Tag: Big Food

Jun28201928th Jun 201928th Jun 20193Commentsby Marika

Noakes celebrates anniversary: victory over diet mobsters

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

Prof Tim Noakes receives a  standing ovation in London in 2018, with Dr Aseem Malhotra (centre) and Dr Peter Brukner (right)

By Marika Sboros

Prof Tim Noakes celebrated a remarkable anniversary recently. It was June 8, 2018, a year since he became a free man, legally speaking.

On that day, the legal sword of Damocles that the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) had dangled over his head for more than four years, disappeared.

Given its behaviour so far, the HPCSA did what many thought it wouldn’t do on that day. It dismissed its prosecution lawyers’ appeal against its comprehensive not-guilty verdict for Noakes in April 2017.

The HPCSA’s own appeal committee confirmed the not-guilty ruling in its entirety. It found Noakes not guilty on all 10 aspects of a charge of unprofessional conduct. Click here to read a report and the full decision. That decision reverberates to this day through medical, dietetic and scientific fraternities globally.

Noakes and I have included a chapter on the appeal in our new book, Real Food On Trial. The subtitle says it all: How the diet dictators tried to destroy a top scientist (Columbus, 2019). It’s an update of Lore of Nutrition, Challenging Conventional Dietary Beliefs (Penguin 2017).

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Oct12201812th Oct 201813th Oct 20187Commentsby Marika

FETTKE: COVER-UP GROWS AFTER CASE AGAINST HIM COLLAPSES?

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Australian orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke’s professional reputation and licence to practise medicine are no longer under threat. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Agency (AHPRA) recently cleared Fettke of any misconduct over his opinions on nutrition.

That response was legally and ethically correct, under the circumstances. However, it raises more questions than answers.

One question is why AHPRA went to war on the side of the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) and its members who mobilised against Fettke. Another is why no heads have rolled in AHPRA’s prosecution of Fettke – in a case that legal analysts called a “kangaroo court“.

Yet another is why AHPRA has ignored extensive evidence of bullying, mobbing and intimidation of Fettke at his workplace, Launceston General Hospital (LGH) in Tasmania, for more than eight years. That is raising questions of a cover-up at the highest levels.

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Apr28201828th Apr 201810th Jun 20181Commentby Marika

BIG FOOD, BIG PHARMA FACE DAY OF RECKONING – KOSTERICH

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros

Of course, Australian physician Dr Joe Kosterich is right about Big Pharma and Big Food. Both have a right to make a living, he says. Just as he has the right and we all have the right.

And just as many of us have, Kosterich also has a healthy scepticism about the way these industries conduct themselves. They don’t have the right to mislead the public with false claims about their products, he says.

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Apr0920189th Apr 20182nd Jul 201819Commentsby Marika

BIG FOOD, BIG PHARMA KILLING FOR PROFIT? YES, SAY TOP UK DOCTORS!

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros

 

Are Big Food and Big Pharma really killing people for profit globally? Yes, say some of the biggest names in European medicine. They’re joining forces on a panel discussion at the European Parliament in Brussels on April 12

The doctors say they will “blow the cover” on the dark world of Big Food and Big Pharma lobbying to influence dietary and medical guidelines.

Click here to view the trailer

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Aug28201728th Aug 201727th Sep 20175Commentsby Marika

Healthwashing: 7 tactics Big Food, Big Soda use to fool you

Posted in Food for Thought

Healthwashing is a dirty business – a close cousin of whitewashing. Whitewashing is loosely defined as ‘a coordinated attempt to hide unpleasant facts, especially in a political context’. Healthwashing is the weapon food and soft-drink companies use to hide unpleasant, soiled facts about their products.

In 2015,  New York Times writer Anahad O’Connor showed that Coke spent billions over decades funding scientists and front organisations to shift the blame from sugar to fat for the global obesity epidemic. Now in the US, two pastors have filed a lawsuit against Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association. They say that the company has deliberately deceived customers about health risks through its advertisements. Coca-Cola vigorously disputes all claims. It has deep pockets to protect its profits.

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Aug0920179th Aug 201728th Jan 201928Commentsby Marika

Lifestyle medicine: front in Big Religion’s war on red meat?

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Lifestyle medicine sounds benign enough. It may be a new front that Big Religion has opened in its war on red meat, says Dr Gary Fettke.

Fettke is an Australian orthopaedic surgeon with a special interest in evidence-based nutrition. He spoke at the CrossFit health summit in Madison, Wisconsin on August 2, 2017.

His talk was on nutrition’s central role in everything. In other words, in health, politics, education, economics, environment and beliefs.

In the first of a two-part series, Fettke raised the taboo topic of religion and nutrition science. His focus was the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and its medical evangelism. In Part 2 here, Fettke looks at “unique” partnerships Adventists use to spread a belief-based anti-meat agenda.

The spectrum of partners is disparate. It veers from relationships with extreme animal rights groups to the World Health Organisation (WHO). It also now includes “lifestyle medicine”.

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Aug0720177th Aug 201715th Oct 201845Commentsby Marika

Medical evangelism: a hand out for bad diet advice?

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

If nutrition science proves anything these days, it is that Karl Marx was right. Religion is the “opium of the people”. It is a reason that bad dietary advice has spread globally, says Australian orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke.

It’s why nutrition guidelines are increasingly “plant-based” as some doctors and dietitians now call it. That distances them from overtly religious associations with vegetarian diets. That’s despite robust evidence on health risks of plant-based diets, says Fettke.

Fettke was a keynote speaker at the CrossFit Health Conference in Madison, Wisconsin on August 2, 2017. The title of his talk: The Central Role of Nutrition in Our Health, Education, Economics, Politics, Environment and Beliefs. 

In the first of a two-part series, Fettke raises a taboo in nutrition science: Big Religion. He also shines a light on its right arm: medical evangelism.

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Jul30201730th Jul 20171st Aug 20175Commentsby Marika

TIME FOR BIG FOOD TO GET TASTE OF OWN MEDICINE?

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros

There’s something deliciously karmic about giving Big Food a taste of its own medicine.

Years ago, I interviewed the head dietitian for that Big Food stalwart, Kellogg’s. She tried hard to persuade me that Fruity Loops really are good breakfast foods for children.

‘Do you feed them to your children for breakfast,’ I asked, looking her straight in the eye. She stared back. To her credit, she hesitated long and hard before saying: ‘Yes.’ It was an awkward moment because she knew that I knew she was lying.

But then, she had a job to do. In the trade, it’s called ‘eating your own dog food’, or ‘dogfooding’ for short. The software industry adopted it years ago for the process of actually using your own product.

Below, one of my favourite nutrition blogger poses an intriguing question. What if, to rise up in the ranks, managers in food and soft drink companies had to make a simple commitment: to ‘dogfood’ from now on. In other words, Big Food executives would have to take daily doses of their own’medicine’.

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May18201718th May 201721st May 201711Commentsby Marika

RISE OF ‘MICROPOWERS’ – HOW TO EAT YOURSELF WELL

Posted in BOOKS

From Louise Stephen’s Eating Ourselves Sick blog

By Marika Sboros

Can you eat yourself sick? Of course, you can. But knowing that is liberating because if you can eat yourself sick, you can also eat yourself well. “Micropowers” show you the way. Ask Australian former corporate high-flyer Louise Stephen.

Stephen is author of Eating Ourselves Sick. The subtitle says it all: How modern food is destroying our health. She was just 33 when a life-threatening auto-immune disease abruptly ended her career. A kidney transplant allowed her to stick around to write this important book.

In it, Stephen documents the rise of “micropowers”. These are are “digital Davids” that challenge once-dominant mega-players in all fields of human endeavour. They also counteract the insidious influence of food and drug industries on dietary advice.

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Jan24201724th Jan 20176th Feb 20176Commentsby Marika

DAA TALKING HEADS: TIME FOR NEW CONVERSATION?

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros

One reason for the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) credibility problem, say critics, is its public face. They say that by default or design, DAA media spokespersons regularly dispense low-fat, high-carb dietary advice that serves the interests of food-industry partners. Such advice lacks evidence for safety and efficacy to treat or prevent obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

DAA spokespersons also regularly show special antipathy towards Paleo and low-carb diets to treat these conditions, despite growing evidence. As well, some spokespersons are prominent university academics. Thus, critics say this leaves DAA open to a common industry tactic. It is the “halo effect” that results from “eminence-based” rather than evidence-based nutrition information. It helps to embed unhealthy products as healthy in public consciousness

In Part 2 of this series, Foodmed.net takes a look at some of those talking heads. We also look at why critics say that the conversation needs to change.

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Jan23201723rd Jan 201710th Oct 201829Commentsby Marika

IS DOWN UNDER’S DAA REALLY IN BED WITH BIG FOOD?

Posted in Food for Thought

By Marika Sboros

Is the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) in bed with Big Food? It’s nearly two years since US public health lawyer Michele Simon first raised the question. She worded it slightly differently at the time. Her answer was an unequivocal “yes” in And Now A Word From Our Sponsors in February 2015. But has anything changed in the interim?

DAA says that it is not in bed with Big Food now and never has been. It claims that its sponsors – “partners”, it prefers to call them – have no influence on the advice it dishes out.  It also claims to take “great care to guard against conflict of interest”.

Its critics say otherwise. They say that DAA is heavily conflicted and has been for decades. Critics also say that DAA is little more than a front for the food industry. Read on in the first of a four-part series and make up your own mind.

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Jan13201713th Jan 201725th Aug 202016Commentsby Marika

NOAKES VS ILSI ‘QUEENPINS’ TRYING TO NAIL HIM

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

So, it has taken a brilliant US investigative journalist to expose all the food industry’s “biggies” trying to silence scientist Prof Tim Noakes. True, signs of food industry involvement were there from the start. CrossFit’s Russ Greene joins the dots to confirm it.

However, Greene adds damning dots that don’t just implicate Big Sugar and Big Soda. He joins them in one straight line leading to a Big Food industry arm. It’s the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) that influences global food and health policy. (Scroll down for a link to Greene’s report. It’s long but well worth the read.)

The kindest thing Greene says about ILSI is that it’s a “Coca-Cola proxy organisation”. He also says ILSI is a “money launderer for purveyors of toxic substances”. And it’s a proxy for other food-industry giants, such as Kellogg’s, Unilever and Nestlé. One of Greene’s many strengths is that he shows all ILSI’s links to doctors and researchers driving the HPCSA case. I call them kingpins – or in this case one kingpin and many “queenpins”. There also appears to be a reigning queenpin. Here’s my review of what Greene shows they’ve all been up to, trying to nail Noakes.

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Nov17201617th Nov 201617th Nov 20165Commentsby Marika

Noakes guilty of ‘remarkable patience in face of profound silliness’

Posted in LCHF

tim-noakesBy Marika Sboros 

Here’s another doctor who doesn’t think that world-renowned scientist Prof Tim Noakes is the devil incarnate of nutrition science. Psychiatry professor Michael Simpson is withering about the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) case against Noakes.

Simpson describes the HPCSA as “totally unfit for purpose” and “Alice in Wonderland living in Pretoria”. He says that it is acting “bizarrely and improperly” in going after Noakes. “Nobody who has paid intelligent attention to the proceedings and the evidence could find (Noakes) guilty of anything at all,” Simpson says.

If Noakes is guilty of anything, it’s “remarkable patience in the face of profound and consistent silliness”. There’s more.

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Jul11201611th Jul 201611th Jul 20160Commentby Marika

Will pasta make you thin? Fat chance!

Posted in LCHF

PASTABy Marika Sboros

Italian scientists say they have proved that eating pasta won’t make you fat. That it actually helps you to get thin.

That’s how media across the globe heralded a new study published in Nutrition and Diabetes. That’s how the researchers themselves have happily punted it .

Can a pizza study be far behind? 

The research is grist to the anti-low-carb mill. A knock-out blow to the low-carb side of the UK “fat wars”. It sabotages a powerful “Martin Luther moment”. It supports Public Health England’s much maligned Eatwell Guide. 

Or does it? Is this just Big Carb fighting back – and losing? Here’s look at what the researchers really say and what their data really show: 

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Jul0520165th Jul 20161st Jul 20180Commentby Marika

UK Eatwell Guide boosts ‘industry wealth not public health’

Posted in LCHF

British poundsTHIS POST UPDATED  ON OCTOBER 3, 2016 WITH NEW RESEARCH.

 

By Marika Sboros

Is the UK government dishing up bad dietary advice to its citizens? Has it wrongly demonised fat, glorified carbohydrates and harmed people’s health for decades?

Is Public Health England’s (PHE) Eatwell Guide really the Eatbadly Guide, as obesity researcher Dr Zoë Harcombe dubs it?

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Apr15201615th Apr 201629th Dec 20161Commentby Marika

WHY SO MANY DIETITIANS HAVE ‘HITS’ SYNDROME

Posted in Living well
Picture: YINGYING ZHANG https://www.instagram.com/yingyingzux

Picture: YINGYING ZHANG https://www.instagram.com/yingyingzux

UPDATE: HITS (Head In The Sand ) syndrome is infecting dietitians. It’s a global problem, say nutrition researchers. It’s the basis for the belief these dietitians have that low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diets are dangerous, despite evidence to the contrary. In particular, it feeds their fear of dietary saturated fat. The experts say that fat phobia is simply from a lack of understanding of the difference between correlation and causation in science.

Another sign of HITS syndrome is the latest anonymous statement from the Association for Dietetics in SA (ADSA) and the Nutrition Society of SA. It went out to doctors and dietitians in South Africa in March 2016. It is premised on conventional nutrition low-fat, high-carb “wisdom”. Here, Eategrity consumer activist Sonia Mountford looks at why ADSA risks becoming increasingly irrelevant based on the advice it dishes out.  – Marika Sboros 

By Sonia Mountford

Dieticians wedded to old nutrition paradigms still like to tell people all they have to do to lose weight is …

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Dec0120151st Dec 20156th Jan 20175Commentsby Marika

Can you trust dietitians who are in bed with Big Food?

Posted in Living well

Weight Loss Signpost Showing Fiber Exercise Fruit And CaloriesShould you follow advice from dietitians who are bed partners with the food industry? Even when they say it’s just for the sponsorship money, and food companies have no influence on their advice whatsoever? 

The spotlight falls often on the Association for Dietetics in South Africa (ADSA), but it’s  a global concern. Food companies exert influence subtly through orthodox-trained dietitians who act as proxies whether by default or design. British investigative health journalist Jerome Burne has written a scathing blog on it: Cuddly dietitians in cosy embrace of industry fat cats.

In the first of a two-part series, Eategrity consumer activist  Sonia Mountford looks at ADSA’s links with Big Food and what effect this may be having on the advice it gives. But do you really need independent dietary advice? As an ancient Ayurvedic sage once said: When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use; when diet is right, medicine is of no need. – Marika Sboros

By Sonia Mountford*

Like many consumers, you are likely to be more aware these days than you were in the past, of what certain foods or food components may be doing to promote your health, and reduce your

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Nov30201530th Nov 201514th May 20174Commentsby Marika

NOAKES: LEGAL TEAM FIGHTS ‘TRIAL BY AMBUSH’ – PART 1

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

The November 2015 session of the hearing against Prof Tim Noakes was a trip through ethical landmines territory. In the first of a two-part series, I give my impressions of what went down this time round. Like all good whodunnits, it had twists and turns. His legal team has called it ‘trial by ambush’.

By Marika Sboros

Here’s a shocker for the legal and ethical books. The Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) admits to procuring secret reports to charge health professionals. In other words, it doesn’t give the accused a chance to respond to all evidence before being tried. It has done so in its case against University of Cape Town emeritus professor Tim Noakes.

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Apr0420154th Apr 201528th Aug 20170Commentby Marika

Dr Jason Fung on doctors who betray patients’ trust

Posted in Living well

Doctors moneyYOU don’t expect your doctor or dietitian to collude with food companies in spinning yarns about health benefits of their products. It’s called ‘healthwashing’.  Many doctors and dietitians collude by accepting sponsorship from Big Food for research or to run their voluntary associations.

Dr Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University has said that ‘sponsorship perverts science’.

Here, Canadian nephrologist Dr Jason Fung takes an even bleaker look. He unravels how and why doctors, by default or design, regularly betray patients’ trust. – Marika Sboros

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