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.

Just recently I saw a job offer for a writer to work on the health magazine Men’s Fitness. Being interested in such matters I read the ad. It was for a staff writer to write and edit the Nutrition and Health sections of the magazine. Ok? So far so good.

Now here’s the bit that cheeses me off. Apparently to be a successful and valued health writer at Men’s Fitness you… “don’t need to be an expert on health matters, but you do need a proven record of producing sharp, witty and accurate copy for a consumer title.”

How one can produce accurate copy without being an expert is beyond me. I understand the need for sharp, witty copy. BUT to call for a health writer that does not need to be an expert on nutrition and health matters is simply an outrage.

Time and time again I read either half-truths or outright errors, particularly concerning nutrition, in articles written in magazines such as this. It drives me crazy. No wonder many people don’t know who or what to believe. People are writing about health matters that are obviously not qualified to do so.

Gillian McKeith has come in for a lot of stick over the last few years - with her apparently bogus doctorate and obsession with poo, it’s rightly so in my opinion.This is just one of the reasons why …

McKeith has a range of foods for sale in many health food shops - another thing which cheeses me off - how can a shop be termed a health food shop when it doesn’t sell fresh produce?! But I digress, back to Gillian. Of particular concern to me is what she calls her ‘cacao bean bar’, subtitled a ‘natural superfood bar’. Sounds quite interesting, looks ‘health-foody’ with a picture of little beans on the wrapper.

However the cacao pod, the fruit of the cacao tree, is what’s most interesting. It has a number of seeds which are commonly called beans, and theses are surrounded by a white fatty substance. Together these two components - cocoa solids and cocoa butter make up what you and I call chocolate … the same bloody food Gillian McKeith condemns on her programmes. And the same food which she uses as a means to ridicule and humiliate her guests, because they’ve eaten it.

Eaten in moderation, chocolate is a perfectly ok thing to eat. Some researchers have even found it actually has positive benefits - we’ve probably all heard that.

How extraordinary it is for ‘that woman’ to put her name to a food which is quite frankly just a glorified chocolate bar.

I’ve not tasted one, but I imagine if challenged in a taste test, Green & Blacks would win, hands down!

Interesting link for history of chocolate is on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacao
http://www.greenandblacks.com