Recently I blogged about the three pillars of the Happy Guide diet, one being tradition, or what I found yesterday being called “the wisdom of crowds,” in a YouTube video by Fat Heads director Tom Naughton.
It’s a speech he gave at Springfield College in Massachusetts, describing how the dietary wisdom of crowds was replaced by advice from the so-called experts or “the anointed,” which is now being replaced again by the wisdom of crowds, via blogs and social media.
“The anointed” have been giving us advice for decades that has been making us fat and sick. Two aspects of this that I personally find quite frustrating, is the advice to avoid saturated fat and the reliance on grains. This was advice doled out on the flimsiest of evidence, and in the video a senator long ago said “We don’t have the luxury to wait for the evidence to come in before we give our recommendations to the American people.” Despite severe warnings from scientists at the time.
A big study from 2009 looking at a massive pool of data found no association between saturated fat and heart disease, and only yesterday, another similar one was published with the same findings.
The whole “lipid hypothesis” has been revealed now, to have been based on weak evidence (mainly some fudged data by Ancel Keys showing an association that wasn’t there, and an experiment where rabbits (herbivores) were fed diets high in saturated fat that caused clogged arteries), and now, largely it seems to me, via the huge effect of the internet and people talking openly and freely, the true causes of heart disease are quite clear. Yet we don’t see a reversal of the standard advice, why not? Because the anointed don’t admit to being wrong. I’ve seen this myself.
The powers that be change slowly, and they don’t backtrack. What you will see is little statements appearing, that question their previously decisions in a very subtle way. To admit a huge mistake would be to take away all their own credibility.
“Science advances one funeral at a time.” ~ Max Planck
If you have time to watch this video I recommend it, because Tom goes into the details of the forces at play… wisdom of crowds vs the anointed.
Free chapter
Michael Kinnaird is the author of Happy Guide, the result of a 20 year exploration into what works for health and happiness.
Read Chapter 1 “The Happiness Secret”
Or get the paperback…
Keep in touch
Get inspiration in your inbox from Happy Guide…
Happy Guide 