.  After all, reading this Bray stuff is like, going to make you gain weight or have a heart attack or something.  This is even after you bothered to use the controversial doubly labeled water.

[Sorry, but I had to add that part about doubly labeled water.  Ever since Peter Hyperlipid gushed about the miraculous water I have been wanting to include it in a post to increase my readership.]

"One must be [mis]reading Research"

Our researchey, geekie fascist "friend" over at [redacted]people always likes to say that "one must be reading research" as it rolls off her keypad frequently, probably more frequently than the times she actually does read the research, based on, you-know, the "academy" talking points statements she makes.

Actually, does anyone really know what time it is, does anybody really read the research anymore?  It seems  to me that Marion Nestle doesn't.  When asked to comment on a recent nutritional study showing than when following different types of diets, a calorie isn't really a calorie, she pretty much says, "hey, just eat less."  The thing is, the research study being actually studied was about macronutrient ratios, not weight loss.  Oh who knows, maybe her quote was taken out of context by the author of the news piece.  But, along with her comment about the research, she is basically telling folks not to read the research or even pay attention to it.  So, it is really something more like, "read the research as long as it agrees with me and if it doesn't, then it is not applicable and you should just do what I say!"

Here's the actual research paper:  http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154
And, here's the widely-linked, incorrect (except politically), and misleading popular article about it, including "Dr." Nestle's most amazing recap comment:  http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-06-27/calories-low-carb-weight-loss/55843134/1

I just gonna have a whole lot to say about this study, once I read all of it carefully.  Careful readers will note that I labeled this post "good studies".  So far I like it, but just for what it is, not for what it is not and certainly not for what the popular press and the greater paleo community are saying about it.  I reserve the right to change the label once I rip the paper to shreds.

Refuse to be Fooducated!

Read this blog!
www.sparkpeople.com/mypa
ge_public_journal_individu
al.asp?blog_id=4920483

I just received a stack of dietitian mags, and they alternately raise my cortisol levels and give me plenty of humorous fodder for future blog posts.

Here's a tidbit from Diane Weiland, who I despise probably just as much as she despises low-carb. Can't even use it in the title of her article on "high protein" diets in the Feb 2010 edition of Today's Dietitian.

"With unbalanced meal plans that sometimes restrict entire food groups, these fad diets often fail to meet humans’ essential needs for vitamins, minerals, and fiber, but they do usually lead to weight loss. "

"Several studies comparing high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets with high-carbohydrate, low-protein diets found high-protein diets to be just as effective and sometimes even more effective than their high-carbohydrate counterparts when it comes to weight loss.." Wow! Didn't read that anywhere from any of the other dietitians. So after using up the first paragraph of her article to trash the low carb diet, she finally has to admit that it works better?

Then she steals Dr. Eades book title and quotes stuff from the Nutrition and Metabolism Society without actually reading and/or quoting anything by Dr. Feinman, which is totally hard to do, but she somehow pulls it off anyway. Then there is most of the entire page later on, where she warns us that we'll get too much fat in our diet, have evil red meat, blah blah blah and our kidneys will fall out. Hmmmm. Read the fine print. Right. Underneath the "What to Keep an Eye On", she implicates the poor dear kidneys, but then says that there is "little clinical evidence supporting this claim." And if she had just spent even another minute over at the Nutrition and Metabolism society, she probably would have found the link to the clinical study showing that a ketogenic diet is actually better for people with kidney problems.

I think these people are liars, scoundrels and crooks. Ketogenic diets are not necessarily high protein diets, but the "fooducators" keep conflating the same issues, and this the same argument they pull out over and over and over again, despite being corrected over and over and over again. Most low carb diets aren't very much higher in protein, they are just higher in fat and. they. just. can't. get. themselves. to. understand. or. admit. that. fact.

Maybe in a Year or Two

Another milestone passed in our most exceptional household.  Someone went to the store recently and bought a bag of sugar.  Hmmm, when did I last do that?  I really can't remember, but I think it was over a year and a half ago, when I bought baking supplies for a Christmas cookie party.  The party was postponed so I ended up not making the cookies, and then I used that bag of sugar all year long.  I made a pile of traditional Christmas bread to take as hostess gifts here and there, and a chunk of it when relatives made a couple of pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving.  No cookie party in 2011 so I made no cookies at all or traditional  holiday foods.  I did hand out chocolate bark to many friends, no added sugar there.
Lately, my husband has added a teaspoon of sugar back to his coffee, so we have been going through it faster.  First, the granulated sugar, then I went to the back of the cabinet and pulled out that old box of crusty confectioner's sugar, and someone found a small bag of brown sugar hidden somewhere way in the back.