Page 16 - Summer2014

Caustic Commentary

Sally Fallon Morell takes on the Diet Dictocrats

BUTTER CONSUMPTION RISING were interpreted to suggest that people can go back to eating
Americans are eating more butter—consumption has risen butter and cheese with abandon.” And the American Heart
25 percent in the last decade. Americans now eat 5.6 pounds Association is sticking to its strictures against butter, cheese
of butter per person per year, up from a low of 4.1 pounds in and cream. These folks, enchained in academia, will still be
1997. This is a far cry from the 18 pounds per person per year shaking their fingers at us when everyone else has gone back
Americans consumed as late as 1934, before the Great De- to delicious, healthful eating.
pression, World War II and the advent of margarine changed
the nation’s eating habits. A report in the Los Angeles Times TYLENOL AND ADHD
(January 7, 2014) credits butter’s growing popularity with In a disturbing study published in JAMA Pediatrics
“more understanding about the health hazards of its processed (2014;168(4):313-320), researchers at the University of Aarhus
counterparts” namely margarines containing trans fats. But in Denmark found a strong correlation between acetamino-
the Times report states as fact that “it’s not a health food. In phen (found in common pain killers like Tylenol) use among
a word, butter is fat—and not the good kind. It’s loaded with pregnant women and the rate of ADHD in their children.
saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease.” For- Overall, moms who used the pain reliever to treat headaches
tunately more and more Americans are rejecting this kind of or to reduce fevers saw a 37 percent increased risk in their chil-
propaganda. Food manufacturers “are working hard to take dren receiving an ADHD diagnosis and a 29 percent increased
advantage of [the new] demand by labeling their cookies risk in the chances their children received ADHD medica-
and frozen pies as ‘made with real butter’.” Even “healthier” tions compared with moms who didn’t use the medication at
margarine is struggling to stand out in a nation “increasingly all. Even after the team accounted for other factors, the link
captivated by foodie culture. Butter has become a symbol of remained strong. The findings are especially troubling since
America’s growing appreciation of authentic cooking. . . " more than sixty-four thousand women in the study reported
using acetaminophen in the three months prior to the survey.
CRACKS IN THE SATURATED FAT DOGMA Higher acetaminophen use among others was linked to higher
A large, exhaustive new analysis of nearly eighty studies by rates of ADHD in their children. Scientists speculate that hor-
a team of international scientists has found no evidence that mone disruptions in utero, triggered by acetaminophen, may
eating saturated fat increases the incidence of heart attacks cause enough imbalance in the brain to make certain children
and other cardiac events. The study, published in Annals of more vulnerable to autism or hyperactivity later in life.
Internal Medicine (2014;160(6):398-406), did not find that
people who ate higher levers of saturated fat had more heart “POLIO LIKE”
disease than those who ate less, nor did the study find less When vaccines have wiped out polio and people still get
heart disease in those dutifully eating higher amounts of poly- polio, what happens? Medical personnel call the paralytic
unsaturated and monounsaturated fat. “My take on this would symptoms something else, in this case Non-Polio Acute Flac-
be that it’s not saturated fat that we should worry about” in our cid Paralysis (NPAFP). In India, for example, the “last” case
diets, said Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, the study’s lead author and of polio occurred in 2011; but in the same year there were
a cardiovascular epidemiologist in the department of public an extra 47,500 new cases of “rare” NPAFP. The occurrence
health and primary care at Cambridge University. But here of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio
in the U.S., health officials will make sure we keep worry- vaccine received. The symptoms of NPAFP are clinically
ing. Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology indistinguishable from polio paralysis and the illness is twice
at the Harvard School of Public Health said that the findings as deadly. Now we are hearing about “polio-like” illness in
“should not be taken as a green light to eat more steak, butter California, with a cluster of five children with paralysis in
and other foods rich in saturated fat.” Prominent food Puritan one year—and this is just the reported cases. Other countries
Alice H Lichtenstein, a nutritional biochemist at Tufts Uni- are also seeing increases in the new “non-polio” illness. The
versity chided, “. . . it would be unfortunate if these results truth is, polio was on a steep decline when the vaccine was
16 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2014 Wise Traditions

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