Cally's working title

Just recently I stumbled upon the health section of a newspaper called The Epoch Times. I’m not sure who the readership of this newspaper is but I’m guessing it’s American, Australian, southern hemisphere travellers.

To see red would be an understatement of the highest order. The thing that sparked my anger? An article on nutrition with the caption ‘Myths and truths about nutrition’. As the caption suggests, there was a paragraph about something the writer considered to be a myth, followed by an explanation. All the ‘myths’ were about saturated fat. Indeed the feature read as though it was written by the saturated fat appreciation society.

The problem with this article is that the ‘truths’ were only half truths (if that) and completely misleading. To make the ‘truths’ appear conclusive; a supporting reference was given. This in itself was alarming since some of the references were 40 years old, which also brings into question the validity of these studies. I’d like to see the criteria for these studies - the sample size, selection of subjects, ethnicity etc. etc. This feature did not use any recent studies to support its claims.

Rather than accepting this feature as simply bad journalism I started to think about who had written such a piece. It was authored by The Weston A. Price Foundation. Who are they you might wonder. I’ll tell you. They are a non-profit organisation who believe the answer to human health is to consume whole foods (granted, a good thing) and activators found exclusively in animal fats.

This type of diet has similarities to the paleolithic diet otherwise known as the caveman diet, of which I’m a great advocate. The feature did not explain that paleolithic man is considered somewhat healthier than we are today because they had to hunt their food and therefore expended many more calories per day in so doing. The feature simply had a picture of deep fat fried fish and chips under the caption ‘myths and truths about nutrition’.

The Weston A. Price Foundation has the right to believe what it will. Indeed a quick glance at their website will provide some interesting reading. To imply that saturated fat is not a risk factor for heart disease and that vegetarianism is not healthy is another matter.