Imaginary food
Based on what appears to be rather scanty evidence, we’ve long been advised to reduce fat consumption from our diets, and then to eat “heart-healthy” vegetable fats and oils while shunning animal fats. One rationale given is that animal fats are full of saturated fats, it is said, which we’re supposed to understand is profoundly bad, again, based on very skimpy and at best inconclusive research.
The short version of the official story is that olive oil is best, vegetable oil is good, and butter and bacon fat are bad. The perception is that olive oil is full of presumably good monounsaturated fatty acids, whereas fats that are solid at room temperature like butter and lard are nearly pure saturated fats. Because the health experts have been singing from this page so long that they know the words by heart, one supposes, they no longer consider the veracity. Yet the perception could hardly be less representative of the reality.
One researcher who has been reviewing the science behind official dietary advice is Dr. Zoe Harcombe in Wales. She has a nice summary review of the issue at her website. As it turns out—based on publicly available nutrition data—a tablespoon of olive oil contains more supposedly unhealthy saturated fat than does a 100-gram pork chop.
All foods contain a combination of different fatty acids. The idea that some foods are pure and good in this regard, whereas others are unhealthy and unclean turns out to be based on a lot of assumptions, chief among them that saturated fat is unhealthy or causes heart disease. Vegetable oils and fats were not a significant portion of our diets until the industrial food industry made them available at the beginning of the 20th century.
As she concludes:
When you know a few facts about food, you can make a mockery of our dietary advice.
Indeed. It is questionable generally for government to have gotten involved in endorsing specific dietary advice. But once it did get involved, there was no stopping it from throwing its weight around the rest of health and medical science, either, thereby giving various interest groups a single entity to attempt to bribe for favorable treatment.
Disclaimer: My opinions here are my own, based on the sources I cite and my other reading of the subject matter for several years now. None of it should be taken as professional medical or health advice. It is entirely possible that all my assumptions are wrong, no matter how convincing I believe them to be. The researchers and physicians who support views such as mine note that individuals should consult their own practitioners.
Maybe Marque could write something on Medicare and Social Security! Probably not old enough, but right now I’m sitting on hold, waiting to talk to someone from Social Security so I can get some information for Part B that supposedly shows payments made last year. I’ve just heard that they regret I’ve waited so long for the 3rd time, and I’ve probably been waiting 20 minutes, so far.
I’ve already spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone with two different insurance companies, and I thought we were done! But, nooo!!!
Why can’t they hire and train people so their “customers” don’t spend all this time on hold because there’s always one more hoop to jump through?
It involves a fair amount of money. Otherwise, I’d just give up.
PS: We are set to break a temp record here today...67 degrees, in mid February, never seen it in my lifetime...though the winds are strong and gusting 40 to 50 mph, that is supposed to stop by 4PM EST.
Works for me, I hate driving in snow and ice...and March while it can snow ( even into April it can) it is rarely, if ever, snow storms, just flurries and showers
I will never forget Yellowstone in June where it was snowing...same with upper Michigan on the lake in Oscoda.