Another media mind-bomb misrepresents health

Sunday, December 12, 2010 by: John Wagner
Tags: Twinkie diet, health, health news

(NewsTarget) CNN Health informed us that Twinkie diet helps professor shed weight. Apparently an actual professor of human nutrition put himself on an experimental diet of junk food for 10 weeks and managed to lose 27 pounds. Of course, as with the majority of health reporting by the "lame-stream" media, there is much more to this story than meets the eye. Let's examine how the public is being confused and cajoled into believing (be-living-in the lie) that nutritionally bankrupt and poisonous foods just might be good for us after all.

Professor Mark Haub, from Kansas State University, restricted his caloric intake to 1800 Calories per day down from an estimated 2600 C/day with 2/3 of this amount supplied in the form of packaged cakes, chips, cookies, sugary cereals and depleted-uranium cookies. Ok, he didn't actually eat the last one but he may as well have because the only real difference is that depleted-uranium cookies would kill faster than a steady diet of these alleged "foods". And lo and behold, the professor lost weight as might be expected if any overweight person starved themselves for 10 weeks.

We are next presented with figures for improvements in his body mass index (BMI) and "good" and "bad" cholesterol levels. These "numb"-ers and technical jargon are deliberately placed early in the article to tune people out because it is known that the majority will not read the entire article and because most simply skim the headlines. Thus, it isn't until nearly half-way through the article that we discover the professor also took a multi-vitamin and drank a protein shake daily in addition to eating vegetables!

But it gets better: canned green beans and "three to four celery stalks" are given as examples of vegetables. Really? Lifeless, nutritionally zapped beans drenched in fluoridated salt and served up in plastic bisphenol-A lined cans are vegetables? At least celery provides a few nutrients and fiber, which would seem to be the only source in this miracle diet.

Psychic-driving is the repeated exposure of a specific message until the receiver accepts it for reality. Psychically-driven messages in this article include: thinness equals healthiness; cholesterol is bad; and all that matters for weight loss is eating less. The first has been disproved, as has the second - maybe this pioneering study of the Twinkie diet can shed light on the last message? Let's see what the professor has to say:

"I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," he said. "I'm stuck in the middle. I guess that's the frustrating part. I can't give a concrete answer. There's not enough information to do that."

Well, thanks for clearing all that up for us professor. We are actually being asked to believe this experiment was designed to determine whether calorie counting or nutritional value is more important for weight loss. Of course, the correct design would have been to compare two calorie-equivalent diets of junk versus nutrient-rich foods, and then compare the results in a matched-pairs, double-blind study.

But then, that's not the real purpose of this "study". Rather than providing useful health information, the goal of this media mind-bomb is to confuse and mislead the reader into believing that weight loss is simply a matter of counting calories, that being thin is the same as being healthy, and that junk foods are reasonable food choices. Heck, they just might be good for you. We just need more information to know for sure. Uh-huh.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

http://www.poisonfluoride.com/pfpc/html/salt_facts.html

http://food.change.org/blog/view/toxic_green_beans_high_bisphenol-a_levels_in_del_monte_foods

http://www.news-medical.net/news/2007/05/14/25076.aspx

http://www.thegreatcholesterolcon.com/

About the author

John Wagner
PhD Candidate, Anthropology