If Paul (astrophysicist) Jaminet met Jack (neurosurgeon) Kruse ;-)
The paleo diet was recently ridiculed as a food fad in Natural’s Not In It. It also came last in a US News Best Diets survey.
Ways of eating such as very-low-carbohydrate, low-carbohydrate, low-reward, paleo, primal, ancestral, just eat real food etc discourage the consumption of manufactured food products and encourage the consumption of produce. If a large percentage of the population stop filling their shopping baskets with manufactured food products and start filling them with produce, who suffers? Not exactly...
This is why the food manufacturing industry tries to ensure that the population gets the best nutritional and dietetic advice that money can buy. See also New study: Big Food’s ties to Registered Dietitians.
While libertarians and anarchists moan about freedom from government interference, the food manufacturing industry has the freedom to crap all over the aforementioned diets and influence people to buy manufactured food products. Morbidity is also very profitable for healthcare and drug companies.
I think that I've now flogged this particular horse to death!
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Corruption. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Corruption. Tampilkan semua postingan
Politics - Bleurgh!
Just recently, I've been lying in my bed, thoughts running through my head. This always happens when I come out of a long period of depression. Here's a nice song from Robbie Williams.
When I started this blog, I made a decision to not discuss politics & religion, as they are about beliefs rather than evidence (I don't believe in angels, by the way). However...
Governments influence what we eat & drink with "Healthy Eating" guidelines.
Governments influence what we eat & drink with subsidies & taxes.
I therefore need to discuss politics.
In an ideal world:-
Governments discourage people & organisations from doing harm.
Governments discourage people & organisations from being A-holes (IMO), as A-holes make the world a worse place to live in for everyone.
In the real world:-
Governments are influenceable.
More money = more influence.
Crap-in-a-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB) makers make humongous profits turning cheap (and often heavily-subsidised) crops into CIAB. They have loads of money.
Fat people eat more CIAB than thin people. More fat people = increased profits.
See where this is going?
Governments do bad things. I'm not under any illusions. Governments also do good things.
I believe that greed & corruption in government is the problem, not government itself. How to solve the problem of greed & corruption in government? Answers on a postcard, please.
When I started this blog, I made a decision to not discuss politics & religion, as they are about beliefs rather than evidence (I don't believe in angels, by the way). However...
Governments influence what we eat & drink with "Healthy Eating" guidelines.
Governments influence what we eat & drink with subsidies & taxes.
I therefore need to discuss politics.
In an ideal world:-
Governments discourage people & organisations from doing harm.
Governments discourage people & organisations from being A-holes (IMO), as A-holes make the world a worse place to live in for everyone.
In the real world:-
Governments are influenceable.
More money = more influence.
Crap-in-a-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB) makers make humongous profits turning cheap (and often heavily-subsidised) crops into CIAB. They have loads of money.
Fat people eat more CIAB than thin people. More fat people = increased profits.
See where this is going?
Governments do bad things. I'm not under any illusions. Governments also do good things.
I believe that greed & corruption in government is the problem, not government itself. How to solve the problem of greed & corruption in government? Answers on a postcard, please.
The future: I just saw it.
Today is Thursday 19th February 2009. I've just read an article in The New York Review of Books 'Drug Companies & Doctors': An Exchange dated 26th February 2009. I don't even possess a Flux Capacitor!
The above article was linked from Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption which I found on The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (THINCS).
"Because drug companies insist as a condition of providing funding that they be intimately involved in all aspects of the research they sponsor, they can easily introduce bias in order to make their drugs look better and safer than they are. Before the 1980s, they generally gave faculty investigators total responsibility for the conduct of the work, but now company employees or their agents often design the studies, perform the analysis, write the papers, and decide whether and in what form to publish the results. Sometimes the medical faculty who serve as investigators are little more than hired hands, supplying patients and collecting data according to instructions from the company.
In view of this control and the conflicts of interest that permeate the enterprise, it is not surprising that industry-sponsored trials published in medical journals consistently favor sponsors' drugs—largely because negative results are not published, positive results are repeatedly published in slightly different forms, and a positive spin is put on even negative results. A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. It is not unusual for a published paper to shift the focus from the drug's intended effect to a secondary effect that seems more favorable."
Oh dear!
The above article was linked from Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption which I found on The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (THINCS).
"Because drug companies insist as a condition of providing funding that they be intimately involved in all aspects of the research they sponsor, they can easily introduce bias in order to make their drugs look better and safer than they are. Before the 1980s, they generally gave faculty investigators total responsibility for the conduct of the work, but now company employees or their agents often design the studies, perform the analysis, write the papers, and decide whether and in what form to publish the results. Sometimes the medical faculty who serve as investigators are little more than hired hands, supplying patients and collecting data according to instructions from the company.
In view of this control and the conflicts of interest that permeate the enterprise, it is not surprising that industry-sponsored trials published in medical journals consistently favor sponsors' drugs—largely because negative results are not published, positive results are repeatedly published in slightly different forms, and a positive spin is put on even negative results. A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. It is not unusual for a published paper to shift the focus from the drug's intended effect to a secondary effect that seems more favorable."
Oh dear!