Why we Reject New Ideas

Most people reading this blog will be familiar with the concepts behind the Banting diet. It's simple really. I could tell you in one line, or in ten principles, in a lecture, or on a web site. If you believe that a low-fat, cholesterol reduced diet, or a vegetarian diet is healthy, you cannot allow yourself to "hear" the message in any of the previous links. If you already "know the truth," there can be no search for a better truth.

I have good friends who have weight issues, and type two diabetes, and severe symptoms of metabolic syndrome, but I can't help them. They already "know." When they know they don't know, when they've "lost the truth" they might be reachable. Each of us is our own master.

Dr William Castelli Director of the Framingham Heart Study, looking at many black swan results, said in 1992; "We found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories; weighed the least and were the most physically active." Even today, for most people that makes no sense at all. However, Banters, or other LCHF diet people, will understand it easily.

In the same way, Banters will understand the results of the dietary study in the the Women's Health Initiative. We understand that a low-fat diet can't be a healthy diet.

But in 2006, that was a shock result to the nutritional establishment. The official response to the unexpected results to the dietary study in the Women's Health Initiative was to set it aside. Dr Elizabeth Nabal, appeared on television to reinforce the importance of the low-fat diet, and to promote business as usual. A strategy that's continued to work for eleven further years, never mind the continuing damage done to public health. The WHI result was "unfortunate" so they chose to ignore it.

In the 1960's Dr George Mann's work in Kenya was ignored. As part of the Framingham study he had also collected data on 1000 American people over two years. The results of that study were unexpected and contrary to what the NIH wanted to publish. In 1977 because of that work, he knew the Diet Heart Hypothesis was nonsense. When George Mann was openly critical of the Diet Heart Hypothesis and the Cholesterol theory of cardio vascular disease, he had years of good science on his side. He was very bitter that his advice was discounted and that his career had a premature end.

It took ten years for the establishment of accept that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, and not by stress or food intake. The evidence for that change was scientifically clear. In the same way it's been clear for more than 20 years that low-carbohydrate diets give diabetics superior control over their glucose peaks and reduce their need for insulin. But the recommendation is seemingly impossible for Diabetic Associations and many doctors to accept.

John Stephen Veitch
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