My girlfriend Beverly shares the same passion I do for help in helping people, especially with their health and fitness. She is a major contributor to online groups that share health information with each other. Bev has gathered quite a following from people who look to her for advice on what’s really true and effective with health and nutrition, because of so many conflicting messages out there – especially with the mass media who seems to be more confused than a chameleon in a bag of Skittles.
Here is an example of a comment from one of her advice seekers:
“Just came across this – curious what your thoughts are:” http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/
Beverly:
Thanks for posting this article. I love stuff like this. I think his premise that, “In weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food.”…..is BOGUS!!!!!!! This is a shameful statement – coming from a NUTRITION professor.
ANYONE knows that nutrients are what feed the brain and help the body achieve it’s optimum health. There are PLENTY of well-designed, legitimate studies to prove this point.
In a nutshell, this is a pathetic excuse for an “experiment”. A 10 week time period tells you nothing about the true affects of his “diet”. BMI is a worthless indicator. I would like to see some actually useful statistics like muscle lost, etc. The ultimate epitome of bad science is using a study group of 1 and having the study only go for 10 weeks.
This is a completely uncontrolled experiment because we are expected to trust him and his report based on blind faith of someone we don’t even know, who had absolutely no supervision. He didn’t even attempt to involve a single legitimate scientist.
Professors pull publicity stunts like this all the time to advance themselves in their career and get attention. There have been plenty of cases of them being exposed after the fact as a fraud.
Most studies that intend to produce bias results are notorious for lasting 12 weeks or less, because bad scientists know that in this amount of time you can tweak the variables to prove just about anything you want. This is why so many pharmaceutical studies last only 12 weeks, even though they know full well that their customers will be using their products for months, if not years.
Well-designed, legitimate studies last a year or more with hundreds (or thousands) of subjects involved. Even though this professor’s “experiment” had a sample of 1, I’d still like to see this guy continue this diet for a year or more, closely observed 24-7 by an independent, unbiased scientist ensuring he’s being honest and consistent with all foods, activity, etc. to control variables. I’d be willing to bet the bank that he wouldn’t make it a year without ending up in the hospital from some nutrient deficiency disease or major health event.
For those of you who want to know how to discern what is believable and what is not in regards to experiments and science, check out this video: https://www.youtube.
My comments/rant (I can’t help it):
Well said Bev!
His poor, young, impressionable students unfortunately think of him as an authority because he is their “Professor” and this horrible lesson will stick in their minds, causing them to mislead other people and perpetuate this gross and negligent display of misinformation.
This pathetic excuse for a teacher is a perfect example of the typical nutrition professor and the ridiculous, absurd things they teach the nutrition students of today. It’s no wonder why current students are still spreading major misinformation, as most traditional dietitians are direct contributers the obesity pandemic in this country. They tell people to eat “healthy” whole grains and other advice that makes people sicker and fatter, instead of advice that actually works, like cutting out all grains completely. Most dietitians also continue to preach the fatally flawed, “Calorie In – Calorie Out” theory this professor is trying to substantiate with this complete joke of an experiment.
Shame on him!
Note: I purposely didn’t mention the professor’s real name in this post, because I refuse to give him any bump in exposure with the search engines, since I suspect that is part of his intention behind this crazy scheme. Most people who pull stunts like this show everyone their true colors: That that they care nothing about the health and welfare of the public, but only about their own selfish ambition to attract attention.