Dangerous Minds
I wrote and published the following article in our newsletter a few weeks back. Because it addresses an important issue (one that keeps coming up over and over and OVER again), I thought it prudent to post it here as well.
Hope you enjoy…
Sometimes, a little flawed thinking can be dangerous. To illustrate what I’m talking about, let me provide an overview of a discussion I had with a visitor who was commenting on my review of Dr. D’Adamo’s Eat Right 4 Your Type diet. In this diet Dr. D’Adamo argues it is your blood type that best determines how you should eat.
My argument against this diet is essentially this; the premise of this diet is not based on anything resembling scientific evidence, and plenty of credible, accredited professionals agree with me. Of course, because the diet focuses on the inclusion of whole nutritious foods, most people will experience some success on this diet. This, of course, does not validate the theory of “eating right for your blood type”, since success can be attributed simply to the replacing of bad food choices with good ones.
Anyhow, one visitor commented that the diet received plenty of positive reviews on Amazon.com, and really, what did it matter if the “Eat Right” theories are a bust, as long as the diet works for most people?
Or in other words, don’t the ends justify the means?
This is a good question.
After all, if people are making positive lifestyle changes, losing weight, getting active and improving their health overall, what’s the harm in believing in D’Adamo’s theories?
The problem is that many people will confuse “cause and effect”, attributing their success on the diet to some magical matching of their blood types to diet, and not because of the fact that they’ve lowered their caloric intake, and have replaced high-calorie nutritionally deficient foods with low calorie wholesome ones.
And here’s the BIG problem…
This sort of thing encourages a belief in magic and pseudoscientific hokum while suspending critical thought. In the case of D’Adamo’s diet, it’s all pretty benign stuff. No one is going to get hurt “eating right for your blood type.”
But what if you were being asked to curtail conventional cancer treatment in favor of some “traditional” herbal concoction that has never been tested?
Here’s where a willingness to accept non-convention theories without question becomes dangerous.
And the more willing you are to accept unproven theories at face value, the more you risk being hoodwinked—and that extends beyond health care to financial advice (how many people have been bankrupted by shady investment advisors lately?) and essentially every aspect of life you care to discuss.
As a consumer, you should demand proof of any claim for any product. Why should you spend your hard earned dollars on advertised “benefits” that are not substantiated? It’s akin to paying for smoke and mirrors. Sometimes it’s fairly benign (as it is in this case) but sometimes it is not; when you curtail conventional cancer therapy for some herbal concoction or invest your life savings with your best friend’s brother in law because of the “amazing returns” he seems to be generating… in such cases, suspension of critical thought can be disastrous.
And this is why the ends do NOT justify the means, and why you must be skeptical of everything you hear or read.
May 25, 2010
Dangerous Minds – http://blog.ultimatefatburner.com/2010/0…
May 26, 2010
This is something that invariably drives me crazy, when it comes to evaluating health and fitness “information.”
For example, often fitness/health “gurus” will issue dark warnings about “unsafe” food additives, and fulminate about the (unnamed) hazards of “treating your body as a toxic, chemical dump.”
‘Cept it’s mostly horses**t. Setting aside salt (which people also add to their own foods) the overwhelming majority of additives are pretty damn non-toxic, non-teratogenic and non-carcinogenic. The primary reason additve-laden food sucks, is because the additives replace the mouthfeel and characteristics of more nutritive food components. In other words, such foods are energy-dense and nutrient-poor.
Truth is, there’s virtually no evidence that GRAS food additives are – in and of themselves – harmful. But these guys appear to be operating on a “scared striaight” model. Rather than just telling the honest, unglamorous truth, that you should eat veggies/fruits and minimally-processed foods because they’re more nutritious and contain disease-fighting elements (like phytonutrients) that highly processed foods don’t have, we have to get the conspiracy theory du jour.
Is there merit in lying to people for their own good (intentionally, or because you don’t know better yourself)? In the short term, perhaps, but – as you point out, a failure to assess things realistically can get you into trouble.