We love to hear good things about our bad habits. Dr. Michael Greger has compared the idea of butter, meat and cheese being part of a healthy diet, to a belief that the earth is flat. Most diet books don’t work, yet continue to sell like crazy each and every year because they tell people what they want to hear. You can sell a lot more books by telling people to eat butter than you can by telling them to eat broccoli sprouts. As a result, most diets don’t work, and most people who lose weight on these programs, end up gaining it back. This is true with Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and pretty much all diet plans (the majority of their clients are repeat customers).
According to John Robbins, the processed food industry alone brings in more than two trillion dollars a year. Big food, is big business, so misinformation, noise, and confusion are the keys to their success. I have a close friend who recently mentioned that butter is healthy. She heard it on a podcast from a man with no scientific background, who also sells supplements, and books, and has an estimated net worth of over ten million dollars. I asked if she or he could provide the evidence/data and she said that he had no studies to support the claim that butter is healthy. My friend is a person of high integrity and intelligence, who I admire greatly, and yet she fell victim to the deceptive marketing and sales practices as well.
I also recently learned that Amazon has more than 30,000 weight loss books for sale on its site. If you are in need of an evidence based diet plan, then I would highly recommend Dr. Michael Greger’s book “How not to Diet” (all of the proceeds from his books, DVDs, and speaking engagements go to charity).
According to Dr. Greger, the safest, most sustainable, nutritious and healthiest diet we know of is a diet centered around whole intact plant foods. Food that grows out of the ground, and is derived from fields not factories. Yes, a whole food plant based diet.
NutritionFacts.org: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/is-butter-really-back-what-the-science-says/?fbclid=IwAR3qkXhzgUoNagL8NgYVISgJ5SlDHMyf42_VvG0hNQaj2HAMCaqXod4X2hs
Click here for an article on saturated fat from Dr. T. Colin Campbell.
