Ivor Cummins meets Gary & Belinda Fettke

[TheAwfulToad]

This is a long video (45 mins) but personally I never get tired of hearing Kafkaesque stories of doctors being reprimanded for curing their patients.

youtube.com/watch?v=p0VwjsZ...(Not working as expected?)

Even if you're already familiar with what happened to Dr Fettke, I recommend you sit through the first few minutes, which is Fettke's own description of the details. I guarantee you'll wonder if we're heading back to pre-enlightenment days, when questioning authority was a punishable offence (especially if you were right).

If you're a bit limited for time, I recommend listening to Cummins' observations on the sheer spitefulness of the diet mafia (around 4:50) and Fettke's comments on the current guidelines (7:15).

The meat of the video is Belinda's "why is this happening?" investigation (starts at 9:00). She concludes that it's not about the wheat and sugar industries, but a quasi-religious thing that springs from "temperance" memes. I think she is spot-on here. I may have used the word "Puritanism" in previous posts. The commitment to low-fat high-carb foods - which are invariably nasty, or at least boring - is about belief, specifically a belief in unhealthy foods that cause unhealthy thoughts and actions. This overlaps with beliefs about meat being a sinful food - something that crops up in several world religions and/or social rules.

You may or may not agree with their thesis - personally, I suspect it's a big part of the story but not all of it. But if you have the time, it's an interesting historical review of three interlinked industries: diet education, junk/fake food, and health food. The too-long, didn't-listen version is that dietary policy is more concerned with ideology than health - which is why scientific arguments just aren't making any headway.

The only thing that irks me about the whole thing is everyone's use of the word "Segway" in place of "segue". Grrr.

[Vale57]

Interesting to hear this historical information and hope the modern food science gets the false information out there soon. But as they did say, in years to come, we will learn more, and what we are finding now, could be proven to be inaccurate. We live and learn.

[Stoozie]

Thank you. I had no idea.

It's all a bit overwhelming once you begin to understand isn't it?

[MTCee]

A valuable insight into the origins and psychology of plant based diets in the western world. Very interesting.