https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-dangerous-foods/

American Pravda: Dangerous Foods

Ron Unz • December 2, 2024

Donald Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services in his new administration, and the latter has declared that his mission will be to “Make America Healthy Again.” But even if Kennedy is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he faces a very stiff challenge in fulfilling that pledge.

Most Americans are probably not fully aware just how dramatically our national health has declined over the last few decades, and until very recently I was certainly included among the uninformed.

Yet much of this decline has been easily visible to our eyes. According to research studies, about 74% of all American adults are now overweight, while almost 42% suffer from clinical obesity, along with nearly 15 million adolescents and children. These rates have skyrocketed during the last half-century.

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Much like Atkins, Taubes in his original 2002 Times Magazine article had warned of carbohydrates in general, comparing their potentially harmful impact on insulin secretion with that of relatively innocuous fats. But the science journalist then spent additional years of research before publishing his 2007 book, and by that point his focus had somewhat shifted to the particularly pernicious role of sugar, arguing that its fructose molecules might damage the liver, thereby leading to the disruption of insulin regulation and possible diabetes.

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The Salt Fix was published in 2017 and the author was Dr. James DiNicolantonio, a Cardiovascular Research Scientist working at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, who also served as associate editor of the medical journal BMJ Open Heart. These seemed like very solid professional credentials and the back cover of his book was studded with glowing endorsements by prominent medical doctors who focused on nutritional matters, reinforcing his credibility. The book was relatively short, running only a couple of hundred pages, but the author made a highly persuasive case that everything the media had always told me about the dangers of salt was almost entirely wrong, and indeed the opposite of the truth.

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