In our fast paced lives it’s
often easier if someone else does the research and we get the benefit of
learning the results. (Case in point, the Paleo diet. Yes, you probably will lose weight doing the diet. Is it
healthy or sustainable? The facts don’t support it. Most people just hear
meat is good for you, fat even better, forget about cholesterol and they think
“now that’s the kind of diet I've been waiting for”.) But another problem with
our fast paced lives is that we don’t care to read all of the information nor
do we care where it came from, who backed the study, how many similar studies
were done to support the claim and how many journal articles are written about
it. I can’t tell you how many people I have passed on information I have
researched and shared with family and friends that in turn read a couple of
sentences about the information learned in the study and decide they will pass
it on to one of their friends and relatives when the advice I gave was actually
for them. I know they say that the teacher will come when the student is ready,
but often times the teacher is there and the student doesn't want to
hear.
The information shared on Dr. Oz
for example, would probably kill you if you followed all of his advice.
He has so many conflicting stories I don’t know how anyone can know whether
they are fat because they eat too much, have a bad thyroid, are lazy and want
to diet without exercise and take a multi-vitamin and single supplements as a
magic bullet as well. Yikes! I know that he’s extremely popular,
but how can you possibly follow a single contradictory thing he says? One
day he’ll tell you to eat to lose weight and the next he’ll tell you to fast to
lose weight. And then people use his name illegally to sell products just
because he said the name of their company once and people see the name Dr. Oz
and they blindly buy the product figuring he did all the research…if he says
it’s good it must be!
I think that what’s going to really help is that slowly,
as the WFPB way towards better nutrition takes hold, we as practitioners,
students and teachers need to encourage people that we have helped to tell
their doctors before beginning this program that they are going to do it and
then have their doctor record the results in their charts as they make
incredible changes in their health. I have opened many a doctor’s eyes
that poo-pooed what I was doing and now are starting to be believers when they
see the change before their eyes. We may not be able to do medically
sanctioned human studies for a lot of chronic diseases, but if we affect a
change based purely on diet and the outcome is recorded, at some point you have
to believe that someone will listen and spread the word.
Ken Carlile
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