I read an article in the LA Times the other day which just illustrates the
continuing state of confusion on diet and health. The media continue to quote
ill informed experts who simply add to the confusion. This is why the paleo
philosophy is so valuable.

This was LAT April 9 "The Healthy Man" This sort of stuff gives me apoplexy.
Listen to this:

The journalist was researching dietary advice given in men's magazines. He
found some of it suspicious, so he went to an "expert". Big mistake!

"...so I mentioned a few of these common themes to someone who does have a
Ph.D. in nutrition: Keith Ayoob, a spokesman for the American Dietetic
association.....For example, I read several diet articles touting an idea
that Americans have embraced in recent years: Eating too many carbohydrates
makes you fat. Not true, says Ayoob. "Eating too many calories makes you
fat"....

I came across two stories that treat this controversial theory as
fact...."But there's no scientific evidence to justify that claim", says
Ayoob."

Can you believe this stuff?

I wrote to the journalist telling him he was writing nonsense, and that his
expert was ill informed, and here is his reply:

"The idea that carbohydrates are somehow evil is bizarre and I bet 99 pct. of
the nutritionists in America - not just Keith Ayoob, whose credentials are
excellent -- would agree. Ayoob would tell you that whole grains are better
than refined grains, but the idea that bread and pasta are making Americans
fat is absurd. And your suggestion that grains are best left to animals, and
that pasta is for the lower classes, says more about you than anything"   (I
said that farmers feed grain to their animals to fatten them, and pasta is
poor man's food in southern Italy, and as they get richer, they eat less of
it).

There were other controversial points concerning fasting -- neither the
journalist nor the nutritionist understood the benefits of fasting.

It horrifies me that Ph.D's in nutrition know so little about food. Obviously
they have to toe the party line. But when they can baldly state that there is
"no scientific evidence...:, when there is a mountain of scientific evidence
just shows how dangerous these people are.

Charles Alban
San Diego, CA