Nutritional Nuggets: Dr Zoe Harcombe

[AnnieW55]

youtu.be/9-PhPsJPzsI(Not working as expected?)

Things we thought we knew that have no real basis. This is a presentation from last year.

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador]

Huge fan of Zoe Harcombe (and Tim Noakes). I haven't watched the whole video, but it's a great presentation; anyone contemplating losing weight needs to watch it. I'm pleased she's addressing that 'animal fat = saturated fat' idea, which is utter nonsense. I was intending to write a post about this, but I'll just recommend people watch the video instead.

I'm pleased to see she's just plain old 'Zoe Harcombe' on the title page. I know she has a PhD from a proper university (and an undergrad degree from Cambridge) but she does tend to overuse her title 'Dr', which occasionally gives the wrong impression.

Incidentally, she looks in great shape, so she must be doing something right. The number of nutritionists I've seen who are pale and blobby would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

AnnieW55, how about reposting this over at the NHS group? People doing calorie-counting really need to see those long term experimental results around 10:00-12:00.

[AnnieW55 in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Will do. I liked this presentation as it was to the point.

There is another on You Tube by her from 2018 The Public Health Collaboration conference (link below) that addresses the Law of thermodynamics as well as a lot of the same ground as in the above.

The Public Health Collaboration (It’s a charity) has quite a few presentations and is worth a look.

youtu.be/BaPJMuTNLXI(Not working as expected?)

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador in reply to AnnieW55]

ohhh, thermodynamics. That's my all-time favourite bit of nutribollocks. I'll watch the video when I have time, I hope she does it justice!

There's a Gary Taubes interview somewhere on YouTube, in which he relates how he was on a chat show being lectured by a nutritionist on the theme of "it's all about thermodynamics". Gary Taubes has degrees in physics and aerospace engineering, so he probably knows a little bit about thermodynamics.

EDIT: having watched it all through, I don't think she really nailed it. She's right, of course, that the laws were formulated to facilitate the understanding of heat engines, but she didn't do a great job of explaining them, or explaining why they don't apply (or don't apply as nutritionists think they do) to weight loss. She appears not to understand the fundamental concept (trading off entropy for work output) and her simplified version of the first law isn't really correct; the first law (change in system energy = heat - work) is derived from the law of conservation of energy, but it isn't merely a restatement of conservation of energy.

To be fair, there's no simple way to summarize thermodynamics without boring people to death or making their heads explode; she probably would have done better to skate over it all and talk about power-flow partitioning instead.

[AnnieW55 in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Thank you for the extra information. I do find it interesting. I just took away the idea that applying the laws for machinery, however complicated, is not directly transferable to the intricacies of the body. It takes a lot to bore me but not much to explode my mind so thanks again for your pointers.