It's all about biota; if the author has decided that fasting or restricted diets (of whatever kind), etc, can't possibly alter one's gut bugs; then it would be

It's all about biota; if the author has decided that fasting or restricted diets (of whatever kind), etc, can't possibly alter one's gut bugs; then it would be nice of them to maybe drop some bibliography showing that, since there's a lot of evidence on the other side. Sure there's a lot of nonsense spouted, too: but Low-FODMAP diets, just for one, do in fact have solid clinic evidence behind them. The author doesn't buy the SIBO explanation for that for a minute? Great, but even if SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth) is bunkem, and the scientists who proposed it wrong, that doesn't alter the mostly positive outcomes. Of course, the article is air and jazz hands, it doesn't discuss any of this much less list counter-studies, but this is what's relevant; science agrees that toxins ARE produced in the gut when our biota goes wrong. The cleansing movement started before we knew nearly as much about our biota as we do now, so understandably much of the folk-terminology and initial high-level concepts look rather dated by now; but that's exactly what the history and philosophy of science tells us to expect from any successful theory, namely that it's higher-level concepts usually don't turn out to be entirely accurate (or even very accurate), even in the case of highly useful theories. The history and philosophy of science tells us that no theory ever has all its P's and Q's lined up, particularly at the top of the theory, and the terminology it initially chooses is almost never ideal - so to leap from finding given terminology and the broadest expression of concepts (and your very idiosyncratic almost pun-like interpretation of them) disagreeable to assuming that you don't have to look into the considerable existing evidence we now have that is consistent with them, is extremely bad (but common, and classist) logic. The guys with the biggest budgets and best University connections usually lose the medical knowledge and innovation wars, for the simple reason that they're the incumbents - it's the innovator's dilemma all over again. Low-FODMAP diets came out of Monash University in recent years. This isn't the best citation, I admit, but it is what's handy right now: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/when-gluten-sensitivity-isnt-celiac-disease/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/when-gluten-sensiti...