Thursday, November 20, 2014

AAAAARRRGH! ;-)

What a wonderful place a blog is to vent....  I've been driving for the last nine hours (dinner break included), and recently sat down en deshabille with my feet up, and here i can't help jumping right in to grinch about something i read on twitter.  :-D  Yes, i AM incorrigible.

"The Health Potential of Fruits and Vegetables Phytochemicals: Notable Examples"  HOLY MOTHER OF THE DREAD CTHULHU -- somebody thought this was a worthwhile study???  It's in PubMed, but it sounds like a junior high school science assignment.

OVER AND OVER people claim that there are health benefits of eating plant life, because epidemiological studies show superior health in those who eat them (ignoring countless confounders).  Plant products theoretically have important nutrients (assuming one's body can actually use them).  But over and over AND OVER, when proper studies try to pin down this claim, it evaporates like steamed-up glass in the car, when you open the windows and let in some fresh air.

Academia, PROVE that those things actually do what you claim -- i dare you.  ...And STFU until you do!

20 comments:

  1. Bill likes tweeting inane stuff like that, unfortunately. He's a pretty good source of information otherwise, but yeah, the endless crap about berries and vegetables, blah blah blah.
    Btw, I've never driven a single minute. Driving isn't Paleo.

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    1. lol -- you caught that reference quickly! :-) yes, i like Bill and he shares a wide variety of stuff, but TAKING FOR GRANTED the "healthiness" of fruitsandvegetables has started chapping my hide....

      i'd walk or ride a horse or drive a cart the 1600-mile round trip, but it would take a LOOOONG time! ;-) ... oh wait, are carts paleo? when was the horse domesticated? ...and i KNOW bicycles (with their inflatable tires) are decidedly neolithic....

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    2. "oh wait, are carts paleo?"
      I'll have to ask Duck if the Inuit used carts. I'll only use them if they did.
      "when was the horse domesticated?"
      I don't know, but I do know they used to hibernate and be fatty.
      bit.ly/1uo14Qf
      If I come across any I'll use the fat for my lamps and eat the lean, so I don't go into ketosis.

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  2. Twitter will be the death of us all.

    If Cthulhu doesn't come for us first.

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    1. :-) the benefit of twitter is that i'm NOT getting lots of politcal teapublican nonsense there! some days i think, if Cthulhu doesn't come and take THEM away, it might be restful to go to him myself!

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    2. Frankly, this is the way I view the two social media giants:

      Twitter: great for fantasy football instant updates, and for setting it up to get positive thinking and other great quotes on a regular basis. Nothing else.

      Facebook: great to see photos of grandkids. Not much else. Will leave for days at a time when the politics gets to be too much. (which might be this weekend, after the Obama thang. LOL)

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    3. FB is good for my family and friends scattered among all the places i've ever lived.... :-)

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  3. It is especially annoying when some food is described as being universally "good for you". May be naturally produced in plants pesticides do have interesting qualities when enter human body.
    I am afraid I am still emotionally scarred for life after memories how the more colorful some fruits/vegetables were, the more eczema flare they caused for my then little son, who is 22 now. We were busy getting him light yellow carrots, white currant, apples with lightest skin. Then I was worried that he would be unhealthy without eating vegetables and fruits, and a good mother had a duty to give her child as much produce as she could. I wish I knew then that I had to keep bread away from him. Now on a gluten-free diet he can eat foods which used to cause allergy.
    I totally grind my teeth when I hear about chocolate and red vine being super foods. Ha!

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    1. people WANT things like chocolate and wine to be good for them -- gives them an excuse to indulge! :-D ...i know what you mean about kids' diets -- if i knew then what i know now, ALL our lives would be different!!!

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  4. Yeah, and it mostly comes from the "eat unprocessed foods" crowd. Do they have any idea how wine is made? It's highly processed. Chocolate, too.

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    1. i think many are getting bored with paleo -- seeking out pubmed sources to support their DESIRE to eat the things they so ardently avoided two years ago....

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    2. It would be better if they just admitted that they're going to be 90% compliant because that's how they prefer to live. Looking for excuses is a bad mental habit that short-circuits your critical thinking skills. Just look at what happened to the Fathead blog after Tom joined the potato heads. People tried to point out flaws in his thinking and facts, to no avail.

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    3. YES -- that's a point that hadn't occurred to me, but the "short-circuit" argument really resonates. :-)

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  5. Jeez I could have a few arguments over some of the stuff posted on this thread. But I promised myself a long time ago to behave on this blog. Believe me that takes some doing as some here know.

    Have a great weekend folks and go easy on that horrible highly processed booze.

    Kind regards Eddie

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    1. feel free, Eddie! :-) i know i put some very provocative stuff here ... but my rants are frequently about things i read that irritate me elsewhere and that i don't want to carry on THERE.

      I also know that many people do very well with produce -- Terry Wahls being the poster-child. It's just the unscientific, taking-it-for-granted, CW part of it that set me off this time. Some of us DO NOT cope well with a lot of vegetables, let alone fruits -- yet because some people DO f&v are "obviously" beneficial across the board? NOPE.

      A great weekend to you, Jan, and our other LCTM friends, too!!! :-)

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    2. How is it being provocative? There is a lot of talk on LC blogs for a while about the futility of the advice "eat more plants", Peter posted a lot about imaginary benefits of fruits and vegetables , here is a good example - http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/search/label/Fruit%20and%20vegetables%20%286%29%20WHEL%20study.
      It looks like the better a study designed , the less benefits of fruits and vegetables it demonstrates.

      One of main benefits of a fresh produce is totally undeniable - in the local system of mass-believes that plants are "nutritional superpowers" the presence of that colorful fresh staff makes LC and even Atkins way more politically correct. When they tell you "What could you possibly eat while avoiding starches and grains, you may get a constipation and miss vital nutrients", and you can always answer, "Sorry, madam/sir, but I can't see how I would get less nutrients and fiber when I switch rice or pasta on a side of my chicken for a broccoli ". Way more widely acceptable, compare with some stuff on all-meat-eaters blogs, like that http://www.empiri.ca/2014/11/experiences-of-five-year-carnivore-part_11.html?showComment=1416680380768#c4841234480266742074

      I suspect most Mediterranean cuisine use vegetables mostly as a way to add/mask flavor to vast quantities of not very tasty olive oil. Does somebody else, but me , thinks that really authentic olive oil tastes horrible, not to mention burns your mouth?

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    3. Vegetables have long been seen as something EVERYONE can agree on, so when studies come out that say "no benefit seen" it seems to turn the nutrition world on its head.... It also seems to make a lot of people mistrust science even more than they do -- and in America the teapublicans do too much of that already! :-)

      My stance has long been, if you like it and tolerate it well, go ahead and eat it! ...Just don't tell EVERYBODY that THEY have to, also. ;-) It was a major revelation to me that lettuce and cashews could mess up my digestion the way they can! I'll never again point out to a veg*n what they're missing in their diet -- the less beef they eat, the more is left for US!

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    4. I just recently came across the blog http://www.empiri.ca/2014/11/experiences-of-five-year-carnivore-part_11.html?showComment=1416680380768#c4841234480266742074.
      The lady eats meat and fat only, because vegies really mess her up.

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    5. I like Amber's work! When I first discovered the blogs of her and her husband, they hadn't posted much and I kinda forgot about them for awhile, but they've done a good deal more since then.

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    6. Meat only diet seems too much for me from the practical point of view. Convenience matters a lot, unless it is in a contradiction with your health needs, and I don't think vegetables cause me a problem, I guess I could lose more weight eating only meat, but I an inside my comfort zone now weight-wise. I guess the person who eats only meat has a chance be perceived by the most almost as a sociopath. It could be an inconvenience, unlike LCarbing, which is no problem to follow basically everywhere.

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