Dr. Dean Ornish strikes again with an editorial lambasting what he calls high-protein diets in today’s New York Times.
I got an email first thing this morning from a South African journalist inquiring as to what I thought about it. Monday mornings are killers for me, so I thought I would jot off a quick response and be done with it. Forty-five minutes later I was still writing. So, I figured I would at least post what I wrote to her here so all could read it.
As seems to be typical, Dr. Ornish’s stance is argued using half truths, obfuscations and all the other slippery tricks in his playbook of deceit.  I don’t have time to go through the full thing, especially on a Monday morning when I have so many other obligations.
As per usual for him, he is relying on observational or epidemiological studies to try to imply causation, and as every decent scientist knows, they do no such thing.
Just to show how disingenuous he is, take a look at how he quotes the statistics in the USDA publication he links to in his editorial.
From the third paragraph of his article:

Although people have been told for decades to eat less meat and fat, Americans actually consumed 67 percent more added fat, 39 percent more sugar, and 41 percent more meat in 2000 than they had in 1950 and 24.5 percent more calories than they had in 1970, according to the Agricultural Department. Not surprisingly, we are fatter and unhealthier.

The message Ornish wants the reader to take away from this is that excess meat and fat consumption are driving the health problems we’re facing as a nation.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  But this is typical vintage Ornish: citing statistics and even giving the reference to find those statistics and assuming no one will bother to actually look them up.
Here is what the statistics really say in the USDA publication cited:
USDA publication
 
Added fats DO NOT include the fat in meat and dairy products (see yellow above).  Added fats are basically oils or shortenings of plant extraction, the very oils Ornish, Neal Barnard, CSPI and others of the vegetarian persuasion have promoted continuously since the 1980s.  And a great quantity of these oils are used in processing cookies and pastries.  But what Ornish wants you to believe from reading his editorial is that these added fats come from meats.
In the same third paragraph, after telling us we are eating 41 percent more meat, he tells us that we are eating 24.5 percent more calories than we did in 1970, implying, of course, that most of those calories came from meat.  Let’s look at what the document actually says:
USDA publication-2
 
More than one third of the caloric increase (39 percent to be exact) comes from an increased consumption of refined grain products, a change Ornish would be proud of.  (See his book, Eat More, Weigh Less, in which he basically tells people to eat all the high-carb, low-fat foods they want to lose weight.)
In fact, grain consumption overall is up 45 percent:
USDA publication_3
Another 37 percent of the increased calories comes from added fat, which, remember, is not fat from meat or dairy.  This is the very vegetable oil fat Ornish has recommended since day one.  And is used along with the increased refined grain products to produce the pastries, cookies, etc. mentioned previously.
Added sugars account for another 19 percent of the increased calories.
If you read the part marked in yellow above, you’ll see that meat and nuts together contributed one percent of the increased caloric intake.  Notice that meat and nuts are considered together.  For whatever reason, the USDA likes to put meat and nuts in the same category.  After about 15 minutes of searching, I found A USDA-published chart that separated the two. Turns out that since 1970 nut consumption has increased by 27 percent, so I would imagine the one percent attributed to meats and nuts together would mainly come from nuts, a plant food Ornish embraces.
From the Dietary Assessment of Major Trends in U.S. Food Consumption, 1970-2005 / EIB-33 Economic Research Service/USDA
USDA doc_3.5
And egg and dairy consumption, which represents a negative 1.5 percent increase, is down.  So the total calories represented by those foods reprehensible to Ornish actually are a negative number.
So, overall, what Ornish wants us to believe is that the increase in obesity and diabetes in the United States come from increased meats and animal fats from dairy; but the US government statistics tell a different tale.  Here is the graph showing fat consumption over this time period:
USDA publication_4
As anyone can see, the only increase in fat comes from vegetable oils, the very oils Ornish promotes.
All this obfuscation and we’re only at the third paragraph.  But you don’t even have to read that far. His very first sentence posits:

Many people have been making the case that Americans have grown fat because they eat too much starch and sugar, and not enough meat, fat and eggs.

Many people would be right according to the very government statistics Ornish presents.  Starch and sugar consumption is way up while that of meat hasn’t really changed and egg and dairy consumption has actually decreased.  Ornish needs to learn to interpret the data he cites.
Wish I had time to do more because this is just for starters.  But it points out a pattern all too familiar to seasoned Ornish watchers.

167 Comments

  1. Looks like Dr. Ornish is clinging on for dear life – can’t help wondering who is working (paying) this puppet ……

    1. Physicians for Responsible Medicine is one group he belongs to, and the very one Congress listens to when legislation concerning nutrition matters comes up for debate. I hear he sits on many such boards and groups, so his pay comes form multiple streams–he’s like the modern-day Ancel Keys. wherever his voice can find the most influence, his body follows.

  2. Thank you for this Dr. Mike. It’ll certainly help me make my case to friends and family when they bring up the Ornish piece. My wife and I are long time readers and truly appreciate what you do!

  3. You may look like George Clooney but you think like Einstein which is why I’ve long been an Eades’ groupie. Confession: Years ago, I used to give Eat More, Weigh Less (Ornish’s book) as gifts to friends.
    Then I saw the light and became a happy and slimmer carnivore.
    Linda, above, asks…”can’t help wondering who is working (paying) this puppet. Alas, Linda, UCLA has just added Dr. Ornish to their health/nutrition programs. I was about to call for an appointment at their Integrative Medicine facility in Westlake Village, California, when I read about their new “expert”. I never made the call and I’m bitterly disappointed.
    Gotta go, my slow cooker has just beeped; there are 6 pounds of gorgeous beef chunks in their broth that have been slow-cooking for 6 hours.

    1. Hey Marley
      Great to hear from you. It’s been a while. Glad to know you’re still slow cooking chunks of beef.

  4. Thanks, Mike – even though you have more than enough to do I appreciate your rebuttal. I read through a great many of the replies (online) and it’s clear there are still a few die-hard (pun intended) Ornish fans out there. However, there are many more ‘Eades’ fans denouncing the whole sorry mess. What I’d like to know is why the Times chose to let this clown put up an Op-Ed piece on the subject. Do writers pay the Times for the privilege? Is there some version of ‘loyal backers’ who pay to get him published? I just don’t get it.

    1. As to why this was published…
      There is a group within the Times led by Jane Brody who are die-hard low-fatters. Ornish is their hero, so they make sure he gets to be heard. What with all the editorial space Nina Teicholz has gotten lately debunking the low-fat diet, I’m not surprised that Deano surfaced i the NY Times with some kind of rebuttal.

      1. Oh, that explains it. I find her stubbornly witless attitude about diet almost as annoying as ‘Deano’s’ (love it!).

      2. I’ve noticed that vegetarians and the anti-meat crowd are very strident, almost like the carbs are controlling them. I’ve never met a healthy looking veggie, and Ornish doesn’t look healthy.

  5. Really great post Dr Eades!!! The US obesity- and diabetes epidemics was all about higher intake of grains and vegetable oil and not about red meat, saturated fats and cholestrol.
    I´ll have to blog on this in Swedish on the LCHF.se-site because here we actually have had a small increase in red meat consumtion since 1995 when we joined the EU and meat got cheeper. And of cause the establishment blames the Swedish obesity epidemics on that.
    While debunking Ornish on the subject of high protein diets, I suggest you hit him with your best shot… that dozens of highly respected scientists for + 100 years has proven, beyond reasonable doubt that the Inuits ate an extreme high protein, animal based diet. Something like +30 to 45 % protein by calories. And they were perfectly healthy while Protein Powered (TM)
    Just a single, highy questioned “scientist” named Wilhjalmur Stefanson has ever claimed that the Inuits ate a moderate protein diet (15-20 % cal). Just like Ornish he had the same talant for twisting facts and create a reality distortion field that some peolple still belive in.
    Now, I know that Ornish has already questioned the perfect health of the Inuits but there are much better health data here from the Arctic parts of Scandinavia. The Sami population were also Protein Powered (TM) with protein intake estimates as high as 47 % in a landscape very similar in flora and fauna to the inland Inuits.
    Just Google: “The Sami paradox or how to dismiss a traditional low carb, high protein diet” or go to LCHF dot com and scroll down to the second post and you´ll get all the arguments for why the Sami high protein, animal based diet for centuries were considered healthy by authorites like Carl von Linneaus.
    Best of luck Dr Eades! Bad scientist trying to distort the facts should be weeded out, no matter if the call them self vegan or low carb/ketogenic.

    1. You speak as though the Inuit people are no more? They are very much alive and well, they still eat mainly a diet of wild meat, most often raw and blood too.

      1. Yes, they’re still here but they don’t necessarily eat their ancestral diet. The ones who don’t are the reason high-protein naysayers still claim meat gives you osteoporosis. In an environment that sees very little sun for about half the year, they’re expected to get by on bread and soda and other industrial foods and their bones pay the price. Those that are still doing traditional hunting are sometimes watering it down with those same foodlike substances–and that’s when they’re allowed to hunt, when some cockeyed vegan activist group isn’t trying to ban them from it.

    2. Please explain how Stefanson twisted facts? I have read several of his books and I don’t recall him saying 15-20% of calories. The diet varied by Inuit location. Those near fishing areas ate drastically more fish. Those away ate more caribou, polar bear, etc. However, in all cases they had enough fat to go with the lean and they didn’t eat “moderate protein”.

      1. LCC,Stefanson claimed the Inuit diet was 80 % calories from fat (aka less than 20 cals from protein) and he made the Bellivue hospital experiment with him and his partner Andersson turn out that way, dispite but the scientists behind the experiment really wanted to test the true inuit diet recorded to be high protein.
        Explain how Stefanson twisted facts?
        Piece of cake. If you read his (bible) book “Fat of the Land” he talks again and and again about 80 % fat but unlike any decent low carb cook book he does nothing to prove it. A decent low carb cook book will provide you with a meny, listed and quantified ingredients and a macronutrient distriubution dirived out of that. Stefanson never did that. He just pulled the 80 % figure out of his wisard hat.
        If you do the calculus of the reindeer caribou pemmican discribed in his book it turns out to be something like max 65 % cals of fat, hardly ketogenic. And Stefanson also admitted that pemmican was not in any way the every day diet of the Inuits.
        Stefansson is just like Dean Ornish.
        Ashley, yes the Inuits are still alive but their traditional diet is fading away and so are their helth. Please read my blogpost on the quite similar Sami diet on LCHF dot com.

        1. I disagree with you about Stefansson, but I will address why when I write my blog post on the Inuit and ketoadaptation.

        2. What scientists knew more about the Inuit diet than Steffanson who had lived among them for years and why would he have wanted to deviate if it was not the case. At any rate, the results of the actual diet he ate seemed to have a healthy outcome.

    3. The libel on Stefansson AFAICT comes from some amateur paleo-ish sites – though not from the official Paleo Diet.
      I’ve never seen a claim by Stefansson that the Mackenzie River Eskimo ate 15-20 % of cal as protein. Would Per Wikholm like to provide an actual quotation – and a reference – for that? I think a figure of 20% protein actually comes from an analysis of what he (and Johansen) were eating in Bellevue. Let’s TRY to be accurate.
      I’ve heard Sally Fallon say that the eskimo Weston Price visited were eating fat:protein at 80:20 and I suppose that the WAPF has his notebooks. (But perhaps not.)
      I see no reason for throwing mud at Stefansson. This is very small men being resentful of a rather larger one. His “My Life with the Eskimo” though out of print is around these days in OCR form and very much worth reading.

      1. If WAPF doesn’t have Price’s notebooks, the Price-Pottenger Foundation might. They don’t get enough attention as far as I’m concerned, and WAPF sometimes strikes me as an organization trying to justify continued birdseed-eating. Certainly the blogs aligning themselves philosophically with that organization post more recipes for bread than they do for meats.

  6. Butter and lard/beef tallow also also part of the added fats, to these do not entirely consist of vegetable oils.
    But according to tabel 2.3 butter intake went down from 9 pounds in 1950-1959 to 4.6 pounds in 2000. And 10.5 to 6.0 for lard/beef tallow.
    If you calculate animal fats and vegetable oils separately, there is an increase of 132% in vegetable oils and a 46% decrease in animal fat consumption.

  7. Marley, I too fell for an “Integrative Health” doctor. It started out well. He got my gut issues straightened out, got me on Armour thyroid (so this is how it feels to be alive!), and through food allergy testing enabled me to see what foods have been causing inflammation for me and keeping me from losing weight (I’m down 12 pounds in 8 weeks by eliminating those foods).
    At my last appointment, he said how well I was doing and that it was now time for a real change for the better. He wanted me to do a plant-based diet, with animal protein only once or twice a week!
    I mentioned the work of people like Dr. Eades, Phinney, Volek, etc., and he said, “Sure, you’ll always be able to find 2 scientists who believe you should eat meat. The other 98% know the facts and know that a plant-based diet is the most healthful. 80% of the world’s population eats a plant-based diet, and they’re not dying from lack of protein. Eat meat, and you’ll get cardiovascular disease and die young. There’s no disputing that fact.”
    Yeah, so now he’s my ex-doctor.

  8. Funny how Dean’s face has morphed over the years to look more and more like a pan full of fried eggs. Nature has a twisted sense of humor sometimes.

    1. Bill Clinton also falls into the catefgory of “people who couldn’t out-run a bad diet”, only Clinton didn’t die…yet.

    2. You can’t outrun poor diet and long history of smoking — the endothelial damage was already doen for the late Mr. Fix….

  9. There are no words capable of expressing how tremendously grateful we are that Dr.Mike is back to his blog.

  10. This is GREAT stuff, PLEASE keep it coming Doc. a lot of us have benefited from your words and CONTINUE to do so!

  11. Doc!!
    Thanks for taking a bullet for the team and tackling this one. Looking forward to seeing you in Austin.

  12. thank you for taking the time to pull the wizard’s curtain back, Mike! the only way to loosen the grip of liars like Ornish is to ruthlessly call out every single one of his misrepresentations!
    …now i’m off to link this article to my facebook friends….

  13. I read the editorial yesterday and it was so obvious that Ornish was selecting bits and pieces of statistics to make his case. I was kind of stunned that the Times would publish something like that. Thanks for pointing out the “Brody Carboholic Connection”. Now it makes a little more sense.
    Ornish is on the wrong side science in this debate. He had his moment in the sun. It’s never fun when the emperor realizes he has no clothes on.

  14. I was outraged by that article, especially in the light of so many publications exposing the dishonesty of Ancel Keyes back in the fifties and the lack of clinical trials. In addition to Eades and Eades, Taubes, Lustig, Teicholz et alii had pretty well debunked that position. I dropped refined and “white” carbohydrates and lost 30 lbs and saw by A1C drop from 6.2 to 5.3. If I’d followed Ornish or Barnard, I’d still be binge carbohydrate eating and feeling starved.

  15. It’s astounding how much better screenshots of relevant text prove a point compared to a litany of URL’s isn’t it? More intellectually transparent and a lot more pleasurable to read.

      1. Not sure what program you use for screenshots but I use Snagit these days…decent step up from the old ctrl-printscrn and then pasting it into MS paint and editing it there. Probably other good free stuff out there also.

          1. Windows itself will do a screen capture to the clipboard:
            – whole screen : press control PrtScr
            – active window : press Alt PrtScr
            Paste into paint and select then crop for the bit you want the save image and insert in the document as normal.
            It’s all part of the Operating System of Windows and Linux too.
            Nothing to pay for.
            Anyway, nice response article.

          2. Thanks for the info. I use a Mac, though, so doesn’t really help me. Maybe it will other.

  16. I bought the Ornish book in 1993 when my husband, asymptomatic, was found to be in heart failure and had 5 by-passes. I cooked the Ornish way for 4 months and Voila! my husbands cholesterol went up! An early believer in Atkins, I love the way you debunk all of his crap. Too bad the rest of the world doesn’t listen…..

  17. Hi Dr. Eades,
    Having learned science from Paul Lutus, I can see what Dr. Ornish does is only pretending to do science. White lab coats and simply “gathering data” etc. is not genuine science. It’s stamp collecting. Studies which only measure effects mean next to nothing- no matter the sheer number of them. Ornish also needs to test his coronary heart disease reversal using the most accurate of techniques- the IVUS before he can claim he reversed it. One can have no narrowing but a diffusely diseased arterial wall. Coronary heart disease is a disease NOT of the lumen, but, rather, the vessel wall. Back in 1987 we did not know this. Coronary angiography misses a TON of plaque literally. Even though it is still used it is outdated and very inaccurate.
    Science requires and demands explanation- deep explanation. All Ornish has is description.
    Take care,
    Raz

    1. Actually, good science IS description. Ornish isn’t explaining at all, because if he were, he’d have written something very close to what Dr. Eades wrote here.
      Too many people try to insert their own interpretations and wishful thinking into the data, and that doesn’t work no matter who’s doing it.

  18. Ornish was on the CBS morning show today, promoting his obscene incorrect information. That was really sad. How can someone get away with that drivel? Is there someone who can follow up and dispute Ornish’s methods?

    1. It has been followed up and disputed multiple times by many people, myself included. Run a search for Ornish on this blog to see my multiple disputes with him. But somehow he has positioned himself in such a way as to get the PR. I’ve got to hand it to him for that. What he lacks in scientific credibility, he more than makes up for in self promotion.

      1. In the modern world, we usually discuss issues where the audience has no immediate way of knowing which side is true. So, for most people, the only actual difference between the two sides of the argument, is which speaker is more convincing.
        So, it is entirely normal that an expert salesman like Ornish, can always successfully promote himself to the media. Not only do the media people not know who is correct, they actually base their business model on the “no one really knows” concept. (“Today on the show, we have Joe advocating ‘The Sky is Blue’ and Fred advocating ‘The Sky is Green’. Tweet us with your opinions!”).
        My personal experience with relatives who are salesmen, is that salespeople are themselves the most easily convinced. So, it did not surprise me that Bill Clinton believed “The China Study”.

        1. Yes, when I did a sales course many years ago the guy running it said that sales people were the easiest people to sell too.

  19. If you look at red meat consumption over the last 30 years, it has actually steadily declined. Fish consumption has remained flat. Poultry consumption has exploded to such an extent that total meat consumption has also increased.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/figure/F2/
    While it is true that meat (meaning chicken) consumption has increased over the last 30 years, Americans consume on a per capita basis, more soda, snacks, ice cream, candy, french fries and pizza than any other country in the world.
    We consume at least 84 pounds of sugar annually and 70% of the foods we eat are processed.
    Think any of these facts might have more to do with obesity and chronic life style related diseases?

  20. I suppose you could split hairs about what people actually consume, but for me it is pretty easy to decipher. People consume what is sold in your local supermarket. You could analyze restaurants, but I don’t think it is necessary. If it is not being sold, then it will be off the supermarket shelf in short order. For the supermarket chain the margins are low and there is intense competition for shelf space.
    In short people are eating wheat, sugar, and vegetable oil, and you can get there by just walking through your local supermarket. When I do this I find that about 80% of what is sold is off limits for me. In fact, you can even include the produce section which has changed considerably in the last half century. If you look at the produce section of the A&P in 1955 it bears little resemblance to what you see now. The green vegetables occupy about the same area, but the leaders in floor space are sugary fruit, which you can obtain 365 days per year. There is profit in fructose, not so much for broccoli, and the floor space confirms that.
    The big bucks for the food manufacturers reside in low fat, no fat wheat and sugar based products, which are displayed everywhere you look. If these products have any nutrient value at all, it has been artificially injected. My guess is that most of the time processed food costs less than the box it comes in. wheat, soy beans,corn, and sugar along with seed oils provide the basis for the diet of the US population.
    There is absolutely no incentive for the processed food industry, big agra, or even the USDA to change any of this. Ornish is just a product of a corrupt research establishment which got bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry a long time ago. In fact, you don’t really have to spend your time cruising pub med or studying biochemistry to decipher what is going on. Just hit the ADA, AHA, etc. website and look at where the money comes from. The idea that big pharma or big food want to hear that you could cure 90% of the cases of type II diabetes by fasting two weeks and then eating less than 50g of carbohydrate per day is of course ridiculous and is never going to happen.
    Ornish has the big bucks behind him, and the only way any of this is going to change is for people to just stop buying 80% of what is sold in your local supermarket. The processed food industry, as well as the pharmaceutical industry would implode over night.

    1. I feel exactly the same way. I only shop at the opposite ends of a store, the middle area makes my blood sugar soar just by looking, and I have to resist the sweet fruits that we hear are so healthy for us. If it wasn’t for grass fed beef and chicken and a few other little items, I would not shop in those stores at all. My type of store is Sprouts etc. and still they have plenty of junk themselves. I tend to want to see an implosion but worry about what that might entail…

    2. The only way any of this is going to change is for people to just stop buying 110% of what is being sold by Ornish, Barnyard and their ilk.
      There could not be a clearer demonstration of the rule that “correlation does not prove causation” than the fact that the tighter and harder they clamp down on nutritional recommendations the MORE obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease, except for the additional fact that despite all their education and training they apparently are unable to see that well studied undisputable truth that even a blind person can see and that they themselves bemoan.
      And that could not be a clearer proof of an underlying agenda to perpetuate ignorance and create confusion to rob people of their health, vitality and power to assert their right of self determination.

    3. Along with the already-existing health risks of eating grains and seed oils, you also have to consider that they are usually sold rancid. The second you grind a seed that contains a high amount of polyunsaturated oils, the oils start to break down. You can try slowing the damage with antioxidants, but that’s all you can do because eventually oxygen will blow through the antioxidants and start in on the oils again. And how do grocery stores sell straight wheat? Pre-ground. Bad enough when it’s refined white flour, even worse when it’s whole-grain.
      The seed oils that already kill us? They sell them in clear plastic bottles. The oils are already rancid. The light coming through the plastic and the gas exchange through the plastic do not help.
      There’s no craft to it at all, no respect for the condition of the food. As long as they meet the basic government standards for “safety” they figure they’re fine. (And this is what’s wrong with saying we shouldn’t have any government standards. Our problem isn’t that we have standards but that they’re inadequate or wrong. If we had no rules for selling food, we’d regularly find meats with food-poisoning bacteria shot all through them too, cans full of botulism, etc.)

  21. Any chance you have a trend line of food type consumption changes vs. average weight or obesity rate? Similar to the USDA chart you posted at the end?
    Thanks for the great info!

    1. I’ve seen other folks present those in presentations, but I don’t have one put together myself. I doubt the USDA will do it as the implications would be way too obvious.

  22. Dr. Eades,
    I have to confess that I’m a bit confused by the statistics on meat consumption. We are eating 41% more meat, but we’re not getting any more calories from meat? Is the implication that the meat today has, on average, only 70% of the caloric density that meat did in the 50s?

    1. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this, but due to a huge wind storm, we’ve had no power for about 13 hrs. Got it back early this morning, and I’ve been playing catch up since.
      Your question is a good one.
      It is confusing, but all the info is there in the USDA booklet linked to in the Ornish quote. It’s a typical example of Ornishian legerdemain. I was going to go into it in my debunking, but ran out of time. Basically here’s the deal. In the third paragraph of his editorial Ornish writes:

      …Americans actually consumed 67 percent more added fat, 39 percent more sugar, and 41 percent more meat in 2000 than they had in 1950 and 24.5 percent more calories than they had in 1970…

      If you read carefully, you’ll note that he says meat consumption is up 41 percent more than in 1950, but that people ate 24.5 percent more calories than they did in 1970. So, you can’t compare calories from meat consumption changes from 1950, when meat intake was at a low, with the change in calories since 1970, when meat consumption had already risen considerably between 1950 and 1970. But Ornish wants you to think he’s comparing apples to apples, when he’s not.
      If you compare meat consumption figures from 1970 to 2000, when the caloric calculations showing an increase of 24.5 percent took place, you’ll see that, based on per capita pounds of meat consumed, meat consumption rose between those two time periods as well, just not as much as between 1950 and 2000. So, how does that meat consumption end up adding only 1 percent of the 24.5 percent increase in calories over that period?
      If you read the USDA document, you’ll see that over the period between 1970 and 2000, the actual fat content of the meat fell drastically. From the document:

      Nutritional concern about fat and cholesterol [driven in most cases by Ornish and his cronies] has encouraged the production of leaner animals (beginning in the late 1950s), the closer trimming of outside fat on retail cuts of meat (beginning in 1986), the marketing of a host of lower fat ground and processed meat products, and consumer substitution of poultry for red meats since the late 1970s — significantly lowering the meat, poultry, and fish group — contribution to total fat and saturated fat in the food supply. Despite near record-high per capita consumption of total meat in 2000, the proportion of fat in the U.S. food supply from meat, poultry, and fish declined from 33 percent in the 1950s to 24 percent in 2000. Similarly, the proportion of saturated fat contributed by meat, poultry, and fish fell from 33 percent in the 1950s to 26 percent in 2000.

      So, despite the increase in number of pounds of meat consumed between 1970 and 2000, the actual calories didn’t increase that much due to the significantly lower fat intake and thus calories per pound of the meat consumed were lower.

      1. Thank you for your response!
        I completely missed the fact that one statistic was from 1970 and the other from 1950.
        The lower fat content of meat is the missing variable that explains the difference I was noticing. However, it seems to me like the correctly interpreted data shows that the increase in the consumption of animal protein is even larger than Ornish implies. His presentation of the data is confusing, but it seems like he is correctly observing that Americans eat a lot more animal protein than they did in 1950.

        1. Don’t forget that nuts are counted in that total too. Dr. Eades mentions this in the article. We have had more of an increase in nut consumption, in between the government claiming walnuts prevent heart disease and the Paleo community using them in baking.

      2. If you look at the following graph it is crystal clear that all of the increase in “meat consumption” over the last 30 years is from poultry. Chicken has less than half the fat of red meat depending on; white vs. dark, skin vs. skinless, fried vs. grilled or broiled.
        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/figure/F2/
        What is astounding is the innumerable “studies” regularly demonizing red meat when red meat consumption has steadily declined and will continue to do so. Beef just hit an all time high price. Also, education on smaller serving sizes has probably had an effect.
        Here is a typical red meat bashing article from JAMA that is more about Red Herrings than red meat.
        http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1697792
        If you were looking just at correlation, it would be far easier for me to make a case that increased consumption of chicken and turkey is causing obesity and chronic diseases… but then a cow makes a much better scapegoat than a chicken or turkey.
        It’s sugar, highly processed foods and manufactured vegetable oils. Three things Eades and Ornish should and do agree on.

          1. Dr. Eades,
            I apologize for stating Ornish would agree with you that highly processed foods are a problem. Your comment spurred me to further investigating his position on processed foods.
            Here is an Ornish recommended supermarket food list. Many of the foods on his list are highly processed nightmare foods for people with diabetes or prediabetes who also have heart disease.
            http://www.hsc.wvu.edu/Wellness/ContentImages/PDF/Grocery-04-2007.pdf
            Any one of the 100 million Americans with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes can easily prove how bad the Ornish list is by testing their blood with a glucose meter two hours after eating off his list.
            Almost all Ornish recommended cereals, breads and salad dressings will spike blood sugars to unacceptable levels without taking insulin or other medications to mitigate their effects.
            Sorry again for giving Ornish more credit than he deserves.

        1. When you do get fat in chicken or turkey, a lot of it’s polyunsaturated. That doesn’t help. We already overdose on the stuff.

  23. Dr. Mike, it’s nice to see you blogging again.
    As usual you do a fine job of reviewing the actual relevant data and high-lighting the contradictions in the NY Times piece, as well as the glaring mendacity of its author. We can only conclude that this individual has no integrity and is apparently impervious to facts and science.
    Oh well, the good news, at least, is that we NYTimes readers haven’t heard very much recently from certain members of the “witches coven” as you have so aptly described them. But I still have to wonder why the Times doesn’t do a better job of screening out these kinds of pundits.
    Regards,
    wcb

  24. Thanks Mike! I’m gonna enjoy my fat-laden prime rib tonight sans the dangerous vegetables and whole grains which are killing Americans. Think I’ll have a 6 egg-yolk salad with it. Should I wash it down with whole milk or just drink some liquefied Crisco with it?

    1. He said vegetable OIL, not vegetables. Milk is high in lactose sugar and Crisco is exactly the sort of seed-based oil Dr. Eades says *not* to eat (and the data back him up).
      Good luck finishing your dinner though. One thing about a meal high in animal fat, if you don’t throw in a bunch of sugar and starch along with it, is you don’t need much before you hit a wall. Try that with granola. I figure you’ll be done eating about this time next week, and you’ll be hungry again half an hour later. Gee, WHY do Americans overeat…

  25. LDL 120, HDL 89,Trigyls 46 on a Paleo diet. Now let’s see someone
    on a Ornish diet with numbers like that. Wife’s HDL is 98.

  26. Amen to your critique! A physician who can interpret data is a rare beast indeed. Keep up the good work.

  27. Dr. Eades is guilty of lying with statistics when he refers to the 39 percent of caloric increase from refined grain products calling this “a change Ornish would be proud of” and further when he says Ornish “basically tells people to eat all the high-carb low-fat foods they want….” Neither of those claims is close to truth. Ornish patently opposes consumption of simple carbs such as refined grains where nutrients have been removed, fiber is low, and the glycemic index is high. Anyone who has read even the introduction to one of Ornish’s books knows that in making such statements by Dr. Eades has made exactly the kind of misrepresentation he accuses Dr. Ornish of making!

    1. I don’t think so.
      Does Ornish recommend the consumption of whole grains? I believe so. Problem is, humans can’t digest whole grains. Whole grains have to go through the refinement process to be made edible. Have you ever tried to pick some wheat or barley and nosh on it – can’t be done. It must be refined to be edible. So, recommending whole grains is nonsense. What he means is refined grains with a little bit of the germ left in. Still refined.
      As to the vegetable oil, you have a better case there because Dr. Ornish does indeed recommend a low-fat diet, in fact one of the lowest in fat out there. But the fat he does recommend is vegetable oil. He, along with CSPI, PCRM, and other pro-vegetarian outfits, all recommended that fast food places reduce the use of animal fats in their products and replace them with vegetable oils, which has led us to the phenomenal growth in the consumption of these markedly unhealthful oils. Dr. Ornish bears a great deal of responsibility for this changing trend.

      1. I actually made fairly righteous whole wheat bread a couple of time, from fresh ground wheat (ground in my Vitamix) just previous to mixing in the
        rest of the ingredients.
        It was horrible and tasted like you would expect.
        The only way to make whole grains palatable is to make beer out
        of them as some peoples who live close to the land or refine them,
        as you say.
        The people who made the guidelines knew or should have known Americans would not eat whole grains.
        I’ve searched the shelves of the supermarkets for righteous whole grain bread and there isn’t any. There wouldbe if anyone was buying, merchants will sell anything that will sell. There may be some in the “Health Food” markets, but most have something to hide that whole wheat flavor, perhaps extra added gluten inclusive or organic sugar cane juice.
        Some fanatics will eat brown rice and there is some in health food
        store, but I had to scour Whole Paycheck to find it, no one is buying it, apparently.

    2. Whole grains have a high glycemic index too. They’re also pro-inflammatory. I automatically stop listening to anyone, MD or not, who recommends eating them. And that includes some of the Paleo community who couldn’t hack fat adaptation and started trumpeting “safe starches”. There seems to be some limited place for resistant starch in some people with certain kinds of gut flora but you have to be willing to control your intake and these folks think controlling intake of anything is pathological. So I decided reading them was pathological. 🙂

  28. You mention several times that Ornish pushes vegetable oils. I don’t think that is so. Unless he changed his tune recently, Ornish preaches a very low fat diet: no added fat of any kind, no fatty animal foods, and even nuts and seeds are banned.

  29. Great job. I have put together such things and I am exhausted just reading about your Monday morning. The deception in Ornish’s article, however, in my view, is not equal to the deception in the ‘meat causes diabetes’ from Willett’s lab. I made a couple of figures from their data in my blogpost “Carrot Nation.” http://wp.me/p16vK0-hX
    I always referred his stuff as Ornishkeit which is a play on Naarishkeit meaning foolishness in Yiddish. I was disappointed to find out that it is not the same word in German as I thought so it may not be as amusing outside of New York.

  30. I also posted on FB:
    Who is Ornish? He did one or two experiments that he claimed was a diet experiment but included reduction in smoking, etc. But his diet is not recommended by anybody but himself. He is a stalking horse for low-fat people because he is extreme but they do not support his diet. He is a creation of the media who pulled him from the cauldron of low-fat stew and held him up to do the low-fat battle for them. He has no credentials beyond the media. IMHO.

    1. You’ve got it right, in my view at least.
      His ‘seminal paper’ is a laugh. But he is great at self-promotion. I’ll certainly give him that.

  31. Thank you for taking the time to write and share this. I’m actually a living rebuttal of Ornish’s trash talk (5’10” 143lbs, eat a paleo diet with huge quantities of pastured meats, and good fats and can’t gain an oz – and have boundless strength and energy, at 49 yrs/o). The NYT would never listen to me, but you they will – please write a rebuttal piece for the NYT and put this guy in his place once and for all.

  32. In the third paragraph I believe is a slight typo: “observational of epidemiological”.
    If so and you fix it, could you please let Marika Sboros know?

  33. Dr Eades, I want to thank you, sincerely, for this quick response that shows that Dr Ornish is, not to put too fine a point on it, LYING. And we have to be hopeful that if he’s so clearly having to LIE to argue his point, then clearly the gig is almost up.
    That said…
    The NY Times publishing this is an absolute disgrace. REAL people’s REAL lives are at stake. Plenty have read this and think, “Well, the NY Times says this, it must be so.” I have no doubt that the LC community will come out in full force against it, but you know, one can’t un-ring the bell. Damage has been done by this publication, that can’t be undone.
    But, perhaps this disgrace will become a watershed moment for the LC community, and a turning point, where the sun stops shining on charlatans like Dr Ornish and instead moves to real authorities, who rely on real science, like yourself and your wife, Dr Robert Lustig, Dr William Davis, Dr David Perlmutter, Dr Jeff Volek, Dr Stephen Phinney, Mark Sisson, etc etc.
    Cheers and THANK YOU AGAIN for this quick reply to Ornish’s absurd, offensive and most importantly DISHONEST op-ed.

  34. Amazing! Please Please do more.
    I switched to a ketogenic diet a few months ago after doing some more research (i’m eventually cycling to a still low carb paleo like diet with some dairy)
    But someone sent me the NYT article with the note ‘an interesting article’ i.e. you should look again at the research. I know that ornish is a crock and its frustrating to see this in NYT for all to read. I started to dissect it but it as you mention, takes time. This article is perfect and entirely what I was looking for, just hoping you can do some more!

  35. Ornish is a silly man. Would like to see the HDL and Trigs of his followers. Wife’s hdl 74, trigs 43 on LCHF. I suppose that’s one way to engage these dummies: “Put up or shut up. Let’s see Ornishs’ followers blood lipid report and compare to the low carb high fat group.” How about it Onrish?

  36. His constant lambasting of a high protein diet but then discussing high fat foods is your typical David Copperfield sleight of hand trick which leaves the average reader (and patient) confused. Copperfield is a magician, but what’s Ornish’s excuse???
    Thanks for the review Dr. Eades.

  37. I forgot to say thanks for all your great blog posts. Couldn’t get well/stay well without your and the other Dr. Eades.

  38. Ornish says hi protein bad, but never states in his article what constitutes hi protein? To him, all animal protein is hi protein regardless of grams per day consumed. So much for a scientific view

  39. Dr. Eades,
    I enjoyed reading your critique of that nonsense article. I did some fact checking myself, and thought you might be interested in my findings:
    The third paragraph from his article that you quoted raised some red flags for me too, as I was under the impression that fat and red meat consumption have significantly decreased since the anti-fat dietary guidelines came out in the 70s. First of all, why does he state the change in ‘added fat’, rather than the change in total fat consumption? I looked it up, and lo and behold it’s because total fat consumption went down, from 36.9% of dietary calories to 32.8% of calories, from 1971-1974 to 1999-2000. (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5304a3.htm#fig1) In absolute calorie terms, it went down 45 calories (904 to 859) per day over that period. The other issue here is why he’s comparing the present to the 50s rather than the 70s. The epidemic of U.S. obesity started in the late 70s after the USDA released new dietary guidelines, which caused a marked decrease in fat and red meat consumption and an increase in carbohydrate consumption. Why then, would Dr. Ornish compare consumption between the 50s and the present?
    The reason becomes clear when we examine his meat statistic. Checking his USDA link, we see that average consumption of red meat per capita, per year went from 106.7lbs in during 1950-59, up to 129.5lb during 1970-1979, and then back down to 113.5lb in 2000 (this is for men, but women have similar data). Ohhh, so that’s why he’s comparing 2000 to the 50s! Between those periods we see an overall increase in red meat consumption, even though there was no increase in obesity from the 50s through the mid 70s when red meat consumption was increasing, and there was an enormous increase in obesity from the late 70s to present when it was decreasing. He’s cherry picking.
    It bears mention that poultry and fish have continuously gone up since the 50s, as they were hailed by the new guidelines as healthy low fat meats. Because of the increase in poultry and fish, total meat consumption has also gone up continuously since the 50s. He did reference total meat consumption. But, red meat is singled out (by the prevailing USDA party line and Dr. Ornish later in the article) as the primary evil, and it’s gone down since the 70s and cannot be implicated in the obesity epidemic.
    Later on he mentions a study showing that restricted-fat diets lose 67% more body fat than restricted-carbohydrate diets. From the abstract he links:
    “The researchers measured the amount of fat eaten and the amount of fat burned, and the difference between them determined how much fat was lost from the body during each diet. Compared to the reduced carbohydrate diet, the reduced fat diet led to a roughly 67% greater body fat loss.”
    If I’m reading this right, they are saying that the endpoint was calculated as (body fat loss) = (fat calories in) – (fat calories burned), not (total calories in) – (total calories burned). Of course this will be smaller if you reduce how many fat calories you eat! Are they not aware that your body endogenously converts carbohydrates into fats? Why don’t they pick a meaningful endpoint like weight loss or change in body density or something? Wow. If you can access the actual paper, maybe I’m misinterpreting what they’re saying. But if not, that is a mind-blowingly deceptive endpoint.

  40. Add me to the list of Eades groupies. That you could write such an informative article on a Monday, which we all know now is a busy day for you, proves that you are a master of research and analysis. Thanks for all you do for us.

  41. An amazing quote from an Amazon reviewer of an Ornish book that I rarely tire of reading!
    “The following is a quote from Amazon review of Ornish’s vegan diet restrictions.
    Ornish diet, eat….
    “Nothing that contains salt. Nothing made with fat. Nothing that contains meat. Nothing that contains oil. Nothing that contains seafood of any kind. Nothing with taste. The list of deadly, and forbidden foods is endless. No almonds, no avocadoes, no cabernet wine, no shrimp. Stay a way from walnuts, salmon, clams, coconut, flaxseed, pecans, and calamari. Eat no roquefort, no cashews, no sushi, no flounder, no cod, no olives, no california roll. You are not permitted olive oil or
    canola oil or sesame oil. (Sesame seeds are even frowned upon.) You are allowed no pecans, no mustard, no sunflower seeds, no pumpkin seeds, no Dover sole,
    no brook trout, no chocolate. . . You are left to a spartan regime of leaves and stems, sugary fruits, and piles and piles of sticky starches. Rice beans potatoes rice beans potatoes rice beans. . . You may dress it up with saffron and exotic spices. But it is still potatoes rice beans to me.And. . .not to be indelicate, but when consuming all this organic mulch your intestines will ferment and bubble like a pot of stew. You will pass gas every few
    minutes, much like a cow does. At the office, I could not sit through a 30-minute meeting without slipping out to the men’s room once or twice to break wind in
    private. (Ornish recommends using Beano, some pill that supposedly helps this ‘side effect.’ Phooey.)
    I gave this up. I now eat low-carb. My weight is down.
    My cholesterol is down (and balanced) my BP is down. I am not hungry. My periodontal disease cleared up. And a no longer puff like a steam engine out the back.” ” This is from Eat More, Weigh Less customer review on Amazon
    “Faddish, bland, dull, flatulent. All starch and sugar”
    By A customer on November 29, 2002
    Format: Paperback
    “I endured this diet for more than six months. I lost three pounds. And was miserable.
    The rule for this diet is very simple. It basically eliminates every food that you have ever WANTED to eat. If you like it, you can’t have it. If it tastes good, spit it out. If you enjoy a food, there is something wrong with it”
    .

          1. It was a Lalanne catch phrase. He said it many,many times along with his other catch phrase, “If man made it, don’t eat it.” A little trivia. Jack was a chiropractor and followed an intermittent fasting, Paleo diet, decades before everyone else caught up to him. He ate twice a day. Mostly plants and fish. Surprisingly, was not a big believer in organic foods as you would think.

          2. Thanks for the added trivia! Didn’t know he did IF’s. My observation of Jack’s diet was he ate way too much fruit. He managed to do his workout the day before succumbing to pneumonia. What this tells me is that while fitness is a great thing, immune system health is much more important. Sugar weakens the immune system, and so when some little infection comes along, pneumonia (which are called opportunistic and deadly) can take over. Humans have them present and depend on the immune system to keep them in check. Wish Jack had known this because he should have lived LOTS longer. My father was in great health, and at age 75, rode his bike 75 miles around a lake where he lived. He died at age 85 from pneumonia. My mom, who is 85, just recently managed to survive a bout with pneumonia that started as a UTI. She’s been a vegetarian for a LONG time and like most of us (and Jack) think fruit is good for us. To me, it’s good evidence that fruits (any sugar for that matter) are not so healthy after all, at least in advanced age.

          3. It would be interesting to get Dr. Eades take on this but I would be surprised if eating too much fruit had anything to do with Jack Lalanne’s death. According to his family, Jack contracted a cold the week before he died. This was a very rare occurrence. As his symptoms grew worse he refused to see a doctor and cut down on workout routine which was two hours a day…one hour lifting weights and one hour swimming in an unheated pool.
            In my view, his refusal to see a doctor and rest, allowed his cold to quickly develop into pneumonia and that is what killed him.

  42. How sneaky and deceptive of Ornish to refer to added fats as … well … added fats! How did he lie?

    1. You should read more carefully. I never accused Ornish of lying. Perhaps you should avail yourself of a good dictionary and look up the word obfuscate.

      1. Ahh … so you allowed a comment through. Mission accomplished 😉
        Now please explain how Ornish did anything untoward by repeating the fact that ADDED fats have increased?

        1. I don’t think I’ve ever failed to let one of your comments through. I just don’t usually comment on them myself.
          You wrote: “Now please explain how Ornish did anything untoward by repeating the fact that ADDED fats have increased?”
          Surely you can’t be that naive.
          I wrote:

          Added fats DO NOT include the fat in meat and dairy products (see yellow above). Added fats are basically oils or shortenings of plant extraction, the very oils Ornish, Neal Barnard, CSPI and others of the vegetarian persuasion have promoted continuously since the 1980s. And a great quantity of these oils are used in processing cookies and pastries. But what Ornish wants you to believe from reading his editorial is that these added fats come from meats.

          I didn’t say anything about his doing anything untoward by repeating the fact that added fats have increased. What he did was to imply to those (the vast majority of people who read his article) fats came from animals. How did he imply this? Read the paragraphs following the one in which he mentions added fats. They are primarily about meat and animal protein with saturated fat and trans fats thrown into the mix. What is the average reader to think? As I say, the piece was designed to obfuscate, not enlighten.

  43. I think Ornish has demonstrated how completely inadequate his diet is for normal BRAIN functioning – his article is utter nonsense, but it is probably the best he is capable of doing.
    I can hardly wait for the updated Protein Power Life Plan; I hope you guys can get it out soon. (Unfortunately, I need it again – a bit, anyway)

  44. I read this, somewhere….so this is not my idea.
    Someone has pointed out that Ornish’s published research went something like this….. He scanned people’s hearts before the MULTIPLE interventions- smoking cessation, meditation, exercise and a very low-fat vegetarian diet were begun…the after scans indicated some reduction in artery plaque…
    This is like doing a test where three or four drugs are tested all together- then looking at the results and declaring definitively….drug #2 is what caused the change!..AND IS THE CURE… This is similar to some of the (many) problems with the ‘China Study’.

      1. After reading your article linked directly above, I conclude that Dr. Ornish appears to have taken the trouble to plan and execute a clinical trial, and then (by adding numerous confounding variables) undermined it so that it had the disadvantages of an observational study.

    1. Note they use the same tactic in reverse to vilify meat. Claim 85g a day of red meat is totes cancer, but let’s ignore the other 400-900g of OTHER food you need to consume if you only eat 85g of meat.

  45. Way to call attention to this. Its the same thing many so called experts use to sway people to their way of thinking. Things change and evolve over time and those of us who can adapt and change our beliefs find ourselves in a better condition. Those who hold onto the same beliefs are doomed to use studies as a way of deceit and trickery.

  46. Hi,
    Thank you for writing this article. Before I post this- I’m in my early 30s from a family with a heavy history of heart disease. Because of this, the low carb/low fat debate is very real and scary for me. I have been trying to learn enough to be convinced that my current diet is the right thing (right now I’m doing MOSTLY paleo, with the occasional high quality burger).
    Here’s my concern with this article, hoping you can clear this up or I am misreading.
    You highlight a passage that says added fat “include those used directly by the consumer such as butter on bread, as well as shortenings and oils used in commercially prepared foods, pastries, and fried foods. All fast naturally present in foods such as in milk or meat, are excluded.”
    You then say “Added fats DO NOT include the fat in meat and dairy products (see yellow above). Added fats are basically oils or shortenings of plant extraction, the very oils Ornish, Neal Barnard, CSPI and others of the vegetarian persuasion have promoted continuously since the 1980s.”
    But the first item on this list is butter, it seems like it gets replaced with the word basically?
    What am I missing?
    This feels like the same kind of thing that this article and the other reviews I’ve read have been picking apart in Ornish’s, so it really stuck out to me. Could you please explain?
    Thanks,

    1. Good pick up. I didn’t notice that when I read it the first time. I don’t know why they count butter twice. Once as an added fat and once again as a dairy product. But if you look at table 2-3 on the bottom of page 17 of the USDA report, you will see that butter consumption dropped by half between 1950 and 2000. And the amount actually used was a fraction of that of vegetable oils, so basically butter is kind of a non-issue.

      1. Thanks for the explanation. I looked at the graph, and butter is not only shrinking but one of the smaller percentages, which makes it odd it would be mentioned first.
        The graph certainly supports that the decrease in (and relatively small amount of) butter consumption means it’s not a non-issue in providing the main factors for the obesity rate increase.
        My understanding of the quoted passage is that butter would be an added fat rather than a dairy product for the same reason lard is classified as an added fat rather than a meat product – they’re being classified as (correctly or incorrectly) a food that is primarily a fat added to another food rather than a food in themselves.

  47. Almost twenty years ago, Ornish made a startling claim that he had reversed heart disease based on a single, small trial and has been cashing in on it ever since.
    Question for the experts here: Has it ever been independently replicated?
    For such an Earth shattering claim, I would think that millions would be flowing into follow on research and trials. Where are they?

  48. “The Scientific Method” is a total grade school myth. It does not exist and never did. It is also NOT how or why we are confident in scientific knowledge. There is no such universal singular method that all scientists use. Kids are being taught wrong things. But they may need it dumbed down dramatically.
    When scientists introspectively exmaine what they do , it does not hold up to this mythical recipe of nonsense. Nor is it how Einstein came up with General Relativity, nor how Newton came up with his findings, nor how we learned about Black Holes etc.
    “The Scientific Method” sucks ( as numerous astrophysicists and science educators note) and is not how real science is done in the various fileds by professional researchers. This is not to say science sucks. Science itself is great.
    However, the REAL thing ( genuine science as practiced by professionals in the real world) is quite messy and circles back on itself. Science does not suck.
    Top professional scientists say all of this in their books and will not argue. However, the majority of the uninformed “fanbase” on the Internet will. They are a different kettle of ichthyology.
    Dr. William McComas, John Denker, The University of California at Berkely’s science education website and numerous other science educators and physicists are trying to rid the world of this myth of “The Scientific Method.” Physicist ,Teman Cooke ,does a phenomenal take down of this myth and presents the views of many other professional scientists.It is a GROSS misrepressentation of actual science and how it works and how it is done.
    Rather, science has principles and parameters. The grade school posters are nothing but nonsense and an insult to professional scientists everywhere- past and present.

  49. Hi jw,
    More than that even, Ornish and others should test his idea using multiple techniques and methods including the most accurate IVUS ( but it is risky and super expensive). Even if he accurately and honestly told the truth, coronary angiography is very INACCURATE- very much so.

  50. The urban religion of vegans debunked yet again by logic and real science. All the effeminate and sickly vegan girlyboys found in any American city are further testimony

  51. I notice a lot of defying physics comments lately over at Richard Nikoley’s blog. Once again, the conservation of energy principle is being abused by commenters. It says NOTHING about why certain breeds of cattle are so extremely cartoonish muscular, NOR does it say anything why certain Bloggers who suffer from obesity – chronic disease state- have gained fat.
    I see a lot of people making assumptions about Jimmy who is a great guy. I empathize with his struggle. Only lower intelligence and scientifically illiterate pompous bloggers / commenters make assumptions about his habits ( or anyone else who sufferes from true obesity) WITHOUT following him/them around.. What’s worse is that they are totally abusing a principle in physics. THat is as scientifically ERRONEOUS as it gets.
    Physics does not operate the way you think it does, Richard. Hae you ever heard of the UNDERDETERMINATION of theory? Do you have a sophisticated enough understanding of science to know this? Richard, all theories rest among a huge network of AUXILIARY ASSUMPTIONS. Is it these assumptions which are wrong, OR the new theory itself- if it does not pass the test of opbservations and experiments? Remember how Neptune was discovered?Our background assumptions were all wrong. And a new discovery was made.
    We are still figuring out what time is and a whole bunch of other stuff.Lots of stuff in physics is not known.
    It is important for the Blogosphere to learn that Nature is under NO obligation whatssoever to follow our “rules or “laws.’ It us up to USE to figure out what she does. Actually, this term law is ONLY used because of tradition. Laws in physics can be true OR false- just like theories. NOTHING has to “obey” anything.
    These “laws” are OUR OWN FALLIBLE creations and descriptions of what we think is going on. NONE are invariant.
    Thus far , the conservation laws are supported. it has to do with symmetry of Nature under time translation. The final chapter has NOT been written on ANYTHING in physics, INCLUDING “thermodynamics.”
    The caloric hypothesis has enormous evidence against it- many mouse studies etc . CI/CO is fitness industry speak- a stupid phrase. NOBODY even eats “calories.” There is FAR TOO MUCH CERTITUDE from vocal CI/CO to be science. MUCH more to the story- how the body HANDLES.. Then genetics- a monumental player in fat cell creation which is a regulated processs-
    Obesity is NOT caused by mere simple overeating. WEIGHT REGAIN IS BIOLOGICAL, Richard. Jimmy and others liek him devlop “chemical mechanic effciiency in the msucles and it is INVOLUNTARY reposnse. The bdoy has SO many defenisve mechanisms. NONE OF THIS “defies” physics…. What does that even mean?????
    A Feymnan noted we want to fond out WHIHC laws are wrong or incomplete as FAST as possible to make progress. Physcis is NOT done by fiat, again, as Dr. Filippenkop stresses! There is an explanation for the siz conservation laws and it has to do with NOETHER’S MATHEMATICAL THEOREM
    All laws are APPROXIMATIONS at very best. ALL of our theories are INCOMPLETE and thus all “wrong.” Physics is NOT done by fiat.
    Take care,
    Razwell

    1. Surely obesity IS caused by overeating. But the definition of “overeating” depends on the individual.
      Whether I am on a very low carb ketogenic diet or a low-fat vegan diet, if I reduce my caloric intake to below what my individual metabolism requires to maintain my weight then I lose weight. If I eat too many calories I gain weight.
      It doesn’t matter, in my own case, what the food type is. If I eat too much of it I gain weight.
      A low carb diet works well for many people because of the good effect it has on appetite suppression. Unfortunately it doesn’t suppress everybody’s appetite sufficiently to lose weight. It never has for me, past the first few weeks.
      doug

  52. I don,t want to get too off topic,but.. Richard, it is NOT Dr. Eades who is a liar,it is your new hero,Colpo. I had his picture analyzed by 4 independent experts in photography. Their unanimous conclusion is that it DEFINITELY IS MANIPULATED. THEY SAID A POORLY EXECUTED HEAD GRAPH. It chaps my butt when you and your heroes make statements about others and their character when your own heroes engage in defrauding the public with PHONY PICTURES and abuse of science. Anybody who ever watched a Hawking, Filippenko or Perlmutter lecture IMMEDIATELY would recognize the abuse of science and the lack of understanding of the most basic things in science by your new found Aussie hero……

  53. I saw the link to that post. As usual,the Internet amateurs do not get it.
    The correct phrase is : “Correlations do not mean anything in science, UNLESS there is an UNDERLYING PHYSICAL PRINCIPLE which EXPLAINS the correlations. Ray Davis’ solar neutrino experiment,which lasted 25 years, was extremely highly correlated to the value of the U.S. stock market. The correlation coefficient was greater than .95.
    HOWEVER, this meant NOTHING. NO physicist thought a anything of this.
    BUT , there ARE situations where correlations can mean a HELL of a lot. Such is the case for greatly elevated blood pressure over years and arterial wall damage.
    We need EXPLANATIONS. NONE of those vegan studies offers any. We need to learn much more about cellular operations to know more about healthful foods . ENORMOUS variables exist in ALLLL human dietary studies,even Lyon types. These studies offer NO explanation. Work with cells could.
    ..

  54. But what is your rebuttal to the argument of livestock production contributing largely to the destruction of our ecosystems?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *