Current science shows the old recommendation to follow a low-fat diet for the prevention of heart disease was all wrong, all along. Yet people still cling to the flawed dietary advice to cut out dietary cholesterol and saturated fats. Worse yet, I still come across clueless “experts,” diet doctors, dieticians, and nutritionists who talk about how many eggs you can “get away with” eating.
Perhaps there’s a simple explanation as to why so many experts and regular folks alike still can’t accept the new science.
Experts and patients still resist new science about fat
Doctors at University of Calgary, Canada, set out to investigate why people who were indoctrinated with false information about the “dangers” of fat reject the new dietary information about its benefits.
As you know, your brain and nervous system need dietary fat. For this reason, researchers in the Department of Neurology at U Calgary encourage their patients to increase the amount of fat in their diets and reduce sugar consumption.
The patients say they understand. Yet they continue to order low-fat latte coffees and pick rice cakes over almonds as a snack.
The neurologists eventually realized that their patients weren’t intentionally failing to follow their recommendations. These patients simply couldn’t process the new dietary recommendations and convert them into meaningful action.
Doctors found that dietary fat restriction had “starved” the patients’ brains of vital lipids, causing shrinking of the part of the brain responsible for learning and accepting scientific facts.
By now, you may suspect this Daily Dispatch is an “April Fool’s” joke. And you’re right! (If you suspected as much, you probably have enough fat in your diet to feed your brain.) The University of Calgary doctors never conducted such a study.
But it makes an important point.
In this modern, scientific era, why do people continue to ignore or deny the scientific facts about human diet and nutrition? Why do some still buy into the concept of “settled science”?
In my view, it is no longer just ignorance.
Is it willful blindness?
People persist in following the low-fat diet mythology — despite all the new scientific evidence that shows the benefits of eating fat…and the dangers of not getting enough of it. And all the evidence that points to sugar and carbs as the dietary culprits all along.
Similarly, strict vegetarians vehemently argue that people don’t need any nutrients from meat. But some of their reasoning sounds to me like the result of poor cognition associated with nutrient deficiency.
Likewise, critics vehemently deny the evidence about any harmful health effects of smoking marijuana, as I will discuss in an upcoming Daily Dispatch. Again, to me, some of their arguments sound like they suffer from the very cognitive effects they insist are “harmless,” providing an actual object lesson to the scientific observer.
So, the April Fools can go on all year long.