AnthonyColpo

Pee Pee a.k.a “Plant Positive” adds Paranoia to His Long List of Psychological Issues

Anthony Colpo — Sun, 13 May 2012 09:16:13 +0000

Pee Pee Continues to Pump Out the Poo-Poo

Poor Pee Pee, a.k.a “Plant Positive” and “PrimitiveNutrition”. He appears to have been so banged up my recent exposé of his fraudulent nonsense he’s now suffering paranoid delusions. When a reader from Bristol in the United Kingdom recently protested the effeminate extremist’s blatant lies over at YouTube, Pee Pee accused him of being me…me being Anthony Colpo of Adelaide, Australia (a long, long way from the UK)!

Folks, this is why you need to avoid having sex with people you’re related to and why you should always include animal foods in your children’s diets. Heaven knows there’s already enough B12-deficient screwballs on this planet…

John writes:

Hi Anthony,

This ["Plant Positive"/"PrimitiveNutrition"] twat got so up my nose I had to post – I can’t actually remember what the profanity was for the other video that he didn’t post, but the one below is me steering people away from his drivel to your website to balance things out – I don’t actually understand the remainder of his reply, could you enlighten me?

Cheers

John

[This is what Pee Pee wrote in response to John's comment]:

PrimitiveNutrition has replied to your comment on Anthony Colpo’s Confusionist Mind, Part 2:

I can’t let through your other comment with the profanity. Yes, if anyone out there is impressed with an guy who uses a cross-sectional study of two hundred men to say that Brown and Goldstein were “wrong”, and by someone who seems to thing they won the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s powerful.

Anthony replies:

Hey John,

his “cross-sectional study” comment is designed to neuter any criticism of Goldstein and Brown by claiming that my case against them is predicated entirely on a single study of 200 men (here’s the link to the study he’s whining about: http://www.bmj.com/content/314/7081/629.full).

Firstly, that study involved 210 men (not 200, but Pee Pee is probably as bad as math as he is the rest of the sciences) and provides strong evidence that Brown and Goldstein and Pee Pee are completely wrong.

His comment does nothing to refute the actual content or findings of the study. It’s just another example of the sneering dismissal of conflicting evidence that the guy specializes in. The lipid hypothesists are more than happy to present cross-sectional data when they believe it supports their case, but suddenly this kind of data is a big no-no when it happens to flatly refute their untenable theories.

This was the study that compared men from Vilnius with those from LinkÖping. The men from Vilnius had lower LDL levels, which according to brainwashed victims of the lipid hypothesis – folks like Pee Pee – should have awarded them with lower CHD mortality.

Reality, however, has absolutely no respect for highly decorated and widely accepted theories. If they’re wrong, they’re wrong. And the lipid hypothesis, and it’s “LDL = Bad Cholesterol” sub theory, are as wrong as wrong can be. It was actually the men from Vilnius who had the higher CHD mortality despite their lower LDL levels.

Pee Pee hates the antioxidant theory, because it flatly refutes the cholesterol theory he has become so attached to. What Pee Pee needs to do is a mature a little (a lot), and realize that theories are not entities to which one becomes emotionally attached. He needs to get a pet or find a girlfriend (boyfriend?) for that shit.

Theories are formulated in an attempt to explain phenomena for which we don’t yet fully understand or have conclusive evidence for. When scientific evidence repeatedly fails to support a hypotheis, it needs to be discarded.

Despite Pee Pee’s rabid hatred of the antioxidant theory, the results showed that men from Vilnius displayed higher LDL oxidation and lower mean plasma concentrations of lipid soluble antioxidant vitamins. As the researchers noted:

“The high mortality from coronary heart disease in Lithuania is not caused by traditional risk factors alone. Mechanisms related to antioxidant state may be important.”

This is subdued scientist speak for:

“Total and LDL cholesterol had bugger all to do with CHD mortality, but we did find much higher LDL oxidation and lower plasma antioxidant levels in the blokes from Vilnius. This would suggest that the lipid hypothesis is utter crap, but because we don’t want to ruin our chances of getting this paper published and wish to avoid raising the ire of the entire medical profession for disputing something they are so heavily committed to, we’ll dramatically tone down our wording”.

Secondly, it is most disingenuous to infer that my case against B&G rests solely on this one study when I have in fact cited numerous others, in my JPANDS paper, The Great Cholesterol Con, and the very article that appears to have sent Pee Pee into a typo-plagued hissy-fit. I guess all the other studies I cited – including controlled clinical trials – showing no connection between total and oxidized LDL levels (there were a half-dozen just in the article alone) must have magically disappeared from his computer screen…either that, or is he’s just as big an evasive liar as he’s always been.

I can’t tell from Pee Pee’s disjointed commentary if he’s claiming B&G never won a Nobel Prize, or if he’s claiming I stated they won the Peace Prize. If this fraudster is denying B&G ever won a Nobel Prize, he clearly needs someone with a tire lever to help remove his head from his culo:

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1985 was awarded jointly to Michael S. Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein “for their discoveries concerning the regulation of cholesterol metabolism”
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1985/

Or maybe he does acknowledge they won a Nobel prize, in which case if anyone is impressed by this anonymous pansy sneakily inserting the word “Peace” between “Nobel” and “Prize” to make it look like I claimed they had won the Peace prize instead of the Physiology and Medicine category, when in fact I did no such thing…then that’s powerful LOL

The guy is, without question, an idiot. Like I said in the recent Pee Pee Smackdown, anyone who still believes a thing this guy says pretty much deserves the ill-health and premature mortality that very likely awaits them.

John, feel free to raise these points in your reply to Pee Pee. I might also include this in the next Reader Mail segment.

Cheers,

Anthony.

Anthony further replies:

Hey John,

BTW, just for your edification…a cross sectional study is where they take a healthy group and a group with the ailment in question, then question them about their dietary and lifestyle habits, and/or run blood tests on them, then see what differences they can find between the 2 groups. There’s no observation period like there is in a prospective or follow-up study…it’s more a snapshot in time.

A prospective or follow-up study is where they track a population for a given period of time, then analyze their blood work and questionnaires to see what patterns they can detect regarding the occurrence of a certain ailment.

Then there are clinical trials which are by far superior to the above-mentioned.

All three types have overwhelmingly failed to support the lipid hypothesis.

Cheers,

Anthony.

John replies:

Hi Anthony – apparently I’m Anthony Colpo

Cheers

John

[Pee Pee's reply to John]:

PrimitiveNutrition has replied to your comment on RaCCG3: Colpo’s Journal Article:

The only person this interested in Anthony Colpo is Anthony Colpo. Nice of you to stop by. Your veil isn’t concealing much.

Anthony replies:

So here we have a guy who has developed a rather unhealthy obsession with yours truly, has made a dozen or so videos about me, and goes to inordinate lengths to discredit my work and belittle me personally…then writes “The only person this interested in Anthony Colpo is Anthony Colpo.”

Interestingly, at the height of my spat with Michael “Who the %$#@ Took My Girdle” Eades, both he and Fred Hahn accused individuals posting dissenting views in the comments section of his blog of being me. I guess being a paranoid kook is part and parcel of being a screwball dietary extremist…watch out for little green Colpos under your bed, Pee Pee!

John replies:

I replied that as far as I was aware, based on the fact that it’s raining outside, I must be living in Bristol, England UK and therefore not Australia. Also my birth certificate doesn’t say Colpo anywhere – he hasn’t posted that yet.

John further replies:

Hi Anthony,

I cannot find any reference to B&G other than in that Janet Brill bollox from earlier this year deriding you for attacking their work on LDL and atherosclerosis (“how dare you they won a Nobel prize” etc etc) – but I cannot find a direct reference to what you said if in fact you did – or was she just making a generalization?

Cheers

John (or Anthony Colpo – see previous email for clarification)

[Pee Pee's reply to John]:

PrimitiveNutrition has replied to your comment on Anthony Colpo’s Confusionist Mind, Part 2:

Perhaps you could be specific and tell me what conclusions of Brown and Goldstein Colpo has disproven. They won the Nobel Prize for their description of the LDL receptor and that seems to be what Colpo is referencing. So start there. What did they get wrong about that and how was that addressed in Colpo’s blog?

I agree, Colpo’s agenda is not hidden. He’s trying to make a few bucks selling his book.

Anthony replies:

Hey John,

here we again see Pee Pee trying to pull the old switcheroo – claiming it was I who referenced B&G and demanding that you explain “What did they get wrong about that [um, what is "that" exactly??] and how was that addressed in Colpo’s blog?”

First of all, let’s set the record straight – it was Pee Pee who brought up B&G in support of the cholesterol hypothesis, not me. It’s there in his video when he starts tossing off about LDL oxidation. It would appear Pee Pee is now suffering statin-induced memory loss.

I don’t normally mention B&G’s work because it essentially establishes nothing, except that LDL has a receptor. Whoopdedoo. So does insulin, testosterone, estrogen, neurotransmitters and a squillion other substances in the body. Just because a substance has a receptor does not prove causality of heart disease or any other disorder.

The only time I discuss B&G is when desperadoes like Pee Pee and Janet Brill, seeking to capitalize on the Appeal to Authority phenomenon, mention them. They earnestly seem to believe the fact B&G won a Nobel Prize automatically negates the need for further debate or for any discussion of their actual findings and claims.

So here’s what Pee Pee needs to do. Seeing as he is the one who cited B&G in support of his twisted pro-vegan, anti-cholesterol, anti-Colpo thesis, the onus is on him to explain:

1. How B&G’s work in any way changes the indisputable fact that repeated studies show no connect between LDL levels and degree of atherosclerosis?

2. How their work changes the fact that the overwhelming majority of prospective studies have repeatedly failed to find any connection between saturated fat and CHD?

3. How their work in any way contradicts the numerous anomalies to the LDL theory of CHD that I present in my JPANDS paper?

4. How their work in any way changes the fact that the only cholesterol-lowering strategy to produce significant CHD mortality reductions are statin drugs…and they just happen to exert a whole host of pleiotropic effects not seen in other cholesterol-lowering drugs?

5. Why the most successful dietary intervention study of all time produced dramatic reductions in CHD and overall mortality despite no difference in cholesterol levels between the 2 groups?

6. How B&G’s work changes the fact that vegan diets do not extend lifespan by a single day?

I could go on and on, but Pee Pee has shown himself totally incapable of answering even the above, so what’s the point.

John, when you fight with someone, don’t let them dictate the fight. If they are a boxer, pick them up and dump them on their head. If they’re a grappler, sprawl on them and…well, you get my drift. The guy is trying to draw you into arguing about minutiae again. Just keep emphasizing the bigger picture, because ultimately that’s what matters. And place the burden of proof on him.

People like Pee Pee are masters of evasion and bullshit, that’s their standard currency. Pee Pee and you could keep going round in circles for the rest of eternity, and you still wouldn’t get him to face up to the numerous contradictions that flatly refute his fraudulent claims. He’ll just attempt to save face and divert the argument off on some other tangent that he hopes will allow him to avoid the humiliation of being proven wrong.

If you don’t have the rest of eternity to entertain this twat, don’t worry, I’ll be making note of all this on my website. Judging by the view counts on Pee Pee’s videos, there’s a heck of a lot more people reading my website than the comments underneath his Youtube diatribes. I guess the guy needs to learn the hard way that you don’t take on people telling the truth when all you’ve got to offer is lies and bullshit.

As for him claiming I have an agenda to sell books…good on ya Pee Pee. When you can’t beat ‘em with facts, roll out the unfounded libel. Pee Pee’s claim that I’m only in this for the money is yet another pissy little ad hominem snipe for which he can provide absolutely no evidence; it’s already been discussed, destroyed and dismissed, but the guy just keeps coming back to it. A clear sign of desperation, in which he again reveals more about himself than he would wish us to know.

I should also point out that while he casts aspersions on my motives, he still hasn’t identified himself, so we don’t know how he or his employers/sponsors make their money…

The guy really is an incurable little sleaze.

Cheers,

Anthony.

PS. John, for your edification, here’s a paper by Dr Duncan Adams of the University of Otago in New Zealand. He may not have won any Nobel Prizes, but he does a pretty good job of dismantling B&G’s erroneous assumptions. As he notes:

“Brown and Goldstein misunderstood the mechanism involved in the pathogenesis of the associated arterial disease. They ascribed this to an effect of the high levels of cholesterol circulating in the blood.”

The claim that the higher the level of blood cholesterol the more of it will magically absorb into artery walls and start forming atherosclerotic lesions is, quite frankly, overly simplistic idiocy. People who believe this evidently equate the walls of human arteries with cheesecloth.

As for B&G’s heavy reliance on the rare genetic disorder of Familial Hypercholesterolemia to support their claim for atherogenicity of LDL cholesterol:

“In reality, the accelerated arterial damage is likely to be a consequence of more brittle arterial cell walls, as biochemists know cholesterol to be a component of them which modulates their fluidity, conferring flexibility and hence resistance to damage from the ordinary hydrodynamic blood forces. In the absence of efficient receptors for LDL cholesterol, cells will be unable to use this component adequately for the manufacture of normally resilient arterial cell walls, resulting in accelerated arteriosclerosis.”

This is what I’ve been saying all along – cholesterol is a critical component of our cells, and without it we’d be royally rooted. Listening to amateur hour Youtube scientists like Pee Pee is not a practice commensurate with attainment of optimal health. As Dr. Adams notes:

“Eating cholesterol is harmless, shown by its failure to produce vascular accidents in laboratory animals, but its avoidance causes human malnutrition from lack of fat-soluble vitamins, especially vitamin D.”[My note: when he says "vascular accidents", he is referring to actual heart attacks, as opposed to 'fatty deposits" on the surfaces of their arteries, the latter being entirely predictable given that the herbivorous animals typically used in these experiments did not evolve to eat large amounts of cholesterol]

John replies:

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for everything you have recently sent me. The reason I and I believe many of your readers respect you so much is you are so damn thorough with your material and frankly mate, I trust you. Don’t worry, I’m not getting drawn into this. This guy couldn’t be convinced that lawn turf is best laid green side up let alone anything else. Frankly I wish I hadn’t bothered commenting on the prick’s YouTube drivel and I won’t be again. I can hardly answer his questions in the text limit on YouTube anyway but I will put something together.

Cheers

John

Anthony replies:

Hey John,

thanks again for the kind words and confidence in my writings.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is tangling with bullshitters is an aggravating and time-consuming job best left to the professionals. I’ve long been toying with the idea of forming “Crapbusters” with a mate who looks remarkably like Dan Akroyd, all we need is a Bill Murray look-alike with a similarly low tolerance for bullshit, a big black hearse to show up at the right price on eBay, and we’re good to go!

Seriously, even though you have not had any formal training in the ancient lost art of Wanker Dissection, you still did a pretty good job of drawing out Pee Pee’s patently self-contradictory nature. I’m still cracking up over his “The only person this interested in Anthony Colpo is Anthony Colpo” snipe. What an outstandingly ironic comment from someone whose favourite topic is clearly Anthony Colpo LMFAO

Take care, and don’t get slimed out there

Cheers,

Anthony.

Who you gonna call?

John replies:

Hi Anthony,

Yeah, “Who you gonna call” – I’ll get to work on the lyrics….

I replied but he didn’t post up any of it. It must be great to be able to be so selective, how very noble of him. His “The only person…” comment is still there however with precious little above or below it, what a silly sad fucker this guy is.

(Thanks for the Duncan Adams paper, that was really interesting)

Cheers

John

Anthony replies:

Hey John,

sleazy is as sleazy does. A big congratulations once again to all the people who have been swayed by Pee Pee’s ‘coherent’ and ‘cogent’ arguments (I know there’s at least 3 or 4 of you out there). It’s gullible twits like you that have allowed lying assholes to run amok and make the world the wonderful, peaceful, harmonious place that it is today.

As for Pee Pee…how does it feel to be such a worthless lying slimeball, mate? Do you really believe the end justifies your sleazy, dishonest means? Has it ever even occurred to you that if you need to be so evasive, selective and downright dishonest in order to defend your chosen beliefs, maybe they are long overdue for a serious overhaul? I guess not…silly me, you’re an incurable tool.

John replies:

Razwell The sane voice of reason!

Hi Anthony,

Guess what….

Don’t worry I won’t reply, anyway now I’m Anthony Colpo I’m far too busy spending the vast fortune accumulated from the sales from my two books.

Cheers

John

Razwell has sent you a message:

SCIENCE

To:veiled17

Colpo is NOT thorough. The man is a FRAUD. Google “Common Myths About Low Carb Diets by Anthony Colpo” He is a FLAVOR OF THE MONTH SCAMMER

Read Hawking, Einstein, THEY are smart. Colpo is ALUGHABLE AND MISREPRESENTS OBESITY SCIENCE

Google “Dr Jeffrey Friedman Modern Science vs The Stigma Of Obesity”

Over 400 genes regulate weight. COLPO IS WRONG. His MISINFORMATION is COMPLETELY AT ODDS with Dr Friedman

EDUCATE YOURSELF.

Anthony replies:

Awesome! When the biggest lunatic troll on the Internet takes your side, it’s pretty much marks the end of what little credibility you had on a topic (just ask Mikey Eades LOL).

My work is done

Ciao,

Anthony “Flavour of the Month for the Last Ten Years” Colpo.

—

Anthony Colpo is an independent researcher, physical conditioning specialist, and author of The Fat Loss Bible and The Great Cholesterol Con. For more information, visit TheFatLossBible.net or TheGreatCholesterolCon.com

Disclaimer: All content on this web site is provided for information and education purposes only. Individuals wishing to make changes to their dietary, lifestyle, exercise or medication regimens should do so in conjunction with a competent, knowledgeable and empathetic medical professional. Anyone who chooses to apply the information on this web site does so of their own volition and their own risk. The owner and contributors to this site accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever for any harm, real or imagined, from the use or dissemination of information contained on this site. If these conditions are not agreeable to the reader, he/she is advised to leave this site immediately.

“How I Lost 120 lbs”: An Interview with Muata Kamdibe

Anthony Colpo — Thu, 03 May 2012 03:29:56 +0000

Before

After

I’m sure you’ve previously read interviews of people who’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m betting most of them gushed on about how they discovered some magical fat loss trick that made the process effortless and melted off the pounds. That trick was probably encapsulated in some product sold by the interviewee, author or media outlet responsible for the interview.

This isn’t going to be one of those interviews. Make no mistake – our guest today has lost a lot of weight. But he’s not going to bullshit you and tell you how easy it was, nor is he going to feed you some self-aggrandizing tale about his impenetrable willpower. He’s not going to wank on about some magic diet, supplement or training routine he discovered that melted pounds off quicker than he could buy smaller clothes. And he definitely won’t be hitting you with a pitch for his new supplement line or DVD workout series; he doesn’t have any.

What you’re about to read is a refreshingly candid, honest and insightful account of one man’s weight loss journey; a journey that was ultimately successful but traversed some pretty rough and rocky terrain on the way.

Today you’re going to meet a formerly obese individual who succeeded in an endeavour at which most others fail. He’s going to explain exactly how it feels to shed over 120lbs of unwanted chub, and he’s going to share with you the strategies he employed en route to his remarkable transformation. He’s also going to share the mistakes, setbacks, frustrations, and insecurities that plagued him along the way. I believe this interview will prove infinitely more valuable to people hoping to lose weight than a lifetime’s worth of infomercial-like cheesy-grinned ‘success’ stories – there’s no sugar-coating here, just the plain truth, warts and all.

ANTHONY: Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Muata Kamdibe. Muata, thanks a million for doing the interview.

MUATA: No problem Anthony. I appreciate you inviting me to do an interview for your blog readers. It’s actually been a while since I’ve done an interview, so just ring a bell or something if I go off on a tangent or something …

A: No worries, tangent radar now activated. Alright, Muata, before we talk about the methods you used to go from obese to lean and muscular, let’s talk about the emotional and psychological changes you experienced. A lot of overweight people have been that way for so long they’ve forgotten just what it feels like to be lean, agile and fit. When I watched your CNN interview, I was reminded of that saying “Inside every fat person, there’s a slim person trying to get out”. You spoke about how, when you were overweight, you rationalized it away in your own mind by saying things like “Hey, I’m just a big dawg”. But when the weight started peeling off, you literally felt like a brand new person, you started thinking, “Wow, this is what the real me looks like!” That must have been a pretty awesome realization – tell us a bit more about what went on inside your head as you made your way from overweight to single digit body fat percentages.

M: Oh yes, my CNN interview. It’s funny because I kinda cringe when I watch it now, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. But, I just want to clear up a couple of things. First, I went below 10% body fat briefly, and that was while I was training with you. I’ll explain more about that in a bit, but I didn’t want folks out there to think that I was walking around at an emaciated 177 pounds for an extended period of time.

Now, back to the emotional and psychological changes that occurred when I lost a bunch of weight. In short, it was a roller coaster ride, with constant highs and lows. From 2003 to 2009, I went from feeling like Superman to fearing regaining my weight if I ate one doughnut. One thing that I don’t think most people who’ve never been obese understand is the mental anguish that accompanies losing a lot of weight. Oh, and the quicker you lose it, the more it plays on your mind. You literally have to get used to the new you, physically and mentally.

Yes, it’s great to be the center of attention at work, and even more so when your story is featured on a major news outlet like CNN…but what happens when the lights go off? What happens when folks at work start to watch you to see if you will keep it off this time? What about that little voice of doubt in the back of your mind that’s constantly telling you that this time will be no different? Does dieting harder and exercising more quiet that voice? Is it sheer willpower that makes it finally shut up?

I said I cringe every time I see my CNN interview because behind my motivational story was a person who was dealing with a lot of psychological and emotional issues as a result of the “new” Muata. Hell, it wasn’t until 2010 that I actually got used to seeing the slender face I see in the mirror every morning.

As with everything else in life, it simply takes time to wrap your mind around what you’ve accomplished. It takes time to realize you will make mistakes along the way, and how and why you should embrace them. More than anything else, it takes time to basically get over yourself and your fat loss story and move on with your life.

A: You’ve just displayed a level of honesty and candour rarely seen when people talk about their weight loss experiences…the only other place I’ve seen this kind of sentiment is in people discussing their experiences with serious eating disorders. Otherwise, it’s usually just ecstatic tales of being able to fit into smaller clothes, feeling more attractive, and so on. I can think of at least one well-known example, who shall remain nameless, who in the early 2000s began hyping his darling diet paradigm to anyone who’d listen, based on the ‘sensational’ weight loss he allegedly experienced, but has since ended up fatter and unhealthier than ever, he’s become a virtual poster boy for the ultimate futility of dietary faddism.

So I’m guessing you’d agree successful weight loss relies much more on psychological factors than what most people would realize? In other words, you can have access to the best diet and exercise strategies, but if your head isn’t the right place you’ll have a real hard time ever reaching your goal?

M: Absolutely! There is only so much of following someone else’s exercise plan or diet that you can do without having to come to grips that you’ve got to figure out a lot of it for yourself. And this is where the psychological factor comes in. It kinda reminds me of an interview I heard former boxing champion Shane Mosley, give many years ago. He told the reporter that with the right trainer and nutritionist, anyone can get into great shape and be ripped, but having the mentality of a champion is something that can’t be taught. Now, I wouldn’t say that to be a maintainer you have to have the mentality of a Floyd Mayweather, but you will have to realize that there comes a time when you will have to figure out and solve your own problems.

A: Muata, one of the main reasons I wanted to do this interview is because a lot of people have such a fatalistic view of weight loss. We hear the 95% failure rate bandied about ad nauseum. With all the idiotic fad diets out there, and the widespread disdain for exercise, and the fashionable pooh-poohing of calorie counting, sometimes I’m amazed people lose any weight at all. Can you share with readers the strategies you used to successfully lose weight? Before you answer, let’s do this in three parts, with part one being the phase where you lost a chunk of weight on your own – after that we’ll talk about the period where we worked together, and then we’ll discuss what you’re doing nowadays to keep in shape.

M: Actually, I lost the majority of my weight following a fad diet! In 2003, I decided to lose weight – again. It was a promise that I had made to myself the year before, and the year before that. Like most obese folks, I had tried diet after diet to lose weight, only to regain whatever I had lost. For whatever reason, in 2003, “doing” Atkins actually worked for me. It got me down to a size I had previously reached taking weight loss pills from a doctor in Tijuana, which was 240-245 lbs. At this point, I think the most fortunate thing happened to me and was one of the reasons I didn’t regain the weight.

In 2004, I was so thrilled with my effortless weight loss that I stopped exercising and promptly hit my first plateau that lasted the entire year. I was fortunate because I was able to actually maintain my 60 pound loss for a good year. This was truly a turning point for me because I had never maintained my lost weight. Although I wanted to lose more, I decided to view the fat loss glass as half-full. Although I was a devout low-carber at the time, and wholeheartedly embraced the “calories don’t count” dogma, I knew that something had to give because I wanted to lose more weight.

So, after reading Greg Ellis’s Ultimate Diet Secrets I started to count calories, and in 2005, I started to lose weight again. It was during this time that I was pretty obsessed with losing weight on the scale. So, I went through periods of weighing myself on a daily basis. I also started incorporating light resistance training into my routine since I was initially doing the cardio that most obese/overweight folks do (read: ellipticals and treadmills).

Unfortunately, at least that’s what I thought at the time, I hit another plateau after losing another 25 pounds.

A: Okay, so then the dreaded weight loss plateau hit, the scourge of dieters since time immemorial. Your body fat percentage got stuck in the mid-teens and you couldn’t get it to budge. That’s when you emailed me and asked if I’d help out. I still remember the ecstatic emails as you dropped below 10% body fat for the first time. Tell us in your own words what you remember from the time we worked together…something other than “Anthony is a sadistic bastard of a trainer who revels in the suffering of others” would be good (laughing). Seriously, what were some of the key things we employed that you feel were critical to smashing the plateau?

M: I have a smile on my face as I answer this because I really enjoyed reading and miss your old Omnivore site, which is what lead me to asking you to train me; you had some classic one-liners for Dean Ornish! No, seriously, the main things I learned from being “virtually” trained by you was the importance of resistance training and using multi-joint, compound movements/exercises. I’d never heard of a dumbell snatch or doing deadlifts with a snatch grip.

Also, you introduced me to the classic 5 x 5 strength-building set and rep scheme that changed my view on lifting weights. I had always hated doing 3 x 10 routines as I always got bored doing 10 reps of any exercise and felt my focus would wander. So, following the 5 x 5 routines you outlined made training fun for me since I was usually finished with my entire workout in 45 minutes.

During this time, I had a lot of “firsts” that bring back good memories. I did my first unassisted dip and chin-up. It was the first time that I had no love handles. It was also the first time that I was able to bench press my body weight for reps! Oh, and it was the first, and only, time that I trained twice a day similar to an athlete. When I dipped under 10% body fat, it was as a result of proper guidance and working my ass off. However, there were some other firsts that I experienced that had nothing to do with your training me.

Actually, I don’t think that I ever shared this with you before Anthony, but it was during this time that I developed an eating disorder. I was so intent on getting a six-pack that I didn’t want to eat as many calories as you were suggesting. Although you clearly gave me my macro breakdowns and explained why I needed to eat X amount of carbs and protein, I felt that I was eating too many calories. In my mind, 2300 calories was too much, despite the amount of training I was doing at the time or how much I weighed.

So, when I proudly proclaimed that I was part of the single-digit body fat club on your old Internet forum, I had a dirty secret that you, nor the other members, knew about.

A: So my comment about eating disorders before was somewhat prophetic. People will probably expect me to be shocked here, but after training people since the early 90s, nothing surprises me anymore. Clients routinely ‘embellish’ the facts about their compliance with the recommendations you’ve set out, and after a while you learn to analyse their comments and body language and you get a good idea of who’s not being totally straight up about their dietary habits. Of course, over the Internet that face-to-face contact is completely missing, so yeah, in your case I had no idea. We’ll talk more in a moment about whether diverging from my recommendations was a good or bad thing, but tell me…what does your diet and training look like these days? Do you regularly change your training around, or do you have one style of training you prefer? You’ve maintained your hefty weight loss and made some pretty impressive strength gains, so you’re obviously doing something right!

M: Nowadays, the eating disorder is behind me, and has been for a couple of years now, and training, not exercising, is just as much a part of my life as brushing my teeth. Part of the reason I’ve maintained my losses is because I follow an active lifestyle, and my training is dictated by my life. For instance, I love to train with dumbells and barbells, but I only do this when I live in a house because I hate going to a gym. When I initially trained with you, I lived in a 4 bedroom house and had a complete gym with power rack and dumbells ranging from 2.5 to 70 pounds, with a boatload of plates.

So, for the past couple of years, I’ve been living in a town-house that has little to no extra space. Therefore, I do a lot of bodyweight exercises and use my kettlebells during the “indoor” months, while I’ll usually do sandbag and dumbell training in the park during the summer. When I move back into a house in a couple of years, I plan on building a lifting platform, and there’s a trap bar out there with my name on it just waiting for me to buy it!

As far as my training style, what’s funny is that the template is pretty much the same: compound, multi-joint movements. One thing that I’ve added to my repertoire since I’m officially middle-aged now is walking with a weighted vest and using my exerstrider poles.

I hope you don’t mind me plugging Tom’s site and product, but I think that it’s something that your readers should check out. These poles are much more than simply hiking poles or the usual Nordic Walking poles that you’ll find available almost everywhere. Basically, using these poles makes walking a full-body activity that also makes it easier on the joints since the force of each step is being distributed evenly all over your body. Tom goes into all the science and what muscles it works on his site www.walkingpoles.com, but for me, it just makes walking fun and enjoyable. But, l do get funny stares from folks and stupid comments like, “Where’s the snow?” whenever I use them.

Oh, and I do joint mobility exercises I learned from Steve Maxwell every day.

Exerstriding along the beach

A: You made a distinction there between “training” and “exercising”. Care to elaborate?

M: Sure, and this is something I first learned from reading a few of the Pavel books you turned me on to back in the day. Basically, I prefer to say that I train or practice because it shows that I’m trying to get better at a skill and not just going through the motions. Whether I’m shouldering my sandbag, pressing a kettlebell, or doing a Jumping Jack, I want to do it with the mindset that there is always something that I can improve upon … be it add more weight, use better form, vary the speed, or what have you. I leave exercising for folks that go to the chrome and fern gyms, to steal a line from Brooks Kubik’s Dinosaur Training …

A: Like all of us, you’ve made some mistakes along the way. Tell us some of the things you wouldn’t do again, that you would discourage others from doing. I know you went through a phase where you were following a very-low-carb ketogenic diet, taking fat-burning supplements and doing HIIT – all at once! Holy catfish, Batman! I hope you sent your adrenals off for an all-expenses-paid break in Hawaii after that one! (Laughing)

M: Man, I was so fixated on getting a six-pack and fearing carbs that I actually followed a keto diet for close to a year. And, yeah, I was taking the fat burners that the “professional” bodybuilders recommended on one of the sites I was reading at the time. I can’t remember the name of one, but it was a see-through capsule and had some sort of double helix looking configuration inside for “sustained” release. Oh, and I was also taking a supplement stack that was supposed to help with my joint health. At one point, I was taking no less than 15-20 pills a day! I was also following, or should I say mis-following, Mike Mahler’s High Frequency Training Kettlebell protocol 5-6 days a week. And to top it all off, I would go for walks around my apartment complex wearing a 20 pound vest 4 or 5 days a week. I was doing entirely too much training and never gave a second thought about recovery. It was all “balls to the walls” training until I damn near hit the wall … in my living room.

A: Huh?!

M: That’s right, all of my ill-advised overtraining caused me to faint twice! Both times it happened, I had just finished urinating. The first time, I made it out of the bathroom before I did my imitation of a whirling dervish before landing on my face inches away from a wall in my living room. You’d think that would’ve been enough of a warning for me, but nooooo. I had to experience it again, but this time I didn’t even make it out of the bathroom. I simply collapsed right in front of the toilet. Fortunately, I fell straight down on my ass and ended up in lotus position. To this day, I get chills thinking what would’ve happened if I had fallen forward or backwards.

Needless to say, damn near head-butting my toilet was a wake-up call for me. So, I stopped taking all the supplements and training like an idiot. I had to learn the hard way that there are no magic supplements, diets or programs, and, most of all, there are no damn short cuts!

A: Bloody hell, I’m having visions of reading the daily newspaper and seeing “Man Found Dead After Head-Butting Toilet” on page 5. Thankfully you shut the door on that whole episode. Something I feel bears emphasizing is that you’re not some Internet jockey with too much free time on his hands, you’re a “real” person employed full-time in academia and a very proud father. Like everyone else, you’ve been through your share of personal trials and tribulations, but you’ve kept in shape the whole way through. How did you do it, when so many others let their training and nutrition go to hell every time some kind of life challenge raises its head?

M: You know, one quote from Michael Jordan always resonated with me. Part of the quote, and I’m paraphrasing, simply states that, “I’ve failed so many times in my life … that’s why I succeed.” Listen, since I started my journey in 2003, I’ve been through two divorces, child custody issues, and problems at my job. However, what I finally came to grips with is that none of these things were an excuse for me to fall back into my over-eating and sedentary ways. I can’t speak for other obese, or formerly obese, folks but I’m very clear about why I was carrying around 100+ pounds. So, as I’ve shared on my blog before, it was my size 36 pants that kept me honest. And, there were many times when they were tight because I started to regain weight; I’m not ashamed to admit this because it’s all part of the process. But, I refused to buy a larger size!

So, each time my pants were getting tight, I had to sit down and, instead of beating myself up as I did pre-2003, simply analyse why it was happening. And, what’s funny is that it wasn’t always as a result of my being a glutton. For instance, I remember I moved from an apartment that was on the third floor to one that was closer to the ground floor. I had no idea how much this would affect my calorie burn throughout the day. Also, I was spending more time behind the computer. My eating habits didn’t really change, and I was still training. I was simply less active, so I started to regain. By not berating myself, I was able to see what I needed to tweak to get my jeans fitting back properly.

I guess more than anything else, I’ve learned how to take a lot of the emotions out of the process, but this has taken years to do. In the beginning, fat loss is all about emotions. From the exhilaration of losing it, to the attention, to the fear of regaining it, to the disappointment of seeing the scale move in the wrong direction. Once the weight is lost, there has to be a period that you believe this time will be different because you have much more control than you think.

I’ve finally realized that this journey is one of self-mastery. It’s much larger than losing weight or even maintaining the losses. It’s about becoming the best YOU that you can be. I know it may sound like some motivational hooey, but, for me at least, it’s not. If you don’t change your way of approaching life, how is losing weight going to really benefit you? Why do you think so many folks regain weight after having bariatric surgery? I think it’s a lot more complicated than they just went back to their old habits …

A: Something that never ceases to amaze me is the modern-day Internet obsession with wanking on about every last aspect of metabolic minutiae, all the while ignoring the most basic fundamentals of nutrition and exercise. People can play the expert and bang on 24/7 about co-enzymes and uncoupling proteins and acetylation and esterification and methylation and yadayada, but talk is just that – talk. If they eat more than their fill and don’t exercise regularly and intelligently, then they’re still going to look like shit. I won’t name anyone in particular, but it doesn’t exactly take a neurosurgeon to instantly think of a few prominent examples. I know you have strong feelings about this…vent, bro, vent! Tell all those Internet-addicted jokers just why they desperately need to push themselves away from their idiot-screens and get outside!

M: OK, and to shamelessly take from one of my favourite shows, Family Guy, what really grinds my gears about the recent crop of what I like to call masturbating Internet intellectuals is that they can talk, or rather post, all day about the minutiae of fat loss or gaining muscle without showing the results themselves. So, we now have a cadre of bloggers and regular commentators who can wank on and on … oh, I’ve always wanted to use that expression in an interview … citing this or that Pubmed study or use jargon from a specialized field, yet are still obese or weak. It’s actually mind-blowing to read folks argue that calories don’t count, yet are willing to explain why cold therapy interacts with some sort of ancient epigenetics that’s been deactivated because obesity is actually caused from inflammation in the brain. I mean, WTF? Do, I really have to be well versed in Archaeology or be a Palaeontologist to lose fat?

Also, folks who do actually realize that “Eat Less, Move More” is simply a template, tend to get carried away with macro breakdowns; however, they aren’t willing to track their calories for more than a few weeks. Give me a break! I mean, how silly is it for an obese person to really concern him or herself with how many grams of protein vs. starchy carbs they eat before noon? Yes, I understand that macros are of some importance, especially for athletes, but I still contend that folks needing to lose 75 to 100 pounds need to focus on simply eating less food! The reality is that if you’re used to eating a whole damn pizza in one sitting, a good starting point to lose the chub is to just eat half, pat yourself on the back, and call it a day.

Nutrition and training don’t have to be that complicated; as a matter of fact, the more simple they are, the more likely you’ll be consistent. There was a reason that Bruce Lee once said, “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”

A: Consistency has to be one of the most important but highly underrated aspects of getting and staying in shape. People get all gung-ho and diet for, like, 3 weeks, then get bored or go bonkers from hunger, then quit…until the next flavour of the month fad comes along. You see this all the time in weight training too…people obsess over whether to perform 6 or 8 or 12 reps, whether you should point your toes up or down during leg curls, whether you should space your hands 10 or 14 inches apart when doing close-grip benches, whether they should do PITT-Force/Max-OT/Dogcrapp/Heavy Duty/MuscleNow/Westside/Sheiko/Bulgarian/Romanian/East Pennsylvanian training. Here’s a revolutionary idea: turn the computer off, and just go lift some damn weight, for chrissakes! I’ll put my money on the guy who consistently gives an honest effort on the basic exercises for an hour or so in the gym three times a week over these jokers who are always neurotically jumping from one routine to another.

It reminds me of when I was younger and we used to go clubbing. No sooner had we settled in X club, everyone was wondering what was going on at Y club. Meanwhile, the crowd at Y club was wondering whether they should have gone to X club instead. It was this weird phenomenon that, no matter where you were, you wondered if the real party was happening somewhere else, even though the place you were in was packed to the rafters (laughing). And so it is with a lot of folks on the Internet these days; no sooner do they start one routine, they read about another on their favourite forum and wonder if they would be better off following that one instead. And the end result is that even if they stumble across an effective routine, they don’t stick with it long enough to give it a chance to work, they’re just engaged in a continual game of swapping and switching. People need to stop getting side-tracked by every convincing-sounding but conflicting theory out there, and to stop making it so much harder and more complicated than it needs to be. Long before the birth of the Internet and the subsequent fifty or so million ‘ultimate’ training routines that followed, there were people getting in awesome shape simply by picking heavy things up and putting them down again 3 to 6 times a week, and getting on their bikes and riding fast in one direction for 20 miles or so, turning around and riding fast in the other direction.

What the Internet has done, I’m afraid, is shift the emphasis from actually getting stuff done to intellectualizing about stuff. Too much theorizing, not enough doing.

M: Exactly!!! And, it’s for this very reason that I’ve decided not to blog for this entire year. The information highway (remember that name?) is one of the major contributors to folks leading a sedentary lifestyle, and I’m just floored with the amount of time and energy many bloggers spend in front of their computers. Hell, I know that back in the 2008 and 2009, I would literally spend hours a day working on my blog. I was writing more about training that I was actually training! So, when I see a blog post with close to ONE THOUSAND comments, I’m just dumbfounded and wonder am I the only one that notices a problem with this growing trend? So, we’re living in the times of the Internet-addicted, obese folks, who can explain all the inner workings of WAT fat versus BAT fat, but still can’t explain why they’re still struggle with their weight … OK, rant over.

A: Another thing that irks me is the widespread disregard for exercise. People need to know this right now: You can lose weight without it, but chances are you’ll still look like crap. If you want to get that attractive, glowing, taut, athletic look to your body, then you’ve got to exercise it. Period. Muscles don’t firm and strengthen themselves from dieting, nor from sitting at a computer all day barking nonsense on blogs and forums. The hatred of exercise seems particularly strong in the low-carb camp, where it’s either denigrated or marketed in some variant of the old “Build muscle and lose all the fat you want in only 20 minutes per week!” nonsense. My firm belief is that the same kind of people who are suckered in by the metabolic advantage fantasy are the same kind of folks who want to believe they can lose all their excess chub with no or minimal exercise. What do you think?

M: I think you’re right, but you know what, I also think that it’s semantics at work here. For instance, folks will say that exercise is good for overall health but does nothing for losing weight because it makes you hungry. While Taubes didn’t invent this BS, he has sure popularized it over the last couple of years. But, this is what I find funny about this fuzzy logic. Being hungry doesn’t mean that a person has to over eat. This is simply a poor excuse in my opinion.

A: Actually, that’s a good point. Hunger is a perfectly normal and healthy physiological response. And there’d be something wrong if you transitioned from sedentary to highly active and didn’t experience a concomitant increase in hunger. I’m talking about genuine hunger here, not “I’m bored and it’s been a whole hour since I last visited the vending machine” eating-for-the-sake-of-eating hunger. Greater demand on the body means greater energy and nutrient requirements. In fact, I think that’s one of the huge advantages of exercise: You can lose weight and stay lean without having to follow the diet of an anorexic fashion model. The key is sticking with intelligent food choices and not using exercise as an excuse to go ahead and eat all that calorie-rich crap that deep down inside you know you shouldn’t be eating. I cite a review by Titchenal in The Fat Loss Bible showing that for most folks, any increase in caloric intake that accompanies exercise is overridden by the increased energy expenditure that accompanies their training regimen. But you need to be training with sufficient volume – eating like a pro cyclist while training on one of these low-volume/”abbreviated”/super-slow routines, that are fashionable in some circles, where your calorie burn is drastically attenuated is not going to give a happy outcome.

M: Speaking of excuses, I think that the term exercise needs to be removed from the equation because it gives folks an easy out. Whenever folks would ask me how I lost the weight, if I said diet and exercise, they would tell me that they don’t have time to exercise. They are more than willing to diet, but they would give me a million-and-one excuses why they don’t have time to exercise. Well, you know what Anthony, I don’t tell folks to exercise any more because, and I’m being generous here, 95 percent of the population aren’t willing to put in the consistent hard work needed to truly transform their bodies.

A: Mate, I hear you loud and clear on this one. After twenty-five or so years of people I meet in shops or at functions asking me “how can I lose weight?”, it’s gotten to the point where I just try and change the subject, because I know 99 percent of them simply don’t want to hear the truth. I’ve lost count of the times people have asked me, with a straight face, “isn’t there some way I can do it without exercise?” Sure, you can eat like a bloody sparrow and starve yourself, but not only is that a crappy way to go about it, you wouldn’t do it anyway because you just told me you don’t want to give up your “favourite” foods, which is code for “calorie-rich shit”. So you don’t want to take responsibility for your dietary habits and start eating sensibly, and you don’t want to exercise, because you’ve become so pathetically lazy that the very idea makes you grimace. So what exactly do you want me to tell you? That if you simply stand on one foot for a few minutes twice a week and fart to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon”, fat will magically start melting off you? C’mon…

These same people would look at me funny if I asked them how I could become filthy rich without doing a single day’s work, but they earnestly ask if there’s a way to get in shape without making any effort. And people with this mentality are everywhere.

M: And, this is nothing new, at least not in the US. Reading books written by physical culturists from the late 18th and early 19th century reinforce the fact that a small amount of the population are into becoming stronger, leaner, or more muscular. These same authors also confirm that folks are willing to fall for BS if it’s packaged just right and requires very little effort on their part.

So, if folks want to denigrate exercise and say it’s useless or that they don’t have time, I simply say right on. BUT, how about being less sedentary and more active. OK, you don’t have time to exercise, but do you have time to not be sitting on your ass watching TV for hours on end? What about not being behind your computer for six hours at a time? If folks want to demonize exercise, be my guest. But, please explain to me the benefits of being a couch potato on your health.

A: Muata, are there any books or Internet resources you’d recommend to people looking to lose weight, build muscle, or just improve their overall knowledge of diet and training?

M: For folks that are interested in science-based fat loss, you know that I have to plug your The Fat Loss Bible, which is well referenced. I like the way you cut through a lot of the myths being propagated by the low-fat and low-carb crowds. For folks looking for a more psychological approach to fat loss, I suggest Tom Venuto’s The Body Fat Solution. A brief list of folks that I think your readers will benefit from checking out are Steve Maxwell, Dan John, Brooks Kubik, Ross Enamit, Alan Aragon, James Krieger, Bill Hinbern, Will Brinks, Evelyn aka CarbSane, Dr. Andro, Tony Gentilcore, and Nick Horton. In addition to Googling these folks, the website The Tight Tan Slacks of Deszo Ban is definitely worth reading. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get enough of old-school physical culture. You can blame ole’ Coach Maxwell for that …

A very dapper Muata at CNN’s 2008 Fitnation Summit.

A: Hey, nothing wrong with the old school training, I love it. Anyway, enough of this diet and training stuff, let’s tackle the issues that really matter: Who do you tip to win UFC 145 … Jon Jones or Rashad Evans? [Note: I didn’t get a chance to post this interview prior to UFC 145, but Muata’s prediction wasn’t too far off the mark: the fight went the full five rounds, with Jones winning by unanimous decision]

M: I think that Evans is going to get worked! To put it mildly. Jon Jones is a phenom and represents the future of MMA. I actually see Jones submitting Evans in the same manner he did Rampage Jackson. He just has too many weapons and ways to win, while Evans can only hope to land a big punch or kick. I pick Jones by submission in the 4th round.

A: What do you like to do with your time when you’re not teaching or training?

M: In my spare time, I dance salsa. While I’m not at the level to go on Dancing With the Stars, I can definitely hold my own. I took my first salsa class well over 10 years ago when I was weighing over 300 pounds. I just recently re-took the class, with the same teacher, a few weeks ago, and it’s amazing how much lighter I feel on my feet now. I also started back playing the congas, and growing vegetables. In January, I set-up my indoor grow tent and germinated close to 100 veggie plants. I eventually gave the majority of them away to co-workers and students. While I grew all of these plants the traditional way (that is in dirt), I’m really a home hydroponic gardener. I plan on setting up my 4 x 4 ebb and flow table for my hot peppers in a week or two.

A: Man, I love chilli peppers. Who needs drugs when you have scorching hot jalapenos?

M: I hear you, and the funny thing is that I can’t handle hot peppers any more, but I love growing them. Go figure. I’ll be sure to send you pics. Oh yeah, I’m also back to playing a lot more chess. Thanks to the free smartphone app “Chesspresso” I play (and get my ass kicked daily) with folks from all over the world.

A: The end of the world is coming in 24 hours (not really, but humour me). How would you spend your last day on Earth?

M: With my son playing Guaguanco on the congas; hoping our rhythms would please the Orishas (and Zeus) to save the world …

A: What book are you currently reading?

M: I’m half-way through the June 1940 issue of Strength and Health magazine. I’ve started to collect these old-school magazines. I’m also re-reading Jim Schmitz Olympic Style Weighlifting and just picked up Nick Horton’s e-book Samurai Strength (another book on Olympic Weightlifting). I just finished reading Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do, and only have a few chapters left to read in Geoff Colvin’s Talent Is Overrated. I’m waiting anxiously for Brooks Kubik’s latest piece on John Grimek, and can’t wait for John Wood to put out The Dellinger Files II.

A: Favourite movie?

M: I’m actually more of a documentary type guy, and if it has anything to do with obesity or the obesity epidemic, I’ve probably seen it already and shown it to one of my classes. But there are three extremely silly/funny movies that I can watch over and over again: Pootie Tang, Stepbrothers, and Napoleon Dynamite.

A: What tracks would you throw on your ultimate workout CD?

M: Oh, my ultimate workout CD would have Sade’s greatest hits and John Coltrane for my joint mobility exercises. When I start training, it would have to have a mix of KRS-One, Jay-Z, Chimaira, Hatebreed, Don Omar, Tego Calderon, Sizzla, Public Enemy, Bounty Killa, Beenie Man, and my Salsa Thundermix!

A: Muata, before we sign off, let the readers know where your blog is at so they can keep up with your latest posts and tips.

M: Well, as I’ve said I’m not blogging this year, so my blog may seem defunct. Nevertheless, I have a good five years’ worth of posts that folks new to my blog may find interesting. I’m still on the fence if I’ll even go back to blogging since I plan on getting into Olympic Weightlifting, which, as you know Anthony, takes a lot of time and work to get the technique down. At any rate, here’s my blog’s address: www.mrlowbodyfat.com. I do have up to date pictures of myself there since there are enough weight loss bloggers out there with outdated pics on their sites. Also, anyone interested can also send a friend request to me on Facebook.

A: Alright bro, it’s been a pleasure as always. Now hurry up and get your butt down to Australia so we can shoot the breeze over an Island Sting or two, and so you can discover all the natural wonders of this vast, spacious, sunburnt country … you know, like the perennially clogged roads of Melbourne that make LA’s freeways look empty (laughing). Seriously, once you hug your first Koala or lie back on a sandy white beach where you can look out over the ocean and not see a single oil rig, you’ll be smitten. And I know you’ll love the fact we have four of the world’s 10 most venomous snake species down here…but don’t let that put you off…as long as you’re within 30 minutes of a hospital it’s no big deal…Muata?…You still there bro? (Laughing)

M: Snakes? Well, you’ve guaranteed my mom won’t be coming with me, she’s deathly afraid of them. While I’m visiting, remind me to tell you about the time when I was seven and she stomped my friend’s rubber snake to death. No, seriously, I have met a couple of good folks in Australia and can’t wait to visit, especially to go riding with you, which is something I haven’t done in years. I just hope that you have an extra testes-saving seat for me because that’s one of the reasons I stopped riding …

A: Another great loss to cycling due to the ball-bashing nature of modern bike saddle design…sigh. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure I’ve got an Adamo-equipped bike for you when you get here. Muata, thanks heaps for doing the interview, take care!

M: Thanks for interviewing me Anthony and you do the same!

—

Why Asians Should Ignore the Cholesterol Sham, and Why Healthy People Should Not Take Statins

Anthony Colpo — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:39:26 +0000

To all healthy folks: Do not take statins, even if the nurses administering them look like this. Ya hear me? Oi, you paying attention?

Folks, before I get rolling, I would just like to dedicate this first instalment of many more cholesterol updates to come to my good buddies Pee Pee and Don Matesz and all those other dopey buggers who make a pastime of accusing me of being a cherry-picker. Today, I’m going to share with you studies you’ve probably never heard of, because they just happen to flatly contradict the mainstream assertion that low cholesterol is healthy and hence are quietly shoved aside by purveyors of this belief due to their embarrassing nature. As we know, one of the favourite strategies humans have for dealing with evidence that contradicts their cherished dogmas is to simply ignore it.

In the twisted worldview of Don, Pee Pee and their ilk, by presenting the studies that you likely never would have heard of due to their embarrassing nature, it is people like me – not them – that are cherry-picking.

Yeah, no worries.

Come and Get ‘Em!

Folks, who wants some cherries? I’ve got a basket full here, and you’re all welcome to grab a handful. They might not be highly-hyped, front page, AHA- or Big Pharma-press-release cherries, but they are definitely sweet, tasty, and certified peer-reviewed delicacies. Enjoy!

Low Cholesterol is Accompanied by Increased Mortality from Stroke, Heart Disease, and Cancer: The Jichi Study

The Asians we are told, are shining examples of the cholesterol theory. They eat a low-fat diet, which gives them wonderfully low cholesterol levels, which in turn not only protects them from heart disease but endows them with the longest average life expectancy on Earth.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Too bad it’s complete nonsense.

Being the cherry-picker I am, I discussed the evidence, so often ignored by others, in The Great Cholesterol Con that low cholesterol is strongly associated with increased mortality in Japan.

Yeah, shame on me for pointing out to our Japanese brethren that this whole cholesterol-lowering thing is just another overhyped Western wank, one with the potential to harm instead of help their health.

Funnily enough, I don’t feel any shame at all. Au contraire, I believe reporting the facts is a noble thing to do, even if it upsets every last dogmatic sod who can’t get his head around the fact he has fallen hook, line and sinker for a load of unscientific rot.

Which is why, dear readers, I bring you the results from The Jichi Medical School Cohort Study, which involved 12,334 healthy Japanese adults aged 40 to 69 years who underwent a mass screening examination (1992-2005), including total cholesterol measurement. Information regarding cause of death was obtained from death certificates, and the average follow-up period was 11.9 years. In total, 635 men and 423 women died during the study period.

The subjects were divided into 4 groups according to total cholesterol level (<4.14mmol/L; 4.14mmol/L to <5.17 mmol/L; 5.17 mmol/L to <6.20 mmol/L, and; >6.21 mmol/L).

Before I report the results, it should be pointed out that the lowest quartile of cholesterol (<4.14mmol/L) , in both male and female participants, was marked by a higher number of current cigarette smokers.

So did multivariate analyses, which many misguided Western researchers seem to think grants epidemiology the same accuracy as RCT data, and which in this instance included adjustment for smoking, age, systolic blood pressure, HDL, drinking, and body mass index confirm the wonderful life-saving benefits of having low cholesterol?

Nope.

The safest cholesterol range in the study was 4.14–6.20 mmol/L in men, and 4.14mmol/L – >6.21 mmol/L in women. As the researchers stated:

“We noted a clear relationship between low cholesterol and increased mortality. Okamura et al reported that occult liver diseases are associated with mortality; however, in the present study, the relationship between low cholesterol and increased mortality was unchanged in analyses that excluded deaths due to liver disease. Our results suggest that hemorrhagic stroke and heart failure excluding myocardial infarction,contribute to the relationship between low cholesterol and high mortality.”

You can check out the full text of the study here:

Nago N, et al. Low Cholesterol is Associated With Mortality From Stroke, Heart Disease, and Cancer: The Jichi Medical School Cohort Study. Journal of Epidemiology, 2011; 21 (1): 67-74.

Yeah, I know, shame on me for allowing you to view the paper yourself…I need to do what folks like Don and Pee Pee do and make sweeping claims and libelous accusations, then refuse to back them up with even a single paper!

Must be the cherry-picker in me…

Low Cholesterol is Associated with Increased Mortality from CVD in Korean adults.

Maybe the Koreans can save the cholesterol cartel’s Asian thesis, no?

No.

A total of 12,740 Korean adults aged 40 to 69 who underwent a mass screening examination were followed up from 1993 to 2008. Groups with the lowest cholesterol (< 160 mg/dL) as well as the highest (>= 240 mg/dL) were associated with higher CVD mortality in analysis adjusting for age, sex, smoking and drinking status, body mass index, level of blood pressure, triglyceride and HDL.

The researchers noted:

“Based on the results of this study, caution should be taken in prescribing statins for primary prevention among people at low cardiovascular risk in Korean adults.”

Aw c’mon guys, the nice folks from Big Pharma won’t like that, will they? Don’t you know that the Asian market, especially China, represents a huge and largely untapped reservoir of profit, but by showing the kind of independent and critical thinking sadly lacking in most of your Western colleagues you’re ruining the party?

Tsk tsk.

Again, dear readers, if you’d like to read the paper yourself, feel free to do so here:

Bae JM, et al. Low cholesterol is associated with mortality from cardiovascular diseases: a dynamic cohort study in Korean adults. J Korean Med Sci. 2012 Jan; 27 (1): 58-63.

Statins are Largely a Waste of Time

As for statins, they’re not just a wank for Asians, they’re a load of cobblers for Westerners too.

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a “for” and “against” installment posing the following hypothetical question:

“Should a 55-year-old man who is otherwise well, with systolic blood pressure of 110 mm Hg, total cholesterol of 250 mg/dL, and no family history of premature CHD be treated with a statin?”

To answer this question, JAMA enlisted Blaha, Nasir and Blumenthal from The Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease for the “yes” case, and Redberg and Katz from the Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco (Dr Redberg) and Department of Health Services, County of Los Angeles (Dr Katz) for the “no” case (Drs Redberg and Katz are also Editor and Deputy Editor, respectively, over at the Archives of Internal Medicine).

To support their “yes” case, the Hopkins crew begin by citing a bunch of cholesterol guidelines that were formulated by panel members sponsored by manufacturers of statins. Yep, I’m sure we can rely on those for accurate, unbiased guidance when tooling around with someone’s health!

They then cite the WOSCOPS and AFCAPS/TexCAPS trials and report the former lowered heart attack and CHD mortality by 31%, while the latter reduced heart attacks by 40%.

Um, fellas … isn’t there something you’re forgetting to tell us about those studies?

Like the fact that the 27% reduction in CHD mortality in AFCAPS/TexCAPS did not reach statistical significance? And that there was no reduction whatsoever in overall mortality?

And the fact that the 27% reduction in CHD mortality in WOSCOPS also did not reach statistical significance?

Instead of reporting these facts about actual death rates, the researchers only reported (read: cherry-picked) outcomes that managed to reach statistical significance and ignored those that didn’t.

Recommending a toxic drug to healthy individuals free of CHD using such dubious interpretation of these largely unsuccessful studies is, to my way of thinking, BoLLOCKS.

The Hopkins team then trot out the absolute farce that was JUPITER, this time including a total mortality reduction of 20% reported in that trial. For me to outline all the discrepancies in this trial – that was conveniently cut short as the mortality trajectories of the treatment and control groups began to menacingly converge – would be a whole other article. Luckily, someone else has already saved me the time and posted a pearler of a critique right here:

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/when-news-sounds-too-good-statins-new.html

After reading that, I’m sure most everyone apart from Pee Pee, Matesz and the JUPITER researchers themselves will agree that citing JUPITER in support of anything other than the all-too-frequent shadiness of Big Pharma-sponsored research is POPPYCoCK and HogWASH.

The Hopkins team then go onto cite some more theoretical figures, then argue that statins are safe, claiming only 5% of patients experience muscle pains.

Incorrect. The reality is that such complaints are dramatically underreported, thanks to doctors’ refusal to believe the ‘wonder drug’ statin they prescribed could ever do anything negative to their patient. And in those who do acknowledge the cause of the muscle pain, filing an official complaint is a time-consuming affair for which they receive no compensation and may even be subject to interrogation about the circumstances that led to the filing of the report.

But what happens when, instead of brushing people off and telling them their symptoms are just due to “getting old”, researchers carefully inspect patient data and make further enquiries? A study published in the October-November-December 2009 issue of Primary Care Cardiovascular Journal, indicates that statin-induced myopathy is far more common than previously claimed by drug companies and health officials. Researchers analyzed the patient records of one 8,000 patient practice and found only one recorded case of muscle symptoms in a patient taking statins. But after questioning 96 randomly selected statin-using patients from the practice, they identified 19 cases of potential muscle damage:

Sciberras D, et al. Is general practice the optimal setting for the recognition of statin-induced myotoxicity? Primary Care cardiovascular Journal, Oct-Nov-Dec, 2009; 2: 195-200.

As for the question of whether statins should be prescribed to women, Blaha et al cite a review by Kostis et al that claims statins also work in women – but ignore two other reviews that concluded statins do not:

So what do Redberg and Katz, who argue the “No” case, have to say in response to the selectively cited arguments of Blaha and co?

Instead of citing a small handful of incompletely reported trials, they report that:

“Data from a meta-analysis of 11 trials including 65 229 persons with 244 000 person years of follow-up in healthy but high-risk men and women showed no reduction in mortality associated with treatment with statins. A 2011 Cochrane review of treatment with statins among persons without documented coronary disease came to similar conclusions. The Cochrane review also observed that all but one of the clinical trials providing evidence on this issue were sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry. It is well established that industry-sponsored trials are more likely than non–industry-sponsored trials to report favorable results for drug treatment because of biased reporting, biased interpretation, or both of trial results.”

As for the commonly claimed low rate of side effects in statin users, they note:

“This underestimation of adverse events occurs because the trials excluded up to 30% of patients with many common comorbidities, such as those with a history of muscular pains, as well as renal or hepatic insufficiency. Many randomized trials also excluded patients who had adverse effects of treatment during an open label run-in period. For example, in the Treat to New Targets trial, after initial exclusions based on comorbidities, an additional 35% of eligible patients, or 16% of patients, were excluded during an 8-week, open-label, run-in phase because of adverse events, ischemic events, or participants’ lipid levels while taking the drug not meeting entry criteria. Additionally, the results of randomized trials of statin treatment likely underestimate common symptoms such as myalgia, fatigue, and other minor muscle complaints because these studies often only collect data on more quantifiable adverse effects such as rhabdomyolysis.

Numerous anecdotal reports as well as a small trial have suggested that statin therapy causes cognitive impairment, but this adverse outcome would not have been captured in randomized trials. The true extent of cognitive impairment associated with statins remains understudied. It is disappointing that more data are not available on important adverse events associated with statin treatment, despite millions of prescriptions and many years of use. This information could be easily collected in observational studies and from registries. One population-based cohort study in Great Britain of more than 2 million statin users found that statin use was associated with increased risks of moderate or serious liver dysfunction, acute renal failure, moderate or serious myopathy, and cataract. The risk of diabetes with statin use has been seen in randomized clinical trials such as JUPITER, which found a 3% risk of developing diabetes in the rosuvastatin group, significantly higher than in the placebo group. In observational data from the Women’s Health Initiative, there was an unadjusted 71% increased risk and 48% adjusted increased risk of diabetes in healthy women taking statins.”

Their conclusion?

“Based on all current evidence, a healthy man with elevated cholesterol will not live any longer if he takes statins. For every 100 patients with elevated cholesterol levels who take statins for 5 years, a myocardial infarction will be prevented in 1 or 2 patients. Preventing a heart attack is a meaningful outcome. However, by taking statins, 1 or more patients will develop diabetes and 20% or more will experience disabling symptoms, including muscle weakness, fatigue, and memory loss.”

Statins. They still suck.

—

Why “PrimitiveNutrition” aka “Plant Positive” is a Shameless and Cowardly Liar

Anthony Colpo — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:17:46 +0000

Warning: This article contains strong language. Please close this page if you are a minor or easily offended.

This is the only photo I could find of Plant Positive, aka PrimitiveNutrition, aka Pee Pee: He’s too gutless to show his face, but just imagine the mindless authority-worship of Janet Brill, the sickening smugness of Michael Eades, the blatant reality evasion of Barry Groves, the intellectual dishonesty of Ancel Keys and the effemininity of Don Matesz all rolled into one. Not a pretty picture…

Sleazy is as Sleazy Does

According to the The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, one of the main definitions of sleazy is:

“slea·zy Dishonest or corrupt; disreputable: Some sleazy characters hang around casinos.”

Some sleazy characters hang around the Internet, too. In fact, a lot of sleazy characters call the Internet their home. Today, you’re going to meet one of these characters, and discover how he goes about shamelessly lying and deriding others behind the veil of anonymity to achieve his shady agenda.

This individual goes by the names “PrimitiveNutrition” and “Plant Positive”. They’re obviously not his real names, but he’s too cowardly to reveal his true identity. This anonymous sleazeball is a vegan activist who snidely and condescendingly attacks anyone who rightfully points out the scientifically untenable nature of both vegan dogma and the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease.

Plant Positive is a true malevolent. He can’t claim ignorance or genuine misunderstanding for his fraudulent claims because, as you will learn shortly, he is well aware of the evidence that flatly refutes his lies. He just goes ahead and ignores it, and brazenly presents his viewers with information that he knows full well is dishonestly reported.

In Plant Positive, we have an individual who seeks to convince people to keep mindlessly believing in a long-running ‘health’ campaign that has in fact proved an abject failure and has indirectly caused millions of unnecessary deaths; we have an individual who blatantly ignores the evidence refuting this strategy, even when it’s staring him in the face; we have a coward who anonymously attacks earnest and conscientious individuals such as Denise Minger and Chris Masterjohn, who are easily among the better commentators in the vast cesspool of disinformation that is today’s health information arena; we have an individual who shamelessly pumps out lie after lie but then sarcastically and condescendingly ridicules those who are telling the truth.

How I Came to Be the Unhealthy Obsession of PrimitiveNutrition/Plant Positive

During my twenties and early thirties, I was a firm believer in the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease. At the age of 21, I was told my cholesterol was moderately high, and that I needed to bring it down. I proceeded to follow a low-fat diet comprised of only the leanest meats and fish, along with lots of ‘healthy’ whole-grains, and proceeded to develop reactive hypoglycaemia, moderately elevated blood pressure, digestive difficulties, dry skin and fluctuating energy levels. After several years of this, I had to face the highly ironic reality that I was healthier and felt better before I started my supposedly healthy cholesterol-lowering diet.

As a rational, sane person, it did not seem at all right to me that one’s well-being would deteriorate when one followed a diet loudly touted to be ‘heart-healthy’. Being a perennially inquisitive person, I started seeking out the scientific evidence behind the cholesterol theory of heart disease, and was amazed to see just how little there was. What I found instead was a theory that had come to totally dominate modern CHD prevention and treatment, yet was essentially based on a web of misinterpretations, shady extrapolations, and outright lies. Despite its patently fallacious nature, the cholesterol theory continued to flourish thanks to the overwhelming and ever-present influences of money, social/academic status, and conformity.

I’ve been an outspoken critic of the cholesterol theory of heart disease ever since. I uncovered so much evidence I was able to fill an entire book with it, and in 2006 I self-published The Great Cholesterol Con, the end result of several years of intense research. I’ve also written countless articles and even a peer-reviewed journal article on the cholesterol myth.

As an avid defender of the nonsensical cholesterol hypothesis, Plant Positive clearly finds me and my work threatening, and has devoted an inordinate amount of time not only to debunking my work but also denigrating me personally. Plant Positive’s sniveling condescension and lie-producing faculties shift into turbo-boost every time he mentions me and my work.

When Plant Positive speaks, this thing is guaranteed to red-line.

I’ve previously addressed some of Plant Positive’s unprovoked antagonism and blatant dishonesty in this post, where I proceeded to label him “Pee Pee” due to his intellectual dwarfism and malevolent, effeminate nature. After penning the article, I promptly forgot about this truth-hating Soy Boy and went back to focusing on far more important and profound activities, you know, like memorising even more Teenage Bottlerocket songs.

Because no excuse for playing a Teenage Bottlerocket song is too weak.

However, recently I received this email from a reader:

Benji writes:

Hello Anthony,

I read your latest blog entry on Don Matesz, hilarious and thoroughly entertaining as usual.

Although you did say “…and if Don disagrees, he’s more than welcome to provide a science-backed rebuttal of each and every point I raise in the article.” You may or may not know that somebody has already done that, it’s a Youtube video available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXV4MEO5s_E.

Just giving you a heads up.

Benji.

No sooner had I received Benji’s email about Pee Pee’s video, I got another one from a bloke called Richard Arppe. I’ve reprinted his correspondence below so you can gain some idea of the intellectual prowess possessed by the kind of people who takes Pee Pee seriously:

Richard Arppe writes:

Hey Colpo,

ín regards to your Don Matesz diatribe, PlantPositive has already replied to you in great detail, in a form of 10 videos. Quite impressive.

Videos 10-22. Check also “the futility of cholesterol denialism”, videos 2-4 of the new serie. Plantpositive also covers your article published which you published in a “scientific journal”.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDBBB98ACA18EF67C&feature=plcp

Enjoy also this fresh, top-notch genetic release:

“Lifelong reductions in LDL linked to consistent reduction in CHD risk” (2012)

http://www.endocrinetoday.com/view.aspx?rid=95991

Cheers

Richard Arppe

To which yours truly replied:

Hey Richard,

I’ll be destroying the cowardly Pee Pee’s nonsense shortly.

Have a humdinger day,

Anthony.

Not content to wait, Mr Arppe promptly replied with this self-assured display of barely coherent hogwash:

Okay,

just pay attention this his work this time. I rather not see accusations of him neglecting Masai and Oakland hospital cases. His response to you did not just cover the two videos titled “response to Anthony Colpo” but the whole “response serie”, atleast from the video 10 and onward is pretty much dedicated to you. Pay attention to them.

Good day to you as well.

Richard

Oh, ps. I came to this diet business with fresh mind, but so far I am not really convinced by the “cholesterol is bogus” -argument, pretty much due to a reasons like these:

2011-02-18 William Castelli MD Heart Disease Risk, Cholesterol and Lipids in 2011: What Do We Really Know?

“You know, we know that if I can get your total cholesterol down around let’s say 100 to 130 or so, and I have maybe not quite a billion people on the earth like that, and those people cannot get atherosclerosis. You know in the China Study, for example, when Chou En-lai was dying of cancer he started a study in China just like the Framingham Study. The only difference was it was in 880,000,000 people so it was a little larger than the Framingham Study. But you know they found these villages in China where you couldn’t get a heart attack or you couldn’t get diabetes and the women couldn’t get breast cancer and you know their total cholesterol were 127, but the chances we could ever get Americans down that low with diet and exercise are not good”.

http://www.prescription2000.com/Interview-Transcripts/2011-02-18-william-castelli-heart-disease-lipids-transcript.html

William Clifford Roberts the one you recited has pretty much made it clear that with total serum cholesterol under 150mg/dl one is bullet-proof against heart-disease. And he refers to long-term digits, prior to the statin treatment and the kind of cholesterol lowering that is induced by cancer and other diseases. Most people cannot reach these numbers without significantly cutting foods of animal origins.

My response to this galactic display of ignorance?

Richard,

let me state this in no uncertain terms – Pee Pee is a shameless pseudoscientist, a rather sleazy one who hides behind the veil of anonymity while he makes sarcastic and unfounded accusations about the scientific validity of other people’s arguments. I have no idea what his true agenda is, but I can assure you he’s full of shit.

Your claim that with total serum cholesterol under 150 mg/dl one is bullet-proof against heart-disease is utter rubbish. It indicates a terribly sad knowledge of the literature, and is a glowing testimony of why people like you need to start looking at the literature yourself instead of mindlessly accepting the lies of screwballs like Pee Pee.

First of all, repeated autopsy studies have failed to find a correlation between serum cholesterol and degree of atherosclerosis. Here’s one you can access freely:

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/23/6/847.full.pdf

Note the preponderance of cholesterol levels under 150, and note the authors conclusion that, after adjusting for age, “No correlation could be observed between the serum cholesterol level and the amount and severity of atheroselerosis in the arteries.”

Here’s another study I bet Pee Pee hasn’t told you about:

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/27/2/229.full.pdf

The Canadian researchers again performed autopsies, and felt compelled to make special mention of one specimen who “Over a 9-year period, this man consistently showed a serum cholesterol level of less than 145 mg. per cent. The mean level was 111 mg. per cent. In our experience this is an extraordinarily low value; nevertheless, a severe grade of coronary sclerosis was demonstrated at autopsy, there were large amounts of lipid in his arteries (the third highest recovery in the series) and a heavy deposit of calcium (the third greatest ill the series). He also had a cardiac infarct.”

So tell me again how a cholesterol level under 150 mg/dl guarantees immunity against heart disease?

This reminds me of a rather not-so-humorous anecdote by a doctor I’ve cited in TGCC. Richard, if you mosey on over to Amazon, grab yourself a copy of Heart Frauds by Charles T. McGee, MD., and flick through to page 84, you’ll see him describe the case of a patient who suffered a stroke and a heart attack shortly before consulting with him. The patient had a cholesterol level of only 115 mg/dl.

Ironically, this very low cholesterol reading automatically prompted the pathology lab’s computer to print out:

“THIS PATIENT IS AT VERY LOW RISK FOR ATHEROSCLEROSIS”

Hmmm, I guess the jokers who ran that pathology lab obtained their knowledge of CHD risk from the same nonsensical William Castelli quote as you. Speaking of which:

“But you know they found these villages in China where you couldn’t get a heart attack or you couldn’t get diabetes and the women couldn’t get breast cancer and you know their total cholesterol were 127, but the chances we could ever get Americans down that low with diet and exercise are not good”.

And why on Earth would Americans ever want to get their cholesterol levels down to 127? Reality check: the Chinese had a poorer life expectancy than the Americans. Even today, the Chinese lag behind citizens of the USA by five years in life expectancy. And they lag even further behind countries like Australia, Italy, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden, etc, as a simple Google search will readily confirm. So why exactly should we hold up the Chinese as a shining example of good health, and strive to emulate their allegedly super-low cholesterol levels, when their life expectancy ranks behind other countries with higher mean serum cholesterol levels?

You know why people with low cholesterol have a lower risk of coronary heart disease, Mr Arppe?

Because study after study has shown that people with low cholesterol levels tend to die prematurely from other causes, most notably cancer, gastrointestinal diseases, and violent causes.

I’ll repeat that one more time: on average, people with low cholesterol levels die earlier, from other causes.

They have a lower rate of CHD mortality because other diseases and violent causes kill them off first!

If you’d read my book The Great Cholesterol Con, you would already know all this, but instead you’ve read a transcript by prominent proponent of the anti-cholesterol fantasy, William Castelli, and watched a bunch of Youtube videos by some dishonest weasel, and now think you know the score about cholesterol. The reality is you are terribly ignorant on the matter.

Like I said, I will destroy Pee Pee’s nonsense shortly. In the meantime, you may like to ponder how you came to be so woefully gullible, and why you really need to review your knowledge acquisition methods; they are currently of appalling quality.

By the way, I never accused Pee Pee of ignoring any Masai or Oakland studies, so whatever you’re smoking, stop it.

As for your “fresh, top-notch genetic release” – did you even read it? It’s essentially an (unpublished) exercise in speculation based on assumptions about genetic variants, not a clinical trial or even a prospective study examining actual LDL levels and CHD incidence and mortality:

http://www.endocrinetoday.com/view.aspx?rid=95991

Good on ya Richard!

Regards,

Anthony.

What to do when your friends become vegan

Poor Richard. It’s folks like him that form the highly gullible prey of charlatans like Plant Positive. He’s probably too far gone to save, but for those of you still in possession of your rational faculties, let’s take a closer look at Plant Positive’s nonsense.

Before we get started, be sure – if you haven’t already done so – to read my previous reply to Plant Positive’s bald-faced lies:

http://anthonycolpo.com/?p=2719

As you’re about to learn, Plant Positive, aka PrimitiveNutrition, aka Pee Pee hasn’t even begun to change his deluded behaviour. To the contrary, his campaign against reality – and yours truly – seems to have kicked into overdrive.

So let’s turn our attention to the video Benji links to and dissect Pee Pee’s fraudulent attack on my JPANDS paper, in which the very weasel utterly incapable of anything other than posting fraudulent Youtube clips snidely belittles as “Mr. Colpo’s attempt at a serious journal article.”

Pee Pee, like our old buddy Dr Michael Eades, dramatically overestimates both his power of scientific analysis and his ability to refute his opponent’s arguments to the point of complete delusion. Feast your eyes upon the highly misplaced arrogance evident in the comments’ section when a viewer asks Pee Pee if I’ve posted a reply to his nonsense, to which Pee Pee replies:

“I haven’t seen a response and I don’t anticipate one.”
Plant Positive

I guess Pee Pee’s powers of prediction are every bit as appalling as his powers of scientific analysis. Today Pee Pee’s going to get a response…and then some.

So let’s put on our anti-ponce thinking caps (you’ll only need the economical lightweight version, Pee Pee ain’t no intellectual heavyweight), click the Youtube video, and start our journey into the deep, dark, deluded world of anonymous vegan fraudster, Plant Positive/PrimitiveNutrition/Pee Pee.

As the video starts rolling, Pee Pee begins with a series of ad hominem snipes at both JPANDS itself and yours truly, while slipping in a few jibes in defence of drug companies. In his dopey, pansified voice Pee Pee cocksuredly accuses me of displaying “scrambled thinking”, an accusation every bit as ironic as Kim Kardashian calling someone an attention-seeking skank.

In fact, in both this and his previous video I addressed, Pee Pee employs an extremely condescending tone and repeatedly uses sniveling little cheap shots to attack yours truly. Clearly, our anonymous hero isn’t happy simply to launch a barrage of fantasy-based attacks upon my writings. Nope, he has to attack me personally, even though I’d previously never even heard of this joker let alone attacked him in any way.

As is all too often the case, the truth is an unbearable burden on the compromised cognitive faculties of folks like Pee Pee, which in turn causes them to lash out and personally attack the source of this discomforting information.

I won’t dwell on Pee Pee’s sniveling little insults, except to point out that, despite no prior contact or provocation on my part, the guy really does seem to have developed an enduring hard-on for me. With reportedly a dozen or so videos dedicated to me, the guy clearly harbours a rather unhealthy obsession.

While on one hand I’m delighted I’ve gotten so deeply under the skin of someone who is such a highly dogmatic and dishonest purveyor of anti-cholesterol vegan dogma, I do find his obsessive behaviour somewhat disturbing.

I’m guessing Denise Minger feels much the same way. A quick scan of the Youtube thumbnails to the right of the main video shows she’s also the subject of much undue attention from this vegan oddball. That Pee Pee goes to such great lengths to attack Denise and yours truly reveals that he clearly finds us to be the most threatening critics of vegan hogwash.

What’s the matter Pee Pee? Perhaps you know deep down inside our arguments are annoyingly sound and you seek to quell the rising sense of cognitive dissonance by externalizing your anger at us. You know Pee Pee, the sensible thing to do in that case would be to simply acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that both veganism and the cholesterol hypothesis of coronary heart disease are massive wanks…but I guess you’re far too invested in those belief systems to ever do that, huh?

Or perhaps you’re acting as a shill for an organization with a vested agenda, something we will consider again later in this post?

That Pee Pee is an individual of rather dubious nature is clear, so let’s turn our attention from matters of character to matters of science, or should I say pseudoscience. Like most purveyors of health and dietary disinformation, Pee Pee relies on super-sized helpings of pretend-science to dupe his audience. In fact, one of the main reasons I want to address Pee Pee’s video is because it will provide readers with a sterling education in the use of both logical fallacies and straight-out bullshit.

Pee Pee claims at the beginning of the video:

“It would take too long for me to comment on everything in his article, in addition to his blog post about me, so I’ll just make some general observations.”

This line is a popular evasive tactic used by bullshitters of all stripes. In Pee Pee’s case, this statement is code for “Colpo’s presented a lot of evidence that I can’t refute, so instead I’ll pretend I don’t have time to debunk it all, even though I do indeed have the time to post a dozen bullshit-filled videos about him on Youtube. What I’ll do instead is focus on a select portion of what he’s written, and I’ll cherry-pick and distort the evidence to make it look like I can refute this small portion. My viewers – really dopey sods like Richard Arppe – will be none the wiser!”

Pee Pee refutes my assertion that the anti-cholesterol campaign has been a massive time-wasting wank by pointing out that CHD deaths have decreased over the years. Then, in that annoyingly poncey voice, chorts “Well, I don’t know Mr Colpo…fewer deaths…that sounds like a public health benefit to me.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, witness Pee Pee’s use of the false dichotomy. This is where you are presented with two false choices, and persuaded to choose the one the presenter wants you to. In this case, Pee Pee would have you believe the only 2 possible arguments are:

1) There was no public health benefit;

2) There was a public health benefit, in the form of lowered CHD deaths, and it was due to cholesterol-lowering.

Both choices are wrong. The truth is there was a lowering of CHD deaths since the 1950s, but it had nothing to do with cholesterol-lowering. Those of you who have read The Great Cholesterol Con will know that, unlike Pee Pee, I gathered up all the US Government’s heart disease mortality data for the period 1900-1998 (the latter being the most recent data available as of 2006 when the book was published). When I plotted this data on a graph, it showed CHD deaths rose in the first half of the century then peaked around 1950 before beginning a steady decline.

In other words, CHD deaths began declining before the war on cholesterol even began. In 1950, Ancel Keys had yet to pen his first ‘pioneering’ paper (1953) claiming a link between fat and CHD, and it was not until the early 1960s, when he wormed his way onto the AHA Nutrition Advisory panel, that the campaign against fat and cholesterol kicked off in earnest. So the decline in CHD deaths began over a decade before the anti-cholesterol campaign got underway.

The Reduction in CHD Incidence that Never Was

As I explain in The Great Cholesterol Con, the real reason for the decline in CHD deaths was rapidly improving emergency medical care of heart attack victims. The actual incidence of CHD did not decline during this same period, completely putting lie to the claim that cholesterol-lowering was preventing heart disease.

So why the oft-repeated claim, so readily accepted by reality-hating twats like Pee Pee, that the establishment-led campaign against cholesterol was responsible for the decline?

“Our philosophy was that to get more money from politicians, we had to show that good things were happening”.

The author of those words, reprinted in a 1996 Wall Street Journal article, was none other than the then newly-appointed president of the AHA, Jan L. Breslow.

So that you know I’m not quoting anyone out of context, like our sleazy buddy Pee Pee does when it helps his case, here’s the full article:

—

Deaths From Heart-Disease Are Occurring Later in Life

Wall Street Journal of November 13, 1996

By JERRY E. BISHOP

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

NEW ORLEANS — Americans have been seriously misled into thinking that heart disease is on the decline, the new president of the American Heart Association charged.

Deaths from heart disease haven’t dropped nearly as much as health officials have claimed and the prevalence of the disease actually may be increasing, asserted President Jan L. Breslow, a Rockefeller University researcher, at the heart group’s annual meeting here.

Dr. Breslow said that for several years public-health officials and groups like the heart association have pointed proudly to a widely used chart that shows the death rate from heart disease has fallen to about 150 deaths per year per 100,000 people, about half of the peak rate in the early 1950s. Dr. Breslow said that the number of deaths is actually 260 to 270 a year.

Chart Reflects 1940 Death Rate

The original chart was used to support claims that the massive public-health campaigns to get Americans to reduce their risk of heart disease have been paying off. These campaigns urged people to reduce their dietary fat, lower blood-cholesterol levels, stop smoking, reduce blood pressure and lose weight. “Our philosophy was that to get more money from politicians, we had to show that good things were happening,” Dr. Breslow said.

The researchers explained that the older chart showed the so-called age-adjusted death rate reflecting the death rate for each age group in the population. The older chart is based on the U.S. population in 1940, when the proportion of Americans over age 65 was relatively small.

Thus, the older chart gives heavy weight to a decline in heart-disease deaths among 40-to-60 year-olds. But it gives very little weight to increases in the death rates among the older groups where most heart-disease deaths are occurring, the researchers said.

Heart Disease at a Later Age

The researchers said that deaths from heart disease, instead of declining, are only being postponed to later ages. This postponement is the real result of the efforts by Americans to reduce their risk of heart disease with low-fat diets, quitting smoking, blood-pressure control and weight loss. Improved care of people who have heart attacks also has helped push deaths to a later age.

“The actual overall number of cardiovascular deaths is 60% higher than it was 30 years ago, despite a 60% decline in the age-adjusted death rate,” added Australian cardiologist David Kelly of the University of Sydney. Today, “80% of coronary deaths are in the over-65 group,” Dr. Kelly said.

Dr. Kelly said that when the “baby-boom” population begins to move into the over-65 age group, in about 2010, “they’ll have a high incidence of coronary heart disease and there’s going to be a huge increase in the need for medical care.”

Dr. Breslow said the strategy of pointing to successes against heart disease to coax more money for research, “although plausible as a strategy, … has backfired.” The proportion of funds from of the National Institutes of Health going to heart and vascular disease has dropped by 5% to $669 million since 1985.

—

So here we have a surprisingly candid admission by the then head of one of the world’s biggest anti-cholesterol organizations that he and his colleagues had been customizing the facts about the true cause of the decline in CHD deaths, so they could get their grubby little hands on even more taxpayer money.

So what, then, are we to make of the study that Pee Pee managed to dredge up that observed, after adjustment for the effect of age, a decline in the incidence of coronary disease by 31 percent from 1980–1982 to 1992–1994?

Oh, we can make a few very worthwhile observations, all of which further serve to illustrate Pee Pee’s dishonest nature.

First of all, Pee Pee has cherry-picked a study that only dealt with a short ten year time span that occurred long after the decline in CHD deaths began, thus allowing him to avoid the uncomfortable contradiction I discussed above.

Gee, how ethical of him to hand-pick a single study that appears, at first glance, to support his stance, whilst ignoring a plethora of studies that do not.

Before I discuss those other studies, let’s take a closer look at this one. And bugger this farcical Science-by-Youtube sham; unlike Pee Pee, who simply shows you a screen shot of the abstract, makes an absurd claim, then quickly moves on fully expecting you will never read the study for yourself, I’m happy to do something Pee Pee never does and provide you with a link to the full text of the study:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM200008243430802

Conducted by lipid hypothesis-friendly researchers, including Stampfer, Hu and Willett, and funded by the NIH – the US Government department that played a key role in establishing widespread acceptance for the cholesterol hypothesis – the paper claimed that “improvement in diet explained a 16 percent decline” in the CHD death rate, a claim that Pee Pee eagerly recites in his video.

Hang on a minute! If changes in diet were partly responsible for the reduction in CHD deaths seen in the USA between 1980-1992, then we’re talking the same dietary changes responsible for the rapid increase in obesity during the same period! After all, during this time period, the average American diet experienced an overall increase in caloric intake, carbohydrate intake (of the refined variety), and fat intake (from unsaturated vegetable fat sources).

Indeed, as you can see if you bother to read the study for yourself, the proportion of participants who were overweight increased during the period of the study.

So what Pee Pee would have you believe is that the fattening Standard American Diet, with its increasing refined carbohydrate and vegetable fat intake, contributed to the decline in CHD deaths. One minute he’s purporting to support “plant-based diets”, the next he’s defending the crap-laden Standard American Diet (SAD)!

You really are one mixed-up tosspot, aren’t you Pee Pee?

But that’s not all. Here’s what Pee Pee deliberately neglects to tell you about the study:

“From 1980 to 1992, the proportion of participants currently smoking declined by 41 percent”

Folks, this is where I’m going to ask you to do a little thinking for yourselves. Tell me, which do you think would realistically explain a reduction in CHD deaths:

1) A crap-laden diet of increasing calorie and refined carbohydrate/vegetable fat intake that caused the participants to become increasingly overweight (which itself is a powerful CHD risk factor), or;

2) A reduction in cigarette smoking, which we know full well promotes heart disease via mechanisms totally unrelated to cholesterol?

Show me someone who inhaled a bunch of noxious gases each day but then claimed it was their cholesterol that caused their heart disease, and I’ll show you a certified idiot.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil…

And what about all those studies Pee Pee ignored? What do they show?

They show that the overall age-adjusted incidence of CHD – including non-fatal disease – remained steady or even increased in the USA and other countries:

Rosamond WD, et al. Trends in the Incidence of Myocardial Infarction and in Mortality Due to Coronary Heart Disease, 1987 to 1994. New England Journal of Medicine, Sep 24, 1998; 339 (13): 861-867.

Center for Disease Control. Hospitalization Rates for Ischemic Heart Disease – United States, 1970-1986. MMWR Weekly, Apr 28, 1989; 38 (16); 275-276, 281-284.

Lampe FC, et al. Trends in rates of different forms of diagnosed coronary heart disease, 1978 to 2000: prospective, population based study of British men. British Medical Journal, May 7, 2005; 330: 1046.

In other words, people were having just as many heart attacks as ever, but emergency medical care – especially the use of anti-clotting agents – became increasingly adept at saving their lives:

McGovern PG, et al. Trends in acute coronary heart disease mortality, morbidity, and medical care from 1985 through 1997: The Minnesota Heart Survey. Circulation, Jul, 2001; 104: 19-24.

Hayashi T, et al. Recent decline in hospital mortality among patients with acute myocardial infarction. Circulation Journal, 2005; 69 (4): 420-426.

Gottlieb S, et al. Mortality trends in men and women with acute myocardial infarction in coronary care units in Israel. A comparison between 1981–1983 and 1992–1994. European Heart Journal, 2000 21: 284-295.

Rea TD, et al. Temporal patterns in long-term survival after resuscitation from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Circulation, Sept 9, 2003; 108 (10): 1196-1201.

As the authors of the famous Framingham study wrote in 1990: “Our data indicate that the decline in mortality was primarily the result of improved survival among persons with new cases of cardiovascular disease, rather than the result of a substantial decrease in the incidence of the disease”:

Sytkowski PA, et al. Changes in risk factors and the decline in mortality from cardiovascular disease. The Framingham Study. New England Journal of Medicine, Jun 7, 1990; 322 (23): 1635-1641.

Why didn’t Pee Pee tell you about these studies? Because like every other dogmatic bullshit artist, he shamelessly cherry-picks the evidence that can be distorted to appear supportive of his untenable beliefs, and ignores that which cannot.

The War on Cholesterol Has Been a Massive Failure

What Pee Pee also isn’t too keen to dwell on is the indisputable fact that the war on cholesterol has been a resounding flop. Despite some fifty years of cholesterol- and fat-phobia, heart disease is still the number one killer in America (and stroke is fourth), see http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm.

Compare this with the war on infectious diseases, which has made massive strides; in 1900, the leading cause of death in America was infection, and average life expectancy was much shorter than what it is now. Improvements in food storage, sanitation, hygiene and medical treatment of infectious ailments are the prime reasons for the significant gains in life expectancy made during the 20th century.

The war on infection was targeted at a real enemy: pathogenic microbes. In contrast, the war on cholesterol was conducted against one of our best friends, a crucial life-giving substance that holds our cells together.

Death by Youtube

And this is where we are faced with a rather disturbing realization about people like Pee Pee. They have the evidence right in front of them that the anti-cholesterol campaign has failed, but instead of calling for a new approach, they insist on more of the same – all the while ridiculing and attacking those who truthfully point out the fallacious and counterproductive nature of the cholesterol sham.

Now if a particular medical approach isn’t working, and millions of people have died and continue to needlessly die as a result, but someone vigorously defends that approach any old how, and campaigns against those who recommend alternative approaches (such as iron reduction, which neatly explains why premenopausal women enjoy such dramatically lower CHD rates than men, and which has produced significant reductions in CHD and cancer mortality in a clinical trial…even though serum ferritin levels did not fully reach the designated targets)…what would you call that person?

Well, if it could be proved that people actually acted on their advice, I believe the legal term would be “accessory to murder”.

No wonder this wackopath refuses to show his face…

So while Pee Pee vigorously dismisses the notion that the only entities who have benefited from the cholesterol sham are vested commercial interests and the researchers and ‘health’ organizations they endow with financial rewards…it’s the plain truth.

Pee Pee Defends Wonderfully Humanitarian and Selfless Big Pharma

Pee Pee leaps to the defence of drug companies whilst calling me a ‘professional’ cholesterol ‘confusionist’. Yep, while drug companies make billions upon billions selling largely useless and toxic cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins and etezimibe, in Pee Pee’s demented world view I’m the one who’s really profiteering from the cholesterol sham via the use of strategically deployed confusion. Yep, I’ve become so rich from my book The Great Cholesterol Con, Pee Pee, I now wear gold-plated gold!

Idiot.

Here’s the reality: Despite its patently false nature, the drug companies continue to profit obscenely from the cholesterol paradigm, with cholesterol-lowering drug sales raking in over $14,000,000,000 per year in the US alone. And statin drugs have been pulling in the billions for over a decade now. They have been a very, very lucrative cash cow for BigPharma. Which would be all fine and dandy if cholesterol really did cause heart disease and these drugs therefore cured it. But lowering cholesterol doesn’t cure diddly – as clinical and observational data show, most people who take statin drugs will proceed to die of heart disease anyway. Granted, given that statins have been repeatedly shown to deplete CoQ10 and clinically documented to impair heart function, more of them may die of heart failure instead of coronary heart disease, but at the end of the day, a heart attack is a heart attack.

Drug companies are undoubtedly the biggest beneficiaries of the cholesterol fraud, but they are hardly the only ones and certainly weren’t the first. That dubious honour goes to the manufacturers of vegetable oils, who were quick to realize the goldmine awaiting them if they ‘educated’ the public about the cholesterol-lowering ‘benefits’ of their wares. Early lipid researchers received funding from vegetable oil manufacturers, who then advertised their products in medical journals and bought “Heart Checks” and “Heart Ticks” from ‘respected’ organizations such as the American Heart Association and Australia’s National Heart Foundation.

In fact, just the other day I was in Foodland, and as I walked past the bottled oil section I noticed a NHF Heart Tick on a bottle of vegetable oil. I grabbed it, checked the label, and saw that it was comprised primarily of soy oil, which is riddled with the omega-6 fat linoleic acid (LA). LA has proven itself a complete failure in lowering cardiovascular mortality in clinical trials, although it does seem to possess a talent for increasing cancer in both animals and humans.

So how did a company manage to get the approval of Australia’s National Heart Foundation for this junk?

They paid for it.

Money talks, truth walks. And that’s pretty much the story of the cholesterol fraud. It survives because it has to, because there’s way too much money, way too much prestige, way too much entrenched dogma, and way too many people who have so heavily vested themselves in the cholesterol belief system that earnestly questioning its veracity is simply not an option.

But getting back to the vegetable oil manufacturers and their highly refined ‘natural’ and ‘heart healthy’ products, which also included the trans fat-laden margarines that were later the subject of much outcry when they were found to increase cancer and CHD risk. The case of margarines, in fact, is especially instructive. Vegetable fats were taken, subject to treatment with extremely high temperatures and exposure to heavy metals in order to solidify them; the resultant smelly grey sludge was then bleached and deodorized and coloured to form a ‘healthy’ replacement for saturated fats that subsequently turned out to be so unhealthy many countries have now either banned or placed limits on the trans fat content of margarines and other foods.

Why did this damaging slop become so widely consumed in the first place?

Because of the cholesterol theory. People became so brainwashed by all the cholesterol alarmism that they shunned perfectly natural animal fats that humans have safely been consuming for millions of years, and turned to totally unnatural Frankenfats instead.

And why did refined vegetable oils, with their excessively high contents of the omega-6 fat linoleic acid that has since been shown to increase cancer – and a host of other ailments – become so widely consumed?

Again, because they lowered cholesterol, and people became so brainwashed by the cholesterol sham that they again had no qualms about avoiding perfectly natural saturated fats and instead embracing refined oils that could not be consumed in nature due to the technology required to extract them from seeds and grains in any meaningful amount.

Pee Pee wants you to believe that all this irrational cholesterol idiocy has benefited public health. I’m sure if we could bring them back from the dead and ask their thoughts, all the folks who died of linoleic-induced tumours would very likely beg to differ.

Are Plaques Simply Full of Lipid, or is Plant Positive Simply Full of….?

At around 5.30 in the video, Pee Pee triumphantly presents a single photo of a coronary plaque with lots of lipid in it, as if this is conclusive proof that cholesterol causes heart disease. That’s a little like presenting us with a shot of an accident scene, then pointing at the numerous police and paramedics present and blaming them for the carnage.

Cholesterol is a key component of your cell membranes – without cholesterol, you’d literally collapse into a hairy, salty pile of mush and bones. But the fact that cholesterol may be present in atheromas, not in a causative role, but instead to serve a repair function seems to completely escape Pee Pee’s cholesterol-deprived brain.

Calcium is often a significant component of atherosclerotic plaque – so why aren’t we told to eat low calcium diets? Why doesn’t Pee Pee embark on a war on calcium?

White blood cells of various types are found at the site of atheromas, and are key players in their formation. Why aren’t we told to lower our white blood cell counts? Why doesn’t Pee Pee embark on a war on white blood cells?

The answer to the first of those questions is because association does not equal causation. The answer to the second of those questions is, well, who knows…the guy’s an anonymous screwball!

Pee Pee wanks on and on, and on, about how cholesterol is not water soluble, as if this in itself is proof that cholesterol is atherogenic. Um, since when exactly did water insolubility become a marker for atherogenecity? Vitamins A, D, E and K are water insoluble – is Pee Pee claiming they are atherogenic too?

This, mind you, comes from a guy who accuses me of having “scrambled thinking”…

Getting to the Core of the Matter

Atheromas (advanced plaques) do indeed typically contain a lipid-rich core; contrary to what super-sleaze Pee Pee would have you believe, I never said they didn’t. Again, if you’ve read The Great Cholesterol Con, which Pee Pee clearly hasn’t and clearly doesn’t intend to because his feeble and incurably dogmatic little brain would literally explode under the weight of conflicting information, you’ll know I discuss this.

So let’s take a closer look at these lipids, shall we? When researchers analysed the fatty acid content of advanced atheromas, they found over fifty percent were of the polyunsaturated variety. Thirty percent were monounsaturated, and only twenty percent were saturated! When compared to normal arterial tissue, advanced plaque in the aorta contains a higher proportion of the omega-6 linoleic acid (the overwhelming majority of which is obtained in the diet from plant oils, not animal fats):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8466938

These higher levels of LA in aortic plaque are reflected by similarly elevated levels in the patients’ adipose tissue and blood, indicating a high dietary intake. No such correlation between the fatty acid content of plaque, blood and adipose tissue is observed for saturated fats:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7934543

What’s more, researchers have found that the higher the LA content of atheromas, the greater the likelihood that their fibrous cap will rupture. Plaque rupture, folks, is the instigating factor that triggers a significant portion of heart attacks:

http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/17/7/1337.long

In other words, omega-6 fat from plant sources is the most dangerous of all.

Go Pee Pee!

LDL Oxidation vs Pee Pee’s Oxidized Brain

Pee Pee really outdoes himself when he turns his attention to the topic of LDL oxidation.

Pee Pee excitedly reports that Joseph Goldstein – a prominent lipid hypothesist who co-authored a pivotal paper that helped really get the LDL sham rolling – does not consider the LDL oxidation theory contradictory to his stock-standard “LDL is bad cholesterol!” theory.

Here we see another of Pee Pee’s logical fallacies, namely the Appeal to Authority.

Authority and prestige are social phenomena, not markers of scientific accuracy. As a quick glance in your daily paper will readily attest, even totally dishonest scumbags routinely achieve positions of very high authority and prestige. Needless to say, in terms of scientific validity, perceived authority doesn’t mean jack if you’re wrong – and as we shall learn, both Goldstein and Pee Pee are dead wrong when it comes to LDL cholesterol.

Striking evidence of this occurs at 8.20, when Pee Pee rolls out yet another whopping big lie, this time claiming that the lower your LDL levels, the less of it will be available for oxidation.

The astonishing thing here is that, in my very paper that Pee Pee is ‘debunking’, I clearly discuss the research showing the “Lower LDL = Lower Oxidized LDL” theory to be completely false. But Pee Pee blatantly ignores it and keeps yapping on like it doesn’t exist. Good old Pee Pee – no act of evasion or intellectual dishonesty is too low for him to stoop to!

Folks, here’s the link to my paper:

http://www.jpands.org/vol10no3/colpo.pdf

Scroll on down to the section subtitled “LDL and Oxidized LDL”, and see for yourself. Check out the studies that Pee Pee has deliberately ignored:

“In animal studies, administration of antioxidant drugs like probucol impairs LDL oxidation and arterial plaque formation, even when there is no change in blood cholesterol levels. In fact, administration of the antioxidant butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) significantly reduces the degree of atherosclerosis in the aorta of rabbits, even though it raises LDL cholesterol levels.

A similar phenomenon is observed in humans.Among elderly Belgians, higher levels of oxidized LDL were accompanied by a significantly increased risk of heart attack, regardless of total LDL levels.

In Japanese patients undergoing surgery to remove plaque from their carotid arteries, blood levels of oxidized LDL were significantly higher than those measured in healthy controls. Advanced carotid plaques removed from these patients showed far higher levels of oxidized LDL than neighboring sections of artery that were disease-free. Elevated oxidized LDL was also associated with an increased susceptibility of plaque rupture. However, there was no association between oxidized LDL concentrations and total LDL levels”

And then check out the subsequent section titled “Serum LDL vs Antioxidant and Fatty Acid Status“:

“In 1997 Swedish researchers published a comparison of CHD risk factors among men from Vilnius in Lithuania and Linkoping in Sweden. These two groups were selected because the former had a four-fold higher death rate from CHD than the latter. Very little difference in traditional risk factors existed between the two groups, except that the men from CHD-prone Vilnius had lower total and LDL cholesterol levels.

According to common wisdom, the lower total and LDL cholesterol of the Lithuanian men should have placed them at reduced risk of heart disease. When the researchers probed further, they discovered that the men from Vilnius had significantly higher concentrations of oxidized LDL. They also displayed significantly poorer blood levels of important diet-derived antioxidants such as beta carotene, lycopene, and gamma tocopherol (a form of vitamin E). Blood levels of these particular nutrients are largely determined by dietary intake, especially from the consumption of antioxidant-rich fruits, nuts, and vegetables. So while the Lithuanian men had lower LDL levels, they were more prone to the formation of oxidized LDL owing to what appeared to be a poorer intake of antioxidant-rich foods.

This may well have explained their greater susceptibility to cardiovascular disease; in tightly controlled clinical trials, discussed below, individuals randomized to increase their intake of fruits and vegetables have experienced significant reductions in cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.”

Yep, Goldstein might be revered by the anti-cholesterol crowd and even managed to pick up a Nobel Prize along the way for his alleged contributions to humanity (just like war-mongering Henry Kissinger, Shimon Perez, Yasser Arafat and global warming shill Al Gore did)…but he was wrong.

As for Pee Pee, we once again see how he’s not just wrong but unashamedly intellectually dishonest.

Antioxidant status/exposure to pro-oxidants is a far more important determinant of your degree of oxidation; as the published evidence clearly shows, your total LDL levels are irrelevant.

LDL Oxidation: Cause or Effect?

And it should be noted that at this point it’s still a matter of much contention whether LDL oxidation is a cause or a side effect of the atherosclerotic process. LDL may play a causative role, or it may simply be a side effect of the suboptimal antioxidant status which may be the real factor at play.

Which brings us to the study at 8.57 that Pee Pee makes a big fuss about:

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/9/2228.full.pdf

Note how the study does not observe overall and CHD death rates, or even the development of atherosclerosis. It simply mentions the amount of LDL oxidation occurring to serum LDL taken from the volunteers placed on different diets and exposed to copper in a petri dish.

That’s a far cry from a study that actually examined the effect of diet on CHD morbidity and mortality in real live humans, isn’t it?

So again, we have another widely used pseudoscience tactic, the old “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit!” strategy. A key part of this strategy is focusing on scientific minutiae to distract people away from the bigger picture, and it’s a favourite of lipid hypothesists. They ignore the all-important long-running studies showing their pet theory is nonsense and instead focus on studies examining isolated aspects of lipid metabolism that can be made to appear supportive, and from which they creatively redraw the bigger picture as if the numerous non-supportive clinical trials never occurred.

In this respect, vegans and lipid hypothesists are just like their low-carb brethren. Low-carbers blissfully ignore the decades upon decades’ worth of metabolic ward studies showing no fat loss advantage to isocaloric low-carb diets, and instead focus on isolated petri dish experiments showing insulin to suppress fat oxidation. From this, they created a best-selling fairy tale that carbohydrates prevent fat-burning and that low-carb diets cause greater fat loss at the same caloric intake.

But the fairy tale quickly falls apart when you gather up all the ward studies and examine the results. The lesson? Always keep the big picture in mind, especially when some huckster starts rolling out the data from short-term lab studies involving glass containers rather than longer term studies with actual human beings.

And this, folks, is the big picture when it comes to cholesterol:

The overwhelming majority of epidemiological studies have repeatedly failed to find any link between saturated fat consumption and heart disease;

Study after study shows that low cholesterol increases your risk of dying prematurely;

Trial after trial involving dietary fat or saturated fat restriction has failed to reduce cardiovascular or total mortality, even though the treatment groups experienced lowered cholesterol levels. As you will learn a little later, the most successful CHD dietary intervention trial of all time slashed CHD and overall mortality even though the treatment and control groups exhibited similar cholesterol levels throughout the study;

Drug-based cholesterol-lowering treatments repeatedly failed to make any dent in cardiovascular or overall mortality until the advent of statin drugs, and even they only exhibit benefits in select groups. Statin drugs exert a host of pleiotropic effects not exerted by earlier drugs such as fibrates (as discussed in my LDL paper, and predictably ignored by Pee Pee because he’s got better things to do with his time…you know, like making more BS-filled videos about me).

Saturated Fat is Really Bad For Your Arteries and it’s Also Really Good For Your Arteries. Got That?

Having said all that, let’s humour Pee Pee for a moment. There’s absolutely no doubting he’s a rabid supporter of the lipid hypothesis. We all know this hypothesis claims not only is LDL atherogenic, but also that HDL is protective and that higher triglyceride and higher LDL:HDL ratios are harmful.

So, keeping that in mind, let’s have a look at Table 2 of the study he wanks on about. It shows that:

As saturated fat intake decreased, so too did HDL;
As saturated fat intake decreased, the LDL to HDL ratio increased;
As saturated fat intake decreased, triglyceride levels increased.

So which is it Pee Pee? Is saturated fat atherogenic, or is it anti-atherogenic? You can’t have it both ways, mate, but that’s exactly what this study shows – by the very tenets of the lipid hypothesis you so blindly worship, this study can be made to support either contention.

You of course, being a shamelessly biased dogmatist, have chosen to interpret the study the way it suits you.

Atta boy!

A Big Fat Misinterpretation

Before I permanently flush this study down the toilet of irrelevance, I would like to point out another glaring discrepancy (well, glaring to anyone with even basic knowledge of fatty acid biochemistry). If you do a Pubmed search for “monounsaturated fat and LDL oxidation”, you’ll note there have been several studies published showing diets enriched in monounsaturated fat reduce LDL oxidation when compared to diets higher in saturated or polyunsaturated fats.

This study, for example, found that “LDL resistance to copper-induced oxidation, expressed as lag time, was highest during the MUFA-rich diet (55.1±7.3 minutes) and lowest during the PUFA(n-3)– (45.3±7 minutes) and SFA- (45.3±6.4 minutes) rich diets.”

This study thus appears to be saying that saturated fat produces exactly the same amount of LDL oxidation as polyunsaturated fats.

In the study that Pee Pee cited, the ratio of polyunsaturated fats to monounsaturated fats in blood increased as saturated fat content of the diets decreased (see Table 2), something that as I will explain shortly would be fully expected to increase LDL oxidation, but the researchers claimed just the opposite.

I do believe the scientific term most commonly deployed by anyone with even the most elemental knowledge about fatty acids in response to these findings would be:

Bullshit.

It is well known among biochemists that saturated fatty acids are the most resistant to oxidative damage. Why? For that, we need to quickly delve into a little biochemistry, so Pee Pee, put down that phallic sex toy made from tofu and listen up.

The Story of Fatty Acids

It goes a little something like this…hit it! Oops, sorry, those Run DMC flashbacks again. The fats we eat are comprised of fatty acids, and every one of these fatty acids contains a chain of carbon atoms.

With the exception of the carbon atoms at either end of the fatty acid chain, each of these carbon atoms has two hydrogen atoms attached to it (the carbon atom at one end has one hydrogen and two oxygen atoms attached, while the carbon atom at the other end has three hydrogens attached).

You still with me, folks? Well done! Except for you Pee Pee…didn’t I tell you to put that goddamn thing away?

OK, so when all of the carbon atoms in a fatty acid, excepting the carbon atoms at each end, are bearing two hydrogen atoms, that fatty acid is referred to as saturated. Animal fats and tropical fats typically contain the greatest proportion of their fat as saturated fatty acids. Coconut oil is the most saturated of all naturally occurring fats, with over 90% saturation, which makes it an ideal cooking oil; thanks to its high saturation, it is far more resistant to oxidative damage from high temperatures.

When a fatty acid contains one or more carbon atoms that are missing one of their hydrogen atoms, then the fatty acid/s in question are termed unsaturated fatty acids. Those carbon atoms possessing a solo hydrogen atom are referred to as double bonds. It is these double bonds that attract free radicals and render unsaturated fatty acids far more vulnerable to oxidative damage than saturated fatty acids.

Just think of these double bonds as desperate unattached singles that are way past their prime and haven’t had any nookie for a while, and are hence open to the amorous approaches of even the most repulsive and aesthetically challenged suitors (electrons).

Viewed in that light, saturated fats and monounsaturated fats are the studs that generally pull high quality and less troublesome sheilas, while polyunsaturated fatty acids are the losers that, if not kept on a tight leash, will get drunk, hook up with drug-addicted strippers, then wake up the next morning to find their wallet and car keys missing. They make friends with the dregs of society and bring them back to your place, so that one day you come home to find your house trashed and overrun with skanky sheilas and tattooed blokes who look like beefier, beer-gutted versions of Willy Nelson wearing leather vests that read “FREE RADICALS M.C. – Born to Oxidize”.

You see, polyunsaturated fatty acids contain two or more double bonds, and hence are the most susceptible of all fats to free radical damage. Because monounsaturated fatty acids each contain only one double bond, they are much less prone to oxidative damage than polyunsaturated fats. And saturated fatty acids, which are completely free of vulnerable double bonds, are the most resistant of all to free radical damage. Yep, saturated fats are the tall, dark, handsome and big strong silent types of the fatty acid world, the ones slowly sipping on their Frangelico while remarking, “Mate, I wouldn’t touch that with a barge pole…”

So…let’s return to the experiments claiming saturated fat causes just as much LDL oxidation as oxidation-prone polyunsaturated fats. They seem counter-intuitive…at least until you analyse the actual methods used to determine this alleged LDL oxidation.

One way of measuring LDL oxidation is to examine the amount of LDL oxidation that has already occurred in blood taken from real live humans after they have already been exposed to the substance under investigation. If you are a real live human, then this is clearly the most relevant form of measurement to you.

The other way is to expose volunteers to the substance under investigation, then extract blood, then throw it in a petri dish, then expose it to another substance that is known to stimulate free radical production in this unnatural environment, such as copper. This method is clearly of far less relevance to human physiology, because inside the complex biochemical wonder that is the human body, copper is only one of a myriad of factors that can potentially affect someone’s antioxidant status.

But if you look at the methods sections of the paper cited by Pee Pee and the paper I cited above (and the other papers you can find on Pubmed that I was referring to), guess which method they use?

Yup.

So what happens when we look for studies that – instead of unnaturally teasing out oxidation after the fact in a petri dish with a free radical stimulating metal like copper – observed the degree of LDL oxidation that occurred inside the body?

You can probably already guess the answer to that solely by Pee Pee’s complete failure to mention these studies, but let’s check them out anyway.

The first study is http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/16/11/1347.full

This is where I get to see who’s really paying attention and actually clicking on the links to read the studies. Yessirree, that’s the same study I linked to and quoted from above. Yep, the study used the copper method to induce LDL oxidation, but there’s something else the authors apparently weren’t so keen to emphasize.

As Chris Masterjohn and Stephan Guyenet have already pointed out (and as Pee Pee would hence already know because he also spends a lot of time lurking on their websites for material to distort and misrepresent) the authors also looked directly at LDL oxidation inside their volunteers. And have a looksy at what they found:

Yep, the polyunsaturated-rich diets increased LDL oxidation, while both the mono- and saturate-rich diets showed a significantly and equally lower tendency to trigger LDL oxidation.

That right there completely wipes out the LDL oxidation study that bought Pee Pee to near-orgasm, but because I fully believe in kicking an evil man when he’s down, let’s continue on.

A year later, the same authors conducted a similar study, and again they emphasized in the abstract the reduction in copper-induced LDL oxidation seen after a mono-rich diet when compared to the PUFA and SFA-rich diets.

And again, they kept as quiet as possible about the fact that the polyunsaturated-rich diet increased LDL oxidation in vivo (inside the human body), while both the mono- and saturate-rich diets showed a significantly and equally reduced tendency to trigger LDL oxidation. As with their previous paper, you have to read the study carefully to note the section embedded in the middle of the paper, in the section subtitled “LDL oxidation”, that reads:

“TBARS (expressed as nanomoles per milligram of LDL protein) were determined in freshly isolated LDL. Identical values were observed during the SFA (0.89±0.05) and the MUFA (1.06±0.04) periods, but they were significantly higher during the PUFA n-6 (1.56±0.08) or the PUFA n-3 (1.70±0.07) periods.”

You’ll also note if you carefully read the aforementioned studies that total and LDL blood cholesterol levels increased during the saturated fat diets compared to the MUFA and PUFA diets in both experiments. Yet LDL oxidation was highest on the PUFA diets, with no difference noted between the MUFA and SFA diets.

In other words, we have even more studies deliberately ignored by Pee Pee because they flatly refute his stupidly simplistic and scientifically disproved assertion that lowering LDL leads to reductions in oxidized LDL.

Awright folks, time to bid adieu to Pee Pee’s LDL oxidation scam:

[LOUD FLUSHING SOUND]

Antioxidants Don’t Work?

At around 9.17, Pee Pee argues that your all-important antioxidant status may not be all that important, and moans that studies examining the ability of antioxidant supplements to reduce CHD have produced poor results.

No kidding. If you take a look at these studies, you’d be forgiven for wondering if they’d been deliberately set up to fail.

Most of them involved large doses of only 1 or 2 antioxidants, such as alpha-tocopherol or beta carotene. Sorry Pee Pee, but that’s not how nature works, mate. In nature, a wide array of nutrients work together in carefully orchestrated synergy to keep the human body humming along. And that’s the way it’s worked for, you know, two and a half million years or so.

But along come 20^th century researchers with their drug-minded single-bullet mentality, who test varying doses of single nutrients against CHD and roundly proclaim antioxidants a failure when their studies return negative results.

What happens when researchers ditch this simple-minded outlook and test a variety of nutrients together in the one study? The one major trial that used a broad spectrum formula was SUVIMAX, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled French project involving over 13,000 healthy adults aged 35-60. The participants took a single daily capsule containing 120 milligrams of ascorbic acid, 30 milligrams of vitamin E, 6 milligrams of beta carotene, 100 µg of selenium, and 20 milligrams of zinc, or a placebo. After 7.5 years of supplementation, cancer and overall mortality rates in men were significantly reduced, by thirty-one and thirty-seven percent, respectively.

Ah, but what about the female participants, you ask?

Their mortality was not significantly lowered.

Why not?

Because their blood antioxidant status at the start of the study was higher on average than the men’s (again, most likely due to the lower pro-oxidant burden posed by their lower bodily iron stores, which corresponds with their lower CHD death rate), so they didn’t have as much to gain from the antioxidant formula.

Tell us again how antioxidant status isn’t that important, Pee Pee?

By the way, I would like to posit that if other key nutrients such as CoQ10 and magnesium had been included in the SUVIMAX intervention, the beneficial findings would have been even stronger.

Gamma Gamma Hey!

One more thing I’d like to point out about the antioxidant supplement studies. Perhaps the most widely studied antioxidant nutrient is alpha-tocopherol, a vitamin E ester that constitutes only one of the many vitamin E tocopherols and tocotrienols occurring in nature. For some reason (I’m guessing cost considerations) alpha-tocopherol is the form of vitamin E most commonly found in supplements, but in natural foods gamma-tocopherol is actually the most abundant form of vitamin E. Administration of over 400IU daily of alpha-tocopherol has been shown in some studies to actually lower levels of the more potent antioxidant gamma tocopherol, which is not a very encouraging development.

But despite these concerns, and despite the fact that several trials already found alpha-tocopherol to be ineffective in reducing CHD morbidity or mortality, researchers kept on studying it in clinical trials anyhow. Meanwhile, we still don’t have a single RCT that has examined the effect of gamma tocopherol on CHD incidence and mortality. Folks, this is why you’ve got to start demanding more accountability from your elected representatives and the way they spend your extortion dues…uh, I mean, tax money. Why do researchers keep getting taxpayer funds to conduct studies confirming what we already know about alpha-tocopherol, when there are critical questions waiting to be answered about gamma-tocopherol?

More Antioxidant Flim Flam: Uric Acid

At around 10 minutes into the video, Pee Pee ramps up the pseudo-intellectual masturbation even further and really starts pouring on the dodgey extrapolations when he talks about uric acid.

Pee Pee’s reasoning goes like this:

Anthony Colpo supports the antioxidant theory;

Uric acid is an antioxidant;

High levels of uric acid are harmful;

Therefore Colpo supports the harmful strategy of raising uric acid levels.

Again, I have to say it: Pee Pee, your idiocy is absolutely epic.

Pee Pee asks “What foods elevate uric acid? The same ones that contribute advanced glycation end products…”

I’m so glad Pee Pee brought up advanced glycation end products, also known as AGEs, because research shows they are higher in vegetarians and vegans than in omnivores. When researchers from Germany and Slovakia compared vegetarians, vegans and meat-eating omnivores, the latter had significantly lower levels of nasty-ass AGEs circulating in their bloodstreams:

Krajcovicová-Kudlácková M, et al. Advanced Glycation End Products and Nutrition. Physiological Research, 2002; 51: 313-316.

Sebeková K, et al. Plasma levels of advanced glycation end products in healthy, long-term vegetarians and subjects on a western mixed diet. European Journal of Nutrition, 2001; 40 (6): 275-281.

AGEs are known to be accelerated by high refined carbohydrate intakes and sky-high levels of glycation are seen in diabetics. However, in this study, the difference could not be explained by total carbohydrate intake, blood sugar, age or kidney function, as all these variables were similar between the vegetarian and omnivorous groups.

So, why then, would meat eaters show lower levels of AGEs? Because they eat meat. Animal flesh, especially chicken, pork and red meat, is the only appreciable source of carnosine[1].

Emerging research suggests this novel amino acid may accelerate wound healing, boost the immune system, rid the body of toxic metals, and even help fight against cancer[2].

Carnosine is a potent antioxidant and is shaping up as an especially effective agent against glycation (aka glycosylation), the harmful process that is accelerated by high blood sugar levels and results in the production of AGEs. In laboratory studies, carnosine exhibits a far stronger ability to prevent glycative damage than the more widely studied anti-glycation compound, aminoguanidine[3-5].

Keep digging your hole deeper and deeper, Pee Pee!

Endogenous Shmogenous

In fact, let me give you a hand. Like any try-hard that’s just learned a new big word, you make much ado about the term “endogenous”. You erroneously claim that endogenous antioxidants cannot be obtained by outside sources such as food, which is utter nonsense. You also claim uric acid is “by far” the most important antioxidant in the human body, which again is bollocks. In fact, as you spew out your anti-antioxidant diatribe, you’d clearly have us believe uric acid was the only endogenous antioxidant of note.

I guess you’ve never heard of glutathione, widely considered the most important antioxidant within the body. Or maybe you have, but neglected to mention it because it didn’t suit your shamelessly biased agenda to do so.

You also ignored a whole raft of critical endogenous antioxidants such as alpha lipoic acid (ALA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase, and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10). You also conveniently omitted the fact that the endogenous antioxidants ALA, carnosine and CoQ10 are indeed available in the diet, with red meat being the richest source of ALA and beef/pork/chicken heart, and sardines/mackerel/herring constituting the richest whole food sources of CoQ10.

I guess another reason you don’t want to mention CoQ10 is the uncomfortable fact that your beloved statin cholesterol-lowering drugs do an outstanding job of depleting the body’s stores of this critical nutrient.

Association Does Not Equal Causation

Pee Pee then notes that uric acid is often seen in people with heart disease and metabolic syndrome, and then goes on to cite organ meats, chicken breast, lean meats, and fish as foods that raise uric acid.

Here we see Pee Pee once again use the false dichotomy.

Pee Pee’s claiming animal foods cause elevated uric acid, and that this elevated uric acid in turn causes heart disease.

Not only is this a false assumption, but it employs a level of simplistic thinking that borders on the moronic.

Firstly, Pee Pee makes the same mistake he does with cholesterol, and erroneously assumes association and causation are the same thing. That association does not equal causation is the first thing students should be taught in any science-related course, but I’m starting to suspect the only schooling Pee Pee has ever completed is an advanced degree in Making Shit Up at the Vegan Institute of Reality Evasion. As Swiss researchers emphasized in a 2004 paper:

“The positive association between serum uric acid and cardiovascular diseases such as stroke or ischemic heart disease has been recognized since the 1950s and has been confirmed by numerous epidemiological studies since then [1-7]. However, whether uric acid is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular mortality is still disputed as several studies have suggested that hyperuricemia is merely associated with cardiovascular diseases because of confounding factors such as obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, use of diuretics and insulin resistance [8-10]. Moreover, there is still no well-established pathophysiological link between hyperuricemia and the development of cardiovascular complications.”

Finnish researchers wrote as much in 2009:

“Cardiovascular mortality was not higher in hyperuricemics than in normouricemics…A rise of serum uric acid may be secondary to more advanced atherosclerosis. Thus, hyperuricemia may be associated with more advanced heart disease and it is not an independent cause of cardiovascular diseases.”

Strike 1 for Pee Pee’s Uric Acid Hypothesis!

The second key point is that, as an explanation for the widespread prevalence of cardiovascular disease, uric acid is a poor one. The incidence of hyperuricemia was 2% in the US in the 1960s, now it’s at 3.9% – almost double[6,7].

So here we have yet another amusing example of Pee Pee shooting himself in the foot with self-contradictory claims. Remember Pee Pee’s insistence that CHD incidence has been declining over the years, and that dietary factors played a role in this decline? Again, you can’t have it both ways Pee Pee…if uric acid is bad for your heart and its prevalence is increasing, and is caused by dietary factors, why is cardiovascular disease incidence allegedly decreasing…and how on Earth can you ascribe this decrease to dietary factors?

Because you’re a world class dimwit, I guess.

Now let’s leave the US for a moment and jump on over to the land of duck liver pates, berets, and those funny-looking Citroens with the roll-top roofs: France. A French report from 1988 reported a hyperuricemia prevalence of 17% in males 22-44, and an incidence of gout that was 3 times higher than that seen among US men by researchers using similar criteria[8].

So French men have a much higher incidence of hyperuricemia than their US counterparts but a much lower rate of heart disease. Oh, and need I mention that the French eat more saturated fat than the Americans?

Strike 2 for Pee Pee’s shambolic uric acid theory!

The third point worth noting is Pee Pee’s use of another favourite bullshitter tactic; namely, the irrelevant extrapolating from people with rare or highly specific health conditions to the general population. We see this in the cholesterol hypothesists with their use of familial hypercholesterolemia to argue that high cholesterol causes heart disease in normal people, and we see it in the citation of Type 1 diabetics by the low-carb shills to support their insulin-makes-you-fat theory and recommend carbohydrate restriction to the general population. Both cases are sterling examples of anti-scientific conclusion-jumping.

As evinced by the low incidence of hyperuricemia in the general population and the millions upon millions of people around the world who eat meat and suffer no issues with elevated serum uric acid, healthy people do not develop hyperuricemia simply from eating meat. And we’ve had clinical validation of this as far back as 1915, when Denis wrote:

“From the results given in Table I it is evident that in normal individuals it is possible to feed large amounts of purine-containing food without increasing the uric acid content of the blood…It is possible that, in a large series of less carefully selected “normal” material a few individuals might be found whose tissues and kidneys might be unable to cope with the large amount of purines ingested and who would under the same experimental conditions be found to have an increase in the circulating uric acid.”

In other words, high purine diets may indeed cause chronically and pathologically elevated uric acid levels, but only in those with genetically susceptible or damaged kidneys, as Denis noted in another paper:

“In normal men no increase in the circulating uric acid is produced by the ingestion of large quantities of purines. In persons suffering from renal insufficiency a more or less marked increase in the uric acid content of the blood is produced by high purine feeding. “

Pee Pee’s uric acid argument is a non-argument, yet another smokescreen designed to distract you from the bigger picture, which is the fact that vegetarian and vegan diets offer no protection against heart disease and do not extend mortality by a single day (more on that in a moment).

Strike 3 for Pee Pee’s wankabolic uric acid argument…Soy Boy, you’re o-u-t!

As we proceed to boot Pee Pee and his stupendously stupid uric acid argument off the field, did you notice the way our slimy purveyor of whole food hogwash slipped in the phrase about “Weston A Price” recommended foods? What on Earth do I have to do with WAP, apart from nothing? I’m not a WAP member, am not associated with them in anyway, and you can be rest assured they in no way speak for me. I thought this clown was supposed to be critiquing my paper, so what’s with the WAP mention? Oh, wait a minute, Pee Pee’s using the favourite BS tactic of denigration by association.

Keep trying, Pee Pee.

Once You Become a Vegan…You Will Eventually Quit

Pee Pee claims that once you become a “whole food vegan” (read: obnoxious militant asshole sickeningly high on your own self-importance), you will no longer need to consume animal foods. Yep, meat will simply become redundant and you can float through life high on zucchinis, bell peppers and your own overblown sense of moral superiority.

Don’t count on it.

Once we strip away all the science fiction, the reality is that vegetarianism and veganism are essentially fad diets, and most people simply do not stick with fad diets. As I have previously written here, research shows most vegetarians eventually go back to eating meat. A CNN survey found 75% of vegetarians eventually ditch their meatless ways, and when Western Carolina University researchers enquired as to why this would be, they found over a third of participants experienced worsening health after removing meat from their diets.

As one respondent succinctly stated, “I will take a dead cow over anemia any time.”

Pee Pee Gets as High as He Wants on His Own Merde

Pee Pee then whines “Colpo’s belief seems to be that your cholesterol can be as high as you want, as long as you consume enough antioxidants”

Rubbish.

Here we see Pee Pee once again use the perennially popular bullshit artist tactic of putting words in your opponent’s mouth. By claiming an opponent said something they didn’t, or ascribing beliefs to them that they in fact do not hold, the bullshitter can then use this newly created red herring to launch a false attack.

And here we realize one of Pee Pee’s major problems, a self-destructive downfall he shares with all of my other intellectually challenged critics:

The guy earnestly seems to believe I’m even dumber than he is!

He truly appears to believe I’m of the same intellectually challenged calibre, only worse!

As a result, Pee Pee earnestly seems to believe he can get away with lying, creating red herrings and false dichotomies, cherry-picking a small handful of studies that appear to support his untenable beliefs, reading from study abstracts without discussing the actual findings in the full text…the guy even cherry-picks from within studies, citing a portion of a paper, while blatantly ignoring conflicting evidence only a paragraph below. As a wannabe scientific commentator, Pee Pee scores an epic FAIL. But in his own mind, Pee Pee earnestly believes that reading carefully selected sentences from carefully selected abstracts on Pubmed makes him an unassailable Grandmaster of the Scientific Method.

By ascribing a claim to me that I never made, sleazy Pee Pee dishonestly infers I believe antioxidants are the be-all and end-all of heart disease, something that once again anyone who has read The Great Cholesterol Con or even the JPANDS paper would know is utter rubbish.

Pee Pee, pull your head from your encrusted culo and listen closely, for here are my true beliefs on the matter of CHD and cholesterol, as I have clearly expounded so many times before:

1. People should damn well forget about their cholesterol levels and start focusing on the things that really matter. Forget about obsessing over highly questionable risk factors and start focusing on causes.

2. Coronary heart disease is a condition influenced by a myriad of causal factors, including, but not limited to:

Infection
Bodily iron stores
Cardiovascular fitness
Nutrition
Fatty acid status (excessive n-6:n-3 ratio imparts increased risk)
Mineral status, with suboptimal magnesium conferring an especially powerful risk
Vitamin D status
Glycemic control and glycosylation
Stress
Circadian rhythm and sleep
Disturbances in nitric oxide metabolism

And yes, without question, antioxidant status.

Hmmm, that’s quite a different looking list than the one Pee Pee presents us with, isn’t it? You know, the one comprised of:

Colpo says get your cholesterol as high as you want!
Colpo says lack of antioxidants is the cause of heart disease!

Colpo says Pee Pee is Full of Shit

Pee Pee wants us to believe antioxidants don’t matter after already masturbating incessantly over LDL oxidation which – as the evidence he so wilfully ignores clearly shows – is determined by antioxidant status.

Like I said, this really is one mixed-up sack of excrement we’re dealing with here.

The Best CHD Advice You’ll Ever Get in One Sentence

Folks, stop obsessing over your irrelevant cholesterol levels, and get off your fat asses and start exercising, eat a nutrient-rich diet of fresh meats and plant foods, keep your serum ferritin between 25-75, keep your stress levels as low as possible, don’t smoke, keep alcohol consumption to a minimum, lose weight via sensible diet and exercise if you are overweight, avoid refined sugars, avoid anti-nutrient-ridden whole grain products, run from linoleate-rich vegetable oils and trans fat-laden margarines, keep good sleep hours, utilize judicious supplementation of critically important nutrients including but not limited to magnesium, vitamin D and CoEnzyme Q10.

There ya go folks…in just one sentence, albeit a kinda longish one, I’ve just given you more useful recommendations than Pee Pee and his legion of fellow truth-hating vegan wankers could ever dream of.

We’re Almost There!

Thank goodness – there’s only ninety seconds left of Pee Pee’s video, which means we’re almost done listening to his effeminate voice pumping out line after line of painfully idiotic bullshit. So let’s put our gas masks back on and plough ahead!

At 11.15, Pee Pee claims that “antioxidant supplements have been shown to be harmful in some trials”. I already addressed this above – giving people inordinately large doses of 1 or 2 nutrients, such as alpha tocopherol or beta carotene, whilst ignoring the plethora of other critical nutrients is a strategy destined to disappoint. Whilst mentioning the “some” that found antioxidant supplementation harmful Pee Pee, of course, makes absolutely no mention of the trials that found them to be beneficial.

Get a SUVIMAX up ya, Pee Pee!

At 11.40, Pee Pee actually manages to get something right when he states that “antioxidant power” is only one potential benefit of eating plant foods, but he quickly reverts back to the bollocks when he cites gene expression and cholesterol-lowering as two others.

I’m Dying if I’m Lying About Lyon

Cholesterol reduction is not, and never will be, a mechanism by which increased pant food intake benefits human health. A sterling example of this comes from the Lyon Diet Heart study.

In contrast to the studies involving vegan/vegetarian diets and total fat or saturated fat restriction that have repeatedly flopped, the Lyon Diet Heart study produced whopping reductions in cardiovascular incidence and mortality. The experimental group was advised to eat a Mediterranean-type diet, where consumption of root vegetables, green vegetables, fish and bread were to be increased, and poultry was to be eaten at the expense of beef, lamb and pork. Experimental subjects were instructed to eat fruit daily, and advised to replace butter with olive oil and a canola-based margarine that was higher in monounsaturated and omega-3 fatty acids than regular margarine.

The study was originally intended to follow the patients for four years, but death rates diverged so dramatically early on researchers called an early end to the trial. After an average follow-up of twenty-seven months, CHD and overall mortality in the treatment group were slashed by a massive eighty-one percent and sixty percent, respectively[9].

Now, according to Pee Pee, the lipid hypothesis is the strongest, most logical explanation for the pathology of heart disease. But, as we’ve all realized by now, Pee Pee is a tool.

In the Lyon Diet Heart Study – the most successful cardiovascular dietary intervention study ever – total and LDL blood cholesterol levels of the treatment and control groups were virtually identical throughout the entire study.

What the researchers did find to differ significantly between the experimental and control subjects were significantly higher blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids and reduced concentrations of omega-6 fatty acids in the former. This observation is in accord with the findings of other researchers who have compared heart attack victims with healthy controls and observed higher blood levels of omega-3 and lower levels of omega-6 fatty acids in the latter[10-12]. In controlled clinical research, the administration of omega-3′s from fish oil has produced significant reductions in cardiac mortality[13].

Blood levels of vitamin C and E were also increased in the experimental group. Along with vitamin A, these were the only vitamins measured, but it is not unreasonable to assume the diet raised levels of other important antioxidants supplied in greater quantity by the increased fruit and vegetable intake.

The Lyon Diet Heart Study is important because it underscores the fact that ensuring regular intake of vital fatty acids and crucial antioxidants is far more beneficial than the mindless pursuit of low blood cholesterol levels.

Which unfortunately doesn’t sit too well with the current cholesterol-phobic orthodoxy that controls modern medicine. When the Lyon Study paper was originally submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine for publication, it was rejected because the “intervention induced no changes in serum lipids”. This ‘paradoxical’ finding left the journal’s reviewers, faithful followers of the cholesterol dogma that they were, “wondering how such a large mortality reduction could have possibly been achieved”[14].

This is utterly disgraceful. Wanton reality evasion from some anonymous scientist wannabe on Youtube is one thing, but from the reviewers of one of the world’s most famous and ‘prestigious’ medical journals?!

Shame on them.

Thankfully, the reviewers at the British journal The Lancet were a little more open-minded, and the Lyon Diet Heart Study report was finally published in 1994.

First, Do No Harm. Second, Laugh Your Ass Off!

At 11.50, Pee Pee serves up another whopper: “Whole plant foods have one enormous advantage over animal foods: they do no harm”.

Excuse me for a moment:

Folks, the claim that animal foods are harmful but whole plant foods are totally innocuous is so monumentally stupid I don’t where to begin. I guess a comparison of whole grains versus refined grains would be a good start; I’ve written in detail why “whole” isn’t always healthier here:

Why “Doctor” Janet Brill, Author of “Cholesterol Down”, is Absolutely Clueless

Again, we see the use of the false dichotomy, clearly a favourite in Pee Pee’s BS arsenal. Pee Pee makes it sound like the only choices are:

A diet of animal foods
A vegan diet of plant foods

He omits to provide you with the third choice, the ones that humans have been successfully utilizing for some 2.4 million years:

A perfectly healthy omnivorous diet of animal and plant foods, low or absent in highly processed packaged foods, which mountains of research shows is vastly superior to either of the above choices.

Pee Pee Commits Himself to Gradual Euthanasia via Low Cholesterol

At 12.20, after wanking on some more about LDL and saturated fats, Pee Pee states “I’m not going to accept high LDL in my body just because I’m crossing my fingers hoping that the antioxidant fairy that Anthony Colpo believes in will be my guardian angel.”

Here’s my advice to Pee Pee:

Please, please, please, by all means ignore the antioxidant theory, even though it has far more clinical support than the idiotic and repeatedly disproven cholesterol fairy. Please go ahead and aggressively lower your cholesterol levels as much as possible, because study after study shows that people with low cholesterol levels die earlier.

I know one less vegan liar on the planet isn’t going to bring a sudden end to the mountain of dietary disinformation that exists out there, but in this day and age of shameless dishonesty and stupidity, every small step we can make towards cleaning up the gene pool by eliminating fraudulent dogmatists is a welcome one.

So go ahead Pee Pee, load upon the statins, sitosterols, ezetimibe, red yeast rice extract, policosanol, and whatever other cholesterol-lowering junk you can get your hands on, because as every good little vegan brainwashee knows, you can never get your cholesterol too low!

And Now, the End is Near…For Pee Pee

Well that brings us to the end of Pee Pee’s video, and almost to the end of this article. It’s now time to take the gloves off and deliver Pee Pee the knockout punch, bare knuckle-style.

Pee Pee’s delivery style is heavily centred around evasion. He evades conflicting evidence like it’s some kind of flesh-eating virus, but most importantly, he evades the bigger picture and instead focuses on the minutiae that appear to support what he wants you to believe.

So let’s look at the bigger picture, shall we? Here are the indisputable facts:

–The overwhelming majority of long-term follow-up studies have found no association whatsoever between saturated fat, total fat and cardiovascular disease (Chapter 7 of The Great Cholesterol Con, and also this recent Harvard review that found those “who ate the highest amounts of saturated fat had no greater risk of CVD than those who ate the lowest. Consideration of age, sex, and study quality did not change the results.)

–Trial after trial has found that saturated fat and/or total fat restriction is a complete dud for lowering cardiovascular mortality (Chapter 8 of The Great Cholesterol Con).

Pee Pee and his vegan cohorts incessantly claim that meatless diets protect against heart disease, but the only clinical trials to examine a vegetarian diet versus an omnivorous diet and include mortality data were those by Ornish – and they found bugger all reduction in CHD mortality.

Ornish’s Lifestyle Heart Trial that everyone bangs on about actually showed a higher death rate in the intervention group after five years of follow-up (2 deaths, versus 1 in the control group). Granted, this may have been due to misfortune – according to Ornish, one of the treatment group deaths was in a participant who had stopped following the intervention, while another intervention subject reportedly exceeded his prescribed target heart rate during exercise with fatal consequences[15].

So let’s take a look at the much larger Multicenter Lifestyle Demonstration Project which, interestingly, almost no-one bangs on about. No doubt because it was such a flop. It sought to apply the intervention in Ornish’s original trial to a larger group of patients recruited from clinics across the U.S. Practitioners from eight medical centres around the country were trained in all aspects of the Lifestyle program, which they proceeded to administer to patients with coronary artery disease. The study was not a randomized trial; instead, outcomes in the 194 patients who completed the intervention were compared with 139 patients who did not take part in the Lifestyle program.

After three years, there were no significant differences in cardiac event rates nor mortality between patients in the intervention and control groups. The number of cardiac events per patient year of follow-up when comparing the experimental group with the control group was as follows: 0.012 versus 0.012 for myocardial infarction, 0.014 versus 0.006 for stroke, 0.006 versus 0.012 for non-cardiac deaths, and 0.014 versus 0.012 for cardiac deaths (none of the differences were statistically significant)[16].

If you truly want to protect yourself against heart disease and stroke, you’d sure as hell better avoid falling for the vegan fairy tale that Pee Pee believes in. At best, it’s useless; more likely, it’s harmful as we shall discuss shortly.

–Vegans and vegetarians do not live longer. Before I discuss the research, check out the following passage by researcher and ex- vegetarian William T. Jarvis, Ph.D., professor of public health and preventive medicine at Loma Linda University, founder and president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, and coeditor of The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America:

“A perennial assumption among vegetarians is that vegetarianism increases longevity. In the last century, Grahamites —devotees of the Christian “hygienic” philosophy of Sylvester Graham (1794-1851) —taught that adherence to the Garden of Eden lifestyle would eventuate in humankind’s reclamation of the potential for superlongevity, such as that attributed to Adam (930 years) or Methuselah (969 years). I discussed this matter 25 years ago with an [Seventh Day Adventist] physician who was dean of the Loma Linda University (LLU) School of Health. Although he admitted that lifelong SDA vegetarians had not exhibited spectacular longevity, he professed that longevity of the antediluvian sort might become possible over several generations of vegetarianism. SDA periodicals publicize centenarians and often attribute their longevity to the SDA lifestyle. However, of 1200 people who reached the century mark between 1932 and 1952, only four were vegetarians[a]. I continue to ask: Where on Earth is there an exceptionally longevous population of vegetarians? Hindus have practiced vegetarianism for many generations but have not set longevity records. At best, the whole of scientific data from nutrition-related research supports vegetarianism only tentatively. The incidence of colorectal cancer among nonvegetarian Mormons is lower than that of SDAs[b]. A review of populations at low risk for cancer showed that World War I veterans who never smoked had the lowest risk of all[c]. As data accumulate, optimism that diet is a significant factor in cancer appears to be diminishing. An analysis of 13 case-control studies of colorectal cancer and dietary fiber showed that, for the studies with the best research methods, risk estimates for dietary fiber and colorectal cancer were closer to zero[d]. A pooled analysis of studies of fat intake and the risk of breast cancer that included SDA data showed no association[e].

a. O. Segerberg. Living to Be 100: 1200 Who Did and How They Did It. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982.

b. J.L. Lyon, M.R. Klauber, J.W. Gardner, and C.R. Smart, “Cancer Incidence in Mormons and Non-Mormons in Utah, 1966-70,” N Engl J Med 1976; 294:129-133 (p.132).

c. J.E. Enstrom. “Cancer Mortality among Low-Risk Populations,” CA — A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 1979; 29:352-61.

d. C.M. Friedenreich, R.F. Brant, and E. Riboli. “Influence of Methodological Factors in a Pooled Analysis of 13 Case-Control Studies of Colorectal Cancer and Dietary Fiber,” Epidemiology 1994; 5:66-79.

e. D.J. Hunter et al. “Cohort Studies of Fat Intake and the Risk of Breast Cancer: Pooled Analysis,” New Engl J Med 1996; 334:356-61.”

Jarvis is correct. Study after study shows that the evidence to support the oft-repeated claim that vegetarianism and veganism extend lifespan simply does not exist. The largest and longest follow-up study comparing vegetarians and non-vegetarians (the EPIC study, with follow-up to 2007 and over 64,000 participants) found no difference in overall mortality between vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Fish eaters and vegetarians had slightly lower rates of coronary heart disease than meat eaters, but higher rates of stroke. Total cancer incidence was significantly lower among fish eaters and borderline significantly lower among vegetarians than among meat eaters. In stark contrast to prevailing anti-meat dogma, the risk of colorectal cancer was significantly higher among vegetarians. For all causes of death combined, mortality in fish eaters was non-significantly lower than in meat eaters, while mortality in vegetarians was non-significantly higher[17].

Keep in mind that vegetarians are well known to have lower rates of overweight and smoking, lower bodily iron stores, and higher participation in exercise. Yet despite these significant advantages, they still exhibit no mortality advantage whatsoever, indicating that something else about their diet (e.g. deficiencies of various key nutrients) and lifestyle (e.g. being a socially retarded loser who spends too much time posting hogwash on Youtube) is countering the benefits of lower iron, overweight, smoking and higher activity levels.

In other words, all things being equal, a vegetarian diet will more than likely shorten your life.

However, there is one health outcome that vegetarianism/veganism consistently outpoint omnivorous diets on, and that’s reduced bone density. Now there’s a reason to give up nature’s most nutrient-dense food!

Not.

As I discussed here, research has consistently shown vegans to have lower bone density than omnivores.

Yeah, Go Vegan, woohoo!

A Former Vegetarian Speaks: Why I Am Not a Vegetarian

Consider the dishonest tactics employed by Pee Pee to make his case for veganism when you read the following quote by Jarvis:

“From a behavioral standpoint, I categorize vegetarians as either pragmatic or ideologic. A pragmatic vegetarian is one whose dietary behavior stems from objective health considerations (e.g., hypercholesterolemia or obesity). Pragmatic vegetarians are rational, rather than emotional, in their approach to making lifestyle decisions. In contrast, vegetarianism is a “matter of principle” for ideologic vegetarians; its appropriateness is a given.

One can spot ideologic vegetarians by their exaggerations of the benefits of vegetarianism, their lack of skepticism, and their failure to recognize (or their glossing over of) the potential risks even of extreme vegetarian diets. Ideologic vegetarians make a pretense of being scientific, but they approach the subject of vegetarianism more like lawyers than scientists. Promoters of vegetarianism gather data selectively and gear their arguments toward discrediting information that is contrary to their dogma. This approach to defending a position is suitable for a debate, but it cannot engender scientific understanding.”

http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsid.760/healthissue_detail.asp

For folks like Pee Pee (and a disappointingly large percentage of Internet diet and health commentators, irrespective of their particular brand of dietary sectarianism), appearing right is more important than actually being right. If you can use fancy language, cleverly cited and cherry-picked studies, and other forms of chicanery to give as many people as possible the impression that your opponents are wrong and you are correct, then that’s all that matters. Unfortunately, fraudsters like Pee Pee cannot claim sole responsibility for this unfortunate state of affairs; a good portion of the blame must be shared by those too lazy to think for themselves and therefore stupid and gullible enough to believe the unscientific rot of these hucksters.

But back to Jarvis. Why, exactly, did he give up vegetarianism?

“I gave up vegetarianism because I found that commitment thereto meant surrendering the objectivity that is essential to the personal and professional integrity of a scientist. As a health educator, I feel I have an obligation to endeavor to stick to whatever unvarnished facts scientific research uncovers. I can support pragmatic vegetarianism, but I believe that crusading vegetarian ideologues are dangerous to themselves and to society.”

http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsid.760/healthissue_detail.asp

That Pee Pee poses a danger to himself wouldn’t even begin to arouse a micron of sympathy within me; but the thought that dishonest dogmatists like him hold the power to influence and harm others through their fraudulent communications is truly regrettable.

Cowardly, Dishonest Sleazeball of the Year Award! And the Winner is…

Coward by Trillium: Dedicated to Dubious Vegan (and Drug?) Shill, Plant Positive.

In conclusion, it is hardly surprising Plant Positive hides behind the veil of anonymity. If I was as full of sheisse as he is, I wouldn’t want anyone to know my real name or see my face either. The guy sits in front of his computer arriving at all manner of dodgey extrapolations while reading abstracts off Pubmed, triumphantly reading selected passages from them ad verbatim to his viewers, in the full knowledge that most of them are too lazy to spend the 3.5 seconds necessary to Google search and start reading the full text of the papers themselves.

Just why are you hiding Pee Pee? Why are you too scared to reveal your face and real name? Are you too embarrassed to be publicly associated with the anti-scientific vomit you spew forth in your videos?

Are you scared those of us who you so snidely and sarcastically ridicule will somehow reach through your computer and slap you silly?

Or are you just spectacularly ugly?

Or is there a more sinister reality? It’s interesting that you’re so defensive of drug companies, given that drug companies have been associated with dubious Internet practices in which individuals shilling on their behalf covertly interact with unsuspecting folks on Youtube, forums and blogs:

http://www.australianprescriber.com/upload/pdf/articles/995.pdf

Or are you doing the same thing, but for a vegan organization?

It’s especially interesting to observe Pee Pee enthusiastically sneer at the possibility that drug companies and the researchers they fund would ever place their pursuit of profit over the best interests of public health, even though countless examples of this very behaviour have been well documented. Here’s just a tiny selection that can be found within minutes of Googling around:

Drug giant accused of false claims: “I was trained to deceive, to lie to doctors.”

Vioxx: “Don’t bring up the heart risks”, Merck sales reps warned in 2001 memo

New England Journal of Medicine cites proof heart attacks related to Vioxx use were omitted from key study

Only 6% of brochures sent to German doctors from drug companies contained statements that were supported by identifiable scientific literature

Is academic medicine for sale? No. The current owner is very happy with it.

Do drug firms suppress unfavourable information about new products?

FDA calls Crestor ads ‘false and misleading’

Big Pharma exploits Third World poor

Former Pfizer director claims Pfizer misled doctors

Why Plant Positive would so quickly dismiss the notion that drug companies would ever act in a manner that places profit before human welfare is a rather curious mystery given the continual stream of reports showing just that.

So again, who’s your Daddy, Pee Pee? Who funds your pompous, time-consuming campaigns against dissenters of the lipid hypothesis? You, or someone else we should know about? Just what are your professional, political, and activist allegiances?

Or are you just a plain socially retarded vegan wanker with nothing better to do with your time than exploit the safety of distance and anonymity endowed by the Internet to attack others who tell the truths you can’t stand to hear?

I guess it’s too much to expect Pee Pee, for once in his life, to stop being a snivelling little coward and identify himself, to publicly stand up for what he claims to believe in.

So to everyone else, be real wary of who you get your information from. Call me strange, but I think people who consistently lie and cowardly hide behind the shady veil of Internet anonymity really aren’t good sources from which to obtain information that can affect your health and well-being.

If you’ve been swayed by this anonymous, lying loon, then here’s some very valuable and free advice for you: You need to review your knowledge acquisition and appraisal methods urgently, because they currently render you a gullible fool. Do not make any major life, health or financial decisions until you have got your cognitive faculties working in a far more intelligent, analytical, perceptive and rational manner.

Kind regards,

Anthony “Get that Soy Shit Outta Here!” Colpo.

Dipshit Warning! Please Read!

I’ve been around long enough to know I should never underestimate the depth and prevalence of human stupidity. I just know that, if I didn’t insert this here passage, some idiot/s would inevitably write to me after I post this article asking, “Colpo, aren’t you going to address the other 500 videos Pee Pee has posted about you? I’d be really interested to hear your response to the one about cholesterol, saturated fat and downregulation of the p231 fuckwittus maximus gene!”

For any such idiots, let me ask you a couple of questions instead:

When Channel 6 presents you with a carefully researched, meticulously presented and highly instructive segment on why Huckster Motor Company has been ripping off thousands of people with overpriced, poorly built and dangerous cars…do you write them and ask if they can also do a story on Huckster’s light commercial range because, hey bro, they have a killer sale on at the moment and you’re really keen on the Huckster SUK69 van?

Or to rephrase the question, when someone exposes a liar for the complete sham they are, do you write them and expect them to waste even more of their time on this liar because you were too stupid to get it the first time around?

And now for the second question:

As a grown adult, when you need to go to the toilet, do you still go ahead and crap in your pants then cry until your parents come and change your undergarments and clean up the mess?

Or to rephrase the question, are you a lazy, unthinking twat who expects others to do things for you, even though others have already spent a good deal of time showing you how to do these very things for yourself?

In the above post, I haven’t just debunked Pee Pee’s lies about my JPANDS LDL article; I’ve also provided you with a description of the numerous types of cognitive chicanery he and his ilk employ, and given you step-by-step examples of how they use these fallacies and how you can easily dismantle them with a little independent thinking and research.

If you can’t see through Pee Pee’s bullshit by now, you never will. If you’re truly that stupid, then my advice is go ahead and embrace his premature mortality-inducing cholesterol-lowering advice and make a meaningful contribution to the ongoing but unfortunately overwhelmed global effort to cleanse the human gene pool.

Good day and good luck.

References

1. Hipkiss AR. Carnosine. a protective, anti-ageing peptide? International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology, 1998; 30: S63-868.

2. Price DL, et al. Chelating Activity of Advanced Glycation End-product Inhibitors. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2001; 276 (52): 48967-48972.

3. Chan KM, Decker EA. Endogenous skeletal muscle antioxidants. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 1994; 34 (4): 403-26.

4. Alhamdani MS, et al. Decreased formation of advanced glycation end-products in peritoneal fluid by carnosine and related peptides. Peritoneal Dialysis International, Jan-Feb, 2007; 27 (1): 86-89.

5. Yan H, et al. Effect of carnosine, aminoguanidine, and aspirin drops on the prevention of cataracts in diabetic rats. Molecular Vision, 2008; 14: 2282–2291.

6. Hall AP, Barry PE, Dawber TR, Mc Namara PM. Epidemiology of gout and hyperuricemia : A long term population study. Am J Med. 1967; 42: 27-27.

7. Zhu Y, et al. Prevalence of gout and hyperuricemia in the US general population: the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2008. Arthritis and Rheumatism, Oct, 2011; 63 (10): 3136-3141.

Note: Hyperuricemia also appears to be increasing in elderly populations, see:

Wallace K, et al. Increasing Prevalence of Gout and Hyperuricemia Over 10 Years Among Older Adults in a Managed Care Population. J Rheumatol 2004; 31: 1582–1587.

8. Zalokar J, et al. [Serum urate and gout in 4663 young male workers (author's transl)]. Sem Hop. 1981 Apr 8-15; 57 (13-14): 664-70.

9. De Lorgeril M, et al. Mediterranean alpha-linolenic acid-rich diet in secondary prevention of coronary heart disease. Lancet, 1994; 343: 1454-1459.

10. Lemaitre RN, et al. n-3 Polyunsaturated fatty acids, fatal ischemic heart disease, and nonfatal myocardial infarction in older adults: the Cardiovascular Health Study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2003; 77: 319-325.

11. Baylin A, et al. Adipose tissue alpha-linolenic acid and nonfatal acute myocardial infarction in Costa Rica. Circulation, Apr 1, 2003; 107 (12): 1586-1591.

12. Yli-Jama P, et al. Serum free fatty acid pattern and risk of myocardial infarction: a case-control study. Journal of Internal Medicine, Jan, 2002; 251 (1): 19-28.

13. Marchioli R, et al. Early protection against sudden death by n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids after myocardial infarction: time-course analysis of the results of the Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della Sopravvivenza nell’Infarto Miocardico (GISSI)-Prevenzione. Circulation, 2002; 105: 1897–1903.

14. Simini B. Serge Renaud: from French paradox to Cretan miracle. Lancet, 2000: 355: 48.

15. Ornish D, et al. Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. Journal of the American Medical Association, Dec 16, 1998; 280 (23): 2001-2007.

16. Koertge J, et al. Improvement in medical risk factors and quality of life in women and men with coronary artery disease in the Multicenter Lifestyle Demonstration Project. American Journal of Cardiology, Jun 1, 2003; 91 (11): 1316-1322.

17. Key TJ, et al. Cancer incidence in vegetarians: results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Oxford). American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2009; 89: (Suppl): 1620S-1626S.

—

Reader Mail: Why Calories are Still King, Treating Hypertension Naturally, Barry Groves, Low-Carb, Paleo, and More!

Anthony Colpo — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:31:45 +0000

“The Trouble with Bullshit” Hits the Bulls Eye!

D (J’s mum) writes:

WOW is all I have to say! What a wonderful caring person you are! J was beyond words to see you talking to him in your article, just what he needed. He has been improving. Eating sweet potatoes and fruit and oatmeal etc. And a lot of it had to do with you and your words of advice. Thanks so much for going above and beyond to help someone so far away!

Anthony replies:

Hey D,

if that made J’s day, then that’s made my day! Glad to be of help, I’m delighted to hear he’s improving, I’m sure he’ll be fine

Take care,

Anthony.

The Trouble with Ninkumpoops: Another Angry Low-Carber Tries to Create a Red Herring

Charles Grashow writes:

You link to this study [in The Trouble With Bullshit]

http://www.annals.org/content/153/3/147.full.pdf

Weight loss was approximately 11 kg (11%) at 1 year and 7 kg (7%) at 2 years. There were no differences in weight, body composition, or bone mineral density between the groups at any time point.

HOWEVER – you fail to state this from the study

The low-carbohydrate diet produced a much greater increase in plasma HDL cholesterol concentration than did the low-fat diet at all assessments during the 2-year study.

Plasma HDL cholesterol concentration increased by approximately 20% at 6 months in the low-carbohydrate diet group, which persisted throughout the study and was more than twice the increase observed in the low-fat diet group.

In conclusion, this 2-year, multicenter study of more than 300 participants revealed that neither dietary fat nor carbohydrate intake influenced weight loss when combined with a comprehensive lifestyle intervention. Both diet groups achieved clinically significant and nearly identical weight loss (11% at 6 months and 7% at 24 months), and persons who received the low-carbohydrate diet had greater 24-month increases in HDL-cholesterol concentrations than persons who received the low-fat diet. We found no differences between the groups for changes in bone or body composition. These long-term data suggest that a low carbohydrate approach is a viable option for obesity treatment for obese adults.

SO – the low carbohydrate group had a better lipid profile (triglycerides were appx the same in both groups but the low carb group had high levels of HDL) AND they both lost appx the same amount of weight

Tell me why this study PROVES that low carb is not good?

Anthony replies:

Hi Charles,

firstly, pop yourself an extra strength chill pill, sunshine, and secondly, learn to read what people have actually written, instead of flying off the handle and sending them an angry email chastising them for something they never said.

I never said “this study PROVES that low carb is not good”. They’re your words, not mine.

What I said is that low-carb diets offer no long-term weight loss advantage, as evidenced by virtually all the studies lasting 12 months or more. And that’s exactly what this study showed.

Furthermore, I already discussed this study on my website some 18 months ago (right here). Here’s what I wrote:

“BTW, I was recently forwarded a newsletter article in which a certain low-carb commentator gushed on about the wonderful cholesterol, triglyceride and blood pressure changes seen in the low-carb group of this study. The low-carb mob are happy to dump on the farcical cholesterol theory when it suits them, but embrace it when it supports their cherished low-carb paradigm (furthermore, the difference in VLDL had disappeared at 24 months). According to this commentator, the health benefits were “enormous”. Hmmm, let’s see:

–No difference in weight loss, body composition, or dropout rates.
–Greater reduction in diastolic BP? Yes, but we’re talking a whopping <3 points at 24 months in diastolic – and no difference in systolic.
–An earth shattering 14 mg/dl difference in triglycerides at 12 months, no difference at 24 months.

Excuse me for being distinctly unexcited.

In regards to the commentator’s claim about the 25 percent increase in HDL on the LC diet – “There’s not a drug on earth that’s been able to do that”; actually, there’s a drug that can raise HDL levels much higher than this. It’s called torcetrapib, and Pfizer had to shelve it after spending squillions of dollars on development because in their clinical trials it was killing rather than saving people.”

Charles, best of luck dealing with your cognitive and anger issues.

Regards,

Anthony.

The Trouble with Barry Groves and other Purveyors of Disinformation

Julie writes:

I found his blog, or something that he wrote, I think he’s the first doctor who I’ve encountered who claims veggies, fiber in foods are unhealthy. WTF? Bad enough that people are afraid of fruit, now there are idiots claiming fiber causes cancer, and I’m seeing where they get those ideas. Poor J, hopefully somebody can help him. I believed some pretty stupid shit at his age, but that was before the internet, which now that I think of it, maybe wasn’t such a bad thing, given the overload of crap and conflicting info.

My first boyfriend later became a Hare Krishna, they’re only supposed to have sex once a month, strictly for procreation. I think anyone who tries to control your sexuality is trying to control you, and is a cult best to be avoided, but some people prefer non-autonomy. Go figure. Personally, I think most low-carbers are a bunch of idiots, but I love fruit, dislike meat, so obviously this is a reaction based on personal taste, even before the science (or lack of it) comes into play.

Good post.

Take care.

Anthony replies:

Hi Julie,

there is evidence, which I have discussed in my books and on my site, showing that cereal fiber can exert unfavourable effects, but as for vegetables and vegetable fibre being harmful, I’m guessing Groves pulled this theory out of the same dark cavity from which he obtained his absurd “Fat will not make you fat!” and “Mamo Wolde was a zero-carber!” claims.

There’s something I didn’t mention about the Obesity in Perspective paper that Groves butchered – the one in which he extracted weight gain data on a high-carb diet, then paired it with weight loss data from a high-fat diet in an entirely different study published in an entirely different journal.

What Groves ‘forgot’ to share with his readers is that the Obesity in Perspective study[1] did in fact feature not just one but 2 high-carb groups – there was no need for him to go searching for another study that featured data for a high-carb diet! And by this point, you probably don’t need me to tell you why he kept silent about this fact.

But I will anyway.

The study was conducted under ward conditions and featured 3 groups, all of whom followed the same baseline diet. One group, however, was overfed fat for 83 days, the other 2 were overfed carbs for 18 days.

The mean caloric increase on the high-fat diet was 860 calories/day, and the mean weight gain was 11kg; of this, 7.6kg (70%) was fat.

In the first of the carbohydrate experiments, a liquid carbohydrate supplement was used to provide an extra 1,866 excess calories daily. This hefty surplus produced an average weight gain of 4.5kg over 18 days. Of this, the average amount of fat gained was 3.4kg (75%).

In the second of the high-carb groups, the average calorie surplus was 1,800 per day. The average amount of weight gain was 4.3 kg, and the average amount of fat gained was only 2.5kg (56%).

An obvious flaw with this study was the unequal calorie surpluses and different lengths of time the high-fat and high-carb groups followed their assigned diets. But the data from numerous other ward studies comparing isocaloric diets of varying carb and fat content over identical time periods give us no reason to suspect that the higher fat diet would have displayed any body composition advantage if the high-carb periods were extended.

So what we have is a study which compared calorie surpluses obtained either entirely from fat or carbohydrate, and found extra calories in the form of fat caused a similar or greater percentage of weight to be gained as fat. This hardly supports Groves’ claim that dietary fat is far more resistant to deposition as body fat than carbohydrate, so he simply ignored it and went plodding off in search of data that supported what he wanted to believe. Even then, he had to resort to the bizarre tactic of extracting data from a weight loss study…

Barry Groves is a texbook classic example of how many people simply decide what they want to believe and, having become comfortable with that belief, will ignore, distort and even invent evidence to maintain it.

As for the Hare Krishnas and their once-a-month sex, this is testament to the incredible power religions and cults can wield over people. Whether it’s convincing otherwise sane and rational people that a bloke was born to a virgin mother (some 2,000 years before IVF), that he parted seas, that he died but then sprang back to life 3 days later, moving a massive stone from the front of his tomb (some 2000 years before the advent of hydraulic rams and anabolic steroids)…or dictating how often they should commit a private act of intimacy with their partner, these organizations are masters of mass manipulation and control.

On a more uplifting note, I heard back from J’s mum (see above) and he’s improving, he’s started tucking into sweet potatoes, fruit and oats, which is great news. Hopefully he’ll be able to look back one day, as a healthy strapping young man, and simultaneously laugh and shake his head at the pseudoscientific nonsense of all those idiot low-carb ‘gurus’.

Cheers,

Anthony.

Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, and the Trouble with eBookPro

Chuck writes:

Dear Anthony,

I am a victim of the low-to-no carb diet gurus. After reading some of your latest posts, I decided I needed to go back and re-read my “Bible”.

However, when I tried to access it, it said my user name and password were incorrect. Since it has been a while since I last accessed the material, I don’t know if it was during a period when I had done a password change (I don’t remember the one I might have used then…).

I am 59 years old, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and outrageously high blood pressure (all discovered on an eye exam for new glasses).

I’m tossing out all the other ‘gurus’ info and recommendations and looking to you for answers. But I need to regain access to my The Fat Loss Bible and I don’t know how to go about it.

Any way you can suggest to reclaim the access would be greatly appreciated and any advice on what steps to take to bring the blood pressure down to ‘normal’ numbers and to also bring my blood sugar numbers into a normal, healthy range would also be appreciated.

I know your schedule is probably very full, so I will await a reply patiently (but hope for one soon!).

Thank you.

Respectfully,

Chuck.

Anthony replies:

Hi Chuck,

Recently, the company that bought the eBookPro software from the original creators suddenly shut it down.

Luckily, as soon as my books became available in Kindle format, I had stopped selling books using the eBookPro software, as it was too troublesome and dated.

If any readers out there are having trouble accessing their eBookPro version, don’t panic – just send me an email with some details I can use to verify your eBookPro purchase (including at least one or more of the following: the Clickbank receipt #; your full name as entered in the order form; the email address you entered when purchasing the book; your username/password combo). Once I’ve verified your original purchase, I’ll send details on how to access a complimentary Kindle copy. Obviously, this offer doesn’t hold for folks who bought the book then subsequently applied for a refund.

Regarding your blood pressure and blood glucose, I have a couple of suggestions. One supplement I’ve found to do quite remarkable things with elevated blood pressure is Hawthorn extract; the 2 products I would recommend are:

Jarrow Formulas Hawthorn, 100 x 500mg

Nature’s Way Heart Care Hawthorn, 120 Tablets

I’d long known about Hawthorn and its use as a cardiac tonic, but because there was little in the way of controlled clinical trial research in the English language literature, I didn’t pay it much attention. But then I caught wind that bodybuilders were using it to effectively counter the blood pressure elevations seen with certain anabolics, which piqued my curiosity. While the general public (often erroneously) perceives bodybuilders as a bunch of juiced up meatheads, they tend to be ahead of the game when it comes to nutrition and supplement strategies, many of which are often subsequently adopted by the general public (the use of whey protein and omega-3 supplements are two examples that readily come to mind).

When two close friends subsequently told me about their high blood pressure problems (one chronic, the other a sudden development due to personal issues), I quickly got hold of the Jarrow version and told them to try it. In both cases, the reductions were quite impressive (systolic dropping from around 160 to 130 in one case, and from 160 to 120 in the second). These are pretty hefty reductions that most drugs would struggle to match – and they were side effect free. I know this is a pretty small and uncontrolled sample size, but if you search around the Internet you won’t have trouble finding plenty of similar stories (the reviews at iHerb make for interesting reading). I was so impressed with what I saw that, while I don’t have hypertension personally, I now take 1-2 tablets daily of the stronger Nature’s Way version as a cardiovascular prophylactic.

I must stress that if you are currently being treated for hypertension and intend to try Hawthorn, tell your doctor, don’t make sudden and unsupervised changes to your treatment regimen. You may need to titrate your medication downwards as you similarly increase your dosage of Hawthorn. If, instead of agreeing to help you, he snickers and sneers at your desire to replace drugs with a natural herb, find another doctor.

As for elevated blood sugar, the following are all important strategies:

•   Weight loss if you are overweight
•   Regular vigorous exercise (again, increase the duration and intensity progressively, don’t go out and suddenly start hammering up hills like Marco Pantani)
•   Iron reduction, using blood withdrawal or IP-6 to reach a serum ferritin target of 50 or below (as discussed in your copy of The Great Cholesterol Con)
•   Low-glycemic index and low-glycemic load foods
•   Tailoring carbohydrate intake to suit your activity levels (explained in The Fat Loss Bible)
•   Magnesium supplementation

Cheers,

Anthony.

Paleo Shenanigans

Matt writes:

Hi Anthony,

I thought you might get a laugh out of this…

My 86 year old grandfather runs/bikes a couple times a week, incorporates lots of calisthenics into his routine, and does yard work everyday like a beast. He lives by the code “Make sure you sweat every day.” I have a younger cousin who is going to college right now as a nutrition major and as part of her required reading she had to read Robb Wolf’s book, I think it’s called The Paleo Solution or something (I know, absolutely ridiculous).

Anyway, she was telling my grandfather all about it yesterday and he responded, “Who gives a shit what the cavemen ate. If they were alive today they would be all over rice and pasta. Do you know what the cavemen were? A bunch of losers with no options. Do you really want to be a loser with no options?” LOL

Great articles as usual. It’s pretty hilarious to see all these low carb toolboxes starting to come around to what you’ve been saying for years now. I still think most of them are too lazy to actual do any hard physical work though, but at least some good people will start seeing the light. That’s all that matters.

Matt

Anthony replies:

Hey Matt,

“Who gives a shit what the cavemen ate. If they were alive today they would be all over rice and pasta. Do you know what the cavemen were? A bunch of losers with no options. Do you really want to be a loser with no options?”

Priceless! I like your grandfather – something tells me we’d get along real well LOL

Take care,

Anthony.

Evidence of Weight Loss from High Calorie Intake?

Archie writes:

Hello Anthony,

In response to your request for information of people who had lost weight without exercise and without inducing a caloric deficit, here is an observation from a BBC television programme in 2008. The two subjects ate an enormous quantity of meat and fat, and lost a remarkable amount of weight in just one week.

Granted, this was not a controlled study, and it only ran for one week, but it is nevertheless instructive.

Kind regards,

Archie Robertson

Anthony replies:

Hi Archie,

thanks for the email.

As evidence for a metabolic advantage, the info at that site is next to useless. No calorie information supplied, and even if it was, it was a free-living scenario…with all the reporting inaccuracies that that entails.

I’ve lost count of all the people who swear they ate a squillion calories per day of meat and fat and proceeded to lose weight. Funny how when we move from the realm of unverifiable anecdotes to metabolic ward trials, these claims completely fail to hold any water: in metabolic ward studies, low-carb diets never produce greater fat-derived weight loss than their isocaloric higher-carb equivalents.

Cheers,

Anthony.

Hormones, Digestion and Calories

Shama writes:

Hi Coach,

I guess you could be busy, just wanted to bring to your attention there is a thread which Coach Dax Moy has started & he is questioning the validity of the calorie in/out theory. While he does accept that it is a valid point, he goes on to talk about hormonal issues, digestive health etc being more important than the law of thermodynamics. I felt if you were to participate in that discussion, it would have had so much weight & validity. All in all, I can’t believe how complicated this whole thing is becoming to fathom & I regret not knowing the true answer.

Anthony replies:

Hi Shama,

how’s things? I have no idea who Dax Moy is and simply don’t have the time to join in any discussion he might be having. But you might like to point out to him that while digestion and hormonal status can indeed affect weight status, they do so via calories (increased GH, testosterone, DHEA, noradrenaline, etc, can speed up metabolism i.e. amount of calories burned…digestion can affect amount of calories absorbed).

No matter how cleverly people try and dance around the issue, the end result is the same…calories are the ultimate arbiter of weight status.

Have a good one,

cheers,

Anthony.

Enlightened Doctors: They’re Out There if You Look For Them

Brian writes:

Anthony,

Just a quick email to thank you for the information you put out there, both on your blog and in your book. I really enjoy(ed) reading them as they are evidence based and free of the bias you see in other texts. As a physician trying to do what’s best for my patients, I have found it most useful and thought-provoking and wish you continued success in years to come.

Best wishes and thanks once again,

Brian.

Anthony replies:

Hi Brian,

thanks so much for the kind words, and I must say your patients are very lucky to have access to an unbiased practitioner who truly places their well being as his first priority.

Take care,

Anthony.

The Spongy Wonder

Vesa writes:

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for your latest article about the ISM bike saddle, looks very interesting!

Some years back I started to commute to work and back by bike during the snow-free seasons. Pretty soon I discovered that the nether regions did not approve the saddle. I tried different versions, some were better than others, but nothing seemed to eliminate the problem completely.

Whilst doing some research I came across “The Spongy Wonder“. It certainly looked totally different to other saddles, completely eliminating the nose of the saddle. I ordered one and although adjusting the saddle took some testing, once the fit was found, the feeling was fantastic: no pressure whatsoever down there.

The ISM saddle looks quite promising as well, so I think I will order one to put on my other bike, it would be interesting to do some comparing.

Although the Spongy Wonder puts absolutely no pressure on the perineum and the cojones, the design is slightly more “cumbersome” than the ISM’s. Thus the “feel” with the SW could be more minor especially when it comes to fast & heavy riding and/ or riding off road, etc. I have found it to be a good fit for myself at least, there certainly is no going back to normal saddles anymore!

I thought I’d give you a shout about the Spongy Wonder, if you have not come across it before, and would like to test one. (BTW, the seat covers they sell separately I found to be a good purchase, as their texture is a bit more convenient than the surface of the saddle itself, in my experience).

I’d also like to thank you for all the excellent information you put out, it is truly a pleasure to read your articles and books. It is rare to find a writer in the health arena (or any area in fact), who appreciates the facts more than dogmas!

Many thanks and all the best,

Vesa

Anthony replies:

Hi Vesa,

thanks a million for emailing, I just checked out the Spongy Wonder website and watched the Youtube video, looks like a great idea. As I was searching around, I came across the Spider Flex, which is similar in design. Actually, there’s a few others employing a similar concept. I’ll make mention of this in my next Reader Mail segment, as it’s good for readers to know about different options.

One thing I’m wondering – in road riding, for example when you’re climbing and seated, and want to pick up the pace, sometimes you want to slide back on the seat and hunch down a little. Have you tried this, or do you hold a fairly static position on the bike when you ride? The pads look like they would be fine for someone who holds a constant position, but I’m wondering how much latitude they give you in sliding your butt back and forth?

Cheers,

Anthony.

Vesa replies:

Hi Anthony,

Thank you very much for your reply, the Spider Flex’s pad design seems to be an improvement on the Spongy Wonder. Interesting to know that there are also other saddles utilizing the same type of design: there clearly is a demand out there.

Although the design of the pads on the Spider Flex seem an improvement over the Spongy Wonder, the SW has a benefit with its pads coming in different sizes, and also there’s the possibility of adjusting the width of the pads (with the SW). Anyway, both would be good options for cycling without the unwanted pressure on the nether regions.

That’s a great point about sliding back on the seat, I’ve felt that with the Spongy Wonder it does not go quite as smoothly as with the conventional, nose-equipped saddles. In that sense the ISM saddle might have an advantage. However, I feel that the seat covers one can purchase separately for the Spongy Wonder enable some slight sliding, compared to the original surface texture of the pads.

As they mention on the websites, it takes some adjustment and trying to get the feel of the saddle right, but once you “get the feel” it certainly is smooth riding from there on!

It would certainly be great to read about different saddles and discover one’s own particular preference.

Many thanks again and keep up the great work!

Sincerely,

Vesa

References

1. Goldman, R. F., M. F. Haisman, G. Bynum, E. S. Horton, and E. A. H. Sims. 1975. Experimental obesity in man: metabolic rate in relation to dietary intake. In: Obesity in Perspective. G. A. Bray, editor. U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. 165-186.

—

The Soy-Induced Silliness of Don Matesz, and Why the Cholesterol Theory is as Big a Sham as Ever

Anthony Colpo — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 08:50:20 +0000

This article is Rated PI (Politically Incorrect): It contains coarse language, sexual references, and nudity. AnthonyColpo.com advises viewing by mature audiences only.

The Latest Blogger to Declare War on Scientific Reality: The Terribly Misguided Don Matesz

Will writes:

Anthony,

Don at “Primal Wisdom” is talking shit about you again–see this article:

http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2012/03/man-fat-hunter-paper-defines-paleo-diet.html

Will

Anthony replies:

You know, there are times when I’m confronted with a display of stupidity so astounding I’m almost left speechless, and this is definitely one of those occasions.

Folks, I wholeheartedly encourage you to click on the link Will supplied and witness the twitness that is Don Matesz.

The article starts off with Matesz getting his knickers in a knot because someone by the name of Miki Ben Dor evidently made some statements about Paleolithic nutrition that Matesz takes issue with. I have no idea who Ben Dor is, but Matesz nevertheless felt compelled to drag my name in to the discussion, along with that of Denise Minger and Gary Taubes.

Matesz snidely ridicules all three of us for having the temerity to comment on dietary and health issues despite our lack of formal medical qualifications. Of Denise, Matesz writes:

“Of course those internet experts know more about paleolithic diet than these anthropologists and archaeologists, right?

Just like Denise Minger, who admits having no formal training in statistics or medicine, knows more about statistics than Richard Peto, PhD, the Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology from Oxford University who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (for the introduction of meta-analyses) in 1989, and was knighted (for services to epidemiology and to cancer prevention) in 1999, and worked on the Cornell-Oxford-China Project, right?”

For those who aren’t familiar with Richard Peto, he’s the guy who, faced with the complete failure of cholesterol-lowering treatments to lower mortality in randomized clinical trials, claimed with a straight face at the NHLBI’s Consensus Development Conference in Bethesda, Maryland, in December of 1984 that that there had “already been fifteen or twenty trials, but in every one something ridiculous happened.”

Yep, when your pet theories are repeatedly disproved in clinical trials, it’s because “something ridiculous” happened in each and every one…

Sure.

Peto then went on to claim that, although no single trial was convincing, the sum of the trial results was impressive when considered together.

As I ponder in The Great Cholesterol Con, how a string of complete failures could somehow appear successful when considered collectively is anyone’s guess; after all, twenty zeros still add up to nothing.

As a person who places facts well above so-called ‘credentials’, I couldn’t give a flying act of fornication how many fellowships and knightships Richard Peto has been awarded; he was wrong on cholesterol and, if he supports the pseudoscientific nonsense his buddy T. Colin Campbell writes in his book The China Study, then he’s flat out wrong there too.

Denise Minger has repeatedly destroyed Campbell’s highly unscientific claims (here and here), and the best Campbell has been able to muster in response is to condescendingly call her work “cutesy” and to deride her for using crude, unadjusted data from the actual China Study monograph – even though Campbell referred to this very same data in his book to make his misleading claims.

Furthermore, when Denise dug up studies citing adjusted data from the China Study, it still contradicted Campbell’s claims!

But never you mind that – according to The Don, Campbell must be right because he’s got initials after his name and Denise hasn’t.

As for Gary Taubes, I think pretty much everything the guy has written in the last decade or so is utter nonsense. But my belief is based on scientific grounds – I know for a fact Taubes has failed to discuss a mountain of evidence that contradicts his repeatedly disproved “carbs make you fat” thesis. Whether Taubes has a uni degree or not means nothing to me – it’s the validity of his argument, not the number of initials after his surname, I’m interested in.

If Don concurs that Taubes’ claims are without foundation, then he needs to outline on scientific grounds just why he thinks so. Wanking on about his lack of formal medical qualifications is just another pathetic display of the “Appeal to Authority” mentality.

Laughably, after blatantly appealing to authority, Matesz assures us he’s not making yet another lame appeal to authority!

Don, just what are you smoking, bro?

Of yours truly, Matesz writes:

“The same way that Anthony Colpo, who has no medical training and has never published any peer-reviewed cardiovascular disease research, knows more about atherosclerosis than WC Roberts, who has authored several books on cardiovascular disease, has spoken at more than 1,300 medical meetings, serves as editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Cardiology, and with colleagues published more than 1,150 peer-reviewed articles on cardiovascular disease in medical journals, right?”

First of all, Don needs to get his facts right. I have indeed had my research on cardiovascular disease published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, and it can be accessed for free right here:

http://www.jpands.org/vol10no3/colpo.pdf

It completely destroys the fallacious LDL = bad cholesterol theory, and if Don disagrees, he’s more than welcome to provide a science-backed rebuttal of each and every point I raise in the article.

Again, I couldn’t give a flying act of booty-slamming how many medical meetings WC Roberts has attended, how many papers he’s published, or how many journals he serves in an editorial function for. If he earnestly believes that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease, despite the mountain of contradictory evidence, then he’s as wrong as wrong can be.

Not letting the case rest with his piss-poor appeals to authority, Matesz further continues his incoherent ranting in the comments section of his post, where he writes:

“I have read Colpo’s “Con” book. I have read Ravnskov’s “Myths” book. I have read Kendrick’s “Con” book. Talk about cherry picking. They take fail to take into consideration all of the evidence. For example, Ravskov thinks that dietary cholesterol doesn’t raise blood cholesterol. He cites studies that feed additional cholesterol to people already eating cholesterol who already have elevated cholesterol. He ignores the studies that started with people eating zero or essentially zero cholesterol, which is the only rational way to test the effect of dietary cholesterol on blood cholesterol. He (and Colpo) ignore cross-cultural studies that don’t agree with their agenda. I don’t have space here to critique their books entirely.”

By lumping me in with Kendrick and Ravnskov, Matesz sneakily attempts to fool readers into believing we are saying the same thing. Let me state unequivocally that I have a low regard for Malcolm Kendrick, who appears to have developed an irreparably bruised ego after I called him out on some derisory and pseudoscientific nonsense he spouted about me on the THINCS email list last year, and has since taken to deriding me every chance he gets. I agree wholeheartedly with Kendrick’s belief that the lipid hypothesis is hogwash, but I do not even begin to hold his beliefs about causation and nutrition in the same esteem.

As for Uffe Ravnskov, while I do think very highly of his writings on cholesterol and heart disease, I respectfully submit that his knowledge of nutrition is lacking (especially when it comes to low-carb diets) and I do not concur with his claim that cholesterol is unaffected by the type of dietary fat. In fact, in TGCC I discuss a meta-analysis that showed when other dietary factors are held constant, polyunsaturated fats tend to lower cholesterol, monounsaturates tend to have a neutral effect, and saturated fats tend to raise it.

While it’s not my job to defend Uffe Ravnskov, I do want to quickly address the following comment by Matesz:

“Colpo, Ravnskov, Masterjohn, and Kendrick have all already failed to produce any peer-reviewed evidence or arguments comparable to that supporting the lipid hypothesis.”

Again, this is false. Ravnskov, along with Kilmer McCully, has published a paper postulating that infectious agents are ‘the’ initial trigger of cardiovascular disease; I won’t discuss this possibility here in detail, except to say I find the contention that pathogenic microbes are harmful to arteries far more plausible than the absurd claim that an essential and life-giving substrate like cholesterol is the true cause of atherosclerosis. For those who would like to read Ravnskov and McCully’s paper, you can check out the full text here:

http://www.annclinlabsci.org/content/39/1/3.full.pdf+html

Anyway, back to Matesz’s unprovoked rant against yours truly. He claims:

“He (and Colpo) ignore cross-cultural studies that don’t agree with their agenda. I don’t have space here to critique their books entirely.”

How convenient. Matesz accuses me of cherry-picking but, despite having ample time and space to wank on about all manner of inane bollocks, he suddenly runs out of room to cite and discuss the studies I allegedly ignored.

Folks, I do believe that is the distinctive aroma of bullshit I detect, March 2012 vintage…

Let’s take a look at Matesz’s claim a little more closely. He’s claiming I cherry-picked my evidence in The Great Cholesterol Con. The truth is, as of 2006, when the book was published, there was no other review in existence that cited all the evidence as completely as I did. If Matesz is privy to such a review, then he’s more than welcome to share it with us.

If he can’t, then I’ll just go ahead and continue to assume he’s completely full of caca.

Who else, as of 2006, tabulated and discussed in such detail all the epidemiological studies that I included in Chapter 7? Of the 26 prospective studies published in the English language literature up to that point, only four managed to find even desperately weak associations between saturated fat and coronary heart disease.

Who else, as of 2006, tabulated and discussed in such detail all the randomized clinical trials involving dietary fat manipulation/reduction that I included in Chapter 8? All of which completely failed to show that lowering dietary fat or replacing saturates with unsaturated sources of fat lowers CHD or overall mortality, despite consistent reductions in serum cholesterol. What these studies instead showed is that weight loss, increased omega-3 intake, decreased processed food intake and increased fruit and vegetable intake, and decreased refined carbohydrate intake are far better interventions than tooling around with saturated fat restriction.

The only conclusion I can honestly come to after reviewing the evidence in its entirety is that the lipid hypothesis of heart disease is utter nonsense. If that makes me a cherry-picker, so be it. I should point out, though, I’m in the company of some pretty esteemed cherry-pickers. Researchers from Harvard University (is Harvard ‘authoritative’ enough for you, Don?) and the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute pooled the data from twenty-one prospective epidemiologic studies examining the association of dietary saturated fat with coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and overall cardiovascular disease risk.

And what did they find? Those “who ate the highest amounts of saturated fat had no greater risk of CVD than those who ate the lowest. Consideration of age, sex, and study quality did not change the results.”

Please feel free to check out the study for yourself:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.full.pdf

Don, fair’s fair; if you’re going to call me a cherry-picker, then it’s only just that you apply the same label to Harvard researchers whom, I might add, have far more extensive formal qualifications in health research and statistics than what you do.

Folks, what we have in Don Matesz is a guy who derides others for their lack of credentials, and sycophantically cites a carefully selected (read: cherry-picked) handful of formally trained researchers who promote theories that gel with his own personal beliefs. All the while, he cites sweet FA evidence to support his criticisms of people like Denise Minger and yours truly; instead, he relies solely on scienceless appeals to authority and ad hominem attacks.

Don Matesz, ladies and gentlemen, is Janet Brill with a beard.

A Unified, Applied Theory of What Don Matesz’s Real Problem Is

There’s no question Don Matesz is about as scientific as a deck of tarot cards, but after reading his rant there was something I just couldn’t understand about him. Namely, what exactly did I do to this joker to attract such derision? What’s this guy’s problem?

Some of my readers who have been following me since TheOmnivore days will be familiar with Matesz’s name. He emailed me back in 2004, just after he and his then-wife Rachel Albert-Matesz released their book The Garden of Eating, asking if I would like a reviewer’s copy. I remembered Don’s name from an article he had authored in a US magazine about Neanderthin author Ray Audette. I sincerely complimented Don on the article and told him I’d love a copy of The Garden of Eating. When the book arrived, I read it and was truly impressed. I proceeded to post a glowing review on my website, and encouraged Don and his then-wife to make the book available on Amazon so that more people could buy it, and so they would be more justly rewarded for what I felt was a job well done (they proceeded to take my advice).

The correspondence between Don and myself was entirely cordial, and while I proceeded to lose track of his movements and writings over the years, I never had reason to believe there was any cause for animosity between us.

To this day, I still continue to consider The Garden of Eating a worthy read. While I’ve not read every Paleo diet book on the market (I have an extremely low tolerance for bullshit), TGOE trumps all over the ones I have read, including such best sellers as Neanderthin and The Paleo Diet.

As recently as 2010, I gave the book further praise, writing:

“The Garden Of Eating: A Produce-dominated Diet & Cookbook by Rachel and Don Matesz. Human beings did not evolve on a diet of whole grains, low-fat cookies, and sterol-enhanced margarines. They evolved on a diet of fresh meats and non-grain, non-leguminous plant foods. I strongly recommend that you base your diet upon a Paleolithic approach to nutrition, but without becoming a fanatical dietary Luddite, as often happens to “Paleo” diet fanatics. The Matesz’s book strikes a good balance between eating in an evolutionary correct fashion whilst living in the 21st century. And unlike other books in the genre, the authors are not cholesterol-phobic revisionists who attempt to re-write human history by claiming humans evolved on only lean meats. You can get it Amazon or at the authors’ website.”

But after reading Matesz’s display of sheer irrationality in the post Will linked to, I was perplexed; I struggled to picture such a pseudoscientist as Don Matesz being capable of co-authoring a well-written book like TGOE. Then the flashbacks started coming; I remembered when the book was sent to me, the brief correspondence accompanying the book was from Rachel, not Don. The book was signed by Rachel, not Don. The Garden of Eating website seemed to revolve entirely around Rachel, not Don. So when I checked the front matter of my copy of The Garden of Eating, which I still have on my shelf after all these years, sure enough, the author is listed as “Albert-Matesz, Rachel, 1965-”

Clearly, Rachel was the true brains behind The Garden of Eating.

Then another flashback came through, this one wrapped in what appeared to be a Texan flag. Yep, it was a conversation I’d had with one of my most valued readers, an eminently likable lad by the name of Jay. I searched for Jay’s email in my inbox and here’s what I found (BTW, if you’re one of these grumpy feminist types who is appalled by the bizarre concept of men finding women physically attractive, please leave now. Also, in the interests of historical correctness, the conversation featured a bunch of non-Matesz-related material that I’ve edited out for the sake of brevity):

On 28/8/11, Jay wrote:

Anthony,

I didn’t want to keep dominating so much of your time, but I can’t let it go that you recommended Don Matesz. He must be listening to you because he made a big deal leaving Paleo after 14 years and upping his carbs. The guy is a total pussy that’s been pussy-whipped by not 1 but 2 women! In an interview on a podcast site which I suppose you don’t click on because of the host, so I’ll summarize. He said he was having trouble on the Paleo low carb diet for several years now. However, he wouldn’t make changes because he was invested in the diet working because:

1) he wrote a book and
2) saving a failing marriage.

Well, I sure am glad I didn’t follow his site and take his advice that wasn’t working for himself, all the while he dishes it out to others because he’s making money off it, and because he didn’t want to hurt the feelings of his woman that has his balls in a vice grip. What’s the word…oh yeah…integrity…or honesty with the readers.

Then, the rest of the interview, he has his new woman clamping down on his remaining tiny ball as she keeps trying to feed him answers during the interview. Now, he posts a higher carb diet and mentions TOFU. No self-respecting Texan would ever be caught dead eating that shit! Notice how he gives her the credit every chance he gets. Unbelievable! What’s the Aussie word…wanker!

“On the cooked burger, we had a sauce Tracy created from blended tofu and spices that made it look a lot like cheese.”

http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2011/06/farewell-to-paleo.html
http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2011/08/some-recent-meals.html
http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/4381/491-ditch-low-carb-and-starches-with-durianrider-and-don-matesz/

Jay

—

Hi Jay,

I didn’t recommend Don Matesz himself, just the book he co-authored several years back with his apparently ex-missus.

I had no idea Don Matesz has been banging on about how he quit low-carb Paleo when in his Paleo book from years back he was banging on against low-carb. Not sure why he quit a diet that he had previously told people never to go on in the first place…that is most weird.

And I had no idea he had surrendered his testicles to his female partner. Letting one’s self become pussy-whipped is a heinous act of wussiness that in countries like Spain, Italy and Brazil has been known to attract the death penalty. Unfortunately, this is what happens when men enthusiastically consume soy products like tofu to the point where phytoestrogen-induced castration occurs.

Seriously…actually, I am being serious – recommending soy and being pussy-whipped really are terrible crimes. But extra seriously, I really am out of the loop with all these Internet commentators, and kind of proud to be that way. I’d much rather be reading actual studies than listening to all these jokers spout off their weird-assed theories. So I had no clue what Don Matesz has been doing and recommending. But Garden of Eating itself was a good book – if I recommend it in future to anyone it will have to be with the caveat that the [male co-author] has since taken a different path, one that no red-blooded, steak-munching, ass-spanking man with healthy testosterone levels would ever care to venture down.

Cheers,

Anthony.

—

Anthony,

Ah crap. With a response like that from you, I think I might have made the email reader article again this week. Alright! I shouldn’t have gone off on him not knowing all the details, but from the farewell article and the interview, it sounds like it was all handled real bad for his readers and a bombshell to them.

Oh, and if you use my email, make sure the readers know it’s some “female” ass I’m spanking!

Jay

—

Hi Jay,

while I’d love to include this in the next Reader Mail segment, some might interpret it as insulting to Don Matesz – I have no idea why really – and as Don has done nothing to me personally (in fact, he was kind enough to write to me out of the blue all those years ago and offer me a reviewer’s copy of The Garden of Eating), I don’t want to start ripping on him. Heaven knows I’ve got enough enemies already LOL.

“Oh, and if you use my email, make sure the readers know it’s some “female” ass I’m spanking!”

Definitely, definitely, definitely female ass

Cheers,

Anthony.

—

After re-reading the formerly private conversation between Jay and I, it’s all clear to me now! This is what I believe is going on, my Unified Theory of What’s Irking The Don:

ABSTRACT: Thanks to years of soy overconsumption, we have a person who has become an estrogen-dominant beta male, causing him to act pathetically subservient to the women in his life. While he believes acting like a compliant doormat is the best way to avoid confrontation with his significant other and ensure a smooth relationship (despite one failed marriage already using this highly flawed and self-effacing approach), what it really does is ferment the seeds of resentment deep inside (no matter how hard he tries to pretend otherwise, no man like’s being anybody’s bitch). Because our hapless protagonist is scared of the wrath he might draw from his partner by acting like he actually had a set of cojones, he instead releases his frustration and anger at people more manly or intelligent, or both. Over the Internet of course, where the threat of physical retaliation and hence the possibility of incurring damage to his carefully applied mascara is absent.

Well, that’s my theory anyway Whether it stands the test of time and peer-reviewed scrutiny remains to be seen, but here is what I do know for sure about Don Matesz:

The guy exhibits exceedingly poor form.

Folks, can we turn the music down a little while I speak directly to Don? Thanks.

Don, I don’t expect you to agree with everything I say just because I wrote some kind words about a book project you were once involved in. Heck, sometimes I have disagreements with my own Mum, the most precious person in the universe and the one person who has done more for me than anyone else on the planet. But we’re grown adults, not robots that were synchronized in the same factory.

What I do believe is that when someone has always been complimentary of you and has gone out of their way to help you promote your (then wife’s) work, you at least owe them the common courtesy of critiquing their work in a more civil and rational manner, instead of acting like a snivelling, ad hominem little dickwad.

Don’t you think?

Now for crying out loud, pull your balls out of the freezer, harden the **** up, go eat a steak, and while you’re tearing into that succulent animal flesh tell the missus in no uncertain terms to go wait in the bedroom, and to make sure she’s got some nappy rash cream handy…

Oh, and when you get a moment, watch the following video … repeatedly.

Ciao,

Anthony “The Anti-Wuss” Colpo.
Fighting Cholesterol Paranoia and Turning Wusses into Real Men Since 2003!

—

The Trouble with Bullshit

Anthony Colpo — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 02:05:17 +0000

Note: You may have surmised from the title that this article contains strong language. You would be correct. If such language offends, please close this page immediately and go watch a Wiggles DVD instead.
You think these guys can pump out the patties? They’ve got nothing on your average diet guru.

—

“We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production. The more polite among you may call it poppycock or balderdash or claptrap, but the concept remains the same. Never in history have so many people uttered statements that they know to be untrue. While bullshit is not new, more money, more media, and more marketing spin have led to a bullshit pandemic. Today, we are so used to exaggeration, cliches, euphemisms, and evasion we rarely notice them any more.”
-from Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit by Laura Penny.

—

As Laura Penny so correctly points out, we live in a world awash with bullshit, the effects of which range from relatively harmless to downright catastrophic. When a bunch of guys sit around boisterously bragging about their sexual exploits, or when a girl with whom you’re about to become intimately acquainted says “I don’t normally do this!”, or when a salesman does the “I’ll have to check with my manager” routine before lowering the price, everyone present is aware, at least implicitly, that they are participating in an exchange of hogwash. When a flabby older guy looks at your buffed, lean physique and feels compelled to blurt out “When I was your age, I was twice as big and fit as you!”, you know the guy is talking schiesen. But instead of asking, “So what the hell happened?!”, you let the poor bloke have his brief moment of thinly-disguised envy, and continue on your way. Because, in the overall scheme of things, such releases of bovine excrement are relatively innocuous.

But when advertisers successfully cajole you into a life of spiraling consumption and debt, or when Big Pharma convinces you to take dangerous drugs you don’t really need, or when the government fabricates claims that a certain oil-rich Middle Eastern nation is harboring weapons of mass destruction and sends your sons and daughters off to get bombed and shot at, then bullshit takes on a whole new face. A very, very ugly one.

I’ll leave the detailed analyses of consumerism and corporate/government chicanery to someone else. My specialty is exposing diet bullbutter, and today I want to discuss with you just how pervasive this particular brand of merde has become, and how it is messing not just with people’s bodies but also their heads.

Real Life Experiences With Diet Phobias

An increasing theme among the correspondence I’ve been receiving of late is gratitude from people telling me how my writings helped them escape from suffocating diet dogma. A lot of these folks had succumbed to such dogma to the point where they were displaying symptoms akin to those observed in anxiety and phobic syndromes. Here’s one of the more detailed emails, which I recently received from Shawn M:

Your website led me to a cure for my anxiety disorder.

I followed a very similar path to the one you did. The first experiences I had with nutrition were entirely unpleasant. The “healthy diet” recommended by the “experts” was completely devoid in flavors that are among some of the highest pleasures of life. The ironic thing is I didn’t feel good, I was getting sick more often, and the most disturbing thing was that life began to feel as bland as diet I was eating. I began to question the parroted advice of experts which is when I looked for alternatives to the side effect laden, depressing, and, in retrospect, dangerous diet I had been told was the only way to achieve good health.

I didn’t have the internet back then because I was still in high school and my parents were behind the times in technology. There was a plentiful amount of literature available though and I read them. One of them made a lot of sense, the Atkins diet. It seemed to make sense that a low carb diet would be the quick way to regaining my health. The horrible blood sugar swings I has been experiencing on the low fat diet seemed to indicate that a ketogenic diet would be perfect. I fell hook, line, and sinker for the promise of greater health and comfort I had never known from a constant supply of ketones fueling me. A state where my body was constantly burning fat seemed like a great way to lean out too. Initially I did feel great. Whether it was from a GHB mimicking ketone, higher protein supply, different nutrient profile, or the mood lifting effects of dietary fats something made me feel better and I stuck with it. I sung the wonders of eating low carb to my friends and family while my body was slowly heading towards dilapidation for the second time no less. The nasty effects finally began to manifest: My ability to run the next year when summer came around was pathetic, I just felt alright which isn’t a good thing to feel especially when you’re trying to improve your body, I felt nearly as bad as on the low fat diet. It was during that time period that I was reading your website at the school I went too. I loved reading your website. It was entertaining, greatly enhanced my knowledge, instilled a love of researching in me, and seemed to run somewhat parallel to my experience.

I read your articles on monkeys and their premium fat diets, the link between saturated fats and testosterone, and even then you stuck by the calories count rule. Your picture on The Omnivore [Anthony's note: Shawn is referring to my old website, TheOmnivore.com] proved it, It was very similar to what, I was going for. The first website I visited every day when I got my limited access to the internet at school was The Omnivore. Sadly I abandoned my attempts at eating a healthy diet. It didn’t seem worth the hassle when there was no benefits to living in deprivation.

I grew older and graduated, I got a job and began to develop a very severe anxiety disorder. I has trouble functioning and leaving the house. Never once did I stop and think, my diet and lifestyle might have something to do with this. At this point, I had the internet and I started to assiduously study pharmacology. That seemed like the most logical way to cure myself. I had no friends at this point due to social phobia so I was free to study every waking hour of every day looking for a solution to my problems. I did drugs, both illicit, licit, and right from the doctor’s prescription pad. None of them helped. Despair filled my life and I slowly rotted physically and mentally. My once bright future grew closer to being extinguished every day. There was a day I remembered Anthony Colpo and The Omnivore. I decided to revisit for old times sake. I was shocked to see it no longer existed but I did see a new website in its place. I read every single thing you wrote on your website just like The Omnivore. I saw you changed your opinion and it made a ton of sense, Your article on being brainwashed is one of your finest moments in my opinion but there was something about your drive to be the best you can be that clicked with me. I had to do something, I was losing my mind.

With my love of nutrition reignited and some motivation granted to me, I started looking at diet and mental health as well as physical health. My study of pharmacology also helped. Its surprising how similar many nutrients are to clinically available antidepressants. NMDA antagonism, neurotransmitter production, BDNF upregulation, AMPA modulation, omega 3′s and proper neurogenesis to mention a few can all be effected by diet and lifestyle. I created a list of things that are documented to lower anxiety in studies: omega 3′s exercise, magnesium, zinc, lower copper, exercise, meditation, bright light exposure, vitamin D microbial content in foods, fats, slow carbs like fruit, lysine, cigarettes cessation, among others, and I cured it. I no longer live in a perpetual state of suffering. The food I eat and exercise I do are something to look forward too. No fads. Just me and my desire to improve myself, bettering myself one day at a time.

I hope I didn’t seem like I was too gushy about you in this email. I just feel like your passion and your ideas were the catalyst to making myself into the person I am today. I thank you for your website and hope that you keep researching and being passionate about your interests. Very soon I plan on getting your The Fat Loss Bible. I’m thin right now but I just don’t have that lean look yet. I trust you more than the abundant parrots.

Shawn

Thankfully, Shawn’s story has had a happy outcome. He’s gotten over his dogma-induced phobia and adopted a far more relaxed, commonsense approach to nutrition.

Now I would like to turn your attention to a story I find somewhat disturbing, the outcome of which is yet to be determined. Several weeks ago, I was contacted by a young lad who, for the sake of privacy, I’ll refer to simply as J.

Hi Anthony my name is J and I had a few questions for you. ANY AND AS MUCH INFORMATION would be greatly appreciated. Over the past 2 years i’ve been struggling with an eating disorder, anorexia. I’m 16 years old right now. I am still a very restrictive eater and its particularly because of carbohydrates. My mom told me about you the other day and how you managed to stay lean while eating i think 450 g of carbs a day? My fears about carbs stretch out as far as insulin, glycemic index, simple, complex, starchy, sugary. Im scared and i mean SCARED of fruit, its fructose, you can only store so much liver glycogen right? same with muscles they only have a minimal storage capacity and then the rest is fat fat fat. It’s destroyed my life in every aspect, its all i think about, i am so lost with proper diet for gaining lean quality muscle mass and getting 6 pack abs. Any feedback would be so very much appreciated, it might even save me. Thankyou.

My first thought when I received J’s email was…“Oh boy!” I’m not a therapist, I simply relay information about diet, training and health to those who are interested. So I wrote back to J and offered what I figured was the most useful contribution I could make – namely, I gave him a free copy of The Fat Loss Bible and suggested he carefully read the information on carbohydrates, which dispels the anti-insulin/anti-carbohydrate nonsense that was all the rage in the early 2000s, the nostril-pinching stench of which still lingers some ten years later.

I received an email back from J, thanking me for the book but stating that he was still “scared” of carbs, and asking if I had any more suggestions. Due to a combination of being on the road and somewhat at a loss for what to say next, I hadn’t had time to respond before I received an email from J’s mother. I’ve reprinted the subsequent exchange below:

Mr Colpo

I am writing to you with a request. I know you are a very busy man and congratulations on your much deserved success. My son J sent you a message in which you replied to him (thanks for that) and also included a link for your book for free (so kind of you thanks again) he has been a restricting eater for two years got caught up in the low carb BS and is now trying to get over it. he has very little if any body fat he is 5’9 120 lbs. he lifts weights 4 times a week. as i said he is trying to get over the fear of carbs, GI and all the other info he is overloaded on. He has great admiration for you and I was hoping you could send him words of encouragement and perhaps and helpful info that could help him with this process? i understand your schedule is probably very tight but if you would be able to it would be much appreciated and possibly the boost that he needs!

sincerely

—

Hi D,

first of all, sorry for my slow response, I have been on the road for the last 2 weeks and am currently in Alpine Victoria.

I think J’s situation is a serious one, and I must state that I am not trained or equipped to counsel individuals with eating disorders, and that it would be highly irresponsible for me to pretend otherwise.

The best I can do is to present the facts pertaining to carbohydrate-based nutrition, and show in plain language why the anti-carbohydrate claims of the low-carb crowd are pseudo-scientific nonsense. I have done this at length in The Fat Loss Bible, which as you know I gave a copy of to J.

If a simple, science-backed analysis of the facts is not enough to convince J, then it appears his exposure to low-carb propaganda has left him inculcated with a deeply ingrained and irrational fear of carbohydrates.

I would love to suggest counseling, but the kind of therapist required would need to be knowledgeable not just on the appropriate cognitive based therapies but also knowledgeable on nutrition and aware of the untenable claims being made by the low-carb crowd. Perhaps you can begin making enquiries in an effort to locate competent therapists in your area who have experience dealing with eating disorders.

While you do this, as a concerned and caring parent you may want to sit down and talk about carbohydrate and diet-related issues with J.

Perhaps you can convince him to incrementally increase his carbohydrate intake, instead of making large jumps at once. By taking baby steps, and observing how he does not feel any worse (in contrast, he’ll very likely find he feels a whole lot better), his irrational fear of carbohydates may begin to wane.

You may like to discuss with J the fact that all elite athletes consume high-carbohydrate diets. If carbohydrates caused humans to become overweight, insulin-resistant, and perpetually-inflamed, why are these athletes able to perform such remarkable feats (feats, I might add, that no low-carb shill could ever replicate…)?

You may like to emphasize to J how refined carbohydrates like sucrose and high fructose corn syrup are starkly different entities from perfectly wholesome and healthful foods such as tubers, rice, berries and fruits.

If J seeks to gain muscle mass, you may like to discuss the research I cite in FLB showing low-carb diets to suppress markers of anabolism (lean mass growth). You may like to discuss with him the fact that the nutrition trend in pro bodybuilding has swung back to high-carb nutrition.

It is imperative that J seeks the right assistance, as he is in the midst of a critical growth phase of his life, and low-carb diets are not conducive to optimal growth; In epileptic children, for example, use of ketogenic diets is frequently associated with underweight.

I don’t know what more I can say, D…I wish J all the best, if you or he has any science-oriented questions related to carbohydrate ingestion that aren’t addressed in FLB, then feel free to write back. But I must state again that I am concerned for J’s well-being and earnestly feel he may need assistance that goes beyond a few rallying words from yours truly.

Kind regards,

Anthony.

—

Thanks Anthony. I appreciate you taking the time to respond. He is currently in therapy but more influence comes from those that he sees and their results. I will share with him your info and continue to encourage him. Thanks again

—

I feel for J, I really do – I was a teenager once, and truth be told, it was a bloody nightmare. Thank goodness for my bike, because I honestly don’t know what I would have done without the solace, freedom, and sense of escape it gave me. For crying out loud, teenage years are already chaotic enough; you have formative young minds, suddenly shoved into adult bodies, in the midst of a critical phase in life where they are transitioning from being raised, controlled and protected by their parents to becoming independent adults in their own right.

Academic worries, conflict with parents, the often very rocky and bumpy drive to establish a sense of self-identity, the unrelenting peer-group pressure to do the most retarded of things (“Hey guys, let’s get sloshed, pop some pills, and take my parents’ Lexus for a spin!” “Great idea bro!”…”Hey sisters, let’s take photos of our genitalia and SMS them to all our friends, who will then forward them onto everyone in the school, so that they will eventually be seen by the principal and our parents! Our antics might even make the local newspaper, bringing widespread shame and scorn on ourselves and our families!” “Yeah, awesome idea, woohoo!!”).

Add in a little thing called sexual maturation, and you’ve got all the ingredients to turn adolescence into a bonafide powder keg.

And now, on top of all this, we apparently have young males so affected by the preponderance of dietary bullshit they’re developing anxiety and eating disorders, the latter once thought to be the province of young girls swayed by the anorexic ‘ideals’ held up by women’s magazines and the fashion industry. The deeply ironic thing is that most of this bullshit emanates from health ‘experts’ who are in poor physical shape themselves and wouldn’t know good nutrition if it landed on their heads.

As I said earlier, I’m no therapist, and I was at a loss for what I though would be truly constructive words that would have a meaningful impact on J’s condition, so I’m glad he’s getting help from a qualified counselor. But on further thought, I do have something more to say to J, and to all those who find themselves obsessing over diet to the point where it becomes a source of angst and displeasure:

Consider Your Sources. Carefully!

As I will discuss shortly, most disseminators of dietary information are totally clueless, and in some cases, downright deluded. Harsh words? Maybe, but they’re 100% true.

If You Can’t Enjoy Your Food, What Can You Enjoy?

When I was a kid, there was an ad on Australian TV by a company called Sanitarium (which, ironically, is run by vegetarians) that used to chime “Food shouldn’t just taste good, it should be good for you!” I totally agree, but I’d like to emphasize something that a lot of people, sadly, seem to have completely forgotten:

Food shouldn’t just be good for you, it should taste good!

You should enjoy eating. Food should not be drudgery, or a chore, or a source of guilt, anxiety, neuroticism, or feelings of deprivation. But thanks to decades upon decades of unbridled bullshit from health authorities, drug companies, diet and health authors, and the clueless journalists and unscrupulous publishers that embrace their excrementa, we now have hordes of people for whom nutrition is not a source of joy but instead a source of continual angst, confusion and neuroticism.

I used to be one of them. In what now thankfully seems like a lifetime ago, I fell for the pseudoscience of both the low-fat and low-carb crowds, and my well-being suffered for it. I turned my back on many of my favourite foods, began eating tasteless whole-grains, surgically trimmed and rinsed all the fat from my food, and strove to cram six meals into my day, every day, becoming agitated if I missed a meal. And just as I got over all that nonsense, and the attendant fluctuating energy and blood sugar levels, along came low-carbing. Instead of irrationally fearing fat, I developed an irrational fear of carbs. Many of my favourite foods, like fruit salads, sweet potatoes, and pizza became distant memories, just as fat-rich meats had during my low-fat days. And my reward for not learning my lesson in the first instance was muscle-draining glycogen depletion that killed my performance on the bike, along with euthyroid sick syndrome that reduced my cold tolerance to the point where winter in Melbourne felt like Alaska.

One of the reasons I do what I do is so that people don’t have to go through what I’ve been through. I don’t want people neurotically obsessing over food and harbouring irrational phobias against fat or carbohydrate. I don’t want people fretting over their cholesterol levels when an impartial and extensive review of the science shows the cholesterol theory of heart disease is utter rubbish. I don’t want people freaking out if some utterly inconsequential strip of plastic fails to turn purple when they pee on it. I don’t want people believing the low-carb “fat adaptation” fantasy, only to watch their athletic performance go to hell in a handbasket

Fad diets, made up of either unnatural foods or eating patterns that humans avoided throughout evolution except in times of starvation or due to unfavorable ecology, do not adequately nourish neither the body nor the mind. They unnecessarily deprive us of essential nutrients and turn what should be one of life’s greatest pleasures into a grudging chore.

Imagine, if you will, someone making the following pitch to you:

“Hi, I”m Dr Robert Dickless, author of Dr Dickless’s Sex-Free Revolution: Become Fabulously Frigid in Only 30 Days! Are you overweight? Are you depressed? Are you always feeling tired and exhausted? In my new book, I explain why you may be suffering from ESS – Excessive Sex Syndrome! Did you know that studies show sex releases vital hormones and fluids, and that once you lose enough of these substances, your body begins a rapid downward spiral into obesity and ill-health? Did you know that the only reason nature wants us to have sex is to create human life? In my book, you’ll learn the key rules to living the healthy, high-energy Dickless lifestyle!

1. Fornicate only once a month until pregnancy occurs!

2. Do not have sex during daylight hours; humans evolved to hunt and gather during the day, not partake in nookie!

3. Do not have sex during pregnancy – it’s unnecessary! Upon successful delivery, do not have sex for another two years to allow mommy’s body a full recovery!

4. No contraceptives, because contraceptives do not occur in nature! Everybody knows Paleolithic humans didn’t use creams, condoms, or diaphragms, so you shouldn’t either! By the way, they also didn’t have mattresses, so you must only get busy on the ground; suitable surfaces include grass, sand, rock and dirt (Stone Agers didn’t have carpet you know!).

This may sound a little inconvenient at first, but after a few weeks on the Dickless Sex-Free program, you will experience incredible energy, fat loss, and a constant feeling of euphoria! Order your copy now for only $149.95, and discover the sex-free Dickless life!”

If someone made the above claims to you, you’d think they were stark raving mad, correct? If someone insisted you do the nasty only once per month and to abstain the best part of three years after conception, you’d likely tell them to go fornicate with themselves, pronto!

So tell me…what should you say to some pseudoscientific alarmist who tries to inculcate you with a fear of perfectly healthy carbohydrate foods?

What should you say to someone who lumps table sugar and high fructose corn syrup in with sweet potatoes and berries as if they were one and the same? Someone who is evidently too stupid to recognize the key differences between highly refined sugars and minimally processed whole foods?

What should you say to someone who claims wholly natural carbohydrates are unhealthy, even though humans have been consuming them with much success for millions of years and they form the staple dietary component of the world’s longest-living populations?

What should you say to some clueless, portly dogmatist who tells you insulin is an evil substance when it is in fact it a crucial hormone without which you could not survive?

What should you say to someone who, with his bulbous belly yearning to burst free from his man-girdle, claims eating a low-carbohydrate diet speeds up your metabolism and allows you to lose more weight in the form of unwanted fat, even though this has never been demonstrated in tightly-controlled clinical research?

What exactly should you say to someone who, in a storm of hyperbole, claims he/she holds the secrets to fat loss, yet is carrying way too much flab himself?

What should you think and say when some goofball insists you abstain from meat, or even animal products entirely, even though humans have been eating them to much benefit for millions of years?

What should you say to someone who moralizes, chastises, and attempts to make you feel guilty for eating meat, when it in fact provides numerous key nutrients that are either entirely absent from or found in low amounts in plant foods?

What should you say to someone who insists vegetarianism is the natural diet of humans, when it simply cannot deliver adequate amounts of vitamin B12, a nutrient absolutely essential for optimal health?

You should tell them the exact same thing you’d tell Dr. Dickless, because all of their claims are every bit as unscientific and idiotic as his.

If everyone did this maybe we could make headway into cleaning up the diet and health information industries, because as it stands, they are absolutely overflowing with bullshit. The diet and health arena is filled with individuals and organizations who make lots of money making claims with absolutely no foundation in sound science. They make statements that are utterly false based on greed, ignorance, confirmation bias, “gut feeling”, wishful thinking, confounder-prone and selectively recalled personal experiences and, in the case of private and governmental organizations, the influence of lobbying and financial incentives from vested interests. Sometimes a combination of these factors is at play, but the bottom line is the same: the information being disseminated is of poor quality and, if put into practice, can have serious repercussions for both mental and physical health.

Ironically, despite the pseudoscientific and conflicting nature of their claims, most diet and health ‘gurus’ insist their recommendations are the pinnacle of sound science and constitute the most effective path to glowing health and racehound leanness.

Not-So New Research Finding: Low-Carb Gurus are Full of It!

Let’s take a closer look at the low-carb camp, whose abundant excretion of bullpucky has been instrumental in shaping J’s unfortunate dietary phobia towards carbohydrate.

Ever since the late 90s, when low-fat mania started to wane and the decades-old pseudoscience of Dr Robert Atkins stormed back into vogue, the low-carb shills have subjected us to a continual stream of bollocks.

Take for example their most persistent and infamous claim:

“Low-carb diets allow you to lose weight while eating more calories!”

Bullshit.

If the low-carb hucksters had cared to examine the metabolic ward studies – the only kind of comparative studies where researchers have an ice cube’s chance in hell of ensuring their participants actually consume isocaloric diets – they would have quickly learned that a low-carb diet has never been documented to cause greater fat-derived weight loss than an isocaloric high-carb diet.

Oh wait a minute, Atkins did read at least some of these ward studies! We know he read the paper by Werner et al[1], but he quickly dismissed this inconveniently non-supportive study, using the lame excuse that it was too high in carbohydrate to promote ketosis[2]. But Werner had used similar macronutrient amounts (including only 52 grams of carbohydrate daily) as was used in a previous free-living study by Pennington, which Atkins called “exciting”[3]. Atkins considered the Pennington study so titillating, of course, because it returned results supportive of his pro-low-carb stance.

Dr. Michael Eades, author of Protein Power, also read the ward studies. Trouble is, it was years after he’d already co-penned his best-selling Atkins knock-off, and only then because yours truly used them to destroy his nonsensical and absurdly biased “metabolic advantage” claims. And like Atkins, when Eades came face to face with the ward results, he embraced the studies that told him what he wanted to hear, and attacked (in his case, quite bitterly) those that didn’t. Ward studies, he claimed, were poorly controlled farces rife with cheating, the participants of which were nothing but the very lowest dregs of society. But when he realized some of the ward studies could be distorted to support the metabolic advantage dogma (MAD), he embraced them the way a returning soldier hugs his missus and kids at the airport. Trouble was, one of these studies was so poorly conducted even the researchers themselves admitted it was rife with cheating, and that its participants were a bunch of misfits with “inadequate personalities.” The other two were German studies with inexplicably high dropout rates, extremely sketchy data and a host of unwarranted and untenable assumptions, and ultimately irreproducible conclusions. You know, just the kind of research you should cite while continuing to ignore far higher quality and often meticulously conducted ward trials!

That folks, is pretty much how the low-carb crowd work. When a tightly controlled trial fails to support their cherished dogma, they attack it, rationalize it away, or just plain ignore it. Meanwhile, inferior quality research that supports their pet paradigms is excitedly reported and lavishly praised, taken at face value with nary an ounce of the eagle-eyed skepticism they employ when seeking to discredit contradictory research.

And it doesn’t end there. If the research can’t be made to support what low-carb authors want you to believe, then they just go ahead and make shit up. Feast your eyes upon the following ‘quote’ shared by British low-carb author Bary Groves, author of Eat Fat, Get Thin! and The High Pro Low Carb Diet: Eat as Much as You Like and Still Lose Weight:

“‘On a high-fat diet, 4703 to 8471 excess calories were required for each kilogram of added weight. On a low fat VLCD [very low calorie diet], replacing fat calories with 8g/day of equivalent carbohydrate calories reduced weight loss by 1.68kg, corresponding to 3300 calories of carbohydrate/kilogram, possibly 2500 calories per kilogram for carbohydrate alone.’”

Groves attributed this quote to a 1975 NIH publication titled Obesity in Perspective, and mindless followers of the low-carb cult promptly repeated the above passage all over the Internet. So I cruised down to Monash University, pulled out the library’s copy of the NIH tome, and looked for the quote. And looked. And looked.

It didn’t exist.

Puzzled, I cruised on back home and emailed Groves. I was rather startled when he admitted making the quote up! He nonchalantly admitted taking the weight gain/calorie intake data from the NIH paper, and some fat loss/calorie intake data from a paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. He then performed a little mixin’-an’-a-matchin’ to arrive at a quote that nicely supported his low-carb thesis.

What a blatant piece of bovine poopery.

Groves subsequently removed the quote from his website, but if you copy and paste his cut’n'shut passage from above into Google, you’ll see it still appears all over the Internet. Bullshit, like other forms of excrementa, often displays enduring stickiness.

You’d think after this episode, one would be a little less inclined to play fast and loose with the truth. But you’re probably one of these silly folks who has a sense of shame, one that would promptly kick in after being caught out. Silly you – don’t you realize the primacy of dogma and the need to support your ingrained beliefs prevail above all else?

Cast your gawkers upon the following email recently sent by Groves:

Anthony

You say “And what about the fact that the longest running free-living trials show no difference in weight loss between low-carb and higher carb diets over the longer term? Why is this? Again, because people on the low-carb diets failed to maintain their calorie deficit over the long term, and hence any weight loss advantage disappeared. Again, thanks to ward studies, we know the true mechanism at work.”

You, Anthony, apparently, do not!

In all studies carried out which compare low-fat, carb-based and low-carb, high-fat diets – including your long-running ward studies – there is always a quicker weight loss on the low-carb diets. That demonstrates that for weight loss, the low-carb diets are better.

But, you will say, this is only seen in studies lasting less than 52 weeks.

And by this stage, the low-fat dieters have caught up. I agree, but there is a reason for this which you obviously haven’t considered. Low-fat, low-calorie diets are starvation diets. Eating that way, if continued, forces the body to go underweight (see inmates of WWII concentration camps).

Low-carb, high-fat diets are not calorie-restricted. Once a person approaches their normal weight, the rate of weight loss diminishes, and once a normal weight is achieved, weight loss ceases. That it one reason why low-carb diets are so much healthier than calorie-restricted diets. When in medical practice for well over 50 years, my late friend, Wolfgang Lutz, used the same low-carb diet for both those who were overweight and those who were underweight – with success in both. (See Life Without Bread, p145)

But, as you say on your blog, “when most people are committed to a certain viewpoint there’s no way they’ll admit they are wrong, even when presented with conclusive scientific evidence proving as much.”, so I won’t try to change you. Like you, “I’ve got far better things to do with my time.”

Barry

As I replied to Mr Groves, I’m left shaking my head every time someone who has no clue tells me I have no clue. And rest assured, when it comes to fat loss, Barry Groves is as clueless as they come.

I proceeded to explain to Mr Groves, as I had already done at least twice before, that there is no ward study in existence showing low-carb diets to cause greater fat-derived weight loss than isocaloric high-carb diets.

Not one.

I explained how the quicker weight loss sometimes seen in the first week or two of low-carb dieting is well known to be due to greater water losses. Low-carb diets cause an initial rapid excretion of sodium, potassium and cause greater depletion of muscle glycogen – all of which exert pronounced diuretic effects. I provided Barry with a link in which this is carefully explained, which he obviously did not read and had no intention of reading because, in true low-carb fashion, he had already decided what he wanted to believe and such trifling annoyances as scientific facts were not about to sway him.

I explained to Mr Groves that weight loss is only achieved with a caloric deficit, and that there is no greater fat-derived weight loss on low-carb diets as metabolic ward studies clearly show. I told Barry if he disagreed, then fine: he was more than welcome to provide me with a metabolic ward study showing greater fat-derived weight loss on a low-carb diet than on an isocaloric high-carb diet.

I’ve not heard back from Barry.

When Barry writes, “But, you will say, this [greater weight loss on low-carb diets] is only seen in studies lasting less than 52 weeks. And by this stage, the low-fat dieters have caught up”, he is engaging in the art of bluffacious bullshit, the kind that could only be produced by someone who has not read the relevant studies but cavalierly pretends he has.

Let’s call Barry on his bluff. First of all, as I explain in The Fat Loss Bible, around half of the free-living studies lasting less than 12 months show no greater weight or fat loss on a low-carb diet. But, for some strange reason, low-carb shills never bang on about those studies. And let’s not forget that 100% of metabolic ward studies – all of which have lasted less than 12 months – show no greater fat loss on isocaloric low-carb diets. And the free-living studies lasting 12 months or more? They’re virtually unanimous in showing no advantage to low-carb diets. In the ones in which low-carb diets had displayed an initial weight loss advantage (due to greater satiety and/or restricted food choices), weight was typically regained after this initial phase. So much for the high-carb ‘starvation’ diets playing “catch-up”…

Don’t take my word for it, check the studies for yourself:

A Randomized Trial of a Low-Carbohydrate Diet for Obesity
Subjects on the low-carbohydrate diet had lost more weight than subjects on the conventional diet at 3 months (mean –6.8 vs. –2.7 percent of body weight) and 6 months (–7.0 vs. –3.2 %), but the difference at 12 months was not significant (–4.4 vs. –2.5 percent). No playing “catch up” for the high-carb group – their weight loss remained constant, while the low-carb group began regaining the weight they’d lost, to the point where the difference was no longer statistically significant.

Comparative Study of the Effects of a 1-Year Dietary Intervention of a Low-Carbohydrate Diet Versus a Low-Fat Diet on Weight and Glycemic Control in Type 2 Diabetes.
In this study, the low-carb dieters lost weight quicker – and regained it quicker. Both the high- and low-carbers lost the same amount of weight at 12 months.

The Effects of Low-Carbohydrate versus Conventional Weight Loss Diets in Severely Obese Adults: One-Year Follow-up of a Randomized Trial.
Participants on the low-carbohydrate diet maintained most of their 6-month weight loss, whereas those on a conventional diet continued to lose weight throughout the year. The final 1-year weight change was -5.1 kg in the low-carbohydrate group and -3.1 kg in the conventional diet group. The difference in weight loss between the 2 diet groups was not significant.

But wait, there’s more…

Persons on the low-carbohydrate diet who dropped out of the study lost less weight than those who completed the study (change, -0.2 vs. -7.3 kg, respectively). In contrast, weight loss was not significantly different for those on the conventional diet, whether they dropped out or completed the study (change, -2.2 vs. -3.7 respectively). Like the overall weight loss result, this difference was not statistically significant.

Comparison of the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone Diets for Weight Loss and Heart Disease Risk Reduction
Mean weight loss at 1 year was 2.1 kg for Atkins, 3.2 kg for Zone, 3.0 kg for Weight Watchers, and 3.3 kg for Ornish. Amount of weight loss was associated with self-reported dietary adherence level but not with diet type. Sorry, Barry.

Long-term effects of a very low-carbohydrate diet and a low-fat diet on mood and cognitive function.
At 12 months, mean (SE) weight loss was 13.7 kg, with no significant difference between the low- and high-carb groups. The low-carb group, however, did have poorer outcomes on total mood disturbance, anger-hostility, confusion-bewilderment, and depression-dejection. Which goes some way to explaining the persistently irrational behaviour of the low-carb crowd. The low-carb diet also worsened flow-mediated dilatation, a measure of endothelial function, compared to the high-carb diet.

Long-term effects of low-carbohydrate versus low-fat diets in obese persons.
At 36 months, persons in the low-carbohydrate group weighed 2.2 kg less than at baseline compared with 4.3 kg less in the low-fat group (difference not statistically significant). From months 12 to 36, the mean difference in weight change was also not significant, although the low-carbohydrate group regained weight and the low-fat group did not.

Weight and Metabolic Outcomes After 2 Years on a Low-Carbohydrate Versus Low-Fat Diet. A Randomized Trial.
Weight loss was approximately 11 kg (11%) at 1 year and 7 kg (7%) at 2 years. There were no differences in weight, body composition, or bone mineral density between the groups at any time point.

Sorry again, Barry.

Fat loss, by the way, is hardly the only aspect of low-carb nutrition in which Mr Groves allows his creative instincts to roam free.

In this article, Groves claims that Ethiopian runner Mamo Wolde powered his way to victory in the 1968 Olympic marathon on a zero-carb diet of high-fat meat. This is what Groves claimed about Wolde’s victory in Mexico City:

“Now let’s look at a real athlete

It was 1968 at the Mexico City Olympic Games. The spectators at the marathon went wild as a relatively unknown Ethiopian, Mamo Wolde, won the marathon. Not only was the thirty-six-year-old runner the oldest man ever to win this prestigious event, he did it in a time that has not been bettered to this day.

So what was Wolde’s secret?

Wolde grew up in an Ethiopian village. His life consisted of running after and hunting wild game on foot. His diet was one high in animal meat and fat, with practically no carbohydrate. Subsequent tests showed that Wolde’s body, under conditions of physical load, readily burned fat as its main energy source. Wolde had no concept of ‘hitting the wall’. It had never happened to him.”

First of all, Wolde’s time was not a record and has been beaten at every Summer Olympics since.

Secondly, I have searched high and low to find evidence of Mamo Wolde’s dietary habits during his competitive years, and have found nothing. The only evidence Groves appears to cite in support of Wolde’s alleged low-carb ways is a study from a 1994 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, but it had absolutely nothing to do with Mamo Wolde nor with low-carb diets[4]. This study in fact involved six American male collegiate runners whose endurance was tested on three different diets. The amount of fat used for fuel during exercise and time to exhaustion was reportedly increased on the “high-fat” diet. What Groves doesn’t mention is that the composition of said diet was 12% protein, 38% fat, and 50% carbohydrate – hardly the high-fat ketogenic affair he claims, without evidence, that Wolde followed!

As I explain here, numerous reports have been published in the peer-reviewed literature regarding the eating habits of East African runners, and they all report the same thing: These athletes eat diets high in carbohydrate, containing only modest amounts of protein and fat.

Like his metabolic advantage arguments, Groves simply decided what he wanted to believe about Wolde’s eating habits, lack of evidence be damned. Regrettably, scores of gullible individuals earnestly believe Groves’ 1968 Olympic fairy tale; I’m told there is even an Internet forum devoted to zero-carbing ‘athletes’, the inspiration for which was the allegedly low-carb driven, record-breaking run of…Mamo Wolde.

It should be pretty clear by now to all but those with the most glucose-depleted craniums that there’s no such thing as a metabolic advantage, but the low-carb hucksters sure cashed in on the meta-bollocks advantage: the law of nature that states the bigger and more grandiose the bullshit, the more likely people are to fall for it in a big way, and the more loot you have the opportunity to make off with.

But what’s a little BS between low-carb friends, you ask? Who listens to these greying, anachronistic jokers, anyhow? Hasn’t the low-carb craze come and gone?

Yes, the craze has come and gone. But like I said, bullshit sticks. So here’s what I have to say to young J:

Seriously J, do you really think the kind of folks who spread low-carb dogma are worth listening to? Do you really want to let the nonsense these people spread leave a permanent stain on your crucial formative years?

C’mon’ champ…you’re a young man with your whole life ahead of you, and a loving mum right behind you. The world is about to open itself up to you…just don’t let a bunch of deluded, dogmatic, greying old farts piss in it. Let them soak in the soiled pool of flab they’ve created for themselves, while you embrace a far more sensible, non-religious approach to nutrition. Trust me, eating is one of life’s truly great pleasures, right up there with sex, family, triumphant achievements, physical activity, and the majestic splendor of unspoilt nature.

For heaven’s sake, don’t let a pack of clueless dogmatic twats take that pleasure away from you.

Go forth young man, with grass-fed T-bone in one hand and giant sweet potato in the other, and ride that surging wave of adolescent hormones to build a robust, healthy, muscle-bound body that will cause legions of girls to swoon and send you SMS pictures of their…um…new shoes or outfits or something (what did you think I was gonna say? Your mum’s reading this too, bro! LOL)

Eat healthy, brother, and grow into the lean, muscular, vibrant athletic specimen that all those flabby low-carb hucksters have never been and never will be.

Ciao,

Anthony “The Anti-Guru” Colpo.

References

1. Werner SC. Comparison between weight reduction on a high-calorie, highfat diet and on an isocaloric regimen high in carbohydrate. New England Journal of Medicine, Apr 21, 1955; 252 (16): 661–665.
2. Atkins RC. Dr. Atkin’s New Diet Revolution, Avon Books, 2002, New York, NY: 70.
3. Atkins RC. Dr. Atkin’s New Diet Revolution, Avon Books, 2002, New York, NY: 67.
4. Muoio DM, et al. Effect of dietary fat on metabolic adjustments to maximal VO-2 and endurance in runners. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 1994; 26 (1): 81-88.

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ISM Adamo Saddle: Oh What a Feeling!

Anthony Colpo — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:42:58 +0000

Note: This article makes mention of male gonads. Please close this page if you are offended by male gonads.

Many of my fellow male readers who ride regularly will attest that, while cycling is a beautiful sport, it isn’t exactly the most gonad-friendly activity. Picture this scenario, played out every day by hapless testes the world over:

RIGHT TESTICLE: “Hey little brother, I got bad news.”

LEFT TESTICLE: “Oh no, please don’t tell me he’s putting his bike shorts on?”

RIGHT TESTICLE: “Yup. Here we go again. Another 100kms of getting repeatedly smashed between the pelvis and that bloody bike seat…”

LEFT TESTICLE: “$#@%!”

Yep, it’s a tough life being a cyclist’s balls. Next time you think you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, spare a thought for these hardy little buggers, trying to maintain their critical status as fertile contributors to the continued propagation of humankind whilst getting royally pounded under highly claustrophobic conditions on a daily basis.

Where’s the Love?

Cycling technology has been pretty slow to accommodate the needs of the male anatomy. The first pedal-powered bicycle appeared in the mid-19th century, and since then there’s been a measly total of just two innovations aimed at making life easier for the male reproductive glands. The first was cycling shorts (knicks) that included padding in the crotch area; the second was the introduction of “anatomic” saddles that featured a groove or split in the middle. Anatomic saddles definitely make life easier on the perineum, but they still have that godamn nose that fights for space with your boys…and inevitably wins.

So while cycling technology had made some effort to accommodate the perineum, it seemed it had pretty much forgotten el cojones.

But then … the skies cleared, the sun started shining again, the birds sang, the clouds parted, and out from the heavens came…

[Trumpets please]

Fellas, this is the tune your crotch will be playing after riding on the ISM Adamo.

…the ISM Adamo!

Thank God You’re Here!

I’ve used all manner of anatomic saddles over the years, but there’s no getting around it: They all still feature that goddamn Pinocchio-like nose that sticks itself right where it’s not wanted. After finally being served notice from the Union Cojones Internationale (UCI) about the inhumane riding conditions I was subjecting my boys to, I had to take action. I briefly flirted with the idea of ordering a Selle SMP saddle, but then I saw it…

…the ISM Adamo.

I bought one, eagerly waited for it to make its way Down Under, then threw it on my bike the minute it arrived. The very first ride I knew I’d stumbled across something special. Let’s just say my boys were really, really happy with their owner and immediately withdrew their UCI complaint.

If you’ve checked out the picture above, you’ll have instantly noticed the Adamo doesn’t look like your typical bike seat. While most saddles have a single long nose, the Adamo has two short ones. I can’t believe it took 150 years for someone to come up with this simple but brilliant modification to the standard saddle design.

The blurb sums it up perfectly: “ISM, or Ideal Saddle Modification, is possibly the only saddle company that really gets it. Sure, most all saddle companies understand that the correct way to sit on a bicycle saddle is with the sit-bones, but ISM is the only company to completely delete the nose of the saddle, forcing the rider to be supported by the sit-bones. The ISM Adamo Road saddle makes lofty claims in the comfort department, and so far, they’ve held up.”

Anthony’s ~~European~~ Bright Vacation

After affixing the Adamo to my main rig, I only managed to squeeze in a couple of 90-minute rides before packing up my bike and heading off to my old stomping ground: Melbourne, the city of olive-skinned hotties, trams, and all-day traffic jams. On the same Sunday as the Australian Grand Prix, I took advantage of the quieter roads and went for a spin from Reservoir to Kinglake. After being on the bike a few hours, I got back home and noticed absolutely none of the “Geezus, why do you do this to us? Aren’t we good to you? What have we done to deserve this?” pissing and moaning I’d normally be subject to from my nethermost regions after a long ride.

But the real test came when I threw the bike back in the car and headed up to Bright, which features what must be Australia’s best riding; Mount Hotham, Mount Beauty, and Mount Buffalo are all within riding distance, and I did all three climbs in the space of a week. And once again, there was nary a whisper of protest from down south.

Folks, in my opinion the ISM Adamo is, without question, THE SHIT.

My experience to date is with the “Road” version (the bad boy in the picture above), but the Adamo is available in several variants, including MTB and touring versions. I’ve been so impressed I’ve already bought four more Adamos, including two of the Racing2 versions (a little lighter and reportedly slightly firmer than the Road).

About the only fault I can pick with the Adamo is that, at 300g for the Road and 270g for the Racing2, it isn’t exactly the lightest saddle around. But heck, I’m more than happy to trade a 150g weight saving for a pair of jewels that, instead of dreading the next ride, bounce out of bed each morning with a big smile on their face singing “zippededoodah, zippedeeday!”

Okay, okay, a little reality check is probably in order at this point. I’ve been gushing on about the Adamo like it’s the greatest thing since Nutella, but I’ve been toying around with bikes long enough to know that bike fit, including saddle compatibility, can be a highly individual thing. I was shocked, speechless, almost mortified in fact, to learn not everyone who tries the Adamo ends up as enthralled as I am. Crikey, what’s wrong with people?!

Seriously, if you buy this saddle and for some bizarre, inexplicable reason it’s not love at first sight, give it a chance. This ain’t no ordinary saddle, and you can’t just throw it on your bike fully expecting it will work perfectly right off the bat (although that’s pretty much how things transpired for me). Its shape and proportions are quite different to a typical saddle, and you may well need to play around with seat height and forward/rear positioning before you get it right. Here’s a helpful video discussing Adamo set-up:

One thing’s for sure – if you can get this saddle to work for you, it will work in a big way. If standard saddles make your little fellas all hot and bothered, then the pressure relief endowed by the ISM Adamo might just make make your millennium.

One of the more common complaints about the Adamo is that the two-pronged nose section is too wide for some folks. If that’s the case, then there’s always the narrower Cobb V-Flow, designed by John Cobb, the same innovative genius who played a big role in the Adamo design (from what I understand, Cobb is no longer associated with ISM and has since started his own company). Here’s an informative video comparing the Adamo Podium and V-Flow Max:

Before I sign off, a quick nod to all my female readers who may be feeling a little neglected by the male-centric focus of this article. Obviously, I can’t personally vouch for the potential female-friendliness of the Adamo, but here’s a review I came across from someone who can.

To grab yourself a reasonably priced Adamo Road saddle, and read reviews by other users, click here.

Competing interests: The author owns a set of cojones. The author has heretofore no relationship with ISM or John Cobb and has received no remuneration from them for this review.

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Anthony Colpo is an independent researcher, physical conditioning specialist, and author of The Fat Loss Bible and The Great Cholesterol Con. For more information, visit TheFatLossBible.net or TheGreatCholesterolCon.com

Disclaimer: All content on this web site is provided for information and education purposes only. Individuals wishing to make changes to their dietary, lifestyle, exercise or medication regimens should do so in conjunction with a competent, knowledgeable and empathetic medical professional. Anyone who chooses to apply the information on this web site does so of their own volition and their own risk. The owner and contributors to this site accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever for any harm, real or imagined, from the use or dissemination of information contained on this site. If these conditions are not agreeable to the reader, he/she is advised to leave this site immediately.

Red Meat Will Kill You, and Other Assorted Fairy Tales

Anthony Colpo — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:23:02 +0000

Breaking news from the deluded world of epidemiology: This T-bone is the same as a Big Mac, and will kill you!

It’s an annual event. Every year, without fail, the headlines are awash with claims that ‘new’ research shows red meat causes cancer. The source for this scary claim is invariably some big data-dredging project…uh, I mean, “epidemiological” study by researchers from Harvard or some other ‘prestigious’ institution (there are no actual randomized controlled clinical trials showing red meat causes cancer).

When the yearly ‘red meat causes cancer’ circus rolls into town, I tend to yawn and quickly divert my attention to other more pressing matters, like the finer points of beef spare rib preparation. Did you know the longer and gentler you cook those little suckers, the more likely they are to slip off the bone due to absurdly mouth-watering tenderness? And that just the right amounts of sea salt, cardamon and fenugreek make these delicacies even more sinfully delicious? Try it some time; just as your taste buds are about to reach the point of orgasm, spare a thought for those poor buggers who earnestly believe all this red-meat-is-bad-for-you nonsense.

Which brings me to the latest red meat-bashing paper that has everyone’s knickers in a knot. The study comes from Harvard researchers, and unlike the usual cancer focus, this one primarily addresses the risk of overall mortality allegedly imparted by eating red meat (the full text is available here). I’ve had a lot of folks asking for my ten cents worth on this study, so here it is:

I think this paper is a load of hogwash.

That’s my ten cents’ worth, hope that helps, I’m going out now. Ciao!

What?

You wanted something a little more scientific, like a discussion of the methods, data, and possible flaws in the study?

Damn it…I thought I was about to make an early getaway!

Oh alright, give me a second to pull the paper up again, and I’ll explain just why I think it’s a complete joke.

Epidemi-hogwash versus Clinical Trials

The first thing that should be pointed out about this paper is that it reports on two epidemiological studies, sometimes referred to as prospective, population-based or follow-up studies. These are studies in which researchers recruit a bunch of people, ask them a series of questions (sometimes only at the start of the study, sometimes at intermittent periods during the study) and then follow them up over a given number of years. In the case of health- and nutrition-oriented epidemiological projects, researchers will ask questions about diet and exercise habits, then see if there is any statistical association between diet, lifestyle and subsequent illness (morbidity) and death (mortality).

If you’ve read my book The Great Cholesterol Con, you’ll know I have an extremely poor regard for epidemiological studies, or more precisely, I have an extremely poor regard for the way in which they are routinely used as alleged ‘proof’ of a causal relationship between dietary factors and disease occurrence. Let’s be perfectly clear: epidemiological studies can not be used as proof of a causal relationship between meat and cancer, or saturated fat and heart disease, or anything else. They can only detect statistical associations; that is, the observation that people who eat this type of food tend to have more, less, or similar occurrence of X disease. Whether disease X is actually caused by that type of food, or whether people who eat that type of food more often are succumbing to the disease due to other behaviours they also engage in more often can not be conclusively determined from an epidemiological study.

For that, you need a randomized controlled clinical trial, in which you recruit a group of subjects, then randomly assign each subject to one of two groups. In the case of red meat, one group would be assigned to consume a diet low in red meat, another would follow a diet identical in every aspect except for a substantially higher red meat content. Both groups would receive clear instruction as to how to best construct and adhere to their respective diets. Although randomization isn’t perfect, it maximizes the likelihood that there is an equal number of smokers/diabetics/non-exercisers/drinkers/drug users/etc in each group, so that one group isn’t disadvantaged by a higher number of subjects with unhealthy habits and/or poorer health.

How to Avoid Prospectively Chasing Your Tail

I’ll give you an example of the futility of drawing concrete conclusions from epidemiological studies. Several decades ago, when Ancel Keys was making a big splash with his absurdly biased Six and Seven Countries studies that claimed fat and cholesterol caused heart disease, another researcher devoid of cherry picking tendencies decided to look at the problem in a little more depth. His name was John Yudkin, and he analyzed a greater number of countries than Keys’ had employed in his small handpicked sample, and found no relationship between fat and CHD. He did, however, find a strong relationship between television ownership and CHD; people who owned televisions were more likely to get heart disease.

Now, if I were a Harvard researcher and got a result like that, I’d immediately conclude televisions cause CHD and issue a sensationalist press release titled “Your TV is Killing You: New Study Shows Television Causes Heart Attacks!” And because most journalists responsible for health and nutrition stories are sheep-like creatures who know absolutely nothing of value about health and nutrition, and would assume that because I’m from Harvard I must really know my stuff when it comes to health research, my claims would get worldwide headline coverage.

However, having graduated not from Harvard but the University of Commonsense, and having majored in Bullshit Detection 101, my first reaction would be to ask, “Is there anything inherently toxic about televisions themselves, or is there some other associated factor at play here?”

Well, we know that television does not emit some toxic poison that seeps into the arteries of viewers, causing them to clutch their chests in terror and inconveniently die just as Lieutenant Horatio is about to nail the bad guys in CSI Miami.

What we do know is that, if you’re watching television, you’re sitting on your butt. Which means you’re not exercising. Instead, you’re probably eating high-calorie junk. If you watch a lot of TV, then that means you’re probably eating even more junk and even less likely to be exercising at all. In which case, you’re more likely to be overweight, unfit, and have the arterial elasticity of a steel girder.

Using the powers of deduction endowed to me by my advanced degree in BS Detection 101, I would promptly suspect that the actual causal factors for increased CHD risk are your poor physical condition and intemperate nutritional habits. This would then prompt me to make recommendations that would seek to directly improve your fitness and nutritional habits. Concluding that TV was the causal factor and telling you to get rid of your TV would do you a fat lot of good if you stayed on the couch and kept snacking your way to an early grave.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the very real danger inherent in the modern obsession with epidemiological studies. They are vastly inferior to randomized clinical trials, but when treated as if they are essentially the same thing – as is the widespread practise nowadays – they can lead to wildly inaccurate and misleading conclusions.

There are circumstances in which epidemiological research is indeed useful. If there is an outbreak of a new viral contagion, for example, researchers don’t have time to sit around discussing the finer nuances of a clinical trial. Epidemiological analysis allows them to determine what geographic locations/age groups/occupations/habits/ethnicities/etc seem to be most susceptible, and then take the appropriate action to contain the outbreak.

The other thing epidemiological research can be valuable for is as a prelude to clinical research, i.e. to determine associations worthy of confirmation or refutation in a far more controlled setting. Concluding from an epidemiological study that meat causes cancer or that driving Holden Barinas causes men to develop effeminate habits is plain stupid. However, noting that these relationships seem to be consistently observed in prospective studies and then commissioning a clinical trial to examine whether the relationship still remains evident in a far more controlled setting is not stupid – it’s good science. You know, the kind of science that would be practised in a world where drug companies and food conglomerates didn’t virtually own the medical and health fields and where researchers were a noble group of independent thinking mavericks who placed more value on relentlessly seeking out the truth than simply milking the same epidemiological study for one headline-grabbing paper after another. But I digress…

The bottom line is that concluding red meat increases cancer risk from an epidemiological study is very sloppy science. And that’s exactly what’s happening with this latest Harvard paper by Pan et al.

It Wasn’t the Inactivity, Smoking and Diabetes that Killed Them – it Was the Red Meat, Damnit!

One of the first things I look at when reading a paper like this is the baseline characteristics of the subjects. Doing so often gets alarm bells ringing, and right now, as I peruse Table 1 of the paper, my head is ringing like an incoming call centre. There are so many discrepancies it actually boggles my mind that anyone would take a paper like this seriously.

The researchers divided meat intake into five quintiles, from lowest to highest. And as you peruse the table, something quickly becomes blindingly obvious: The more red meat people ate in these studies, the more likely they were to live unhealthier lives overall.

Remember how I said this paper covered two studies? The first was the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS), the baseline data of which shows that as red meat intake rose, so too did the prevalence of all the following:

Physical inactivity
Smoking (the highest quintile of red meat consumption had three times as many smokers!)
Diabetes

Those who ate the most red meat also drank more alcohol, were less likely to use multivitamin supplements, and had a self-reported daily caloric intake over 800 calories more than those in the lowest quartile (2396 vs 1659 cals/day, respectively…more on that later).

So in HPFS, those who ate the most red meat also tended to live lifestyles that were unhealthier all-round.

And it’s much the same in the second project, the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS). The baseline data again show that those who ate the most red meat did less exercise, were more likely to smoke and have diabetes, were less likely to take a multivitamin, and also self-reported eating an extra 800+ calories daily.

Again, the more prolific red meat eaters smoked more, exercised less, and had a higher incidence of diabetes – a disease of disordered glycemic control with no plausible connection to red meat but strong links to excess caloric and refined carbohydrate consumption and physical inactivity.

I think it’s incredible that I even need to point this out in 2012, especially to Harvard researchers, but it’s pretty well established by now that smoking, diabetes and physical inactivity all greatly increase the risk of cancer, heart disease and premature mortality; the very outcomes that the researchers are ascribing in this paper to poor old red meat, everybody’s favourite whipping boy.

Some readers may object that this was countered by the multivariate analysis performed by the researchers, which adjusted for age, body mass index, physical activity level, smoking status, race, menopausal status and hormone use in women, family history of diabetes, myocardial infarction, or cancer; history of diabetes, hypertension, or hypercholesterolemia; and intakes of total energy, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

My response to that would be: Yeah, right.

Assuming that multivariate analysis can honestly remove all confounding variables and provide a truly accurate risk assessment is to basically claim that researchers have magical powers. Running a statistical model after the fact is a far cry from conducting a clinical trial scenario in which subjects are randomized to two groups and given explicit instructions on what they should and should not eat. Furthermore, think about all the factors that weren’t even considered; illicit drug use, which is highly prevalent in society (and a very real problem in the medical field), is rarely probed in nutrition-slanted prospective studies. Nor are many other risk-taking behaviours, or such factors as poor sleep habits or greater psychosocial stress exposure. These factors certainly didn’t feature in Pan et al’s multivariate analysis, even though there is a very real possibility that, due to their generally unhealthier lifestyles, the more frequent red meat eaters were more likely to display these characteristics.

Just How Accurate Was this Data, Anyway?

The very high prevalence of inaccurate dietary reporting in prospective studies and even free-living clinical trials is well established. Keeping that in mind, remember how in the Pan et al paper, as red meat consumption went up so too did self-reported daily calorie intake? And that as red meat intake went up, physical activity levels went down? Unless you’re one of the dopey low-carb sods who still believes in MAD, we should by all rights expect a far greater prevalence of overweight and obesity with increasing red meat consumption – but we see no such thing. Mean BMI is inexplicably similar across all five quintiles of red meat intake.

According to this study, unlike the rest of us mere mortals, doctors and nurses are metabolic freaks who can eat more, exercise less, yet still not gain extra weight.

Sure.

You’ll recall that in long-running epidemiological studies, sometimes a single dietary questionnaire is filled by the subjects, in others the questionnaires are filled periodically. In the HPFS and NHS studies, “periodically” was once every four years(!)

To quote the researchers themselves: “In 1980, a 61-item FFQ was administered to the NHS participants to collect information about their usual intake of foods and beverages in the previous year. In 1984, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006, similar but expanded FFQs with 131 to 166 items were sent to these participants to update their diet. Using the expanded FFQ used in the NHS, dietary data were collected in 1986, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006 from the HPFS participants. In each FFQ, we asked the participants how often, on average, they consumed each food of a standard portion size.”

Most people struggle to accurately remember what they ate three days ago, but this method makes the very generous (some would say absurd) assumption that the subjects not only gave highly accurate portion sizes, and highly accurate frequency estimates, but were able to do so for a period covering twelve months prior to the questionnaire being filled out.

That odour you’re smelling? It’s the not-so-sweet smell of bovine poop.

Cholesterol Down! Mortality Up!

There’s something else in Table 1 that is very worthy of close attention, but was completely ignored in all the shrill press releases. Namely, as people ate more red meat, their likelihood of having high cholesterol decreased in linear fashion. This relationship was especially pronounced in HPFS, where those in the highest red meat quartile were almost half as likely to have high cholesterol.

Stop the presses!

For years, I’ve been banging on about how the war on cholesterol is an absolute absurdity, how cholesterol is a perfectly natural substance that is absolutely essential to the continued well being of each and every one of us. And while the occasional sickeningly smug Janet Brill-type attempts to portray me as a lunatic for stating this plain fact, the indisputable truth is that cholesterol is an essential cellular substrate which humans ought to grant far more respect. Pull all the cholesterol (and saturated fat) from your cell membranes, and you’d promptly collapse to the ground in a lifeless pile of mush and bones.

And here we have a study showing that as levels of this essential substrate went down, mortality went up. But once again, this is ignored in favour of far more fashionable and politically correct red meat-bashing.

Excuse me while I step outside for some fresh air…the smell from the Pan paper is killing me.

Unprocessed My Rump!

Like a lot of the meat-and-cancer studies, the researchers examined both unprocessed and processed meats, the latter known to often contain a number of questionable ingredients suspected of contributing to chronic diseases. In addition, processed meats are often subject to some rather dodgey manufacturing and preparation processes; in the US some of the largest ever food poisoning outbreaks were caused by cold cuts, hot dogs, and inadequately cooked hamburger patties.

So obviously, the researchers had to group different types of red meats into the “processed” and “unprocessed” categories. In the “processed” category we see “bacon”, “hot dogs”,and “sausage, salami, bologna, and other processed red meats”.

No problem there.

Now let’s check out the “unprocessed” category. All you afficionados of free-ranged, pasture-fed beef might want to sit down before I continue the discussion. You might want to keep some oxygen handy, as well.

All set? Good.

According to the researchers, ‘unprocessed red meat consumption included “beef, pork, or lamb as main dish” (pork was queried separately beginning in 1990), “hamburger,” and “beef, pork, or lamb as a sandwich or mixed dish.”‘

What?

Since when is a hamburger “unprocessed”? Sure, if you buy fresh ground meat and make the patties yourself with no added artificial ingredients – but what tiny percentage of America’s hamburgers are actually consumed in that fashion?

And you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that sandwich meats are often of the processed “cold cut” variety…so just how did they sneak into the “unprocessed” category?

Folks, welcome to Bizarro World, where a fresh T-Bone and an additive-laden meat patty from MickeyD’s are considered the same thing!

While you don’t need to be a brain surgeon, it appears you must not be from the epidemiology department at Harvard to be alert to such blindingly obvious flaws.

This is the same thing as a fresh, unadulterated, nutrient-rich cut of beef. It must be true, because the jokers from Harvard said so.

Relative Risk Shenanigans

OK, let’s talk about the actual risk increases the researchers claimed for red meat consumption. The HPFS study included up to 22 years of follow-up, while the NHS follow-up included up to 28 years’ worth. The total number of participants in both studies was 121,342; total number of documented deaths was 23,926 deaths (including 5910 CVD deaths and 9464 cancer deaths) during 2.96 million person-years of follow-up. So around 20 percent of the cohort died during the study.

After performing their multivariate analyses, the researchers claimed a relative risk increase in overall mortality of 12% for total red meat consumption, a 13% increase for “unprocessed” red meat, and a 20% increase for “processed” meat consumption. Even in a clinical trial, increases of 12-13% are not exactly earth-shattering. But in a prospective study, hopelessly prone to confounding factors and featuring questionable dietary retrieval methodology occurring about as frequently as the Olympic games, it’s an absolute non-event. Relative risk percentage in the triple digits, despite the flaws of epidemiological studies, certainly warrant attention. But to earnestly claim from such an inherently flawed study that red meat consumption imparts a 12% increase in overall mortality is a very, very bad joke.

Only a hopelessly biased vegan could love a study like this…

To all you journalists who insist on sensationalizing pseudo-scientific rot like this, shame on you. Seriously, stick to quoting lying politicians or writing up gossip columns or whatever other inane pap you are truly qualified for; people who have no clue about scientific research and merely accept press releases from research groups at face value have absolutely no ethical business being in a position where they can influence other people’s health knowledge and behaviours.

For everyone else, be very wary of sensationalist diet and health stories appearing in the popular media, and immediately ask yourself, “Was this finding derived from a randomized clinical trial or a prospective epidemiological study?” If the latter, take the results with a wee pinch of salt.

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Kamdibe, Colpo & the World vs Razwell the Racist

Anthony Colpo — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:08:25 +0000

In my previous post, I addressed the libelous claims of a cowardly, anonymous Internet troll who attacks all and sundry under various monikers, the most common of which is “Razwell”. In 2008, “Razwell” developed an all-consuming obsession with yours truly – for reasons elucidated in the previous post – and proceeded to launch a demented one man war designed to antagonize and discredit me. Ironically, more and more of those who once shared his low-carb views are coming out of the woodworks to agree with me, something which has infuriated “Razwell” to no end.

When demented hatemongers like “Razwell” experience the ostracision and rejection that their irrational behaviour inevitably leads to, they become increasingly desperate and often take extreme measures in a fruitless attempt to re-establish whatever influence they felt they once had.

For “Razwell”, this included issuing totally false allegations that I’d made a “racial insinuation” towards Muata Kamdibe, an African-American college professor hailing from California. Several years ago, Muata and I struck up a rapport which eventually led to Muata asking if I’d help him kickstart his stalled weight loss. Muata had lost a huge amount of weight on his own, but his body fat percentage had stalled in the mid-teens, and he asked if I had any tricks up my sleeve that would help him break into single digits territory.

Hmmm, let me see, does Anthony Colpo have any tricks up his sleeve for achieving single digit body fat levels? That’s a bit like asking a brewer if he’s got any beer in his fridge

Muata and I got to work in what turned out to be a most rewarding collaboration; as the CNN video below shows, Muata got his single-digit body fat percentage in relatively short order:

The transcript to the story can be found here.

Sometime after Muata had hit single-digits our friendship was temporarily marred by what was, in hindsight, a stupid misunderstanding. I won’t go into the full details as it’s now water under the bridge; the only thing that matters is that we proceeded to resolve the matter and put it to rest. Muata and I enjoy as cordial a relationship as ever and I know Muata agrees with me when I say we’re both proud of what our collaboration achieved. Muata has continued with his healthy lifestyle and continues to keep himself in great shape, and I’m truly glad to have played my part in his remarkable transformation.

However, certain others have nothing constructive to contribute to the world and can only make their presence felt by spewing vitriol and seething hatred from behind the safety and anonymity of their computer screens. It was recently brought to my attention that “Razwell” was claiming I had made a racial remark to Muata, and that Muata had challenged me to a cage match that I had allegedly backed away from. Both of these allegations were news to me, and the thought of a cowardly bigot like “Razwell” – who proudly admitted on his website to calling me a “wop” and a “dago” – accusing me of racism was rather bizarre, to say the least.

So I contacted Muata for clarification. Here’s what he had to say:

Anthony,

I just finished reading Razwell’s deluded post, and I have to say that this guy is NUTS!!!

Please post my response for your readers to see. Let me clearly state that I do not think that you are a racist and never have. This is just a ludicrous accusation and is utterly FALSE.

Also, Razwell/Phil/Chris/Susan/Oyama (or whoever else he is masquerading as this week) does not in anyway represent me, and it is laughable to think that I would need a faceless troll and cyber-bully to protect me.

Finally, whatever beef you and I had back in 2007 was settled between us in a civil and private manner a long time ago. Whatever mud was slung during the dispute has been long forgotten, and I refuse to give in to the #1 Colpo-hater (or is it actually lover) for mistakes in judgement I made 5 years ago (read: NEVER correspond with a self-confessed troll).

But your boy Razzie/Dr, Harmony got one thing right? I did, in a state of glycogen depleted madness and fury (I was eating VLC, doing HIIT, and taking a shit load of fat burners*), challenge you to a cage match. And, you know what?

It still stands … I’m coming for you Colpo

Oh, and I’m bringing Razzie with me for protection … LOL!

No, seriously, this guy is truly not playing with a full deck of cards, so it’s best to ignore whatever venom he spews.

Thanks for letting me set the record straight.

All the best,

Muata

So there you have it. I’m about as racist as a Benetton ad, something which would hardly come as news to anyone who knows me personally. As an Italian-Australian kid who suffered the taunts of little racist shitheads on a daily basis in his primary and early high school years, I can’t express just how much I think the whole concept of racial bigotry is utterly moronic. All you tossers who vilify Asians/Lebanese/blacks/etc, just remember that we’re all Earthlings and, if you go back far enough, we all descend from Africa. Think about that the next time you find yourself dialing for Chinese, ordering a kebab, or drooling over Rihanna…

As for the cage match challenge (which Muata acknowledges was sent in an email that I obviously never read)…alright Muata, let me know when you’re coming Down Under, so I can mow the lawn, remove all the three-corner-jacks (they can be kinda painful and annoying when you’re rolling), and set up the garden stakes and rope (cage match Aussie style LOL). And please know that “Eye of the Tiger” and “Blitzkrieg Bop” are already spoken for as entrance songs by yours truly

Oh, and as for bringing “Razwell” Down Under, you do know that feral animals are a big problem here in Australia and are strictly prohibited on all flights entering the country?

Seriously, enough of deranged uber-trolls. This vulgar lunatic has already taken up way too much of my time, but unfortunately any claim of racism needs to be addressed immediately and decisively before it gains traction among the less intelligent and less scrupulous members of the population.

For those of you trying to find “Razwell’s Blog”, don’t bother; it was shut down by authorities yesterday after breaching virtually every defamation law in existence.

Peace, love and Teflon bike lube,

Anthony.

*Anthony’s note: Just to clarify, very-low-carb diets and fat-burners were and are not a part of my recommendations.

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