3 ms·

Here's one of the biggest in terms of suspected havoc wreaked by "experts". Literally all my life (and I turn 56 RSN), dietary saturated fats and most especial

by hga 10y ago

Here's one of the biggest in terms of suspected havoc wreaked by "experts". Literally all my life (and I turn 56 RSN), dietary saturated fats and most especially cholesterol were BAD things. Today, from health.gov "Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption. (hmmm, the "for overconsumption" was added recently or this is a different document, anyway, that's from "https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/06-chapter-1/d1-2.asp https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015-scientific-report/...) And if Gary Taubes and company are right, the resulting push from fats to carbohydrates has been responsible for perhaps the worst 1st world heath catastrophe in modern times.... But, yeah, the liberal love to laugh at those fat Middle Americans, who got that way by following the government's dietary guidance, which was based on liberals enforcing from the top down their "reality".

orly_bookz 10y ago
Honestly, I don't believe that anyone in the modern era really got fat because they were following guidelines. I think it's much more likely the fact that we put sugar into just about everything, portion sizes having gone up, edibility of foods having gone WAY up (texture, taste, sugar/oil/salt portions), manual labor decreasing, sedentary habits increasing (tv, movies, video games)... The first world and especially the West faced a storm of changes which individually might be fine but which together form a nightmare health scenario.
- hga 10y ago
  And "putting sugar in everything" as a way to make it taste better is completely unrelated to the government scoring this as "good", whereas using fat scores as "bad"? There are also those who thing the portion size issue might have to do with a too carb rich diet not satiating appetite as well as a more or fat rich diet. Edibility has gone way up? I don't think so, the old stuff tasted damned good, and often better (I'm of an age where I've tasted a lot of it made by old fashioned grandparents). And many of the changes pushed by this directly make foods taste not hardly so good, e.g. McDonalds let themselves get pushed into removing beef tallow (rendered fat) from their fry oil, their french fries aren't worth much anymore. I've also been trying some Cambells Chunky Soups for the first time in many many years, and some of the old favorites don't hold a candle to when they came out in the '70s. Less manual labor doesn't explain why those who didn't do a lot of it didn't used to get fat like they do now. More sedentary habits, that's a possible cause, but the evidence for it is shaky, and still has to be balanced against calorie inputs.
paulddraper 10y ago
Cholesterol, carb-heavy food pyramid, global cooling, the Brexit outcome, 2008 financial crisis. expert consensus != reality Everyone loves ridiculing the global warming deniers. But there's been as much error on the other side of the fence. Earth's point of no return was 10 years ago, according to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Fossil fuels are always running out, and yet the world supply has grown. Half a century ago, Paul Ehrlich declared the inevitable mass starvation of billions. In 1970, Life magazine reported "solid experimental and theoretical evidence...in a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half..." These guys are venerated by liberals, yet their predictions are barely more reliable than rapture-and-apocalypse cults.
- jljljl 10y ago
  Sometimes expert consensus and fear mongering leads to action. 1970, 1977, and 1990 saw major amendments to the Clean Air Act that might have changed the trajectory described in that Life article.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    I doubt 1977 or 1990 affected whether city folks wore gas masks in 1980.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- flukus 10y ago
  Global cooling was never an "expert consensus".

by hga 10y ago

orly_bookz 10y ago

Honestly, I don't believe that anyone in the modern era really got fat because they were following guidelines. I think it's much more likely the fact that we put sugar into just about everything, portion sizes having gone up, edibility of foods having gone WAY up (texture, taste, sugar/oil/salt portions), manual labor decreasing, sedentary habits increasing (tv, movies, video games)... The first world and especially the West faced a storm of changes which individually might be fine but which together form a nightmare health scenario.

hga 10y ago
And "putting sugar in everything" as a way to make it taste better is completely unrelated to the government scoring this as "good", whereas using fat scores as "bad"? There are also those who thing the portion size issue might have to do with a too carb rich diet not satiating appetite as well as a more or fat rich diet. Edibility has gone way up? I don't think so, the old stuff tasted damned good, and often better (I'm of an age where I've tasted a lot of it made by old fashioned grandparents). And many of the changes pushed by this directly make foods taste not hardly so good, e.g. McDonalds let themselves get pushed into removing beef tallow (rendered fat) from their fry oil, their french fries aren't worth much anymore. I've also been trying some Cambells Chunky Soups for the first time in many many years, and some of the old favorites don't hold a candle to when they came out in the '70s. Less manual labor doesn't explain why those who didn't do a lot of it didn't used to get fat like they do now. More sedentary habits, that's a possible cause, but the evidence for it is shaky, and still has to be balanced against calorie inputs.

paulddraper 10y ago

Cholesterol, carb-heavy food pyramid, global cooling, the Brexit outcome, 2008 financial crisis. expert consensus != reality Everyone loves ridiculing the global warming deniers. But there's been as much error on the other side of the fence. Earth's point of no return was 10 years ago, according to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Fossil fuels are always running out, and yet the world supply has grown. Half a century ago, Paul Ehrlich declared the inevitable mass starvation of billions. In 1970, Life magazine reported "solid experimental and theoretical evidence...in a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution...by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half..." These guys are venerated by liberals, yet their predictions are barely more reliable than rapture-and-apocalypse cults.

jljljl 10y ago
Sometimes expert consensus and fear mongering leads to action. 1970, 1977, and 1990 saw major amendments to the Clean Air Act that might have changed the trajectory described in that Life article.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  I doubt 1977 or 1990 affected whether city folks wore gas masks in 1980.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
flukus 10y ago
Global cooling was never an "expert consensus".