Category: Nutrition

Florida tells Brian Clement to stop practicing medicine

  Note: Also posted today is a brief profile of a new blog, Naturopathic Diaries: Confessions of a Former Naturopath, by Britt Marie Deegan Hermes, a trained naturopath who became disillusioned with her profession. I encourage you to have a look! The State of Florida has finally taken action against Brian Clement. David Gorski, Orac, and the Canadian media, especially the Canadian...

/ March 5, 2015

The Food Babe’s war on “chemicals” heats up again

[Note: This is an extra bonus post. Because The Food Babe has been in the news and I couldn’t wait until today, I discussed it at a certain not-so-super-secret blog. If you’ve read it before, it’s only somewhat modified and updated. If you haven’t, it’s new to you. Either way, feel free to comment. Completely new material by me will appear here...

/ February 15, 2015

Acupuncture, Organic Food, and Other Questions

In this post I respond to some reader mail regarding several different issues - organic farming and pesticides, acupuncture, and herbal supplements. In each case I clarify my position and discuss the evidence base.

/ January 14, 2015

Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Claims about Telomeres in the Scientific and Pseudoscientific Literature

The New Year starts with telomeres as the trendiest of trendy biomarkers. As seen in Time, telomeres are the means to monitor our well-being so we can protect ourselves from all sorts from threats, including early death. A skeptic needs to do considerable homework in order to muster the evidence needed to counter the latest exaggerated, premature, and outright pseudoscientific claims about...

/ January 11, 2015

The Health Benefits of Moderate Drinking

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread–and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness– Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!” – The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam   Alcoholic beverages have always inspired strong opinions pro and con. Omar Khayyam included wine in his vision of Paradise; Carrie Nation took a hatchet to saloons. Humans have...

/ December 30, 2014

Vani Hari, a.k.a. “The Food Babe,” finally responds to critics

It’s no secret that we here at Science-Based Medicine (and many scientists and skeptics with a knowledge of basic chemistry and biology) have been very critical of Vani Hari, better known to her fans as The Food Babe. The reasons for our criticisms of her are legion. Basically, she is a seemingly-never-ending font of misinformation and fear mongering about food ingredients, particularly...

/ December 8, 2014

Does the Movie Fed Up Make Sense?

The 2014 film Fed Up is an advocacy documentary. Its message: There is a worldwide epidemic of obesity. It is endangering our children. Increased sugar consumption is responsible. The food industry is responsible for our increased sugar consumption because it puts hidden sugar in processed foods, bombards us with advertising, favors profits over health, and lobbies against regulation. The government is responsible...

/ October 14, 2014

Yahoo News spews NaturalNews anti-vaccine (and other) propaganda

Yahoo News appears to have confused NaturalNews with actual news. It’s not. NaturalNews is the in-house propaganda organ for Mike Adams, whom I’ll introduce in a minute (although he needs no introduction for most readers here). A couple of recent examples:     A recycled story, over a year old, from NaturalNews, appearing on Yahoo News last week. It starts out as...

/ October 2, 2014

Diet Cults vs. Science-Based Healthy Eating

This will be shorter than my usual book reviews and is something of an afterthought. I just finished writing a long article on “Food Myths” that Michael Shermer had asked me to write as a cover article for an upcoming issue of Skeptic magazine, and while researching the subject I read a book that someone had suggested to me (I’ve forgotten who...

/ August 26, 2014

Pass the Salt (But Not That Pink Himalayan Stuff)

Humans, like many other animals, crave the taste of salt. Animals frequent salt licks, humans have traded salt for equal weights of gold, and the word “salary” comes from the Roman soldier’s allowance for purchasing salt. Salt appears in our language in idioms like “worth its salt” and “salt of the earth.” Shakespeare’s play King Lear is a variant of a folktale...

/ August 19, 2014