No One Can Be Told

I learned two interesting things today about nutrition – a bit of a red pill moment again.

As Morpheus said:

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.

The first thing I learned: no one can be told what nutritional sensitivities she/he has – they have to see it for themselves, they have to try it out. There are no reliable medical tests, and quite definitly no exhaustive knowledge about what foodstuff causes problems.

Which leads me to the second thing I learned: A food that is fine (or almost fine) for one person, can be awful (health wise) for other people. And conversely, a food that is awful for one person (health wise) can be fine (or almost fine) for other people.

So, if someone has health problems (even health problems that are not commonly associated with nutrition, like e.g. depression), and if this person wants to find out if there is a connection between their health and their nutrition, they have to run personal experiments. Remove dairy, see if it helps. Remove fruits, see if it helps. Remove soy, see if it helps. And so on. Then reintroduce, see if the problems return, and then remove the foodstuff again.

Having said that, I think there are three "main" suspects that one should check out first: 1. Seed oils and PUFA overconsumption. 2. Dairy and pasteurized milk and 3. Grains

(On a personal note: Since removing all dairy – even Ghee – and removing beef/veal, and removing some of the fruits, and further reducing my PUFA intake, I managed to loose 9 kg, about 18 pounds, since March. Initially the pounds came down fast, but now I kind of reached a plateau – I have to really watch out how much I eat.

I now increased carbs again, reduced meat, became ANAL about reducing PUFAs and lost another two to three pounds. I currently eat a diet which consists of potatoes, coconut fat, vegetables, some meat, sometimes rice and sometimes fruit. Low PUFA, normal to high SAT fat, low to normal protein, normal to low carbs. No seed oils, no dairy/milk, no beef/veal, no lamb, no grains, no soy, no eggs. I have the impression that when I eat less meat, that I feel better, so I am considering reducing meat further, maybe have some vegetarian days. Unlike "full" fasting days, this should be something I could manage.)

Peer Review – Not Worth The Paper

Amazing:

The present investigation was an attempt to study the peer-review process directly, in the natural setting of actual journal referee evaluations of submitted manuscripts. As test materials we selected 12 already published research articles by investigators from prestigious and highly productive American psychology departments, one article from each of 12 highly regarded and widely read American psychology journals with high rejection rates (80%) and nonblind refereeing practices.

With fictitious names and institutions substituted for the original ones (e.g., Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential), the altered manuscripts were formally resubmitted to the journals that had originally refereed and published them 18 to 32 months earlier. Of the sample of 38 editors and reviewers, only three (8%) detected the resubmissions. This result allowed nine of the 12 articles to continue through the review process to receive an actual evaluation: eight of the nine were rejected. Sixteen of the 18 referees (89%) recommended against publication and the editors concurred. The grounds for rejection were in many cases described as “serious methodological flaws.” A number of possible interpretations of these data are reviewed and evaluated.

(via WUWT)