If there’s a group I’ve enjoyed ridiculing this year, it’s all those related to the quacktastic Weston A. Price Foundation, such as Sally Fallon and her book “Nourishing Traditions”, as well as Dr. Mercola.
These are easy targets.
I.
I’m not doing any original research here, I’m merely amusing myself by reading others critique or just bash them; and then their cult-like followers respond in comment sections with great indignity. Clearly, they reason, the original poster didn’t read the book in question, or it must all be true because my hundred-and-fifty-year-old grandmother ate lard and ghee every day and was as healthy as a horse and outlived all my other relatives who adapted to a ‘western diet’ and so clearly saturated fat is good for us and anecdote anecdote anecdote.
That’s my yada yada yada.
Yoda, Yoda, Yoda.
II.
[1] Diet-Blog Looks at Nourishing Traditions. From the comments:
- “my paternal grandmother, in india, has been telling me as long as i can remember about the wonderful nutritional properties of ghee (clarified butter) and coconut oil (a traditional part of the south indian diet) – both are valued highly in ayurvedic medicine.” It gets more anecdotey from there … but my quackmeter was already at eleven with ‘ayurvedic medicine‘. As they say — and I say, flippantly –, you know what you call ‘alternative medicine’ that works? Medicine.
- “Your say against my say. Be practical, go on Sally Fallon’s diet for 6 months and proof her wrong!” Perhaps I shouldn’t dismiss someone for being unable to write, but it’s Saturday and on the weekend I’m no longer paid to be tactful. In any case, it’s more of the non-scientific — anti-scientific — all-views-are-equal, radical subjectivity approach. When I read drivel like this I want to force-feed people a little Hume, not because he was ‘right’, but because he’s a good place to start thinking critically about how, using empirical means, we may build up, stage by stage, more certain and more general (if not not universal) claims to knowledge. “I have my knowledge and you have your knowledge”, as this comment basically claims, is an exercise in vapid anti-intellectualism.
- “She says to replace chemical fats (margarine, shortening, etc.) with real fats that are good for you” … someone doesn’t understand any meaningful meaning of ‘chemical’ or ‘real’. In real life I hate this sort of magical thinking, which provides an interesting but batsh*t scale of ‘real’ based on a supposed ‘natural = good’ relation, along with some vitalism and so on; it’s the Early Modern Period thrust into the quackery of the 19th century. But from an academic and critical point of view I’ve always found this manner of ‘thinking’ fascinating.
[2] Fanciful Folklore Is No Match For Modern Science. Quotworthy:
- “WAPF correctly points out that processed foods, sugar, corn syrup, and white flour are harmful, but nutritional deficiencies caused by “junk foods” are not remedied by a diet high in meat and butter, animal products that are devoid of plant-derived phytonutrients, which promote health and slow the “aging” process.”
- “Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, is a smorgasbord of woefully outdated and potentially dangerous advice”
- Circular logic: “Fallon and Enig perpetuate long-held nutritional myths by referencing the same people who started the myths in the first place.”
Of course, alas, we’re also dealing with a post by Dr. Fuhrman, who is another one-man industry and who has a certain agenda. Thus we must use our critical thinking caps.
- Your disease, your fault at Science-Based Medicine: “And Joel is trying to sell you something. Like most so-called medical writers at HuffPo, he links directly to his website, where he sells all sorts of miracles.”
- Eat To Live Diet, Eat For Health: Review, Observations, Success, Doing It With Weight Watchers: ‘celebrity’ endorsement? Check. Dr. Oz endorsement? Check. Reads more like a paid advertisement than a review? Check.
Anyway, back to the original topic, in brief:
- SALLY. FALLON MEAT QUACK AND WITCHDOCTOR (ooh, look, all-caps!)
- Sally Fallon Morell and the Weston A. Price Foundation, you better get a very good lawyer – and lots of insurance (about raw milk quackery)
- Nourishing Traditions is total Quackery (that’s more like it … along with the cat fights in the comments)
- Weston A. Price Foundation: shills and quacks (“The Weston A. Price Foundation is one of the primary groups responsible for spreading some of the FUD that you may have heard about soy products.” Indeed. And then you get the stupid comment by Biologist: “Veganism and vegetarinism [sic] are senseless when you consider predator-prey relations and when it comes to your need for omega-3s in balence [sic] with omega-3s. If you don’t listen to me oh well, you will be infertile as a result. Soy is nutriution [sic] deficient and a scam.” I love it!)
It’s fun letting the quacks and cranks go at each other.
III.
As for soy, while I may not necessarily respect the groups I’m linking to (oh, cray-cray Animal Liberation Front …), but they can be used as anti-Mercola medicine:
- What About Soy? (Plus, I love the 1990s color scheme, very Web 0.47)
- Soy: What’s the Harm? and Response to Not Soy Fast
- Evidence Soy is Not Ideal to Consume (the POST is pure Mercola-esque quackery copied-and-pasted cognitively from similar sources — see also “Why Soy is Not Healthy, which is almost a carbon copy, or the anti-soy section of 9 Steps To Perfect Health – #1: Don’t Eat Toxins, which is another clone –, BUT there’s the detailed and link-heavy comment by De Landtsheer that’s worth perusing … though it’s immediately followed by some sort of genius pseudoscience, “It is a fact that soy proteins are folded and cannot be broken down by the body.” Oh. Really. Oh, Joe Martino, you limp-brained nematode.)
Going elsewhere …
[3] What About Grass-fed Beef?
As someone from the West I’m familiar with mile after mile of grazing cattle; the description here, however, of the extant policies make them seem so entrenched that hope for better West quickly turns to despair.
