Ross Walter Nutritionist and Naturopath health articles and blog

Diabetes organisations and diabetes educators have no clue about diabetes and don't help people with diabetes

12/6/2026

7 years ago I went to a “Low carbohydrate diet for Diabetes” seminar presentation at Diabetes Queensland. I saw their advertisement for the seminar and I thought “FINALLY!”, that a major diabetes organisation had read the many research studies on using low carb diets reducing and reversing diabetes, so I booked in!

The ½ day seminar was run by a Diabetes Qld representative who herself had Type 1 diabetes. There were only a few people in attendance, approximately 4 junior dietitians, 3 student dietitians, myself and a low-carb friend.

The seminar quickly turned to disappointment when their version of “low carb” was having no less than 130 GRAMS of carbs/sugar PER DAY! One level teaspoon is just 4 grams! So Diabetes Qld wanted to introduce a new “low carb” diet for people with diabetes which has more than 32 teaspoons of sugar per day!

So the attempt by Diabetes Qld was just “marketing”, and to pretend that they are on board with the “low carb” concept, but not really changing anything to help people with this chronic health condition.

I should have known the seminar was going to be the usual cr@p as soon as I arrived, and seeing a bowl of lollies on each table! You can see this in one of the attached photos. And everything got even worse as the day went on.

Morning tea was a sugar-fest with cakes and muffins! Lunch was sandwiches and fruit (more carbs and sugar!). And there was a practical session of making “healthy” sandwiches with checking labels on various commercial breads to find lower carb options, which I refused to participate in.

I did ask some embarrassing questions of the host several times, and to explain why their version of low carb was ridiculous and not supported by better evidence. I hope I planted some seeds in the minds of the young dietitians there.

These diabetes associations and the information they share, or the advice they give through their “educators”, clearly shows that they have no bloody clue what they are doing. They were (and still are) blaming dietary FATS, high calorie diets, and being overweight for causing diabetes, which is completely wrong!

These so-called health organisations exist from public funding and donations, to maintain themselves and the status quo. Never has any of these health organisations with their hundreds of millions of dollars in donations ever found a cure for these chronic health conditions. Or they would be out of business!

Diabetes is not a difficult condition to treat, reverse and even prevent! Just prescribing insulin and telling people with diabetes to avoid fats, keep eating a diet high in carbs, sugar and grains, which doctors and diabetes organisations do, is just INSANE!

While a diet high in carbs and sugar is a huge root cause to the development of diabetes, it isn’t the only cause or factor which needs to be addressed or treated. Then there’s also the many different types of diabetes (Type 1, 1.5, 2, 2a, 2b, 3, 3c, 4, 5, LADA, MODY, Inspidus, Gestational, and more!) all need to be addressed and treated differently in each person, with a more root-cause based treatment approach. This is what I do!

Stay healthy!

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The real causes of weight gain have nothing to do with calories!

11/6/2026

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Following on from my 2 previous articles on the topic of calories, which seems to have got the uninformed pro-calorie Personal Trainers a little off-side, I get asked a lot how to help someone to lose weight, especially as weight gain or weight loss is nothing to do with calories (or kilojoules)! So what is best, or what works to help someone to their optimal or healthy weight?

First let’s look at what doesn’t work, from my clinical experience, and from published studies!

1. Low fat diets don’t work! Your body doesn’t get fat because you eat fat, or because fatty foods have higher calories! There are also very healthy essential fats we have to eat in our diet, but also very unhealthy processed fats and seed oils.

2. Low calorie diets don’t work! Calories are a useless concept for measuring the health of a food, or the effects they have on your body, and nothing to do with weight gain or loss. Low calorie diets mean “low fat”, as fats and oils have the highest calories compared to all other macronutrients.

3. Counting calories doesn’t work, nor does having a calorie deficit, or the whole calories in vs calories out scam! See previous point, and my 2 previous posts on calories.

4. Eating less doesn’t work! Your body needs NUTRIENTS to function properly!

5. Reducing or eliminating meats doesn’t work for fat loss. Instead you may not get enough protein and you lose muscle mass instead of body fat, which wrecks your metabolic rate and makes it more difficult to lose weight, but easier to gain it all back again as fat.

6. Fasting or water fasting doesn’t work for long-term weight loss. Again, your body needs nutrients to function.

7. Detoxing or juicing doesn’t work for weight loss! Juices are just a concentrated sugar drink which will be turned into body fat…

8. “Diet” drinks or foods with artificial sweeteners don’t work for weight loss, and because of the metabolic changes they make in your body, they actually cause you to put on MORE weight, even though you are not having as much sugar or calories!

9. Exercising more doesn’t work, especially if you are just eating the same old cr@p! Some physical activity is good, but needs to be more specific activity or exercise for weight loss at the right times, along with the right foods and lifestyle too, or you can make no difference to your weight.

10. Eating smaller meals more frequently doesn’t work, and can actually increase blood sugars for longer, increase insulin resistance and weight gain, as well as causing chronic digestive issues. Eating more frequently prevents your body from using your body fat stores for energy, so you don’t lose weight.

11. GLP-1 medications can help to lose weight temporarily, but you also lose muscle mass and bone mass too, which is not ideal for your long-term health. Then there’s many other serious side effects they cause, if you can tolerate them. These dangerous medications are not a substitute for a good diet and lifestyle.

So, what works for improving weight loss?

1. Finding and fixing ALL the root causes of weight gain in YOU. There are always root causes and factors which contribute to weight gain including stress, sleep issues, low thyroid function, other hormone imbalances, low stomach function, inflammation, dysbiosis, and more! The causes in you will be different to other people, so what you need is going to be different to others.

2. Low carbohydrate diets work! High carbs turn into high glucose, which then turns into body fat. High carb diets trigger an insulin response, and insulin is a fat-storage hormone. So reducing carbs makes the most sense!

3. LCHF (Low Carb High/Healthy Fats) diets work. Paleo diets work. Ketosis diets work, although I recommend a more modified version of keto compared to the more extreme versions. These diets retrain your body to use your body fat for energy, as well as preventing further fat storage.

4. The best diet for you for weight loss, is one that you will be able to stick to!

5. WHEN you eat is as important as WHAT you eat, HOW you eat, HOW MUCH you eat, HOW you eat, and WHERE you eat too!

6. Some physical activity is needed, but you don’t need to be at the gym for hours each day! The right types of exercise can use the body fat stores for energy, to increase the weight loss.

7. Improving whole body metabolism and function is needed. Weight gain is a whole body issue, not just an issue of what you eat and how little you exercise.

8. Some support for past or current stress or trauma may be needed, or to change mindset over beliefs or behaviours which may be contributing to weight gain or preventing weight loss.

9. Intermittent Fasting works! This means eating food in a smaller and limited window of hours during the day, typically with a delayed breakfast. This can reduce inflammation, and trigger body fat stores being used for energy when you are not eating.

10. Eating smaller dinners works! Unfortunately, we traditionally eat our largest meal for dinner, which can contribute to more weight gain. By the time you have digested your dinner, you’re ready to go to sleep! So your body will turn your unused energy from the recent dinner into body fat to use for later. Especially if your dinner is high in carbs such as potatoes, breads and grains, pasta, rice, or desserts.

11. Avoiding processed and packaged foods works to help with weight loss, as the artificial and toxic additives, preservatives, sweeteners, sugar, colourings etc, can cause chronic inflammation, which in turn can cause weight gain. Just eat real food!

12. Testing for common causes and factors of weight gain with specific blood tests can help to find the causes of YOUR weight gain, and help you to focus on what you need to do to lose weight. Testing for low thyroid function, infections, inflammation, insulin resistance, anaemia, poor liver function, low protein levels, hormone imbalances, and various nutrient deficiencies (or excesses). If any of these issues are found, then they can be treated, to help improve your weight loss!

In summary, there are many factors which cause weight gain. As such, what you need to help with reducing weight, must be specific and personalised to YOU! Your treatment plan needs to take into account your root causes and factors, your lifestyle, your other symptoms and conditions, and to treat and improve whole body function!

Stay healthy!

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Your body does not burn calories!

11/6/2026

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This is Part 2 of my "Calories are unscientific, ridiculous, and should never be used" article! (See my previous post for Part 1).

One of many issues with nutrition science is the concept of a calorie, and using calories as a ridiculous measurement of how healthy a food is, or the effects of the foods on the body. The model of using calories is often referred to the Calories In-Calories Out or CICO model. This is explained as the number of calories measured in your food intake vs the calories expended or used in exercise.

Here are many, many reasons why the CICO model is complete BS, including all the following:

1. Calories of metabolic processes are different in each person, and can't be measured anyway - only the alleged food intake can be measured and the exercise done - what about all the energy consumed or produced by other metabolic processes, re-use of nutrients, re-absorption of nutrients, and waste products (from breath, sweat, urination and poo)?

2. How is a "calorie" used in the body?! What are the biochemical reactions which use calories?! (Answer: none)

3. The CICO model does not take into account each person's own metabolic rate, typically driven by their thyroid gland. Someone with a low functioning thyroid will have a tendency to have low energy, slow metabolism and easy weight gain, but difficulty losing weight, even on a healthy diet

4. The CICO model assumes that physiological mechanisms or environmental factors or other biochemical hormones have no impact on energy balance - that it is all based on how foods are "BURNED"

5. CICO does not distinguish between "good" calories and "bad" calories. We all know an apple is better and healthier than a choc-chip cookie... but a cookie may have the same or less calories?!

6. In the CICO model, they forget to include how many calories are produced or needed to digest that food. For example, a lollipop might take 10% of its calories to be used by the body, but a steak can use 30% of its alleged calories to be digested

7. The CICO model assumes that EVERYTHING you eat is going to be digested and absorbed, with NO waste! CICO does not take into account the "energy" or heat of your poo as another output for example!

8. The CICO model suggests that 500 calories from brownies is just as fattening as 500 calories of kale! It's just ridiculous!

9. A low calorie food does not imply that it is healthy for you, and a high calorie food also does not imply that the food is unhealthy

10. Similar to good vs bad calories, the CICO model does not look at nutrient density of the foods, or their macronutrient breakdown into protein vs carbs vs fats or vitamins and minerals, or how the nutrients in the food affect your body in good or bad ways

11. CICO assumes everyone is the same, or that the heat energy output from a calorie in one person is the same as for another, which is not possible

12. With the CICO model, artificial sweeteners with zero calories (but are known to cause metabolic dysfunction, diabetes, weight gain and cancer) are allegedly better for you than high calorie healthy fats or an avocado for example?!

13. CICO assumes that the body "oxidises calories" in the same way and amount as in a bomb calorimeter (and at sea level etc, in the definition of a calorie)

14. CICO doesn't take into account the adaptive metabolic processes in each person - someone MAY lose weight in the short term on a low calorie diet, but then due to hormones, thyroid changes, and other factors, weight loss can stall or plateau and then increase again due to the "starvation" effect and the adaptive slowing of metabolic processes to conserve energy for longer-term survival

15. Maintaining a healthy weight and good health is more about WHAT someone eats, not how much (or little) they eat based on calories

16. Weight gain is about over-storage of excess foods (or types of foods) not on over-eating of those foods or calories. One person eating the same foods as another will store more of those foods, while someone else will be using the foods for metabolism

17. Muscles need more NUTRIENTS for the muscle health and function, and hence more nutrients from foods are used instead of being stored as body fat. Nothing to do with calories

18. A typical Keto/ketogenic diet has more calories than a low-fat diet, yet people on a keto diet will lose more weight (as body fat), more consistently, and for longer than someone on a low fat (ie, low calorie) diet!

19. Since the 1960s we have been told that we need to be more aware of the calories we eat and to reduce high calorie foods - which means cutting fats as they have the most calories per gram. Look where that got us - with the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers, and other chronic inflammatory conditions ever in history

20. Proteins suppress appetite to make you eat less, but carbs do the opposite, yet they have the same calorific value

21. Healthy fats suppress appetite for longer than proteins, yet they have the highest number of calories

22. Low carb diets (generally higher calories from higher fats) lead to more weight loss than low fat diets (with lower calories)

23. Carbohydrates and proteins have the same calorie value at 4 calories per gram. But replacing carbs with the same amount of protein, as shown in many studies, will result in weight loss from reduced fat stores, and sparing or improving muscle mass. Hence again, weight loss has NOTHING to do with calories of the foods you eat

24. The CICO model blames the individual for eating too much or not exercising enough, when there are MANY factors and hormones which are causing their weight gain, or preventing the usage of the fat stores for energy

25. Consuming excess calories, or even not using those calories as exercise, does not cause anyone to get fatter, any more than it does to cause someone to become taller! Expending more energy than you consume does not lead to weight loss; it just leads to hunger and probably more of the wrong foods which can increase your weight!

If anyone recommends that you should count your calories, or choose your food based on calories, especially for weight loss, ignore their advice and then run away!

As you can see from above, there are a LOT of reasons why calories are irrelevant, useless, unscientific, and not representative of how foods and nutrients get used in your body! Focus instead on the good nutrients in foods, and avoid the bad ingredients in processed foods.

Be informed. Be healthy!

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Calories are a useless measurement of the health of foods!

11/6/2026

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Choosing foods based on calories as being a measurement of how healthy they are is unscientific and ridiculous! Calories should never be used as a measurement of food quality or of their health to your body.

Let's review what a calorie really is... A calorie (or more correctly, a kilocalorie) is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius (specifically from 14.5C to 15.5C) at sea level! A kilocalorie (which we usually refer to as "one Calorie" with a capital C) really is 1000 calories. Kilojoules are the metric measurement of energy from foods, so they are also an irrelevant and ridiculous measurement of the health or energy of foods.

The measurement of the calorie content of a food is done in a device called a "bomb calorimeter", a closed container containing oxygen, and the food is physically BURNED in this device, to measure its energy output as heat. This is supposed to be a representation of how our bodies use nutrients, which it clearly isn't! Our bodies are NOT an enclosed device, and our bodies do not BURN food to create heat in the same way! We have many thousands or even millions of processes and chemical reactions which occur in our bodies to convert our food into far more than just heat, but also into many other products which change in more chemical reactions to finally allow us to live and function (but not burn up!). It is actually impossible to measure the amount of energy a food really gives us in our bodies, so the concept of calories has been used. But calories have been taken too far as a measurement of food quality, when it never should be.

My other issue about using calories for foods is the belief that low calorie foods are better for you, when they are not! This concept has been used for decades by weight loss companies, dietitians, doctors, food companies, government food guidelines, and the general public, but again it's wrong!

Consider the following comparison of the calorie content of the major macronutrients:

Carbohydrates (vegetables, fruit, grains etc) - 4 kilocalories per gram
Protein (meats and plant-based protein) - 4 kilocalories per gram
Fats (animal and plant based oils and fats) - 9 calories per gram
Alcohol (ok, not a macronutrient, but it is a good comparison) - 7 kilocalories per gram.
Then see the attached graphs (in the comments) for comparing the blood sugar levels of each of these macronutrients - ie., how foods containing these affect your body...

Carbohydrates get converted quickly into glucose (ie, sugar) and raise your blood sugar levels quickly. Your body responds to the high blood sugar by secreting insulin to force cells to take up more glucose and insulin also forces the fat cells to take in the glucose that is converted to fat. Hence a high carb diet leads to fat storage and weight gain. Carbohydrates do not give a long-lasting energy.

Some proteins can be slowly converted into glucose, but generally most proteins will be broken down into their amino acid building blocks, to be rearranged into other proteins the body can use. Proteins are more filling, and give a longer-lasting energy to delay hunger for longer.

Here's an important question for you - carbs and proteins have the same calorie content, but which one has a better effect on your body, with less blood sugar spike, less insulin required, but a much longer lasting energy?!

Healthy fats generally don't raise blood sugar! However they do give a longer lasting energy, are much more filling than carbs and proteins, and healthy fats don't cause the same inflammatory and oxidative damage that carbs do.

Ignore calories, ignore calorie measurements of foods as a marker of their health benefits, and ignore counting calories for weight loss or even for general health! Also ignore and run away from any so-called influencer or practitioner who uses the word “calories” in your diet advice or health recommendations!

Focus instead on 1) the NUTRIENT content of foods, especially of whole, real, fresh, seasonal foods, and 2) avoiding processed, refined, packaged, and artificial foods which cause INFLAMMATION in your body, which is a major cause of our chronic disease epidemics today. Inflammation is one of the real causes of obesity, not calories! Inflammation comes from many other sources to cause weight gain, such as from hormone imbalances, stress, lifestyle factors, dysbiosis, exposure to toxins and chemicals, infections, and many more sources - most of which are unrelated to your food intake an unrelated to calories!

When all the root causes of someone's weight gain are investigated and treated, you will lose weight easily and consistently, without hunger and cravings, and you will be able to reach and maintain your healthy goal weight long into the future! This is what I can help you with!

In the next article I will expand more on why calories are useless and unscientific, and should never be used as a measurement of the health of a food or for weight loss.

Be informed. Be healthy.

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A message to the critics of the new US food Guidelines and anti-meat promoters

20/2/2026

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This is part 2 of my article on the critics and their comments on my previous posts on the changes to the new US food guidelines and food pyramid:

Some of the craziest comments from critics I’ve seen and experienced even on my recent posts on the topic of the recent changes to the US food guidelines and food pyramid, is the belief that meats and animal foods are unnecessary, unhealthy or even dangerous, and are the cause of heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and other health issues. And so they shouldn’t even be on the food pyramid.

Let’s think about this a bit more and take a common modern western meal to use as an example – the humble hamburger meal. So we have a bun with meat, some salad, sauces, and a side of chips/fries and a soft drink (or “soda” for those in the US!). ALL of this was valid under the previous food guidelines and food pyramid, along with chocolate, sweets, donuts, pizza, ice cream, coke, and more! What we have in reality in this meal is a highly processed high carb grain-based bun exposed to many agricultural chemicals from farming, with artificial preservatives and additives, artificial vitamins (because the natural ones were destroyed in their processing), inflammatory gluten, and even added sugar, with a variety of high carb sauces with artificial ingredients and additives, colourings and preservatives, high carb chips/fries cooked in toxic and oxidised seed oils and carcinogenic acrylamide, to be chased down with an extremely high carb sugary drink (or artificial sweetener ingredients, which are even worse for you than the sugar/HFCS drinks!) with more artificial colourings, additives and preservatives.

Oh, but it’s the MEAT which is to blame for the epidemics of heart disease, diabetes and cancers?!
Really?! Are you insane?

You CANNOT blame the meat on the hamburger for the inflammation, oxidative damage, or symptoms that the carbs/sugar, artificial chemicals, toxic oils, and other processing causes to your body and your health!

The new food guidelines and food pyramid focus on eating “REAL FOOD”, which includes meats, healthy fats, vegetables and some fruit. And less of, or none of, the highly processed crap. So that is why it doesn’t include recommendations from processed food companies, or junk food companies, and grain/cereal companies! And that’s a good thing!

Meats and animal foods don’t cause heart disease, diabetes or cancers!

The ironic thing is that it’s mostly plant foods which do cause these epidemics of chronic diseases! High carb and sugar diets most certainly cause heart disease, diabetes and cancers. And these highly processed foods come from plants. Meats with their healthy fats and cholesterol, do not cause these chronic health issues. Meats are the foods with the highest nutrient density for protein, vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats. Far more than plant foods, especially in terms of the amounts and bioavailability of the nutrients per gram. And we’ve been eating animal foods forever in history, but we’ve only seen these health epidemics in the last 50 years! Coinciding with the introduction of and availability of highly processed foods.

There’s also the ironic and amusing use of the word “plant” when it comes to food processing, being made in an industrial plant or factory! Any “food” which is highly processed or packaged, and made in a plant/factory perhaps shouldn’t be eaten. Even if it does originally come from a real biological plant!

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t be eating plant foods! But I am pointing out the irony in the beliefs of many people that plant-based options are better and healthier, or that meats or animal foods are unnecessary or unhealthy or cause disease, because they don’t.

But sadly, because of past biased food guidelines and diets, corrupt industry/organisations, poor quality studies, social media and influencers, and other factors, people are confused as to what is healthy or not. It looks like the times are finally changing, starting with the US in their official new food guidelines and recommendations. Let’s hope people do start following the new guidelines, and organisations too, and that we see real reductions in these chronic health issues.

Stay healthy!

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The USA's food pyramid and food guidelines had to change!

20/2/2026

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This is part 1 of my article on critics to the recent food pyramid posts:

I’ve noticed from a number of negative comments on my recent posts on the new US food guidelines and food pyramid, that some people or critics who are following specific diets have no clue about nutrition and health.

Some people are concerned with seeing meat and fats at the top of the new food pyramid, which has symbolically been turned upside down literally and figuratively! Other people have issues with grain-based foods, including whole grains, now being the least recommended foods, often saying “but where will you get the fibre from?”!

Part of the trouble is that the general public have been brainwashed and lied to for decades on what foods are healthy or not, or which foods we actually need in our diet, from the previous food pyramid design, social media influencers, and other biased beliefs. It’s not easy to accept that previously-held beliefs were perhaps false, and to take on and accept new evidence or beliefs.

The previous food pyramid and food guidelines in the USA, Australia, and other countries, were all influenced by lobbying and sponsorships from food industries, or in other words, those involved in the past food guidelines were paid to tell lies about recommendations, to protect profits for the food industry. For example, the previous food guidelines in Australia, although published by the NHMRC being a government body, was actually the result of a tender which was won by the Dietitians Association of Australia for a little over $500,000. So it was actually the DAA who produced the food guidelines! And at the time, the DAA were sponsored and paid by many food industry companies, including junk food companies and processed food companies, and so the dietary guidelines were massively biased to these processed food companies, and not based on quality evidence or published studies. This is why they promoted lots of high carbohydrate grain-based processed foods, but recommended low fats, low salt, low cholesterol, packaged foods. And not much real foods.

The same can be said for many so-called health organisations such as the various heart health organisations and charities, diabetes organisations, cancer organisations, etc all around the world! They too are sponsored by processed food companies for favourable recommendations, rather than the truth based on evidence.

The previous food pyramid or food plate models allowed sweets, chocolate, sugary drinks, fries, alcohol, donuts, ice cream, biscuits, and more! In what insane universe are these foods healthy and being recommended in the food guidelines?!

We’ve had 50 years of nutrition lies and propaganda, and this is why our overall health has gone backwards ever since. Despite the so-called good food guidelines and recommendations of the past, we’re experiencing epidemics of so many chronic health issues, such as heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and these have actually got worse with the previous guidelines. Something had to change!
This is why the recent changes to the US food guidelines and food pyramid are a GOOD change to the lies and propaganda of food and nutrition, which everyone has been fed for decades! I actually don’t think the recommendations went far enough, but it’s a good start.

I will follow this up with another article on this topic, as my rant went on a bit longer than I initially expected!

Stay healthy!

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Documentary review: "Super size me 2: Holy chicken"!

1/3/2025

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I've just come across the new food documentary of "Supersize me 2: Holy chicken", from Morgan Spurlock who produced the original food/health documentary called “Super size me” many years ago, where he lived on McDonalds meals 3 times a day and had doctors tracking his health before and during the documentary. The findings of this experiment were amazing and scary.

In this new documentary, he wants to open his own healthy fast food restaurant, based on chicken. He chose chicken because its lean (but we know that doesn't make it healthy!) and cheap (maybe not now with the chicken massacre going on due to the alleged bird flu infections).

It was interesting to see the decision-making process of deciding the chickens, the farming, meals and ingredients were more based on market trends and marketing terms, rather than being healthy.
The chosen chicken breed for meat is ready for the table in just 6 WEEKS, when not long ago it used to take 16-20 weeks. The poultry growers claim that growth hormones in chick is a myth... I'm not so sure about that in some countries. The chickens were growing so fast that they had bald patches, because their feather growth couldn't keep up with their incredibly fast growth rate. At 6 weeks old the chickens were 6 lb (2.7 kilos), and even when younger, the chickens could barely stand up to support their bodyweight. They spent most of their time sitting down and not moving around. The high growth rate caused many of the mega-chickens to die from heart disease and heart attacks. That's what happens to us humans too from a too-high carb diet. But the farmer growing his chickens said if they weren't dying from heart attacks, he would know they were not growing fast enough, so it was a good thing.

A vet performed an autopsy on some of the dead birds at 6 weeks old, and found necrosis in the hip joint, which he said was very common in these fast growing birds. He also found brittle bones, bent bones due to high body weight, and heart failure.

The US National Chicken Council, the "Big Chicken" lobby group of the industry, was described by one farmer in the documentary as being "a large mafia", as the organisation controls every aspect of the industry, from the breed, incubating the eggs, supplying hatchlings, feed, medications, and even encourages competition amongst growers to produce the biggest and best birds, for a reward of increased payments over other chicken farmers. And the farmers have no say in anything. If a farmer speaks out, the industry can make it impossible for them to make a profit to drive the farmer out of the system. An informer from the organisation explained that expensive upgrades to the chicken farms were forced onto the farmers, to keep them in debt and to have control over them.

Morgan wanted to market his chickens as "free range". The USDA (US Department of Agriculture) definition of "free-range" chicken means that the chickens are ALLOWED to have 51% access to daytime outside their sheds, but the chickens don't actually have to go outside. So he built a small 1 meter radius semicircle arc of a fence in the doorway of his massive shed, which could potentially allow a couple of his thousands of chickens to venture outside, but they didn't. But he could still call the meat as "free-range".

Another misleading term used in chickens is "cage-free", but chickens grown for meat in the US have never been raised in cages (unlike chickens that are produced for their eggs, where cages are very common). Another misleading term is "humanely raised", for which there are no guidelines as to what this actually means!

Marketing of foods in the documentary was also interesting, in using specific terms to make the foods or meals appear healthier when they are not. After coming up with some sample chicken "sandwiches" (actually a burger!) Morgan asked his marketing consultants "how healthy is a sandwich?", and everyone laughed...

He wanted to use the term "organic" to market his chicken in meals, but the chicken feed wasn't organic. It was mostly based on grains with corn then soy meal as the main ingredients, but also included pork meat and a massive shopping list of other ingredients including mould (Aspergillis) and a heap of anti-parasitic and anti-bacterial ingredients (oregano oil, garlic oil, clove oil and more), which actually cause dysbiosis (an imbalance of the gut microbiome) and this actually helps them put on more weight!

So since he can't call his chickens organic, he tried "all natural" instead, but an expert says that this is the most misleading claim in meat products. Consumers seem to think that "all natural" is similar to or is the same as "organic" in its meaning. It has nothing to do with what the animals are fed or their growing environment or whether they are given medications or antibiotics. According to the USDA, "all natural" means "minimally processed" and "no artificial ingredients" These guidelines only need to be applied AFTER the animal is killed.

In the US, poultry cannot be given hormones to make them grow faster, but producers still make the claim in their marketing or labelling that the chicken is "hormone-free".

So he can (and did) call his chicken meat products as "free range, cage-free, no hormones added, humanely-raised, 100% natural", and this could get the USDA's seal of approval! And Morgan quoted "that's some pretty good bullsh1t right there!". And the USDA don't have a budget to test or check anything, so they just rubber stamp everything.

The majority of the documentary was to highlight the ridiculousness of the wording used in the production and marketing of fast food products, and how marketing consultants can make up things to make food appear better or healthier, when they really aren't. And such companies get away with it, and people buy the BS. There was nothing in the documentary about the actual nutrition of these foods, or how they affect your health. With all this BS marketing, people think they can eat anything they want. And food companies use these techniques of human behaviour to suck you in and to increase their sales.

Morgan interviewed a professor of nutrition and he asked "what if there was a company who was completely honest with their customers?", to which she looked confused and said "why would they want to do that"!

Hilariously, Morgan used a lot of honest statements about the chickens and the industry in his marketing in the new restaurant including:

"Holy chicken (the name of the restaurant) too good to be true"
A "better for you, sounds great - means nothing" sticker on the burger/sandwich wrapper to hold it together
"Holy chickens are so awesome, they can hardly stand it", referring to how fat the chickens are that they can barely stand up
Having a sign in the restaurant showing how small the outdoor space needed to be for thousands of chickens to call them "free range"
Signs explaining that they use green paint and wood in the restaurant to give the impression of nature and healthy food
"No added asbestos or plutonium" signs on the wall!
And "We never use the F-word" referring to "fried" and why they use the word "crispy" instead, so people think the food is healthier, even though the chicken IS fried!
They point out all the w@nky marketing terms of "fresh", "artisanal", "green", "local", "all natural" and more, mean nothing but are used to trick people
And signs on the tables that explain the black horizontal "grill" marks on the chicken are actually PAINTED on (which much of the industry does), to give the impression of grilled chicken having more flavour, when the chicken is actually fried.

Morgan is at least very open and honest about everything, no doubt to the disgust of the "big chicken" industry. And the customers are shocked but loving his message. 4 days after opening the restaurant, several investors called him to want to franchise the brand all across the US! But it was just a short-term venture to get the message out to the public about the chicken industry and to make the documentary.

And the chicken farmers started lawsuits against the "big chicken" companies.

I recommend to watch the full "Super size me 2: Holy Chicken" documentary on your favourite streaming channel.

Stay healthy!

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The importance of organic foods and to reduce cancer risks

7/6/2022

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A recent investigation by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) on the US Department of Agriculture data found that nearly 60% of kale samples tested were contaminated with a likely carcinogenic (cancer-causing) pesticide (EWG, 2022).

The toxic pesticide, known as DCPA or Dacthal, was classified by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a possible carcinogen in 1995, but only recalled by its manufacturer 10 years later in 2005 (but only on some crops), banned in the European Union in 2009, is STILL being used in the US on crops such as kale, broccoli, sweet potatoes, eggplant and turnips. Other leafy greens in the US were also found to be contaminated with the same chemical. And this was not the only chemical used on these plant crops.

Kale production has increased by 56% in recent years due to more interest in their nutritional value.

Dacthal is also being used in Australia for brassica vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, spinach etc), legumes, alliums (onions, garlic, etc), potatoes, carrots and many other crop types (NuFarm, 2022).

This information stresses the importance of knowing what you are eating, and what your foods are exposed to, such as pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals. Just because someone is natural, green, or plant-based, doesn't mean it's going to be good for you. This is why certified organic foods or home grown vegetables can be healthier and safer for you to eat.

Be healthy.

References:

Environmental Working Group (EWG). (2022). More than half of kale samples tainted by possibly cancer-causing pesticide. Retrieved 5th June 2022 from https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/kale.php

NuFarm. (2022). Dactal 900WG. Retrieved 5th June 2022 from https://nufarm.com/au/product/dacthal-900wg/

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Calories are unscientific, ridiculous, and should not be used (Part 2)

19/4/2022

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This is Part 2 of my "Calories are unscientific, ridiculous, and should never be used" article! (See my post of yesterday for Part 1).

One of many issues with nutrition science is the concept of a calorie, and using calories as a ridiculous measurement of how healthy a food is, or the effects of the foods on the body. The model of using calories is often referred to the Calories In-Calories Out or CICO model. This is explained as the number of calories measured in your food intake vs the calories expended or used in exercise.

Here are many, many reasons why the CICO model is complete BS, including all the following:

Calories of metabolic processes are different in each person, and can't be measured anyway - only the alleged food intake can be measured and the exercise done - what about all the energy consumed or produced by other metabolic processes, re-use of nutrients, re-absorption of nutrients, and waste products (from breath, sweat, urination and poo)?
How is a "calorie" used in the body?! What are the biochemical reactions which use calories?! (Answer: none)
The CICO model does not take into account each person's own metabolic rate, typically driven by their thyroid gland. Someone with a low functioning thyroid will have a tendency to have low energy, slow metabolism and easy weight gain, but difficulty losing weight, even on a healthy diet
The CICO model assumes that physiological mechanisms or environmental factors or other biochemical hormones have no impact on energy balance - that it is all based on how foods are "BURNED"
CICO does not distinguish between "good" calories and "bad" calories. We all know an apple is better and healthier than a choc-chip cookie... but a cookie may have the same or less calories?!
In the CICO model, they forget to include how many calories are produced or needed to digest that food. For example, a lollipop might take 10% of its calories to be used by the body, but a steak can use 30% of its alleged calories to be digested
The CICO model suggests that 500 calories from brownies is just as fattening as 500 calories of kale! It's just ridiculous!
A low calorie food does not imply that it is healthy for you, and a high calorie food also does not imply that the food is unhealthy
Similar to good vs bad calories, the CICO model does not look at nutrient density of the foods, or their macronutrient breakdown into protein vs carbs vs fats or vitamins and minerals, or how the nutrients in the food affect your body in good or bad ways
CICO assumes everyone is the same, or that the energy output from a calorie in one person is the same as for another, which is not possible
With the CICO model, artificial sweeteners with zero calories (but are known to cause metabolic dysfunction, diabetes, weight gain and cancer) are allegedly better for you than high calorie healthy fats or an avocado for example?!
CICO assumes that the body "oxidises calories" in the same way and amount as in a bomb calorimeter (and at sea level etc, in the definition of a calorie)
CICO assumes that EVERYTHING you eat is going to be digested and absorbed, with NO waste! CICO does not take into account the "energy" or heat of your poo for example!
CICO doesn't take into account the adaptive metabolic processes in each person - someone MAY lose weight in the short term on a low calorie diet, but then due to hormones, thyroid changes, and other factors, weight loss can stall or plateau and then increase again due to the "starvation" effect and the adaptive slowing of metabolic processes to conserve energy for longer-term survival
Maintaining a healthy weight and good health is more about WHAT someone eats, not how much (or little) they eat based on calories
Weight gain is about over-storage of excess foods (or types of foods) not on over-eating of those foods or calories. One person eating the same foods as another will store more of those foods, while someone else will be using the foods for metabolism
Muscles needs more NUTRIENTS for the muscle health and function, and hence more nutrients from foods are used instead of being stored as body fat
A typical Keto/ketogenic diet has more calories than a low-fat diet, yet people on a keto diet will lose more weight (as body fat), more consistently, and for longer than someone on a low fat (ie, high calorie) diet
Since the 1960s we have been told that we need to be more aware of the calories we eat and to reduce high calorie foods - which means cutting fats as they have the most calories per gram. Look where that got us - with the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers, and other chronic inflammatory conditions ever in history
Proteins suppress appetite to make you eat less, but carbs do the opposite, yet they have the same calorific value
Healthy fats suppress appetite for longer than proteins, yet they have the highest number of calories
Low carb diets (generally higher calories from more fats) lead to more weight loss than low fat diets (lower calories) in many published studies
Carbohydrates and proteins have the same calorie value at 4 calories per gram. But replacing carbs with the same amount of protein, as shown in many studies, will result in weight loss from reduced fat stores, and sparing or improving muscle mass. Hence again, weight loss has NOTHING to do with calories of the foods you eat
The CICO model blames the individual for eating too much or not exercising enough, when there are MANY factors and hormones which are causing their weight gain, or preventing the usage of the fat stores for energy.

If anyone recommends that you should count your calories, or choose your food based on calories, especially for weight loss, then run away!

As you can see from above, there are a LOT of reasons why calories are irrelevant, useless, unscientific, and not representative of how foods and nutrients get used in your body!

Be informed. Be healthy!

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Calories are outdated, unscientific and should not be used

18/4/2022

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Choosing foods based on calories as being a measurement of how healthy they are is unscientific and ridiculous! Calories should never be used as a measurement of food quality or of their health to your body.

Let's review what a calorie really is... A calorie (or more correctly, a kilocalorie) is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius (specifically from 14.5C to 15.5C) at sea level! A kilocalorie (which we usually refer to as "one Calorie" with a capital C) really is 1000 calories. Kilojoules are the metric measurement of energy from foods, so they are also and irrelevant and ridiculous measurement of the health or energy of foods.

The measurement of the calorie content of a food is done in a device called a "bomb calorimeter", a closed container containing oxygen, and the food is physically BURNED in this device, to measure its energy output as heat. This is supposed to be a representation of how our bodies use nutrients, which it clearly isn't! Our bodies are NOT an enclosed device, and our bodies do not BURN food to create heat in the same way! We have many thousands or even millions of processes and chemical reactions which occur in our bodies to convert our food into far more than just heat, but also into many other products which change in more chemical reactions to finally allow us to live and function (but not burn up!). It is actually impossible to measure the amount of energy a food really gives us in our bodies, so the concept of calories has been used. But calories have been taken too far as a measurement of food quality, when it never should be.

My other issue about using calories for foods is the belief that low calorie foods are better for you, when they are not! This concept has been used for decades by weight loss companies, dietitians, doctors, food companies, and the general public, but again it's wrong!

Consider the following comparison of the calorie content of the major macronutrients:

Carbohydrates (vegetables, fruit, grains etc) - 4 kilocalories per gram
Protein (meats and plant-based protein) - 4 kilocalories per gram
Fats (animal and plant based oils and fats) - 9 calories per gram
Alcohol (ok, not a macronutrient, but it is a good comparison) - 7 kilocalories per gram.

Then see the attached graphs for comparing the blood sugar levels of each of these macronutrients - ie., how foods containing these affect your body...

Carbohydrates get converted quickly into glucose (ie, sugar) and raise your blood sugar levels quickly. Your body responds to the high blood sugar by secreting insulin to force cells to take up more glucose and insulin also forces the fat cells to take in the glucose that is converted to fat. Hence a high carb diet leads to fat storage and weight gain. Carbohydrates do not give a long-lasting energy.

Some proteins get more slowly converted into glucose, but generally most proteins will be broken down into their amino acid building blocks, to be rearranged into other proteins the body can use. Proteins are more filling, and give a longer-lasting energy to delay hunger for longer.

Here's an important question for you - carbs and proteins have the same calorie content, but which one has a better effect on your body, with less blood sugar spike, less insulin required, but a much longer lasting energy?!

Healthy fats generally don't raise blood sugar! However they do give a long lasting energy, are much more filling than carbs and proteins, and healthy fats don't cause the same inflammatory and oxidative damage that carbs do.

Ignore calories, ignore calorie measurements of foods as a marker of their health benefits, and ignore counting calories for weight loss or even for general health!

Focus instead on 1) the NUTRIENT content of foods, especially of whole, real, fresh, seasonal foods, and 2) avoiding processed, refined, packaged, and artificial foods which cause INFLAMMATION in your body, which is a major cause of our chronic disease epidemics today. Inflammation is the real cause of obesity, not calories! Inflammation comes from many other sources to cause weight gain, such as from hormone imbalances, stress, lifestyle factors, dysbiosis, exposure to toxins and chemicals, infections, and many more sources - most of which are unrelated to your food intake an unrelated to calories!

When all the root causes of one's weight gain are investigated and treated, you will lose weight easily and consistently, without hunger and cravings, and you will be able to reach and maintain your healthy goal weight long into the future! This is what I can help you with!

In the next article I will expand more on why calories are useless and unscientific, and should never be used as a measurement of the health of a food or for weight loss.

Be informed. Be healthy.

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Modern medicine is JUST an experiment of using toxic chemicals into malnourished people

4/12/2020

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Modern medicine is just an experiment of what happens when you put toxic chemicals into malnourished bodies...

Medications don't fix anything. They just trick the body into hiding your symptoms, to make you feel better. Take for instance pain-killing medications - they perform clever things to your biochemical pathways to stop the pain-causing neurotransmitters and/or the cellular receptors from responding to the neurotransmitters, so you don't FEEL the pain. Even though the root causes of the pain are still there, still triggering the pain, and still triggering the pain neurotransmitters...

Or cough medicines which stop you coughing. Never mind that the coughing is a natural mechanism to get the infected mucus and wastes out of your body! Hence you stay more infected and sicker for longer...

Or anti-inflammatory medications which reduce inflammation. Never mind that inflammation is your immune system's natural healing process, so you are in fact prolonging your injury, preventing healing and preventing your immune system from working, which in turn can lead to more infections and over time, cancer.

Or medications to reduce indigestion, reflux, or heartburn etc, by reducing the amount of stomach acid that your stomach produces, to reduce your symptoms. Never mind that your stomach is supposed to be acidic in order to digest your food and release all the nutrients that you eat! If you aren't digesting your foods, you won't be absorbing the nutrients from your foods, and you will quickly become deficient in a large number of nutrients, which in turn cause many more symptoms and conditions, which you may likely reach for more medications to try to hide.... and never actually fix anything. All the while, your health gets worse and worse.

Medications can't fix a poor diet. Medications can't correct nutrient deficiencies. What you need instead is to fix the root causes of your symptoms, which WILL give you long-term resolution and prevention of recurrence!

Sadly, this is not what doctors or the medical system do. They "treat" symptoms (really, they just "manage" symptoms) with medications or surgery.
I instead, as a Clinical Nutritionist, Naturopath and Herbalist, focus on finding all the root causes of all your symptoms and putting together a plan to treating and fixing those root causes, as well as using better and safer options to reduce symptoms and make you feel better, while fixing the causes.

Finding and fixing any nutrient deficiencies is also a very important aspect of what I do, which can be done through signs and symptoms and/or pathology testing. It is also interesting to note that most medications actually CAUSE many nutrient deficiencies, which is also something I check that your medications are doing...

Don't just hide your symptoms! Get rid of them forever, by finding and fixing the root causes. That is what I can help you with!

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the coronavirus is insignificant and shouldn't even be news

9/7/2020

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Here's some perspective of the coronavirus situation...

Over 4 million people this year have died from hunger, with around 9 million dying every year from a lack of food. A further 815 million people (over 10% of the world's population) suffer chronic undernourishment (World Hunger, 2017), which is not just confined to developing countries, as many in western countries are also suffering hunger and a lack of nutrition. Over 45% of all child deaths are from poor nutrition (Global Nutrition Report, 2015).

If you believe the statistics, around 500,000 people have allegedly died from coronavirus around the world. But these statistics are based on corrupt WHO recommendations for classifying deaths from assumptions being made, no testing to confirm, no autopsies being recommended, and an inaccurate PCR test that is not designed for diagnostic purposes.

What would be the true numbers of covid deaths, we might never know. But one thing is for sure - the coronavirus should be a very minor player in world health issues at the moment. But it isn't because of clever planning and marketing by those who only want you to see that the virus is the only thing that is affecting people.

I haven't even gone into the statistics of other causes of death due to chronic diseases or other infections such as influenza, which kill many, many more people in the world each year.

But we have a media scare campaign over a man-made virus to which just 0.3% of people test positive for, and a mortality rate of those who test positive of just 0.1%... This virus should not even be a published news story, because it is so insignificant in the overall picture of health in the world.

Have you seen any doctor, health official, government, or media outlet during this whole scare campaign, recommending that you can reduce your risks of coronavirus by getting the right nutrition or addressing nutritional deficiencies? No, of course not. Why?

How do you know if you have nutritional deficiencies? You have some if you:
1) Get an infection
2) Have a chronic disease condition
3) or if you have any symptoms at all.

You can easily get tested to see what deficiencies you may have, and then get the results analysed holistically and naturopathically to look for these deficiencies. Sadly, a doctor or GP doesn't interpret your results to look for these as they aren't trained to. This is where I can help!

If you do eat the right nutrition and address deficiencies, you can improve your immune system to better protect you from the coronavirus, as well as solving the world's hunger and malnutrition problems, and also reducing and preventing all chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, mental health and neurological conditions, and even cancer.

See my earlier articles on how to support your immune system better for reducing your health issues.

And stay healthy.

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"The Magic Pill" documentary review

8/6/2020

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On Monday 31st July 2017, I was invited to attend a private screening of the new food and nutrition documentary "The Magic Pill", and be an expert on the panel afterwards to answer health and nutrition questions from the attendees. Perhaps the title is a little vague at first, but the message becomes clearer as you progress through the film, produced by Rob Tate and Pete Evans (Australian celebrity chef and Paleo nutrition advocate).

The film introduces us to several people of differing ethnicity and their families, and a warts and all look at their health issues, medications, and their concerns about their health. We looked at Caucasian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and a large community of Indigenous Australian Aborigines in Arnhem Land. All had many chronic diseases, including many "20th Century conditions" of over-consumption, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, liver and kidney disease, asthma, and cancer. We also followed the stories of a young girl and boy with severe ADHD and intellectual development issues who were non-verbal and showed a lot of typical behaviours of being on the autism spectrum, which was very stressful for their families.

The Yolgnu people in Arnhem Land were particularly interesting, as they recalled their parents and grandparents all being very fit, strong, having great teeth and in excellent health while living their traditional ways and foods. Then white man came with their western/modern foods. They were now living on "modern" foods of breakfast cereals, breads, damper, jam, orange juice and coca cola... As a result, their health was very poor, life expenctancy very low, and they couldn't see how they could change this.

But along came a charity called "Hope for Health" with selfless health professionals with a program which incoprorates their traditional medicine and diet, exercise, detox retreats, nutrition and cooking workshops and support. In a few short weeks, they turned their health around and this gave them hope! You could see the relief and improvements in their eyes and faces again, and it was beautiful to see! For more information on this charity and their work, please visit https://www.hopeforhealth.com.au/ and consider a donation to help these wonderful people.

A brief section of the film showed similar health issues with Native Americans eating the same modern foods introduced by white man.

It was obvious that the "modern" food pyramid and government food guidelines does not work for everyone (or "anyone", it could be argued), especially indigenous populations. One reason that the guidelines are not working is due to the huge amount of influence the food industry companies have in these guidelines, through "sponsorships" of various health advisory groups, and their deliberate funding of biased "research" simply confuses the public and maintains the current situation. These sponsorships are openly listed on their respective websites.

From my experience in clinical practice (as a Nutritionist and Naturopath), people from non-Western ethnic backgrounds improve their health so much by returning to their traditional diets, which typically includes plenty of seasonal vegetables, some fruits, organ meats, grass-fed/wild caught meats and healthy fats - eggs, nuts and seeds, and the occasional fast. This became the theme and purpose of the film - to educate and empower people to return to health using traditional nutritional medicine and cooking techniques, while avoiding the health dangers in processed foods.

Various scientific, medical and nutritional experts were interviewed and contributed to the film, including Dr David Perlmutter ("we should eat natural foods, not scientised foods"), Dr Rangan Chatterjee ("the question that all doctors should ask patients is 'what are you eating?'"), farmer Joel Salatin ("90% of cattle in the USA are fattened up in feedlots, being fed GRAINS" - yet they are supposedly healthy for us?!, and "a sick environment causes sick crops, which causes sick animals, which causes sick humans who eat them"), South African scientist Professor Tim Noakes (the South African dietetics association filed a complaint against him for giving Low Carb High Fat diet advice, but he won, due to the amount of scientific evidence supporting the LCHF model ), and more.

There was a short section of the documentary showing charts and statistics of the benefits of a LCHF or ketogenic type diets to reduce weight, and reverse many of the modern diseases mentioned earlier. The weight of scientific evidence shows that the current food guidelines is contributing to the chronic disease epidemic we have now, and perhaps the food pyramid model should be turned upside down, so that meats and healthy fats are the main part of our diets, instead of grains.

I do not agree with the current food guidelines (which is quite disappointing as a Nutritionist, but it is a decision based on evidence), and I recommend a similar food model for my clients, being a "low inflammation" nutrition program, which is a slight variation of the LCHF/ketogenic/Paleo model. I don't believe, however, that a high intake of meat/protein or healthy fats should be the most consumed food group. Vegetables should be - preferably raw, fresh, seasonal and organic as much as possible for their wide nutrient content. Grass-fed meats and "healthy fats" (not so much "High Fat", which is open to abuse or extreme diets) should come next, with processed or refined carbohydrates such as sugar, grains and grain products coming a distant last in quantity, or even avoided (as there's no nutrients in grains which can't be obtained from other food groups!).

A LCHF/Ketogenic diet can reduce chronic disease symptoms by reducing inflammation, reducing cholesterol and blood sugars, and normalising blood lipid levels and the body's response to insulin. These changes can help to reduce weight, reverse type 2 diabetes, improve mental health, reduce autism symptoms (both children became vocal, more responsive and better behaved in a few short weeks!), greatly reduce or even eliminate the need for insulin for T2 diabetics, improve energy, improve brain function and cognition, and reduce many other chronic disease symptoms!

We saw all of these improvements start in a few days in the family members being followed in this documentary, and they kept on getting better at each checkup a few weeks and several months after incorporating the dietary changes. It was heartwarming and wonderful to watch the improvements, to see and hear their reactions, and their need for less medications which neither helped improve their health nor reduced their symptoms.

If you are interested in food, health, nutritional medicine, or wanting to reduce your chronic disease symptoms, please have a look at this film! I recommend watching for its emotive, educational and empowering message, that nutritional medicine can be "The Magic Pill" to many of our current health epidemics many people are dealing with personally. If the movie can inspire just one person that there is hope in having better health and a better quality of life, the film has achieved its purpose! Many thanks to all those involved in the film, for raising awareness and hope in many!

Once you are ready to make some changes yourself, please consult with an experienced Nutritionist or Naturopath to help personalise a plan for you, as your current health conditions, lifestyle, medications and other factors may need to be taken into account. I'd love to help you achieve your health goals!

"The Magic Pill" is available to watch on Netflix. Please look out for this, as I highly recommend watching it!

Good health to you!

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review of the vegan documentary "The Game Changers"

11/11/2019

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(I have not included all the text of this review here, as it's very long! I have added the introduction, some initial points, and the conclusion. For the full review, click on the PDF file link at the bottom of this article, to open or save the file and read the entire content!)

Being a Clinical Nutritionist and Naturopath means seeing many clients with a variety of health conditions and helping them to improve their health by reducing symptoms and enabling healing. In almost every case, there needs to be some improvements to their food intake in order to get the successful results that the client is looking for.

To help clients achieve their goals requires a lot of knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of all body systems, biochemistry, metabolic pathways, pathophysiology of many diseases, and all the interactions between these. I am very evidence-based as a practitioner, in order to make good recommendations of nutrients and/or products and advice to help the client. There is also an amount of anecdotal evidence being in practice too, which is evidence from personal observations as a practitioner and from the patient. While this is not considered as "scientific evidence" it is still very important, as not everyone is the same or has the same experiences with the same treatments, which is often not reflected in scientific studies.

I am fully aware of the seemingly conflicting advice and recommendations about foods and diets - which diet is best, or whether coffee, chocolate, red wine, dairy, butter, soy or grains are good for you this week or not! Then next week they are bad again... Hence I like to keep on top of the nutritional advice which is given to the public. Which is why I frequently review food-related news stories, articles and documentaries to see what recommendations they say, and whether they are in fact, evidence based.

This review is for the new "plant-based" documentary called "The Game Changers". The documentary is produced by James Cameron (also the producer of Titanic, and Avatar movies and others), Arnold Schwartzenegger, Jackie Chan (actor, martial artist), Lewis Hamilton (F1 driver), and mostly hosted by James Wilks, a UFC martial arts fighter. The trailer for the documentary showed short snippets of several sporting stars and athletes allegedly improving their performance on a "plant-based" (read as "vegan") diet. Even bodybuilder Arnold Schwartzenegger is in favour, despite him not actually being a vegan at the time of his greatest successes! He achieved that on a very high animal protein diet with a side of anabolic steroids! Arnold said in the trailer and in the movie: "the marketing at the time was that real men ate meat, and lots of it", and "but that was marketing. It's not based on reality".

The very same could be said about this documentary - it's not based on reality, certainly not a scientific reality!

By the way, the word "vegan" or description of a vegan diet recommended in this documentary is never used! It's as if the producers know that the word "vegan" has such negative perceptions that they deliberately didn't use this word because they were embarrassed to do so! And there's many good reasons why the word "vegan" has deserved negative perceptions, not least of which is the tendency of the cult-like followers to suspend logic and science in their arguments.

Instead of the word "vegan", they repeat the term "plant-based" on and on and on. If the producers and contributors to the film are so pro-vegan, they should use the term, and not hide behind the confusion of whatever "plant-based" really means. This confusion will grow, particularly as some commonly promoted diets which prevent or improve health issues are "plant-based" but they contain meat and animal products, such as the Mediterranean diet! (Lăcătus, Grigorescu, Floria, Onofriescu & Mihai, 2019). Make no mistake, this documentary is NOT about a moderate "plant-based" diet with some animal products. It is talking about and promoting a VEGAN diet!

The main concept of the documentary is about protein, and that animal protein is not necessary for athletes to perform at the highest level. And that plant-based protein can not only help athletes, but reverse heart disease and diabetes. Or does it?!

As with my other food-related documentary reviews, this is a bit long. Very long, really! Sorry! But it needs to be, but will be very informative, scientific, with a more balanced point of view, and pointing out the errors or holes in their arguments with referenced articles and published studies!

The film quoted wisdom from the martial artist Bruce Lee:

"Research your own experience
Absorb what is useful
Reject what is useless
Add what is essentially your own."

This was Bruce Lee's way of life. And this is good advice, as we are all different!

Yet the aim of the documentary is the opposite - to get everyone to be the same.

This review might sound at this point to be anti-vegan. No it isn't! I am happy for people to look into this way of life and use it themselves, but what is missing in the documentary is balance! Or science. The documentary is extreme in its beliefs and information, and in many parts is completely lacking in good science on human physiology, metabolism, biochemistry and their effect on diseases. The purpose of this review is to perhaps fill in the holes or correct many aspects of science which were lacking in the documentary, and provide more balance, all fully referenced with published scientific studies.

The story
The documentary followed James Wilks and his journey to recovery after tearing ligaments in both knees after a sporting injury. In his search to finding ways to heal more quickly, he came across a book about the Roman Gladiators that found they had mostly a "plant-based" diet, which greatly surprised him. Researchers have found that the gladiators were referred to as hordearii or "barley men", because of their diet. Yet researchers analysed their bones and found them to be fairly strong, and seemed to recover from injuries quickly. So he set about looking into this more for a quicker recovery from his injuries.

My comments - Gladiators were slaves. They had short lives and were not fed well by their owners. They had very nutrient deficient diets, lacking in calcium that is needed for strong bones. Historical accounts showed that the gladiators downed vile brews of charred wood or bone ash or similar, to keep their bones strong. Gladiators were fed a lot of barley, because it made them fat! And they needed subcutaneous fat to protect them from cut wounds that would otherwise damage nerves and blood vessels! A skinny gladiator was "dead meat", and would not have made for a good show. So their plant-based and very high carb diet was done deliberately to make them fat (Curry, 2008). We know this today, that a high carb diet becomes blood sugar, which then gets turned into triglycerides or fat. A major point ignored in this film.

Protein for energy
A big assumption or belief throughout the documentary is the belief that we need protein for energy, and if you decide to go "meat free" as many athletes in the documentary have done, then people will ask "where will they get their energy from if they don't eat meat?!". And if one can get protein from plants, then we don't need meat!

My comments - Our bodies can use the macronutrients of carbohydrates, proteins and fats for fuel for energy. Depending on your typical food intake, the priority of which macronutrients get used first can differ. If you eat a typical Western diet or predominantly vegetarian or vegan diet that is high in carbs, then you will use these macronutrients in this order (Patton & Thibodeau, 2013):

Carbs -> glucose
Fats -> ketone bodies and glycerol
Protein -> amino acids.

If you are on a more ketogenic diet and are "fat adapted", your body's order of preference of fuel will be different (Freeman, Veggiotti, Lanzi, Tagliabue & Perucca, 2006, p153):

Fats -> ketone bodies and glycerol
Carbs -> glucose
Protein -> amino acids.

If you are an athlete, your body's order of preference of fuel can be different, depending on whether you are a distance athlete or a sprinter. Metabolising carbs is a quicker process, but not very efficient, and produces lots of lactic acid as a by-product, which makes muscles sore and burning during exercise, and you run out of energy or strength quickly. Metabolising fats for energy is slower, but MUCH more efficient in producing energy, but doesn't produce lactic acid, so you will have a lot more stamina and less sore muscles later. Hence for sprinters, a higher carb diet (not protein!) can be best for more explosive power in short events. For distance athletes, fats are the best fuel - not carbs and certainly not protein!

It is important to note that protein is always last in the order of preference for energy metabolism! This is important to note, as proteins have many more important functions, being used to make thousands of other proteins in the body, for repair of tissues and organs, and many other metabolic functions. Proteins are very important for your body, and your body doesn't want to "waste" protein to make energy, unless it has to. However, your body will use stored protein if you do not get enough protein in your diet. If you don't eat enough protein where will your body get protein from?

Your muscles.

Muscle tissue will be broken down to provide your body with the protein it desperately needs. You do not want this to happen. Especially if you are an athlete. Hence protein for energy is irrelevant. You need it for repair and recovery afterwards.

(see the PDF file link at the bottom of this article to read the full review content!)

Other issues with vegan diets
Due to the vegan bias in this documentary, there were no negatives of a vegan diet mentioned, so here is a little more balance to the reality:

Plant foods are high in "anti-nutrients" like TIs, oxalates and phytates, which bind to a lot of vitamins and minerals and other nutrients in the same meal, and prevent the body from being able to absorb and use those nutrients. Hence these plant anti-nutrients reduce the bioavailability of other nutrients, or in other words, the antinutrients can cause nutrient deficiencies
Many plant-based foods actually INCREASE inflammation in the body. Plant based foods such as sugar in sugary foods and drinks, processed foods, vegetable/seed oils (especially when heated), and grain products (and they chemicals they are sprayed with) all cause inflammation (de Punder & Pruimboom, 2013). As inflammation reduces the function of the immune system, and is the main driver of chronic disease conditions like arthritis, dementia, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, inflammation-causing foods should be avoided or reduced
Many people have undiagnosed or unknown intolerances or sensitivities to different foods. While this is not restricted to just plant foods, some of the biggest culprits include wheat, gluten in wheat, rye and barley, lectins in legumes, soy, and corn, although an individual can be intolerant to any food
Sadly, modern plant agriculture and farming relies on toxic agricultural chemicals, which often cover the plant foods exposed to them, and which doesn't come out in the processing of those foods, so you end up eating them and having these chemicals affect your health. Genetically modified (GMO) corn actually produces its own toxins in the plant (from a toxin-producing bacterial genes being spliced into the corn genes). So you end up eating these toxins and they have a terrible effect on your digestive system, microbiome and your health
There is a belief that all humans of all cultures and ethnicities are all the same. We are not. We do not have the same genetics, and hence there is no one diet which is ideal for each and every one of us.

Follow the money
As the old Russian proverb says, "When money speaks, the truth keeps silent". Or the more modern catchphrase "follow the money" to find the truth.

James Cameron, one of the directors and contributors to the film, wants you to buy into a plant-based protein eating plan because... he and his wife own many plant-based food industry companies, from which they want to make even more money from gullible people who believe what they see in this documentary, without really checking the scientific facts. The Camerons founded Verdient Foods, a US-based company, and have other similar plant-based food companies and joint ventures with other plant-based companies around the world. His opinion in this film is extremely biased as a result of his financial interests in these food industry companies (Bloomberg, 2019).

Dr David Katz is a medical doctor in the USA, and author of several books and many peer-reviewed studies, mainly on the topic of nutrition (Sboros, 2018). He was a contributor and interviewee in the film, possibly as he is well known as an outspoken voice on nutrition science in the USA. Yet he has faced controversy in his beliefs and articles, and even faced being sacked from some publications due to undeclared conflicts of interest. He was being paid by various companies and appearing to write articles on favour of those companies, and not disclosing his financial benefits from those companies, which would rightly be seen as a conflict of interest (Sboros, 2018).

Dr Katz has been caught out many times in previous publications with similar conflicts of interest, writing favourable reviews but not declaring a financial interest, biased writing, defending manufacturers of unhealthy or junk foods, or even writing favourable product reviews using a pseudonym. He has ties to many producers of sugary foods and drinks, and he promotes or defends their products, for a fee of course. He has denied these conflicts of interest (Sboros, 2018; Greene, 2019).

Other contributors to the documentary include:

Dr Walter Willet - a Harvard University scientist, who has a long list of affiliations and conflicts of interest with vegetarian and vegan groups (The Nutrition Coalition, 2019)
Dr Micael Greger - a medical doctor specialising in nutrition, but vegan nutrition only. He promotes veganism with a religious fervour and will cherry-pick studies promoting the benefits on plant-based diets while never saying anything positive about animal foods (Schwarcz, 2017).

Conclusion
The overall message of the documentary was good, that for athletes to get the best personal or team results, they must do more than just train and practice, but focus on eating healthy meals which provide all of the nutrients that their bodies need to:
1) provide energy for training and in events
2) provide nutrients for repair and recovery
3) provide the right nutrients needed for many metabolic processes
4) have a good digestive system function to digest, absorb and assimilate the nutrients (this was actually completely missed in this documentary!)

The vegan bias of this documentary was particularly evident, with deliberately withheld information, incorrect assumptions or beliefs, misinformation, selective blaming of animal products when plant products cause the same issues, and in some cases, outright lies with regard to human physiology or biochemistry in favour of a plant-based approach vs. a healthy balanced animal and plant based diet! In particular is the completely wrong message in the film that protein is used for energy, when protein metabolism is the last resort for energy production!

Again, everyone is different! SOME people can do fairly well on a vegan diet (perhaps only in the beginning of a vegan diet, as mentioned above), while I see many (as clients) who do not do well at all due to the many inherent nutrient deficiencies of this approach. Athletes need to be very, very careful on a vegan diet to make sure they are getting even more of the nutrients they need. I would highly recommend that anyone considering a vegan diet to working with an experienced Nutritionist to make sure your nutrient needs are being met! As a practitioner, I have never suggested to a vegan to start eating animal products again to rectify any deficiencies which may be causing their health issues. I respect their decisions to be vegan, and I help them address their issues.

There is a lot of blind faith, word of mouth or perception that a vegan diet is healthier, when scientific studies show that some vegans can be healthy (if their diet is done well), and omnivores can be healthy too! But conversely, there are a lot of vegans and omnivores who are not healthy. The problem is not which diet someone is following, but how that diet affects the individual! As we are not the same in our genetics, there is no one diet which is good for all of us. Find what works for you, and seek professional help from experienced nutritional medicine practitioners if any symptoms arise from any change of diet, as it means there is something not right. Having a blind faith in a vegan diet as being perfect for you isn't scientific, but is akin to following a new religion because it's trendy.

Similar to other vegan documentaries I've reviewed in the past, if the producers really want people to follow their way of life or see the health benefits that they claim, then they should at least tell the truth or the full story, and not repeat common misbeliefs based on poor quality science or old science to "prove" their arguments. None of the producers of the documentary have any scientific or nutritional background to completely understand the information they obtained in the making of this, nor were they able to look at the many health consequences of what they are trying to promote. But I guess that was their plan.

The documentary concluded with a disclaimer, "the information in this film is not intended to be medical advice". Yep, they got that right. Sadly too many will buy into the biased and incorrect information in this film, and not see this disclaimer at the end.

Even as a Clinical Nutritionist, and an evidence-based one at that, I have determined that being vegan is not for me. Not because I perceive it as being too difficult, but simply as I know my body better than anyone else. I know what it needs, how it reacts to various foods, and how it works. I am very aware of many quality published studies showing that a vegan diet is deficient in many nutrients, and the health consequences of these. And I'd rather just eat real food and not rely on supplements to get my daily requirements! If being vegan worked, no supplements should be needed, and I shouldn't see any vegans as clients, but sadly that is not the reality.

This more balanced look at this documentary should show that BOTH animal foods and plant foods are needed for a healthy body and healthy life! Too much of one or the other can cause health consequences. However of equal importance to the quantity of nutrients being needed, the quality of those nutrient sources is also as important, as well as other factors such as your own genetics and uniqueness, digestive system function, how foods are cooked, and more.

Wishing you the best of health!

(PS - I have attached my full review of The Game Changers documentary in a PDF document below! Feel free to download, read and share this around! The above article is just a summary of the introduction, main points and conclusion of the full article, which debunks and busts every error, omission or lie in the film!)

the_game_changers_documentary_review.pdf
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How the EAT-Lancet global diet will be forced on you

31/1/2019

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This article follows on from my previous 2 articles on the ridiculously proposed EAT-Lancet diet. The EAT-Lancet commission's initial report for a global diet showed WHAT they want everyone to eat. But another report they released on 28th January 2019 explains HOW they are going to make you follow their plans, by forcing governments and "health organisations" to make it happen!

This project has just become a whole lot worse... read on for more details.

Some observations of the new report include:

1) They propose to reduce the influence that the food industry have on food guidelines used by different countries around the world, because of their tendency to prevent health initiatives being implemented

2) They will promote their EAT-Lancet global diet to all levels of government, to all nations and communities and all people, by using international human rights laws, along with government organisations like the World Trade Organisation, European Union, the World Bank, United Nations and others.

3) They will force governments to stop giving subsidies to fossil fuel and food industries (about $5 trillion annually), and redirect those funds to other sustainable energy and food practices... in effect, for themselves to get these funds instead! Can you now see why they want to force this on you?!

4) They want to overcome the powerful energy and food lobby groups which have prevented government policies being made which keep people and the environment unhealthy while they maintain their profits. For example, soft drink companies spent $50 million in the USA during 2016-17 to prevent government initiatives to reduce intake of soft drinks. The group are recommending stronger government structures to reduce conflicts of interest, including public education, social media marketing, government procurement, additional taxes... and subsidies, but they said this was a bad idea before!

5) They will utilise individual agents as influencers to getting their message out to the general public, in a "bottom-up" approach to go with the "top-down" influencing through government policies in all levels to change public opinions

6) They want to make individuals take responsibility for their own health, by reducing social prejudices on obese or unhealthy people or on their gender, religion and race
7) They will increase awareness of access to efficient cooking stoves (?!) to improve nutrition

8) The report admits that the world CAN produce enough food for everyone, but undernutrition and deficiencies still exist in more than one third of the world's population. Ironically, 99% will be deficient with this plan, and only the 1% who are part of the project possibly getting enough...

9) Animal crops which produce red meat are allegedly a problem and intake will be restricted in this global diet, because one third of the world's grain crops go towards feeding them and not us! Cattle for example are NOT naturally meant to eat grains! The only reason they are fed grains is because grains are high in carbohydrates, which gets turned into fat! So grain-fed cattle become larger and fatter. And this group want YOU to eat more grains, to fatten you up before slaughter?!

10) Red meat in excess is blamed in the report as causing obesity! Not in most people as I see it, but it's the carbs, sugar and grains which are! The report says "Animal-source foods, including meat, provide a rich source of highly bioavailable micronutrients, especially for young children, and make an important contribution to high quality diets when consumed in moderation"! So why are they effectively banning animal foods, with the exception of one-fifth of an egg, or one-tenth of a sausage, as per their 7 grams of red meat per day?

11) They are proposing to promote their implementation of the EAT-Lancet diet worldwide, in a similar way to how cigarettes were demonised and and smokers being alienated, in an attempt to get governments and the public to change and comply to their dietary recommendations

Their goal is to reduce poor nutrition and its ongoing costs on the health system and environment, estimated at $3.5 trillion annually. Ironically, this project will actually INCREASE levels of poor nutrition by causing more nutrient deficiencies in more people than ever before, as reviews of this diet have shown it is deficient in vitamin B12, vitamin D, vitamin K, sodium, potassium, calcium, iron, omega-3 fats, protein and amino acids, and more!

This new report also makes an impossible claim that their plans (along with spending 1% of GDP) will stop the increase in climate change!

I've recently watched George Orwell's 1984 movie again, and the EAT-Lancet global diet being forced on everyone is a blatant New World Order policy, if I've ever seen one. It is unscientific, unproven, biased, elitist, and undemocratic. It is a commercial profit-making enterprise, disguised as a global public health directive, and funded by the world's taxpayers, who are only going to get sicker as a result of this.

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Is the new EAT-Lancet diet healthy for you? (part 2)

30/1/2019

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This is part 2 of my article on the new proposed EAT-Lancet "global diet"...

While it would generally be great to see more people eating more quality plant-based foods, which I mentioned in my last 2 articles, there are more than a few problems with this report and the dietary recommendations it makes.

1) There are a lot of published studies which refute the studies they cite as evidence of their reasonings for their recommendations.

2) Nutrition researchers have analysed the nutrient breakdown of the proposed global diet, which was easy to do as they published the quantity and calories of each food item they recommend. They found many major deficiencies in nutrients if you were to follow their advice! Some of the deficiencies include vitamin B12, vitamin D, vitamin K, sodium, potassium, calcium, iron, omega-3 fats, protein and amino acids, and more! Just one nutrient deficiency will result in health symptoms and diseases, but this many is a health disaster. This objective of the group to provide a healthy diet has failed miserably!

3) There is no one single diet which works for everyone. We've seen that over the past few decades with government food guidelines all over the world, and the epidemics of chronic diseases are being caused by these guidelines that are too slow to respond to good quality scientific studies.

4) The massive amount of carbohydrates, especially refined and processed carbs (sugary foods and grains) in the EAT recommendations is as bad or worse than what we already have today. For example, they recommend a massive 811 calories or 32% of your daily food intake should be hi-carb grains, and more carbs from starchy vegetables, and another 5% of your daily intake from sugar! This will simply increase the rates of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

5) The commission forgets that animal crops rejuvenate the soil with their manure, ironically needed by plants to grow! But plant crops are grown in ever-depleted soils, or are topped up with artificial nutrients instead, not to mention the toxic herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and more that the crops and soil is exposed to. This is not sustainable farming nor environmentally friendly.

6) They recommend many unhealthy fats and oils, including palm oil, which is NOT environmentally friendly as many would know! The palm oil industry is well known for destroying native rainforests to grow specific palm trees. I thought the EAT-Lancet concept was about being sustainable and environmentally friendly?! No, it's not. More native rainforests will be cut down to produce more palm oil from this recommendation, especially when palm oil makes up 2% of this diet (compared to red meats at 1%!).

7) Many of their assumptions are still based on old and incorrect beliefs (based on poor quality studies done in the past), that saturated fats are bad and cause heart disease (which studies show they don't!), or that diabetes is caused by red meat consumption (it's not!), or that salt is bad for you (wrong again), or eggs are bad because they are high in cholesterol which is another heart disease risk (it's not!), and other fallacies. As a result, this new diet is just the same old incorrect information, but then made much, much worse.

8) For many decades we have been told that we all need to eat and drink lots of dairy products every day, to get plenty of calcium for healthy bones. The current perception is that dairy is a good source of calcium, which it actually isn't! But suddenly, the EAT-Lancet report says that a World Health Organisation review has shown that regions with low dairy intake actually have lower bone fracture rates! So now dairy should be reduced. I've been saying for a while that dairy is a poor source of calcium and many plant-based foods have a higher % of calcium per gram! Hence by eating more quality plant foods, you can get sufficient calcium in your diet, but this new diet provides only 55% of your daily requirement of calcium!

9) Meat makes up just a tiny 6% of this new diet, of which only 1% is red meat (just 7 grams per day!), or 2% for chicken and fish. There is no good quality evidence for this! This decision is based on personal bias against meat by 31 out of the 37 committee participants (being 84%) being vegetarians or vegans themselves.

10) There have been NO studies done on this proposed diet! NONE! So how can they possibly be recommending it when they haven't actually tested it?! They have put this recommendation together from a committee looking at different published studies on individual nutrients, but then not actually researching their recommendations as a whole to prove that it will be safe, beneficial and effective in meeting their objectives for our health and that of the environment.

The EAT-Lancet global diet is, in my opinion from reading their recommendations, pretty much more of the same old useless dietary guidelines advice based on the same old nutritional fallacies, but with significantly less meat being recommended and that being replaced by more carbs which ironically will cause even more problems.

Whenever there is a major push for a one-size-fits-all approach to health and nutrition, and where there is no scientific proof, it must be ignored! It simply will not work!

The EAT-Lancet diet should be renamed as the Fat-Lancet diet, because the deficiencies it has, and the high amount of carbs from sugar and grains, and it's reliance on unhealthy fats, will cause more disease and obesity, a worse environmental impact, and more profits to the medical system and the people involved with this proposal.

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The EAT-LANCET diet - is this new global diet healthy for you?

30/1/2019

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The latest instalment of nutritional confusion and idiocy of late is from the release of a new report from the EAT-Lancet Commission, which is the collaboration of the EAT group and The Lancet, with the former being a non-profit startup and the latter allegedly one of the world's leading scientific and medical journals. Really they both should know better...

The EAT-Lancet Commission Report was only recently released (Jan 16, 2019), and is a joint report for a "global health diet" that is allegedly healthy for both people and the planet. Sounds great so far... although a single diet for everyone already has my hackles up, as that simply will not work!

The EAT group hide behind other companies and foundations, but mostly funded by a Norwegian billionaire couple, of which Gunhild Stordalen, is a former model turned doctor and environmentalist, and her husband owns a large chain of hotels. Ironically one of their Foundation's slogans on their website is "sustainable business is big business", no doubt being big profits for them. Another of the Foundation's initiatives is the "Zero Emissions Resource Organisation (ZERO)", to limit climate change caused by human activities, and several other climate and health related initiatives. So why then do the two owners of the EAT group and Foundations own a $20 million private jet in which they fly all around the world in?! And the many meetings of the EAT-Lancet group, including 37 scientists were regularly flown around the world to attend... Not very green, sustainable, environmentally friendly. Very hypocritical I think!

The EAT group is, according to them, a global initiative linking food, health, and sustainability across science, business and politics. The project is far more than developing a single global diet, but one which makes many recommendations about sustainable farming and agricultural practices, environmental impacts, and politics - of free trade, and how to get governments to implement the EAT-Lancet recommendations and how to sell it to the world's population. Good luck with that, as there are many renowned critics of the recommendations, and justifiably so, even days after the report has been released.

The major recommendation of the EAT-Lancet report is that everyone should be eating a LOT less meat and dairy, and replacing these with more plant-based foods! And by less meat, I mean just 7 grams per day of red meat, or 29 grams per day of chicken or fish! Or just one-fifth of an egg!

If the currently recommended food guidelines are so good for us all (allegedly, but they aren't), then why do this group want to make such drastic changes to our meals? Simple, because of their personal bias - with 84% of the scientists on the EAT-Lancet panel being vegetarians or vegans themselves.

As I've said before, yes some people need to eat more vegetables to get more nutrients which will improve their health! But any diet is only as good as the quality and quantity of the nutrients in the foods. If a diet isn't providing sufficient nutrients for you, especially for a significant amount of time, such as this proposed global diet which is lacking a lot of nutrients, then your health will suffer with symptoms and disease.

Of course we also need to be more environmentally aware, and be more sustainable with our resources of food and energy production. We aren't doing too well with this, mostly due to general apathy of the issue, or government or industry regulations (or lack of) which allows damage to be done to the environment on a massive scale.

How does the EAT-Lancet report's recommendations stand up to my scrutiny?! I will analyse their diet and recommendations in my next article!

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Evidence-based nutrition and health advice

16/1/2019

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I totally understand that nutritional medicine and natural treatments are conflicting to the popular belief that most people have, and this is therefore confusing to some people! Or that the media mentions what might be good for you seems to change every week with new studies concluding with opposing findings to the last week's studies.

Much of the information that I write about or recommend is completely opposite from what we are generally told in the media or from government or health officials, and recommendations that I mention in my articles and in consultations may appear to be at odds to what may have been the public perception for decades.

This can be said for many things that I write about, for the best nutrition and treatments for weight loss, cholesterol and heart disease, cancer, sun exposure for health, and many more topics!

But I see many clients who have been doing all of the usual recommended medical treatments, including following the government food guidelines (which are a bad joke), taking all the recommended medications, and getting nowhere with improving their health, or in fact, getting worse.

There are many reasons for why the public belief on a particular health topic may be incorrect, including poor quality scientific studies done in the past, and the difficulty in the authorities to admit to mistakes for fear of legal action being taken. Hence mistakes tend to be covered up for a long time, or the truth is revealed only very slowly, and even then it takes a long time for the general public to accept the new truth.

To continue to do the same things and expect a different result is apparently the definition of insanity! If you have been doing what you think are the right things, and you are not improving or getting better, you MUST do something different, to decide to make a change for the better and get another opinion!

Everything I say or recommend is based on scientific research, and therefore is "evidence-based". More important than that is that the advice I give is based on good quality scientific research, as a lot isn't good quality.

It's a new year, so it's a great time for a new start to improve your health! I'd love to be able to help you and your family to improve your quality of life! Just ask or contact me to see how I can help you!

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"We got it wrong on cholesterol" say nutrition experts

27/8/2018

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At a major nutrition conference in Switzerland in June 2018, many of the world's top nutritionists, scientists and doctors presented many historical and recent published studies, to look at the recommended food guidelines around the world, how they came to be, and what can be done to improve them based on more recent research, in the light of the current epidemics of obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases.

The food guidelines in most large developed countries were designed with the idea to reduce the growing rate of heart disease back in the 1980s. Their advice was to reduce saturated fat in the diet, reduce cholesterol-rich foods (and blood cholesterol levels), reduce salt, but also increase plant seed oils and whole grains. This on the whole seemed to make sense on one level, but even back then the nutrition science community wasn't in agreement.

The ONE major study which caused a change in belief of nutrition and later the development of the food guidelines was a paper known as the "7 countries study" in the late 1950s by Dr Ancel Keys, an epidemiologist, and creator of the K-rations used in the armed services. His study showed that there was a link between saturated fat (and cholesterol) intake and heart disease, and based on his study, he lobbied and pressured the medical authorities to believe that cholesterol was the major cause of heart disease which was not the opinion at the time. And so it became the "low fat, low cholesterol era".

It didn't work did it? The rates of heart disease and other chronic disease shot up, to epidemic proportions all around the world which we see today.

Why? Because Dr Keys actually studied the heart disease rates and diets (only on paper, not real health results) of people from 22 countries, but he only published the data on 7 countries which actually matched his perceived opinion (i.e. reporting bias). When the data from the other "missing" 15 countries was later analysed by other scientists, they found that they did not come up with the same findings as the 7 which were reported. In fact, when all of the data was analysed together, there was NO correlation between cholesterol and heart disease at all! Sadly this misrepresentation of data in scientific studies continues to this day, which makes it difficult for you (and me!) to sort out the truth from the BS!

And this is confirmed in many more recent and quality studies, which show that high blood cholesterol levels are NOT associated with an increased risk of heart disease at all! In fact the OPPOSITE is the case - low cholesterol levels (especially seen in those taking cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins) actually increase the risk of heart disease. Other studies show that 50-75% of people who have had heart attacks do NOT have high cholesterol levels, but "normal" levels! So there must be something else which is causing this epidemic of heart disease!

And we know what this is! More on this in the next article.

Coming back to the recent Swiss nutrition conference... the general consensus of the nutrition experts there was that "we got it wrong on saturated fat and cholesterol with respect to heart disease". They admitted it! Which is a massive step in turning around this epidemic we have.

Now we need the government nutrition bodies to realise the truth too. No more covering their backsides or hiding the truth, so that they don't get sued. They can't hide the truth any longer. We know what's really going on, and we know why - they have made a lot of money deceiving people and making them sicker to sell more pharmaceuticals and useless medical procedures.

Let's hope that the admission by leading experts that "we got it wrong" on cholesterol and saturated fat will be the start of a major change in nutrition advice!

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The importance of your food choices for dental health

9/8/2018

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At the recent "Low Carb Nutrition Revolution" conference in Gladstone, which I attended as a presenter on the topic of "Low carb for mental health", I was reminded of one of the main reasons I decided to follow this career path, initially as a Nutritionist.

About 12 years ago (approx 2006) I was dragged along to a day-long seminar about Dr Weston A. Price and his work. I wasn't sure what I was getting into, as I was still in my previous career at that time! Dr Price had passed away several decades earlier, but the spokesperson for the Weston A Price Foundation was the main speaker.

Dr Weston Price (1870-1948) was an American Dentist, Nutritionist and Scientist. In the late 1890s and early 1900s he spent over 10 years travelling all over the world to search for the secret of health. He visited and lived with indigenous populations on most continents to research their diets and the quality of their teeth. He found almost perfect dental arches, next to no dental decay, in an era of no water fluoridation, and very little toothbrushing or toothpaste!

When Dr. Price analyzed the foods used by isolated indigenous peoples he found that they provided at least four times the calcium and other minerals, and at least TEN times the fat-soluble vitamins from animal foods such as butter, fish eggs, shellfish and organ meats.

Dr Price was researching these remote populations at the most perfect time in history, when modern foods were only just reaching these areas - white flour, white sugar, refined vegetable/seed oils, and canned foods.

He then noticed the children of parents who had abandoned their traditional diets in favour of the modern diets had extremely bad and decayed teeth, and also a narrowed face, crowded teeth, and a much reduced immunity to disease. All of this occurred in a few years after modern high carb foods were introduced.

The discoveries and conclusion of Dr. Price are presented in his book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration", of which reprints are still available today. The book contains striking photographs of handsome, healthy natives who eat traditional diets, and compares them with the physical degeneration that occurs when their fellow natives abandon nourishing traditional diets in favour of modern convenience foods. See some attached photos for a comparison.

While Dr Price's research was done in the early 1900s, his conclusions are still very relevant today, perhaps even more so, in this era of high carb convenience foods, epidemics of chronic disease and poor dental health. The research in his book could only have been written at that time in history! We are very lucky that he conducted these studies at the time.

What can we learn from this?

That people of various cultures should stick to their traditional diets of whole, fresh foods as much as possible, while also avoiding the high carb or highly processed foods such as sugar, flours and bakery products. This is why I recommend to clients of different ethnicities to stick to their original traditional diets and not adopt the modern convenience foods, and ignore the ridiculous government food guidelines which assume that we are all the same when we are not!

I believe that Dr Weston A. Price is a hero for his nutrition and dental research! He also noted big health problems with mercury amalgam fillings and root canal teeth...

Do you think your diet is right for you? Or do you get various aches and pains, or digestive symptoms when you eat something but can't pinpoint what is causing it? Or do you get lots of dental decay issues but can't work out why? I can help!

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<<Previous

Diabetes organisations and diabetes educators have no clue about diabetes and don't help people with diabetes

The real causes of weight gain have nothing to do with calories!

Your body does not burn calories!

Calories are a useless measurement of the health of foods!

A message to the critics of the new US food Guidelines and anti-meat promoters

The USA's food pyramid and food guidelines had to change!

Documentary review: "Super size me 2: Holy chicken"!

The importance of organic foods and to reduce cancer risks

Calories are unscientific, ridiculous, and should not be used (Part 2)

Calories are outdated, unscientific and should not be used

Modern medicine is JUST an experiment of using toxic chemicals into malnourished people

the coronavirus is insignificant and shouldn't even be news

"The Magic Pill" documentary review

review of the vegan documentary "The Game Changers"

How the EAT-Lancet global diet will be forced on you

Is the new EAT-Lancet diet healthy for you? (part 2)

The EAT-LANCET diet - is this new global diet healthy for you?

Evidence-based nutrition and health advice

"We got it wrong on cholesterol" say nutrition experts

The importance of your food choices for dental health

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