Saturday, May 24, 2014

Fed Up - A Movie Review


(Revised and abridged to coincide with the broader release of "Fed Up") 

“Fed Up” is a new documentary about diet, health, and the epidemic of obesity and its complications.  Made by executive producers Katie Couric and Laurie David, and directed by Stephanie Soechtig, the film chronicles the struggles of a handful of overweight kids and intersperses their stories with interviews of politicians, scientists, and practitioners explaining how we got here and how to fix it. 

If you have not heard of this film, you will soon.  “Fed Up” was one of the hardest tickets to get at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  Apparently food and diet are very potent topics.  And this film is potent.  It has all the right elements for a successful documentary:  a scary health story everyone can relate to, a big name narrator - Katie Couric, good production, plus all the right villains, heroes, and victims. 
  • Villains:  big sugar, big corporations, lobbyists, political villains (mostly Republicans), Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, George W Bush, etc. 
  •  Heroes:  concerned professionals - doctors, scientists, nutritionists, political heroes (almost all Democrats), Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin, George McGovern, etc.
  • Victims:  kids, minorities, the poor.
Unfortunately, “Fed Up” is deeply flawed.  While the movie does do a good job of telling the sugar story, it misses the carbohydrate forest for the sugar trees.  It also has an overt political agenda which blinds it from seeing the true culprits.  Along the way it glosses-over and misrepresents some key elements and ultimately alludes to the wrong solutions.  When all is said and done, “Fed Up” is the equivalent of a jumbo tub of popcorn ladled with salt and trans-fats -  you will enjoy it while it lasts, but it will leave you worse-off in the end.

Here’s the movie in summary: 
  • Too much sugar in our diets has led to an epidemic of obesity, which has led to a host of health problems, and ultimately will lead to premature death for millions.  Children are most at risk. 
  • Greedy big corporations and lobbyists threw money at venal politicians, and got them to conspire against our health interests, which caused it all. 
  • Therefore, the cure is for big government to step in and stop the greedy corporations from harming us for profit. 
According to the movie, a key turning-point which led to our obesity epidemic was a 1977 government report titled “Dietary Goals for the United States”, aka The McGovern Report.  This was the first time the federal government officially weighed-in on diet.  Here are the report’s six goals:


In the  “Fed Up” version of the story, The McGovern Report and subsequent government efforts had the science right, but big greedy corporations and their lobbyists twisted the findings, put pressure on weak politicians, and got them to water-down the government recommendations.    

It makes for a great story and a powerful documentary, but it is pure nonsense.  The government has never gotten the science right!  Ergo, the central premise of “Fed Up” is wrong:  Our obesity epidemic was not caused by greedy big corporations, but rather by big government hubris, mistaking consensus for science, and incompetently engineering the diets of three hundred million unique individuals.  This is the real story behind our obesity epidemic.   

Governments don’t do science, they do consensus.  In 1977 the biggest health issue of the day was thought to be heart disease.  A consensus had formed among health professionals that heart disease was largely due to a diet high in meat, eggs, and dairy.  Fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol were our main enemies, with sugar and salt bringing up the rear.  The government accepted the consensus and mistook it to be settled science. 

The late author Michael Crichton (“Jurassic Park”, “Andromeda Strain”, etc) had some choice words about the difference between consensus and science: 

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

When government mistakes consensus for science, it doesn’t just print a flawed report.  A cascade of bad decisions and policies result with untraceable negative consequences.  Subsidies, taxes, penalties, regulations, etc. all get employed to support the flawed  consensus, and real damage can result.

For instance, we now know that McGovern’s first goal – to increase carbohydrate – was a monumentally bad one.  Since the consensus was that we should eat less meat, eggs, and dairy - all sources of protein and fat - we therefore had to increase the only thing left - carbohydrates.  The text of the report stresses increasing primarily "complex carbohydrates like whole-grains, fruits, and vegetables”.  Sounds harmless right?  Eh, not so much.

We now know that many of the so-called complex carbohydrates, like the ones The McGovern Report told us to eat for 60% of our diet, are just as bad as sugar.  There is no metabolic difference between a modern whole-wheat bagel and a can of Coke.  In fact, according to William Davis, MD, author of  “Wheat Belly”, modern whole-wheat flour is more glycemic (blood sugar spiking) than even table sugar!

It turns out that overeating bad carbohydrates is what is making us obese.  It’s not sugar alone as “Fed Up” would have us believe!  Some of those bad carbohydrates are the very ones our government has been pushing on us for nearly forty years.    

I call all the bad carbohydrates GLUE.   Any carbohydrate is GLUE if it meets these criteria:

  •           GLycemic (blood sugar, and/or insulin spiking)
  •            Un-nutritious (low in nutrients)
  •            Energy-dense (highly caloric) 

GLUE includes all sugars and sweeteners, refined fruit and fruit juice, refined grains including anything made from flour, and refined starches.  (In general, the less a carbohydrate looks like its original form, the more likely it is GLUE.)     

This puts many so-called complex carbohydrates in the GLUE category, including pasta, crackers, bread, cereal, and some rice.  These are the things our government has been telling us to eat more of for nearly forty years!  Even if it says “whole-grain” on the label, it is likely GLUE.  "Fed Up" spends all of 30 seconds talking about carbs other than sugar!  All of the morbidly obese kids and families featured in the film are not just sugar addicts; they are carb and GLUE addicts, which is completely ignored by the film.

The second, third, and fourth goals of The McGovern Report were concerned with reducing fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.  We now know that fat does not make us fat, that saturated fat does not cause heart disease, and that ingested cholesterol does not raise our bad cholesterol (LDL), but does raise our good (HDL). We now know that the consensus was wrong about all this too. 

One of the unintended consequences of The McGovern Report, as the movie does point-out, was the substitution of sugar for fat in processed foods. Thanks to the report’s recommendation that fat be reduced, food companies responded by replacing the flavorful fat with sugar and other sweeteners like HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup).  After all, sugar was the lesser of evils according to the report!  Moreover, HFCS was thought to be healthier then sugar according to the consensus.  Plus, it was cheaper thanks in part to corn subsidies and sugar import restrictions.  This made it economical to put HFCS in practically everything. Yay!  Thus the report shot itself in the foot - twice.

Another unintended consequence of the report was the substitution of trans-fats for saturated fats.  The report singled-out saturated fats, so corporations replaced them with man-made trans-fats.  We now know trans-fats are a proven health threat.  We also know that the generic recommendation to reduce saturated fat was irresponsible.  “Fed Up” does not mention this.  (See this from just the other day: "Study Questions Fat and Heart Disease Link")  

There never was a unanimous consensus on diet.  Dr. Robert Atkins, a NY cardiologist, became famous for popularizing the low carbohydrate diet.  His 1972 book, “Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution” chronicled his observation that his patients did better eating low carbohydrate diets.  The modern consensus was dead wrong according to him and many others who came before him.  Carbohydrate was the culprit, not fats, saturated fats, cholesterol, or just sugar.  He went on to correlate the emergence of our obesity epidemic with the advent of a diet high in refined carbohydrate.  From the 1960’s, until his death in 2003, and continuing today, he is called a denier, ridiculed, ostracized, demonized, and was even sued. 


(Consensus sometimes behaves like religious fanatics - it burns its heretics at the stake.  Say, is that a torch-bearing mob coming my way?)

Now that the flaws in the consensus have been exposed and millions are dying, the clueless culprits and their apologists (like those who made this movie) are trying to pin the blame on their favorite scapegoats – greedy big corporations.

That’s not to say that corporations do not play a role.  They make our food after all.  But corporations only make the products we demand.  We were instructed by the consensus and our government to eat more carbohydrate first, avoid fat second, avoid saturated fat third, avoid cholesterol fourth, and finally to reduce sugar and salt.  We demanded that corporations supply us with foods meeting those priorities.  And that’s just what they did!  The fact that we went on to consume way too much of the sugary stuff is not their fault.  It’s our fault!  The movie gets this basic cause and effect backwards.

Overlooked entirely in the movie is the role of the 1992 FDA Food Pyramid, which doubled-down on the faulty consensus from The McGovern Report.  It’s hard to find a more recognizable and influential symbol of our dietary trend the last quarter century. Bread, cereal, rice, and pasta, all GLUE, were to be the very foundations of our diet.  Again we were told to eat the wrong things by our government.



Ironically, Bill Clinton is one of the film’s heroes and appears multiple times.  He was elected president the year the Food Pyramid debuted.  He along with his administration bought into the consensus and irresponsibly promoted The Food Pyramid for eight years. 

The federal government is still at it today.  As I’m writing this, I became aware that the USDA has published a children’s book and is urging grandparents to read it to their grandkids as a bedtime story.  The book features cute kittens explaining the current version of the Food Pyramid, which is called “My Plate”.  The first food group on My Plate, and the largest, is - “The Grains” – bread, crackers, rice, and noodles.  Big government is still mistaking consensus for science, still pedaling GLUE, and still puzzled by the ongoing obesity epidemic! 

Finally, there are the movie’s solutions. The main suggestion is to compare the diet caused epidemic to the smoking caused one, and learn from the successful campaign against smoking.   On this basic point I concur.  But the movie implies more. 

The good guys are all big government types:  Mike Bloomberg, Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin, for example.   While the bad guys all lean (relatively) smaller government:  Sarah Palin, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush.  As I have shown, big government has largely caused and prolonged this epidemic.  How likely is it that even bigger government can solve it?

NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg is a hero in the movie.  He famously banned salt, big sugary drinks, and trans-fats from restaurants and stores in New York City.  Not just for kids, but for adults too.  This is the problem with Bloomberg-ism, and the movie’s implications: we are all children in the eyes of the nanny state. 

In the most blatantly disingenuous edit of the movie, Sarah Palin is shown speaking about how parents should be responsible for feeding their own kids and not government.  In the very next clip she is seen sipping a Big Gulp.  The implication is clear:  government is the only entity which can be trusted to make good choices.  The edit is clearly designed to paint Palin as stupid and irresponsible.  The audience gasped at this edit both times I saw the movie with some muttering aloud, "What an idiot!"  Of course, the Big Gulp was a prop Palin employed during a speech in NY in defiance of Mike Bloomberg’s attempted ban on big sugary drinks.  Shamefully, the filmmakers don’t reveal that.  The courts agreed with Palin in the end.

Surely, government can play a role as it did with cigarettes and kids.  Advertising GLUE and unnatural food to kids could and should be barred, as should selling GLUE and unnatural foods to minors without adult permission.  But this has always failed because of the consensus definition of "junk food".  According to the "Fed Up" and consensus definition, a ban on junk food for kids would include such things as cheese, egg yolks, and a burger patty!        

If government wants us to change our eating habits, it should start by admitting the errors of the consensus for the last forty years.  The McGovern Report has been proven wrong about fats, meat, eggs, cholesterol, dairy, and now even salt.  Those are not the things that are killing us.  Too much GLUE and unnatural foods are what's killing us.  The government mistook a consensus for science, focused on the wrong culprits, and has been giving us bad advice for forty years. 

“Fed Up” misses this incredible story of government hubris, mistaking consensus for science, misinformation, and tragic unintended consequences.  Instead, it preaches more bogus consensus – corporations are evil and big government can save us. 


Further Reading
The real solution cannot come from a government prone to confusing consensus with science, nor from politicians who sell policy to the highest bidder (from any party).  It has to come from people educating themselves.  Many people have adopted low-carb, “paleo”, whole-food, and no grain eating habits without the government telling them to, and they are getting thinner and healthier. 
Here are some book suggestions which may help you:

Gary Taubes

Robb Wolf

Mark Sisson

Liz Wolfe, NTP

And of course, Dr. Robert Atkins

(*Many thanks to my lovely nutritionist wife Pam for her help in writing this piece, making me read these books, and for keeping me healthy despite myself.)

Originally published 4/2/14.  Reposted upon release of the film 5/9/14.  Revised and abridged 5/24/14.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

If you like your VA, you can keep your VA. Period.

There seems to be a lot of outrage regarding the VA hospitals death panels.  From the President on down, politicians in both parties are "mad as hell" and will not rest until they get to the bottom of this "unacceptable" situation.  This makes me laugh...and cry at the same time.

The assumption everyone is making is that the VA exists to provide the best healthcare available to our vets.  Ha!   If it was true, the outraged parties might have a shot at fixing it, but it's not true, and that is why the VA is as unfixable as the IRS.  No mortal put in charge of the VA, as currently defined, could ever fix it because it is impossible for a nationalized, unionized, and politicized government agency to provide excellence on any level.  If we really wanted vets to have access to the best healthcare, we would let them choose their own doctors and hospitals.  

And don't tell me our military is an example of a government agency which provides excellence.  The military is an exception only because it is non-union, has it's own code of justice, and usually avoids politicization.  Heck, unlike the VA, you can still get demoted and even fired from the military!  (Well, at least you used to be able to.  Getting fired is almost impossible these days, and it is one reason the military is also sliding downhill.)  

Here're the facts:  The VA exists primarily as a jobs program for (mostly Democrat) unionized political constituents.  The VA is also a slush fund for (mostly Democrat) politicians and a funding source for (mostly Democrat) politicians.   Those are its primary functions.  Treating vets is simply a means to an end, and the end is money for Democrats.

No President, Secretary, or Superhero can squeeze excellence out of a nationalized, unionized, and politicized organization.  Barack Obama is the poster-boy for nationalizing, unionizing, and politicizing everything within his grasp.  Feigning anger and concern for vets is just the latest bald-faced lie from this President.     

  
    

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Why The VA Is So Screwed Up, And Why It’s Obama’s Fault


Unless you get your news from NBC, CNN, ABC, New York Times, Comedy Central, CBS, Washington Post, LA Times, MSNBC, or al Jazeera, you probably know that the Veterans Administration has death panels and secret waiting lists which are killing veterans, or more accurately, letting them die rather than doing the hard expensive work of treating them, healing them, and prolonging their lives.  In other words, the VA is performing exactly as designed.  Come to think of it, the entire federal bureaucracy is performing exactly as designed.  The IRS, Fannie and Freddie, The State Department, Obamacare (HHS), The Obama Administration, and all the rest in this “mismanaged carnival of stupidity” (to repurpose Alec Baldwin’s words) are all performing exactly as designed.  What’s more, it’s all Obama’s fault. 

No, I’m not suggesting that President Barack Obama himself is making the day to day decisions at the VA, HHS, IRS, or any one of the alphabet soup exemplars of tragic dysfunction which we call government.  He is far too busy watching college hoops, fundraising, partying with Jay Z, golfing, and dishing one-liners from behind a teleprompter to be involved in running anything.  Running stuff is icky and hard.  Besides, Obama doesn’t ever want to risk having his fingerprints on any part of this travesty.  Yet despite his attempts to float above the mess, his signature is everywhere, for he is the modern ideological leader of totalitarian big government and has been it’s most ardent champion since coming on the national scene. 

Barack Obama is a perversion of King Midas:  everything he touches gets nationalized.   Got a problem with student loans?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with health insurance?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with housing?  Nationalize it.  (Don’t forget: as Senator, Barack Obama was known as the “Senator from Fannie and Freddie”.)  Got a problem with curriculum?  Nationalize it.  Got a problem with anything, the answer is always the same: nationalize it.  And when you nationalize it, you politicize it.  Hence, everything becomes political. 

You would think the VA is a healthcare system for veterans.  You would be wrong.  The VA is first and foremost a jobs program for political constituents that was originally set-up to treat veterans but now does so as an afterthought.  You might think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were mortgage companies for the poor.  You would be wrong.  Fannie and Freddie are first and foremost political operations that originally were set-up to provide mortgages for the poor but now do so as an afterthought.  This goes for Obamacare, student loans, the IRS, and every other agency, policy, statute, and corner of the federal government under this President and those before him who shared his philosophy. 

The framers of our constitution knew this could happen.  They knew totalitarianism and all-powerful government would politicize everything and turn it into a horror show.  That’s why they gave us a “charter of negative liberties” which says “what the federal government can’t do to you…” (to borrow Barack Obama’s own derisive words.).  The constitution specifically limited federal power.  It was a check on totalitarianism and a wall against nationalizing and politicizing everything.  Well, it used to do that anyway.  Not so much anymore. 

No president in our history has openly denigrated the concept of limited government and done more to deliberately undermine it than this president.  Dead veterans, dead ambassadors, more than a doubling of dead soldiers in Afghanistan, death panels, a government weaponized for political purposes, and a mismanaged carnival of stupidity from top to bottom are the inevitable result. 

Friday, May 9, 2014

Fed Up with "Fed Up"

I saw the food documentary “Fed Up” the other day and have a lot to say.  “Fed Up” is a film about diet, health, and the epidemic of obesity and its complications.  Made by executive producers Katie Couric and Laurie David, and directed by Stephanie Soechtig, the film chronicles the struggles of a handful of overweight kids and intersperses their stories with interviews of politicians, scientists, and practitioners explaining how we got here and how to fix it. 

If you have not heard of this film, you will soon.  “Fed Up” was one of the hardest tickets to get at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  Apparently food and diet are very potent topics.  And this film is potent.  It has all the right elements for a successful documentary:  a scary health story everyone can relate to, a big name narrator - Katie Couric, big name cameos, good production, plus all the right villains, heroes, and victims. 
  • Villains:  big sugar, big corporations, lobbyists, venal politicians (mostly Republicans), Fox News, Sarah Palin, George W Bush. 
  •  Heroes:  concerned professionals - doctors, scientists, nutritionists, do-gooder politicians (almost all Democrats), Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin, George McGovern.
  • Victims:  kids, minorities, the poor.
Unfortunately, “Fed Up” is deeply flawed.  While the movie does do a good job of telling the sugar story, it misses the carbohydrate forest for the sugar trees.  It also has an overt political agenda which blinds it from seeing the true culprits.  Along the way it glosses-over and misrepresents some key elements and ultimately alludes to the wrong solutions.  When all is said and done, “Fed Up” is the equivalent of a jumbo tub of popcorn ladled with salt and trans-fats -  you will enjoy it while it lasts, but it will leave you worse-off in the end.

Here’s the movie in summary: 
  • Too much sugar in our diets has led to an epidemic of obesity, which has led to a host of health problems, and ultimately will lead to premature death for millions.  Children are most at risk. 
  • Greedy big corporations and lobbyists threw money at venal politicians, and got them to conspire against our health interests, which caused it all. 
  • Therefore, the cure is for big government to step in and stop the greedy corporations from harming us for profit. 
According to the movie, a key turning-point which led to our obesity epidemic was a 1977 government report titled “Dietary Goals for the United States”, aka The McGovern Report.  This was the first time the federal government officially weighed-in on diet.  Here are the report’s six goals:


In the  “Fed Up” version of the story, The McGovern Report and subsequent government efforts, had the science right, but big greedy corporate interests twisted the findings, put pressure on politicians, and got them to water-down the goals.   

It makes a great story, but this is pure nonsense.  The government has never gotten the science right.  Governments don’t do science, they do consensus.  Sure enough The McGovern Report was a turning point, but that’s because the report was based on a flawed consensus!

In 1977 the biggest health issue of the day was thought to be heart disease.  A consensus had formed among health professionals that this malady was largely due to a diet high in meat, eggs, and dairy.  Fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol were our main enemies, with sugar and salt bringing up the rear.  The government accepted the consensus and mistook it to be settled science. 

When government mistakes consensus for science, it doesn’t just print a flawed report.  A cascade of bad decisions and policies result with untraceable negative consequences.  Subsidies, taxes, penalties, regulations, etc. all can be employed to support the consensus, and if that consensus is wrong, real damage results.

The late author Michael Crichton (“Jurassic Park”, “Andromeda Strain”, etc) had some choice words about the difference between consensus and science: 

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

Science is particularly elusive when it comes to diet.  One of the big challenges is the chronic nature of bad eating habits - there is often no immediate negative effect, and it can take years for health problems to emerge.  Another challenge is the fact that people are all unique in their level of activity, genetic make-up, and medical history.  Animal studies do not always correlate well with humans when it comes to diet.  And finally, controlling variables when humans are involved over long periods of time is nearly impossible.  Nevertheless, science has been putting a dent in the consensus.

For instance, we now know that McGovern’s first goal – to increase carbohydrate – was a monumentally bad one.  Since the consensus was that we should eat less meat, eggs, and dairy - all sources of protein and fat - we therefore had to increase the only thing left - carbohydrates.  The text of the report stresses increasing primarily "complex carbohydrates like whole-grains, fruits, and vegetables”.  Sounds harmless right?  Eh, not so much.

We now know that many of the so-called complex carbohydrates, like the ones The McGovern Report told us to eat for 60% of our diet, are just as bad as sugar!  There is no metabolic difference between a modern whole-wheat bagel and a can of Coke.  In fact, according to William Davis, MD author of  “Wheat Belly”, modern whole-wheat flour is more glycemic (blood sugar spiking) than even table sugar!

It turns out that overeating bad carbohydrates is what is making us obese.  It’s not fat, and it’s not just sugar as “Fed Up” would have us believe.  Some of those bad carbohydrates are the very ones our government has been pushing on us for nearly forty years!

I call all the bad carbohydrates GLUE.   Any carbohydrate is GLUE if it meets these criteria:

  •           GLycemic (blood sugar, and/or insulin spiking)
  •            Un-nutritious (low in nutrients)
  •            Energy-dense (highly caloric) 
GLUE includes all sugars and sweeteners, refined fruit and fruit juice, refined grains including anything made from flour, and refined starches.  (In general, the less a carbohydrate looks like its original form, the more likely it is GLUE.)     

This puts many so-called complex carbohydrates in the GLUE category, including pasta, crackers, bread, cereal, and some rice.  Even if it says “whole-grain” on the label, it is likely GLUE.  These are the things our government has been telling us to eat more of for nearly forty years.  Of course, when Americans are told to eat these things, most of what they buy is not whole-grain.  Americans have developed a taste for refined, bleached, white flours and starches, and this was the case before The McGovern Report.  Knowing this, and then telling Americans to eat more GLUE, is downright insane.

Below is a USDA graph showing how The McGovern Report actually influenced our food supply:



According to the USDA, fat trended down and carbohydrate skyrocketed shortly after The McGovern Report in 1977.  The graph also shows a similar availability of carbohydrates prior to the 1950s, but prior to WWII, USDA data was at best a guess.  Either way, back then we ate much less GLUE, and hence obesity and its complications were not epidemic.

(If you are wondering how I can make all these claims and not provide footnotes and citations, remember this is first and foremost a movie review.   And I'm a blogger not a scientist, Jim!  Suffice it to say my wife is a nutritionist, and she makes me read all these books.  If you’re interested in reading some too, a good one to start with is Gary Taubes' “Good Calories, Bad Calories”.  Taubes appears briefly in the film too.  I'll link more sources at the end.)  

The second, third, and fourth goals of The McGovern Report were concerned with reducing fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.  We now know that fat does not make us fat, that saturated fat does not cause heart disease, and that ingested cholesterol does not raise our bad cholesterol (LDL), but does raise our good (HDL). We now know that the consensus was wrong about all this too. 

One of the unintended consequences of The McGovern Report, as the movie does point-out, was the substitution of sugar for fat in processed foods. Thanks to the report’s recommendation that fat be reduced, food companies responded by replacing the flavorful fat with sugar and other sweeteners like HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup).  After all, sugar was the lesser of evils according to the report!  Moreover, HFCS was thought to be healthier then sugar according to the consensus.  Plus it was cheaper thanks in part to corn subsidies and sugar import restrictions.  This made it economical to put it in practically everything. Yay!  Thus the report shot itself in the foot - twice.

Another unintended consequence of the report was the substitution of trans-fats for saturated fats.  The report singled-out saturated fats, so corporations replaced them with man-made trans-fats.  We now know trans-fats are a proven health threat.  We also know that the generic recommendation to reduce saturated fat was irresponsible.  “Fed Up” does not mention this.  (See this from just the other day: "Study Questions Fat and Heart Disease Link")  

In short, the consensus was dead wrong on many levels.  Ergo, the premise of “Fed Up” is wrong:  Our obesity epidemic was not caused by greedy big corporations, but rather by big government do-gooder hubris, mistaking consensus for science, and incompetently engineering the diets of three hundred million unique individuals.  This is the real story behind our obesity epidemic.

I’m not suggesting that we could have entirely avoided this had the federal government not issued dietary goals based on a bad consensus.  We were well on our way to a crisis, downing Coca-Cola, Wonder Bread, and Mary Janes long before government got involved.  But the government managed to exacerbate and prolong the situation by repeatedly instructing us to eat more GLUE, and that continues up to this day!

There never was a unanimous consensus on diet.  Dr. Robert Atkins, a NY cardiologist, became famous for popularizing the low carbohydrate diet.  His 1972 book, “Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution” chronicled his observation that his patients did better eating low carbohydrate diets.  The consensus was dead wrong according to him.  Carbohydrate was the culprit, not fats, saturated fats, cholesterol, or just sugar.  He went on to correlate the emergence of our obesity epidemic with the advent of a diet high in refined carbohydrate.  From the 1960’s, until his death in 2003, and continuing today, he is called a denier, ridiculed, ostracized, demonized, and was even sued. Atkins may have not been right about everything, but it turns out he and the many others who came before him were onto something.

(Consensus sometimes behaves like religious fanatics - it burns its heretics at the stake.  Say, is that a torch-bearing mob coming my way?)

Now that the flaws in the consensus have been exposed and millions are dying, the do-gooders and their apologists, like those who made this movie, are trying to pin the blame on their favorite scapegoats – greedy corporations.

The movie makes a huge point of showing how the lobbyists and big food corporations pressured politicians to tweak the government recommendation in their favor. Admittedly, these parties had their own economic interests in mind, and they did put pressure on politicians who predictably folded.  But in the end, none of it had any effect because the consensus was wrong in the first place!  The McGovern Report’s very first goal was for us to consume more carbohydrate, much of it from GLUE.  Blaming this epidemic on efforts to water-down government reports is like blaming a butterfly for a hurricane!

That’s not to say that corporations do not play a role.  They make our food after all.  But corporations only make the products we demand.  We were instructed by the consensus and our government to eat more carbohydrate first, avoid fat second, avoid saturated fat third, avoid cholesterol fourth, and finally to reduce sugar and salt.  We demanded that corporations supply us with foods meeting those priorities.  And that’s just what they did.  The fact that we went on to consume way too much of the sugary stuff is not their fault.  It’s our fault.  The movie gets this basic cause and effect backwards.

Overlooked entirely in the movie is the role of the 1992 FDA Food Pyramid, which doubled-down on the faulty consensus from The McGovern Report.  It’s hard to find a more recognizable and influential symbol of our dietary trend the last quarter century. Bread, cereal, rice, and pasta, all GLUE, were to be the very foundations of our diet.  Again we were told to eat the wrong things by our government.



Ironically, Bill Clinton is one of the film’s heroes.  He was elected president the year the Food Pyramid debuted.  He along with his administration bought into the consensus and irresponsibly promoted The Food Pyramid for eight years.

The federal government is still at it today.  As I’m writing this, I became aware that the USDA has published a children’s book, and is urging grandparents to read it to their grandkids as a bedtime story.  The book features cute kittens explaining the current version of the Food Pyramid, which is called “My Plate”.  The first food group on My Plate, and the largest, is - “The Grains” – bread, crackers, rice, and noodles.  Big government is still mistaking consensus for science, still pedaling GLUE, and still puzzled by the ongoing obesity epidemic! 

Finally, there are the movie’s solutions. The main suggestion is to compare the diet caused epidemic to the smoking caused one, and learn from the successful campaign against smoking.   On this basic point I concur.  But the movie implies more. 

The good guys are all big government types:  Mike Bloomberg, Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin, for example.   While the bad guys all lean (relatively) smaller government:  Sarah Palin, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush.  As I have shown, big government has exacerbated and prolonged this epidemic.  How likely is it that even bigger government can solve it?

NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg is featured near the end of the movie.  He famously banned salt, big sugary drinks, and trans-fats from restaurants and stores in New York City.  Not just for kids, but for adults too.  This is the problem with Bloomberg-ism, and the movie’s implications:  there is no distinction between children and adults.  We are all children in the eyes of the nanny state. 

In the most blatantly disingenuous edit of the movie, Sarah Palin is shown speaking about how parents should be responsible for feeding their own kids and making the right choices.  In the very next clip she is seen sipping a Big Gulp.  The implication is clear:  the filmmakers are painting Palin as irresponsible and they do not believe she is capable of making responsible choices for her kids.  Therefore Palin and all parents need big government to do that for them.   Of course, the Big Gulp was a prop Palin employed in defiance of Mike Bloomberg’s attempted ban on big drinks.  Shamefully, the filmmakers don’t reveal that.  The courts agreed with Palin in the end.

Surely, government can play a role as it did with cigarettes and kids.  Advertising GLUE and unnatural food to kids could and should be barred, as should selling GLUE and unnatural foods to minors without adult permission.  That would be a big help.  But “Fed Up” is too busy covering for big government’s mistakes and demonizing big corporations to ever get that helpful.  The movie suggests a ban on sales and ads for "junk food", which under it's own definition would include such items as cheese, egg yolks, and a hamburger patty!

If government wants us to change our eating habits, they should start by admitting the errors of the consensus for the last forty years.  The McGovern Report has been proven wrong about fats, meat, eggs, cholesterol, dairy, and now even salt.  Those are not the things that are killing us.  Too much GLUE and unnatural foods are what's killing us.  The government mistook a consensus for science, focused on the wrong culprits, and has been giving us bad advice for forty years. 

“Fed Up” misses this incredible story of government hubris, mistaking consensus for science, misinformation, and tragic unintended consequences.  Instead, it preaches more consensus – corporations are evil and big government can save us. 


Further Reading
The real solution cannot come from a government prone to confusing consensus with science.  Nor can it come from politicians who sell policy to the highest bidder (from either party).  It has to come from people educating themselves.  Many people have adopted low-carb, “paleo”, whole-food, and no grain eating habits without the government telling them to, and they are getting thinner and healthier. 
Here are some book suggestions which may help you:
Gary Taubes
"Wheat Belly"

Robb Wolf
"The Paleo Solution"

Mark Sisson
"The Primal Blueprint"

Liz Wolfe, NTP
"Eat The Yolks"

And of course, Dr. Robert Atkins
"Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution"

(*Many thanks to my lovely nutritionist wife Pam for her help in writing this piece, making me read these books, and for keeping me healthy despite myself!)

Originally published 4/2/14.  Reposted upon release of the film 5/9/14.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Dude, Benghazi Still Matters


According to the “Obama-Is-Awesome” crowd, Benghazi doesn’t matter.  It’s old news, the election’s over, Fox is the only network that cares, nothing can bring back those who died, it’s all about politics, what difference does it make, move on dot org, let’s focus on jobs, look, the Koch brothers, and go Hillary 2016! 

Dude, Benghazi still matters.  Some are calling the Ben Rhodes email a smoking gun.  Yes it is, but not just for what it says.  The Ben Rhodes email proves illegal activity on the part of the Obama Administration.  Remember, this email was part of a previous subpoena but was withheld by the administration.  A judge forced its release as part of another subpoena from a private lawsuit.  At this rate there could be hundreds of such documents. This renders all previous hearings and investigations null and void.  It is abundantly clear that there has been a twenty-month campaign by the Obama administration to stonewall and cover-up the truth.  Innocent parties don’t behave this way.  And it is illegal to ignore a subpoena.

The content of the withheld email along with recent testimony contradicts everything the administration has been telling us.  They were involved in pushing the YouTube video story.  They did edit the talking points.  They did know an al Qaeda affiliate called Ansar al-Sharia was responsible.  They knew there was no demonstration about a video in Benghazi.

Moreover, they have never revealed why requested security was denied and who was responsible.  They have never told us why Chris Stevens and the CIA were in Benghazi.  They have never explained Barack Obama’s whereabouts during the attack and involvement in the decision not to attempt a rescue.  They still have not brought justice to the murderers - no one has been captured or punished - despite several journalists being able to locate and interview the perpetrators.  A filmmaker was jailed for a full year as a result of this alleged deception.  $70,000 in taxpayer funds was spent on ads in Muslim countries to apologize for a YouTube video. 

The Presidential oath of office begins with the line “I do solemnly swear to faithfully execute the Office of The President…”  The definition of faithfully is “in a manner that is true to the facts…”  Just in recent history Richard Nixon lost his job because he did not act in a manner true to the facts.  Bill Clinton was impeached for the same offense.  No one died in either case.  Did Barack Obama know the truth about Benghazi and then lie to the American people to cover-up his incompetence in the face of a re-election campaign?  This matters, and Presidents have lost their jobs over it. 

The second line of the Presidential oath regards the obligation to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution…”  If the YouTube video was a deception to cover-up incompetence, then jailing a filmmaker to support the deception clearly violates the Constitution.  If the video was a deception, then the $70,000 spent on running ads in Muslim countries was a theft of taxpayer funds for purposes of winning an election. 

Hillary Clinton aspires to swearing the same oath as Barack Obama.  She swore a similar oath as Secretary of State. 

Dude, Benghazi still matters, and learning the truth is the right thing to do.  


Thursday, April 24, 2014

Bundy vs. Douglass

Cliven Bundy, the dissident rancher in Nevada, waded into race the other day as if he didn't have enough on his hands already fighting the federal government.  Here's what he said according to The New York Times:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.Continue reading the main story"
And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

To our ears in 2014, coming from a white person, this is highly inflammatory speech. But in 1862, coming from a former slave, almost the exact same sentiment was inspired, prescient, brilliant.  Here's what Frederick Douglass had to say, and he repeated this throughout his public life:
 
"What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!

Indeed, context and timing are everything.  

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Happy Earth Day!

First off, let me say I'm an environmentalist.  I have seen pristine coral reefs ruined by careless humans.  I've choked on the air in places like Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.  I've seen unmentionable things washing up on beaches, and surfed through things I'd rather forget.  I was in the water treatment business, and invented a cheaper way for industries to treat their own wastewater.  Currently, I'm working on an after-market automobile exhaust filter.  I even once dabbled in selling retail carbon credits!

That said, I'm a global warming agnostic.  Allow me to explain:  Unless I've done the "science" myself, as in the above examples, all I have to go by is secondhand science.  To rely on that, I need to be convinced that what I'm reading is in fact science.  So far, what I've seen on the subject of global warming does not amount to science, but is rather  consensus.

Here's what author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, etc) had to say about the difference between science and consensus:        

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
We've seen this movie before.  The exact same thing happened in the medical field with heart disease and diet.  Just like the global warming debate today, there was a time during the heart disease debate when the problem was believed to be so serious that there wasn't sufficient time to do real science.  Instead, we were given a consensus opinion and  told that the science was settled.  It turned out that was a disaster.

We were told, for instance, that fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol were causing heart disease.  The science was settled they said.  The federal government began issuing reports and official recommendations in 1977 based on this consensus opinion.  They have stuck to their guns on this all the way to today.  Only one problem; the science on fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol disagrees with the consensus.  (If you’re interested in reading about this, a good place to start is Gary Taubes' “Good Calories, Bad Calories”)

Is the consensus also wrong about man-made global warming?  Time will tell.  All I know is the global warming consensus advocates are behaving exactly like the diet consensus advocates, and that speaks volumes. 
   



    

Friday, April 18, 2014

Not A Smidgen Of Corruption. Period.


We keep hearing how there is no evidence that “The White House” (like the building itself is the perp!) is involved in any scandals.  Not surprising, since they have stonewalled every attempt to provide information, and key figures have refused to testify. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, the media is in on the cover-up.  So, since they refuse to cooperate and exonerate themselves, (because everyone knows that innocent parties always obstruct investigations!) we are left with a circumstantial trail of clues that, well, speaks for itself: 

From yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily:

Corruption: New emails show that both the IRS and Justice Department were involved in a probe of Tea Party and other conservative groups. This is no mere scandal — it's a major breach of the law.

At this point it’s clear that the disenfranchisement of conservatives during an election cycle was a coordinated attempt by ruling Democrats, including the President, to win an election at any cost.  It all fits with the lying about doctors and insurance, the fudging of numbers, and the auditing and intimidation of any and all opponents.  But these recent email disclosures go beyond denying non-profit status.  They sought to criminalize opposing political speech!

IBD concludes:
President Obama told Fox News in February that there wasn't "even a smidgen of corruption" in what the IRS did. The corruption is there, Mr. President, and it demands a prosecution. The only remaining question is whether the rot extends to your office, too.

Yes it does.  Next question.  Here’s just a partial list of amazing circumstantial coincidences, which tie Barack Obama, yes President Barack Obama, directly to thuggishly targeting his political opponents and weaponizing the federal government:  

  • Ever hear of the Barack H. Obama Foundation?  It’s a non-profit based in Kenya run by Barack Obama’s half brother Malik Obama, best man at the Obama wedding.  It allegedly raises money for Muslim terror organizations among other shady things.  Yet, in the midst of disenfranchising conservative groups, Lois Lerner found time to grant it retroactive tax-exempt status going back 4 years, mere days after receiving its application. So conservatives get denied after a 4 year delay, while Barack Obama’s Kenyan, Muslim, shady half brother gets approved instantly and 4 years retroactively.  Not a smidgen here. 
  • Gibson guitars, which relocated to a right-to-work state was raided twice by Obama’s armed federal agents, harassed, property seized and destroyed.
  • Non-union Toyota was targeted by Obama, fined, sued, humiliated, bullied.  
  • Johnson & Johnson, scourge of unions, was targeted by Obama, fined, sued, harassed, and had plants shut down.
  • Boeing tried to open a new plant in a right-to-work state, got sued by Obama’s NRLB, and the plant opening was delayed until Boeing capitulated to its machinists union.
Read this for details on the above.

Nope, not a smidgen of corruption here.  Period. 

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Fed Up with “Fed Up”


I saw the food documentary “Fed Up” the other day and have a lot to say.  “Fed Up” is a film about diet, health, and the epidemic of obesity and its complications.  Made by executive producers Katie Couric and Laurie David, and directed by Stephanie Soechtig, the film chronicles the struggles of a handful of overweight kids and intersperses their stories with interviews of politicians, scientists, and practitioners explaining how we got here and how to fix it. 

If you have not heard of this film, you will soon.  “Fed Up” was one of the hardest tickets to get at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  Apparently food and diet are very potent topics.  And this film is potent.  It has all the right elements for a successful documentary:  a scary health story everyone can relate to, a big name narrator - Katie Couric, big name cameos, good production, plus all the right villains, heroes, and victims. 
  • Villains:  big sugar, big corporations, lobbyists, venal politicians (mostly Republicans), Fox News, Sarah Palin, George W Bush. 
  •  Heroes:  concerned professionals - doctors, scientists, nutritionists, do-gooder politicians (almost all Democrats), Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin, George McGovern.
  • Victims:  kids, minorities, the poor.
Unfortunately, “Fed Up” is deeply flawed.  While the movie does do a good job of telling the sugar story, it misses the carbohydrate forest for the sugar trees.  It also has an overt political agenda which blinds it from seeing the true culprits.  Along the way it glosses-over and misrepresents some key elements and ultimately alludes to the wrong solutions.  When all is said and done, “Fed Up” is the equivalent of a jumbo tub of popcorn ladled with salt and trans-fats -  you will enjoy it while it lasts, but it will leave you worse-off in the end.

Here’s the movie in summary: 
  • Too much sugar in our diets has led to an epidemic of obesity, which has led to a host of health problems, and ultimately will lead to premature death for millions.  Children are most at risk. 
  • Greedy big corporations and lobbyists threw money at venal politicians, and got them to conspire against our health interests, which caused it all. 
  • Therefore, the cure is for big government to step in and stop the greedy corporations from harming us for profit. 
According to the movie, a key turning-point which led to our obesity epidemic was a 1977 government report titled “Dietary Goals for the United States”, aka The McGovern Report.  This was the first time the federal government officially weighed-in on diet.  Here are the report’s six goals: 


In the  “Fed Up” version of the story, The McGovern Report and subsequent government efforts had the science right, but big greedy corporate interests twisted the findings, put pressure on politicians, and got them to water-down the goals.   

It makes a great story, but this is pure nonsense.  The government has never gotten the science right.  Governments don’t do science, they do consensus.  Sure enough The McGovern Report was a turning point, but that’s because the report was based on a flawed consensus!

In 1977 the biggest health issue of the day was thought to be heart disease.  A consensus had formed among health professionals that this malady was largely due to a diet high in meat, eggs, and dairy.  Fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol were our main enemies with sugar and salt bringing up the rear.  The government accepted the consensus and mistook it to be settled science. 

When government mistakes consensus for science, it doesn’t just print a flawed report.  A cascade of bad decisions and policies result with untraceable negative consequences.  Subsidies, taxes, penalties, regulations, etc. all can be employed to support the consensus, and if that consensus is wrong, real damage results.

The late author Michael Crichton (“Jurassic Park”, “Andromeda Strain”, etc) had some choice words about the difference between consensus and science: 

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

Science is particularly elusive when it comes to diet.  One of the big challenges is the chronic nature of bad eating habits - there is often no immediate negative effect, and it can take years for health problems to emerge.  Another challenge is the fact that people are all unique in their level of activity, genetic make-up, and medical history.  Animal studies do not always correlate well with humans when it comes to diet.  And finally, controlling variables when humans are involved over long periods of time is nearly impossible.  Nevertheless, science has been putting a dent in the consensus.

For instance, we now know that McGovern’s first goal – to increase carbohydrate – was a monumentally bad one.  Since the consensus was that we should eat less meat, eggs, and dairy - all sources of protein and fat - we therefore had to increase the only thing left - carbohydrates.  The text of the report stresses increasing primarily "complex carbohydrates like whole-grains, fruits, and vegetables”.  Sounds harmless right?  Eh, not so much.

We now know that many of the so-called complex carbohydrates, like the ones The McGovern Report told us to eat for 60% of our diet, are just as bad as sugar!  There is no metabolic difference between a modern whole-wheat bagel and a can of Coke.  In fact, according to William Davis, MD author of  “Wheat Belly”, modern whole-wheat flour is more glycemic (blood sugar spiking) than even table sugar!

It turns out that overeating bad carbohydrates is what is making us obese.  It’s not fat, and it’s not just sugar as “Fed Up” would have us believe.  Some of those bad carbohydrates are the very ones our government has been pushing on us for nearly forty years!

I call all the bad carbohydrates GLUE.   Any carbohydrate is GLUE if it meets these criteria:

  •           GLycemic (blood sugar, and/or insulin spiking)
  •            Un-nutritious (low in nutrients)
  •            Energy-dense (highly caloric) 
GLUE includes all sugars and sweeteners, refined fruit and fruit juice, refined grains including anything made from flour, and refined starches.  (In general, the less a carbohydrate looks like its original form, the more likely it is GLUE.)     

This puts many so-called complex carbohydrates in the GLUE category, including pasta, crackers, bread, cereal, and some rice.  Even if it says “whole-grain” on the label, it is likely GLUE.  These are the things our government has been telling us to eat more of for nearly forty years.  Of course, when Americans are told to eat these things, most of what they buy is not whole-grain.  Americans have developed a taste for refined, bleached, white flours and starches, and this was the case before The McGovern Report.  Knowing this, and then telling Americans to eat more GLUE, is downright insane.

Below is a USDA graph showing how The McGovern Report actually influenced our food supply:



According to the USDA, fat trended down and carbohydrate skyrocketed shortly after The McGovern Report in 1977.  The graph also shows a similar availability of carbohydrates prior to the 1950s, but prior to WWII, USDA data was at best a guess.  Either way, back then we ate much less GLUE, and hence obesity and its complications were not epidemic.

(If you are wondering how I can make all these claims and not provide footnotes and citations, remember this is first and foremost a movie review.   And I'm a blogger not a scientist, Jim!  Suffice it to say my wife is a nutritionist, and she makes me read all these books.  If you’re interested in reading some too, a good one to start with is Gary Taubes' “Good Calories, Bad Calories”.  Taubes appears briefly in the film too.  I'll link more sources at the end.)  

The second, third, and fourth goals of The McGovern Report were concerned with reducing fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.  We now know that fat does not make us fat, that saturated fat does not cause heart disease, and that ingested cholesterol does not raise our bad cholesterol (LDL), but does raise our good (HDL). We now know that the consensus was wrong about all this too. 

One of the unintended consequences of The McGovern Report, as the movie does point-out, was the substitution of sugar for fat in processed foods. Thanks to the report’s recommendation that fat be reduced, food companies responded by replacing the flavorful fat with sugar and other sweeteners like HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup).  After all, sugar was the lesser of evils according to the report!  Moreover, HFCS was thought to be healthier then sugar according to the consensus.  Plus it was cheaper thanks in part to corn subsidies and sugar import restrictions.  This made it economical to put it in practically everything. Yay!  Thus the report shot itself in the foot - twice.

Another unintended consequence of the report was the substitution of trans-fats for saturated fats.  The report singled-out saturated fats, so corporations replaced them with man-made trans-fats.  We now know trans-fats are a proven health threat.  We also know that the generic recommendation to reduce saturated fat was irresponsible.  “Fed Up” does not mention this.  (See this from just the other day: "Study Questions Fat and Heart Disease Link")  

In short, the consensus was dead wrong on many levels.  Ergo, the premise of “Fed Up” is wrong:  Our obesity epidemic was not caused by greedy big corporations, but rather by big government do-gooder hubris, mistaking consensus for science, and incompetently engineering the diets of three hundred million unique individuals.  This is the real story behind our obesity epidemic.

I’m not suggesting that we could have entirely avoided this had the federal government not issued dietary goals based on a bad consensus.  We were well on our way to a crisis, downing Coca-Cola, Wonder Bread, and Mary Janes long before government got involved.  But the government managed to exacerbate and prolong the situation by repeatedly instructing us to eat more GLUE, and that continues up to this day!

There never was a unanimous consensus on diet.  Dr. Robert Atkins, a NY cardiologist, became famous for popularizing the low carbohydrate diet.  His 1972 book, “Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution” chronicled his observation that his patients did better eating low carbohydrate diets.  The consensus was dead wrong according to him.  Carbohydrate was the culprit, not fats, saturated fats, cholesterol, or just sugar.  He went on to correlate the emergence of our obesity epidemic with the advent of a diet high in refined carbohydrate.  From the 1960’s, until his death in 2003, and continuing today, he is called a denier, ridiculed, ostracized, demonized, and was even sued. Atkins may have not been right about everything, but it turns out he and the many others who came before him were onto something.

(Consensus sometimes behaves like religious fanatics - it burns its heretics at the stake.  Say, is that a torch-bearing mob coming my way?)

Now that the flaws in the consensus have been exposed and millions are dying, the do-gooders and their apologists, like those who made this movie, are trying to pin the blame on their favorite scapegoats – greedy corporations.

The movie makes a huge point of showing how the lobbyists and big food corporations pressured politicians to tweak the government recommendation in their favor. Admittedly, these parties had their own economic interests in mind, and they did put pressure on politicians who predictably folded.  But in the end, none of it had any effect because the consensus was wrong in the first place!  The McGovern Report’s very first goal was for us to consume more carbohydrate, much of it from GLUE.  Blaming this epidemic on efforts to water-down government reports is like blaming a butterfly for a hurricane!

That’s not to say that corporations do not play a role.  They make our food after all.  But corporations only make the products we demand.  We were instructed by the consensus and our government to eat more carbohydrate first, avoid fat second, avoid saturated fat third, avoid cholesterol fourth, and finally to reduce sugar and salt.  We demanded that corporations supply us with foods meeting those priorities.  And that’s just what they did.  The fact that we went on to consume way too much of the sugary stuff is not their fault.  It’s our fault.  The movie gets this basic cause and effect backwards.

Overlooked entirely in the movie is the role of the 1992 FDA Food Pyramid, which doubled-down on the faulty consensus from The McGovern Report.  It’s hard to find a more recognizable and influential symbol of our dietary trend the last quarter century. Bread, cereal, rice, and pasta, all GLUE, were to be the very foundations of our diet.  Again we were told to eat the wrong things by our government.



Ironically, Bill Clinton is one of the film’s heroes.  He was elected president the year the Food Pyramid debuted.  He along with his administration bought into the consensus and irresponsibly promoted The Food Pyramid for eight years.

The federal government is still at it today.  As I’m writing this, I became aware that the USDA has published a children’s book, and is urging grandparents to read it to their grandkids as a bedtime story.  The book features cute kittens explaining the current version of the Food Pyramid, which is called “My Plate”.  The first food group on My Plate, and the largest, is - “The Grains” – bread, crackers, rice, and noodles.  Big government is still mistaking consensus for science, still pedaling GLUE, and still puzzled by the ongoing obesity epidemic! 

Finally, there are the movie’s solutions. The main suggestion is to compare the diet caused epidemic to the smoking caused one, and learn from the successful campaign against smoking.   On this basic point I concur.  But the movie implies more. 

The good guys are all big government types:  Mike Bloomberg, Bill Clinton, Tom Harkin, for example.   While the bad guys all lean (relatively) smaller government:  Sarah Palin, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush.  As I have shown, big government has exacerbated and prolonged this epidemic.  How likely is it that even bigger government can solve it?

NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg is featured near the end of the movie.  He famously banned salt, big sugary drinks, and trans-fats from restaurants and stores in New York City.  Not just for kids, but for adults too.  This is the problem with Bloomberg-ism, and the movie’s implications:  there is no distinction between children and adults.  We are all children in the eyes of the nanny state. 

In the most blatantly disingenuous edit of the movie, Sarah Palin is shown speaking about how parents should be responsible for feeding their own kids and making the right choices.  In the very next clip she is seen sipping a Big Gulp.  The implication is clear:  the filmmakers are painting Palin as irresponsible and they do not believe she is capable of making responsible choices for her kids.  Therefore Palin and all parents need big government to do that for them.   Of course, the Big Gulp was a prop Palin employed in defiance of Mike Bloomberg’s attempted ban on big drinks.  Shamefully, the filmmakers don’t reveal that.  The courts agreed with Palin in the end.

Surely, government can play a role as it did with cigarettes and kids.  Advertising GLUE and unnatural food to kids could and should be barred, as should selling GLUE and unnatural foods to minors without adult permission.  That would be a big help.  But “Fed Up” is too busy covering for big government’s mistakes and demonizing big corporations to ever get that helpful.  The movie suggests a ban on sales and ads for "junk food", which according to it's own definition would include such items as cheese, egg yolks, and a hamburger patty!  

If government wants us to change our eating habits, they should start by admitting the errors of the consensus for the last forty years.  The McGovern Report has been proven wrong about fats, meat, eggs, cholesterol, dairy, and now even salt.  Those are not the things that are killing us.  Too much GLUE and unnatural foods are what's killing us.  The government mistook a consensus for science, focused on the wrong culprits, and has been giving us bad advice for forty years. 

“Fed Up” misses this incredible story of government hubris, mistaking consensus for science, misinformation, and tragic unintended consequences.  Instead, it preaches more consensus – corporations are evil and big government can save us. 


Further Reading
The real solution cannot come from a government prone to confusing consensus with science.  Nor can it come from politicians who sell policy to the highest bidder (from either party).  It has to come from people educating themselves.  Many people have adopted low-carb, “paleo”, whole-food, and no grain eating habits without the government telling them to, and they are getting thinner and healthier. 
Here are some book suggestions which may help you:
 
Gary Taubes
"Wheat Belly"

Robb Wolf
"The Paleo Solution"

Mark Sisson
"The Primal Blueprint"

Liz Wolfe, NTP
"Eat The Yolks"

And of course, Dr. Robert Atkins
"Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution"

(*Many thanks to my lovely nutritionist wife Pam for her help in writing this piece, making me read these books, and for keeping me healthy despite myself!)