Thoughts on Nick Hiebert's “A Comprehensive Rebuttal of Seed Oil Sophistry”

Introduction

Consider this a follow-up of sorts to my post and debate with Alan Flanagan (Goodrich, 2021a, 2021b), if you want some background.

Nick Hiebert (Hiebert, 2021a), whom I have been interacting with for several years on Twitter, thought he could do a better job than Alan did, and challenged me to a debate. After going through a little back-and-forth on format, it became clear that Nick wanted to debate me only if he could have a moderator that would take his side in his view of the facts and the logic. I proposed a standard Oxford-style debate, where such matters are handled by the debaters, and the moderator simply enforces the rules (time, taking turns, etc.).

Nick refused, and blocked me. And then apparently wrote this, “A Comprehensive Rebuttal of Seed Oil Sophistry” (Hiebert, 2021b). And then challenged me again to a debate (I’ve been told), which I couldn’t see, as he has continued to block me. Which is most amusing, but…

After several requests, I’ve decided to take a look at his post. I’m responding as I read it, as it’s 60-odd pages long*. I am doing this in the manner of an audit. I’m not going to go through the whole thing, but until I have a feeling that I can assess the quality of the argument to my satisfaction, and hopefully to that of the reader.

This post moved to Substack.

Does Linoleic Acid Induce Obesity? Part 2—RYGB and HNE

Part 2: Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass and 4-Hydroxynonenal

Part 1 here.

Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass (RYGB)

After Roux-en-Y bypass surgery, people show "a marked reduction of the hedonic drive to consume palatable food and beneficial changes in dietary habits." RYGB excludes from food contact the primary part of the small intestine that mediates food reward.https://t.co/VpB2lbOLDZ

— Stephan Guyenet, PhD (@whsource) November 29, 2018

Post moved to Substack.

Does Linoleic Acid Induce Obesity? Part 1

[P.S. Part 2: Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass and 4-Hydroxynonenal]

Introduction

OK folks, into the wayback machine.

In 2010 I stopped eating seed oils, and saw a chronic inflammatory bowel disease resolve in days:

“So a few months ago, I stopped eating industrial seed oils (veggie oils). In two days the diarrhea stopped. Eat the oils, it started again. I no longer craved starch or sugar, so I didn't eat any wheat for a week, without meaning to….  So now I could turn the symptoms of the last 16 years on or off, based on eating veggie oils or wheat. Wow!” (Goodrich, 2010)

Post moved to Substack.

What Is The Most Fattening Food?

I came across this paper recently:

"Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long Term Weight Gain in Women and Men” (Mozaffarian et al., 2011)

From the illustrious New England Journal of Medicine.

The most notable authors (apologies to the rest!) are F. B. Hu—Frank Hu, the current Frederick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard University, 2021a); D. Mozaffarian—Dariush Mozaffarian, Dean of Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (Tufts University, 2021); and W. C. Willett—Walter Willett, the previous Frederick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the aforementioned Harvard School  (Harvard University, 2021b), and until 2017 the chair of the department of nutrition—per Wikipedia as of this writing.

The three are the Holy Trinity of the Nutrition Establishment of the United States, and, by extension, the world. Combined, the three have written countless papers, editorials, and opinion pieces on the subject of health and nutrition.

This post has been moved to Substack. Please follow me there!

Good Keto vs. Bad Keto

This is what passes for a keto diet in the rodent literature.

From (Li et al., 2021)

It's Envigo's TD.96355, from a paper finding negative effects of a keto diet. 

"Ketogenic diet aggravates colitis, impairs intestinal barrier and alters gut microbiota and metabolism in DSS-induced mice" (Li et al., 2021)

F3666 is another rodent keto diet, (Lecker, 2011). It's also high in seed oils, and it's also commonly used. 

Virta Health explicitly advises patients to limit seed oil consumption (Phinney et al., 2020), based on Phinney's labratory experience and self-experimentation, in which he found seed oils to be acutely, albeit mildly, toxic: 

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Interview: "Tucker Goodrich & Dr Berry Question the Safety of Canola & Soybean Oil"

Really nice discussion with Ken Berry with a live audience, so we got some good questions.

I don't think he has a podcast, but this is on YouTube now:

Interview: Tucker Goodrich Challenges Failed Experts with David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice

"Tucker Goodrich Challenges Failed Experts"
My part starts at 00:24:00.

"Also in the show, Tucker Goodrich joins David to comment on the censorship of information, the Diet Doctor podcast on vegetable oils, intralipid , the horrible dietary guidelines of hospitals, whether salt is harmful to our bodies, burning excess PUFAs, and more."

Radio, so no video for this one. Here's a link to the podcast, and here's an embedded player:

AHS21 Presentation: "Why Did We All Get Sick? The Nutritional Transition & How Seed Oils Drove It"

This post moved to Substack.

How Much Seed Oil Is Too Much? Short-term Consequences of Going Off The Wagon

A cold day in Hell's Canyon

Have I mentioned I got married?

So this post is going to be a joint effort with my wife, Jen.

We went to high school together in Connecticut, and reconnected after many years and found ourselves to be a very good fit.

Unbeknownst to me, she had been suffering from a chronic auto-immune disease, fibromyalgia, for decades, since shortly after we graduated high school.

"Fibromyalgia affects about 4 million US adults, about 2% of the adult population."

When we reconnected in 2019, she was a Greger-style near-vegan, running her own organic farm in upstate New York, and producing most of her own food. She was also quite ill, overweight, and on a number of medications.

So at our first dinner together, after negotiating with the waitress about what food I could eat and winding up with a plate of sausages and a hard cider, I mentioned why I eat the way I do, and told her what to eat:

"Avoid seed oils, refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, and make sure to eat animal protein and animal fats."

Just a sentence. While we were friends, I didn't want to get into a diet debate with a vegan.

A few weeks later she let me know that she had fixed her diet, and was down 17 lbs already (for a total of 56 lbs over the next few months, back to beauty-queen weight).

What she didn't mention until much later was the fibromyalgia. What a near-vegan diet, a physician's care, and drugs hadn't accomplished was fixed with a paleo diet in a few months: the pain went away, for the first time in decades.

She had also suffered from cracks in her heels. I first learned about this from the Barefoot Sisters (podcast at the link), who were also vegetarians. I've long had a suspicion that heel cracks were a function of a low animal-fat diet, and along with the fibromyalgia, the heel cracks resolved.

So two years into this process, we went to LA for a few days for the Ancestral Health Symposium 2021, where I spoke. Since we were staying in a (very nice!) hotel where the conference was held, it was unavoidable that we were going to have to eat out in restaurants, something we do very rarely at home.

We are always careful when we eat out, since I am ridiculously gluten-intolerant. I have no choice. But seed oils are much harder to manage when eating in restaurant. We went to an In-N-Out Burger joint, for instance, and ordered burgers without buns or sauce, telling them I had a wheat allergy. But it's not possible to determine in what they are cooking the burgers. What do they use to lubricate the grill? Obviously we skipped the fries!

Same problem with the restaurant at the hotel: what are the vegetables cooked in? Given that they wouldn't put butter on the table even when they served gluten-free toast (what was in the toast?), I doubt they were using butter for the bread or the sautéed vegetables.

My general assumption is that since I don't have an acute reaction to seed oils, a little bit when I rarely eat out isn't going to harm me.

So when we get home, Jen reveals that her fibromyalgia is back. So are the cracks in her heels. She also had a rather severe intestinal distress which she'd rather not detail here! 

All three are improving, but that's a pretty severe reaction to a few days of not rigorously controlling her diet! The intestinal distress required a fast and a period of carnivory to resolve.

When fibromyalgia was full-on she describes it as having a "whole-body sprain", but now it's just in a few locations, like her hips.  Now the connection between fibromyalgia and seed oils is pretty clear (Albrecht et al., 2019; Cordero et al., 2011; Meeus et al., 2013), and I've helped others put it into remission via a low n-6 diet, but I've never heard of it coming back from just a few days of not-so-careless eating!

Luckily she's improving already.

So this raises a number of questions: 

1. What is the amount of n-6 fats that causes these illnesses?
2. What is the  amount stored in adipose tissue, and how does this interact with dietary intake?
3. How long does it take to clear these fats out of the body, until one can tolerate a small intake?

Jen's only been eating this way for 2 years, after years of being on a high n-6 diet. It took me 5 years to really start feeling totally well, and the last odd health improvement happened after 7 years.

Five years is about how long it should take adipose tissue to lose stored n-6, based on the half-life of fats in adipose tissue. Some tissues with a high turnover, like the skin or gut, appear to happen quickly, some, like cartilage, likely take years, if ever.

In celiac it is recognized that a lack of exposure builds tolerance, and that symptoms also may take a while to return. This was my experience, and my tolerance to small, accidental exposures has grown. Not sure if this will directly apply to Jen's auto-immune condition, however.

In talking to Aaron Blaisdell, the founder and director of AHS, he described how he put his 'genetic' porphyria into remission, he said he suspects it was the seed oils that caused it (an update from his previous position.) For a guy who used to blister under the sun and had to wear denim and canvas when outside, he's looking quite tan!

But a lot of the answers to the above conditions are going to have to be addressed individually, since, as in Aaron's case, there are genetic factors driving individual responses to environmental triggers, and they're not always well understood.

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Albrecht, D. S., Forsberg, A., Sandström, A., Bergan, C., Kadetoff, D., Protsenko, E., Lampa, J., Lee, Y. C., Höglund, C. O., Catana, C., Cervenka, S., Akeju, O., Lekander, M., Cohen, G., Halldin, C., Taylor, N., Kim, M., Hooker, J. M., Edwards, R. R., … Loggia, M. L. (2019). Brain glial activation in fibromyalgia – A multi-site positron emission tomography investigation. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 75, 72–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2018.09.018

Cordero, M. D., Alcocer-Gómez, E., Cano-García, F. J., De Miguel, M., Carrión, A. M., Navas, P., & Sánchez Alcázar, J. A. (2011). Clinical Symptoms in Fibromyalgia Are Better Associated to Lipid Peroxidation Levels in Blood Mononuclear Cells Rather than in Plasma. PLoS ONE, 6(10), e26915. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026915

Meeus, M., Nijs, J., Hermans, L., Goubert, D., & Calders, P. (2013). The role of mitochondrial dysfunctions due to oxidative and nitrosative stress in the chronic pain or chronic fatigue syndromes and fibromyalgia patients: Peripheral and central mechanisms as therapeutic targets? Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets, 17(9), 1081–1089. https://doi.org/10.1517/14728222.2013.818657

Interview/Debate: PUFAs Killing You? Debate Between Alan Flanagan & Tucker Goodrich on Mark Bell's Power Project

Here it is.

"We brought together Alan Flanagan and Tucker Goodrich to debate a few topics, mainly the dangers of Poly Unsaturated Fats.

This post has moved to Substack. 

Show notes for Flanagan and Goodrich on Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast

Here it is.

These are notes for things I referenced in the discussion. I didn't try to represent Alan Flanagan's research.

This post moved to Substack.

References for Ancestral Health Symposium 2021 talk, "Why Did We All Get Sick?"

This post moved to Substack

AHS21

Interview: Ray Peat, with David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice

"Ray Peat Interview with Tucker Goodrich, David Gornoski on PUFAs, Seed Oils, Benefits of Sugar, Milk"

"In this fascinating interview, David Gornoski and Tucker Goodrich are joined by Dr. Ray Peat, researcher of aging, nutrition, and hormones. Dr. Ray Peat talks about how his interest in nutrition science started; how changes in diet affected health in Mexico and Israel; whether sugar is harmful to our bodies; the connection between PUFAs, cancer, and diabetes; how ketogenic diets can be harmful; how avoiding PUFAs lowers the skin’s susceptibility to sunburn; what kind of milk is beneficial to our health; and more.

"Subscribe to Dr. Peat’s newsletter by emailing raypeatsnewsletter@gmail.com

Here's a link to the podcast, and here's an embedded player:

Katherine Eban on COVID-19 Origin

Peter Attia interviewed Katherine Eban about the origin of the COVID-19 disease (link to podcast), an investigative reporter who's done some amazing work on generic drugs in the past.

While I have a few issues with her argument about the COVID-19 disease's origins (hence this short post) let me say that I think this is in general an excellent interview, and a very good introduction to the issue if you are not familiar with it already. Eban and Attia go through the key points, and a number of rather uncomfortable points are included. So I recommend it, but with the caveats addressed below (which is not comprehensive).

Attia sells the transcript to these podcasts to subscribers, and I do not subscribe, so I did these brief snippets myself. Timestamps are mine, as are any errors.

00:05:47: "One might say [the origin] was settled a while ago, or seemingly settled..."

So, a little bit of my background on looking into this:

1/3 The first credible evidence I've seen that Covid-19 may have come from a lab.

"US-funded $3.7 million project approved by Trump's Covid-19 guru Dr Anthony Fauci in 2015 after US ban imposed on 'monster-germ' research"https://t.co/PwTaiGJPzR

— Tucker Goodrich (@TuckerGoodrich) May 4, 2020

2/3 Fauci was paying the Wuhan lab to, "Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission."https://t.co/OhT0S7uBVk

— Tucker Goodrich (@TuckerGoodrich) May 4, 2020

3/3 "Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus"https://t.co/I5flRc8qUE

— Tucker Goodrich (@TuckerGoodrich) May 4, 2020

So over a year before Vanity Fair published Eban's article, it was pretty obvious that the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab (WIV) was a possible, if not likely source of the disease.

"“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the [Trump administration] official said."

That quote was from an OpEd in the Washington Post published on April 14, 2020. This podcast contains nothing that adds to or subtracts from that conclusion.

So, disagreements.

The Moratorium

The Asian Times article from April 22, 2020 makes a mistake that Eban repeats in her own analysis:

"Back in October 2014, the US government had placed a federal moratorium on gain-of-function (GOF) research – altering natural pathogens to make them more deadly and infectious – as a result of rising fears about a possible pandemic caused by an accidental or deliberate release of these genetically engineered monster germs."

Lin, the author, links to an article that says: 

"[The White House] is halting all federal funding for so-called gain-of-function (GOF) studies that alter a pathogen to make it more transmissible or deadly so that experts can work out a U.S. government-wide policy for weighing the risks. Federal officials are also asking the handful of researchers doing ongoing work in this area to agree to a voluntary moratorium."

Eban's Vanity Fair article states:

"In October 2014, the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on new funding for gain-of-function research projects that could make influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses more virulent or transmissible. But a footnote to the statement announcing the moratorium carved out an exception for cases deemed “urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.”

Eban sent me an article similar to Lin's source via twitter: 

Thx for listening. Tell me more about no moratorium for Gain of Function research: https://t.co/AakJCIoyZu

— Katherine Eban (@KatherineEban) July 20, 2021

Which stated (correctly) that:

"...the US government is temporarily halting funding for new studies aiming to give novel functions to influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses."

Despite it's erroneous title: "Moratorium on Gain-of-Function Research".

NIAID funding of EcoHealth, including WIV.

The relevant definition of "moratorium" here is "a suspension of activity". As the 2014 White House order makes clear, this was not a moratorium, as all existing research projects were grandfathered, only "new" projects were prohibited. Further, there's no evidence whatsoever that anyone asked or that Ecohealth refused to "voluntarily" halt its gain-of-function (GoF) research project. (As I discussed in this twitter thread, based on NIAID and HHS documents, the WIV research was clearly GoF.)

It's clear from the language of the White House order that someone from NIAID should have asked EcoHealth to pause its research!

And indeed, as HHS documents make clear, the research project, which was not "new", continued to receive funding.

Even NIAID Director Fauci states that funding continued:

""About $600,000 was spent over a five-year period," Fauci said during a congressional budget hearing. "That comes to anywhere between $125 (thousand) and $150,000 per year that went to collaboration with Wuhan."

So there was never a moratorium that applied to or was followed by the NIAID and the WIV.

Further evidence that there was no moratorium for WIV is that the "pause" was lifted on December 13, 2017, while on November 30, 2017, Zheng-Li Shi (the 'bat woman') published a paper that listed the NIAID grant as a funding source:

"Funding: This work was jointly funded... the National Institutes of Health (NIAID R01AI110964)..."

And it was GoF, using the "reverse genetic" technique:

"Recombinant viruses with the S gene of the novel bat SARSr-CoVs and the backbone of the infectious clone of SARSr-CoV WIV1 were constructed using the reverse genetic system..."

As Eban had noted, in the VF article: "The grant was not halted under the moratorium or the P3CO framework." Which is quite obvious, as it was never subject to the "pause", however none of this nuance is discussed in the podcast.

00:31:53: "...led the US Government to impose a moratorium on funding of any kind of gain of function research of SARS and MERS pathogens."

This is clearly not accurate.

00:32:10: "Interestingly, in the very beginning of the Trump Administration, in January of 2017, that moratorium was lifted. But it was replaced by this [P3CO] framework..."

Obviously since the pause never applied to WIV, and was never followed by WIV, it is incorrect to imply, as she does here, that it was lifted by the Trump Admin. There was nothing to lift.

Her discussion of the P3CO framework is well worth reading, as NIAID Director Anthony Fauci had apparently decided to ignore it, just as he had ignored the Obama-administration request to voluntarily halt the SARS research conducted by WIV. However she never makes this connection, despite (inaccurately) quoting part of the footnote noting who at NIAID had the authority to waive the pause for WIV funding: 

"An exception from the research pause may be obtained if the head of the USG funding agency determines that the research is urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security."

Did NIAID Fund Gain-of-Function Research? 

Attia then asks her (00:32:47) about NIH Director Collins and NIAID Director Fauci denying they funded GoF work (in at least one case for Fauci, under oath). "Can you evaluate the veracity of those statements?"

00:33:44, Eban: "So here is where we enter this true semantic marshland, because the feeling of, and I'm not talking about wingnuts who want to fire Fauci, credible people who have evaluated this say that there is some sort of rhetorical grey area here. First of all... well the Government hasn't funded research at the [WIV] directly, they have funded, basically, an intermediary non-profit called EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn has given sub-grants to the [WIV]. So, yeah, no direct funding, but yeah, indirect funding. 

"Now, part of the obligation of EcoHealth Alliance was to report back to the NIH [actually, the NIAID] and say, here's our progress reports, here is what the [WIV] was doing with some of your grant money, and we ensure that they have been doing this safely. We don't know what's in those progress reports, because NIH [again, NIAID] has not released them. 

Attia: "That sounds like a FOIA waiting to happen..."

Well, we really don't need a FOIA to come to a conclusion about this, and it's not a semantic marshland, because sufficient information to draw a conclusion is already available.

For starters as I detailed here, NIAID defines GoF research as: 

"...any selection process involving an alteration of genotypes and their resulting phenotypes is considered a type of Gain-of-Function (GoF) research, even if the U.S. policy is intended to apply to only a small subset of such work.

"...To answer these questions, virologists use gain- and loss-of-function experiments to understand the genetic makeup of viruses and the specifics of virus-host interaction. For instance, researchers now have advanced molecular technologies, such as reverse genetics, which allow them to produce de novo recombinant viruses from cloned cDNA, and deep sequencing that are critical for studying how viruses escape the host immune system and antiviral controls. Researchers also use targeted host or viral genome modification using small interfering RNA or the bacterial CRISPR-associated protein-9 nuclease as an editing tool."

WIV was clearly doing reverse genetics research, a type of GoF, per the NIAID definition, as detailed above and reported in a publicly-available, peer reviewed paper, or, as the State Department put it recently:

"The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses."

Second, NIAID monitors what award grantees and sub-award grantees are doing:

"The work was a collaboration among scientists from EcoHealth Alliance, Duke-NUS Medical School, Wuhan Institute of Virology and other organizations, and was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], part of the National Institutes of Health. The research is published in the journal Nature."

Third, NIAID requires that sub-award grantees be approved:

"While principal investigators (PIs) can perform a range of grant actions under the NIH standard terms of award, they must get prior approval from NIAID for the following things: ...Addition of a new foreign site or foreign subaward."

Fourth, the Government was notified that the WIV was not meeting standards:

"Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats."

Eban seems to be paltering here: the distinction that she attempts to present as a justification for Fauci's and Collins' statements falls apart simply when looking at the NIAID documents about their supervisory role in sub-award grants.

"“I can’t guarantee everything that’s going on in the Wuhan lab, we can’t do that,” Dr. Fauci said..."

It's the NIAID's self-declared responsibility to ensure basic protocols are followed, and he is the Director. If he has doubts (as he should have) about the WIV, he should have pulled the grant. He could also have implemented the pause and the protocols outlined above, which he failed (or declined) to do. Collins is similarly culpable.

In light of the evidence, it's simply impossible to answer Attia's question in any other way than to acknowledge they were likely being dishonest.

Bias

00:06:11 Eban: "...with Trump out of office... it was a good time to begin to look into..."

Why is the fact that Trump is out of office relevant to where a disease that has killed millions come from? It shouldn't be, unless you are putting politics ahead of people's health.

Identifying the cause of this disease, if it was human-caused, as seemed likely even a year ago (and as Eban notes, even the Chinese came to the conclusion that the labs in Wuhan were likely the cause of it), is rather crucial if we're going to avoid another apparently iatrogenic pandemic.

From Vanity Fair:

"As the pandemic raged, the collaboration between EcoHealth Alliance and the WIV wound up in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. At a White House COVID-19 press briefing on April 17, 2020, a reporter from the conspiratorial right-wing media outlet Newsmax asked Trump a factually inaccurate question about a $3.7 million NIH grant to a level-four lab in China. “Why would the U.S. give a grant like that to China?” the reporter asked.

Eban in the podcast:

00:35:45: "In my investigation there are credible questions about that funding. Why were we allowing taxpayer dollars to a high-level Chinese laboratory, where we now believe there were was actually military scientists working in there. They're obviously an adversary..."

The Newsmax question was not "factually inaccurate", the grant did indeed go to China and the NIAID oversight process makes it clear that they would have known where it was going. It's actually a damn good question, and had it come from "the mainstream media" which had "studiously avoided" the topic, as she noted, Eban would doubtless have approved of it. 

Eban did excellent work, as far as she went, but it appears her political bias prevented her from drawing the obvious conclusions above—comments about conspiracy theories are used repeatedly, even as her reporting demonstrates that the 'conspiracy theorists' were working off the known facts most effectively in this particular case.

Conclusion

From the Vanity Fair article:

""Inside the NIH, which funded such research, the P3CO framework was largely met with shrugs and eye rolls, said a longtime agency official: “If you ban gain-of-function research, you ban all of virology.” He added, “Ever since the moratorium, everyone’s gone wink-wink and just done gain-of-function research anyway.”"

From Fauci's FOIA'ed emails:

"Auchincloss replied to Fauci, saying, “The paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH. Not sure what that means since Emily is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone through the P3 framework ... She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.”"

Concluding that a manager who presides over what seems likely to be a gross violation of safety protocols, ignores policies designed to enhance safety, and then attempts to hide his culpability should be fired isn't a "wing nut" response, it's management 101. 

00:35:07 Eban: "The NIH now is being buried up to their eyeballs in FOIAs, absolutely. People want to know, what did they know about this research."

This is what happens when you're not forthrightly trying to find out what went wrong. It's a red flag.

The conclusion I have gotten to, which she provides a good bit of evidence to support, is that the fellow who has been leading our response to COVID-19 likely financed its creation, and the fellow who was tasked with finding out where it came from likely created it. Both are doing their very best to distract us from those conclusions. And there's little chance either will pay a price.

That's a pretty grim conclusion to come to.

Hopefully Eban will continue this line of research, but put the bias to the side.

Interview: Thomas Seyfried on Glioblastoma, Metabolic Cancer Breakthroughs, with David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice

"Dr. Thomas Seyfried, Tucker Goodrich, David Gornoski on Glioblastoma, Metabolic Cancer Breakthroughs" 

"Continuing our exciting overthrow of failed sacred cows with science-driven conversation on health and nutrition, David Gornoski and Tucker Goodrich are joined by Dr. Thomas Seyfried, the leading researcher of the metabolic theory of cancer. Prof. Seyfried of Boston College talks about the experience of Pablo Kelly who treated his brain cancer with ketogenic diet. Is Dr. Seyfried's method compatible with Dr. Lisanti's way of treating cancer? Is cancer a genetic disease? Why is metabolic therapy only considered as a last measure for cancer and epileptic patients after standardized treatments fail? What is the role of Cardiolipin in the cell and how does Cardiolipin damage affect us? How can we stop Cardiolipin damage? 

"Visit Dr. Seyfried's website at https://www.tomseyfried.com 

"For more content by David Gornoski visit https://www.aneighborschoice.com

Here's a link to the podcast, and here's an embedded player:

Here are most of the show notes, which will also be updated (If you listen to it at real speed, I will probably finish before you do!).

And in today's news: "Feasibility and Biological Activity of a Ketogenic/Intermittent-Fasting Diet in Patients With Glioma".

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Show notes:

Long-term glioblastoma survivor, Pablo Kelly, reaches out with a message of hope (https://t.co/tXiSll8xat). Pablo was the subject of our case report published in Frontiers in Nutrition (/doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2021.682243).

— Thomas N. Seyfried (@tnseyfried) July 8, 2021

Pablo Kelly case report (Seyfried et al., 2021)

Media stories (Davies, 2016; Dodd, 2017; “Fighting for Survival -Pablo Battles Brain Tumour with Ketogenic Diet and Healthy Doses ofDetermination and Positivity,” 2016)

Glioblastoma prognosis: “…without any treatment you can expect to live between 8 and 14 months.” (Bailey & Cushing, 1926)

“Current Standards of Care in Glioblastoma Therapy” (Fernandes et al., 2017)

“…showing precisely how Standard of Care contributes to the rapid demise of the patients…” (Seyfried et al., 2019)

IDH1 mutation (Li et al., 2019)

“If you have a tumor, you should never irradiate somebody’s brain! It’s insane! I published a very clear article on this…” TK

Cancer treatment fails (Horgan, 2019)

Cancer depends on glutamine (Seyfried, 2011)

Mutations don’t cause cancer (Sonnenschein & Soto, 2000)

Mitochondrial transfer experiments in cancerous cells (Zampieri et al., 2021)

P53 gene mutations (Baugh et al., 2018) and effects on mitochondria (Moulder et al., 2018)

Warburg effect and metabolic hypothesis for cancer (Seyfried, 2015)

Substrate-Level Phosphorylation (Chinopoulos & Seyfried, 2018)

ATP Synthesis and cancer (Seyfried et al., 2020)

“Michael Lisanti Interview on His Breakthrough Antibiotic Solution for Cancer Metastasis, ATP” (Gornoski, 2021, 2021)

“Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” (Dobzhansky, 1973)

Evolutionary concepts of default and quiescent states (Sonnenschein & Soto, 2000)

PD-L1 Inhibitors and patient mortality:

“Findings:  In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 125 clinical trials involving 20 128 patients, the overall incidences of all-grade adverse events were 66.0% and of grade 3 or higher adverse events were 14.0%. The overall mean adverse event incidences were similar across different cancer types but varied between different drugs.” (Wang et al., 2019)

Efficacy and research base of ketogenic diet in cancer (Colin Champ) (Haskins et al., 2020; Klement et al., 2017)

Ketogenic diet as a first-line therapy (in epilepsy) (Kossoff, 2010)

Unknown mechanism for metformin (Vial et al., 2019)

Cardiolipin and cancer (53:49) (Kiebish et al., 2008, 2010; Seyfried, 2015; Ta et al., 2014)

Barth syndrome (Peter & Bellcross, 2019)

“Alzheimer's Disease is Associated with Decreased Risk of Cancer-Specific Mortality” (Romero et al., 2014)

Veech “superfuel” (Cahill & Veech, 2003)

Jim Abrahams and the Charlie Foundation (Abrahams, 2018)

...I ran out of time and energy at 1 hour through the interview. End of show notes.

 And in today's news: "Feasibility and Biological Activity of a Ketogenic/Intermittent-Fasting Diet in Patients With Glioma". (Schreck et al., 2021)

Thoughts on 'Of Rats and Sidney Diet Heart...', Alan Flanagan's Post Defending Seed Oils

Apologies to Stan Efferding, who asked me last year to look at this blog post. I really don’t like doing this kind of post, especially when it’s a soft target, but as it keeps coming up, I guess I have no choice.

So here we go.

Introduction

Alan Flanagan
(Flanagan, 2020a)

The blog post in question is titled “Of Rats and Sydney Diet-Heart: Drawing a Line Under Polyunsaturated Pseudoscience” (Flanagan, 2020b), the author is Alan Flanagan, who “…has an MSc in Nutritional Medicine, is currently pursuing his PhD, and a [sic] former practicing Lawyer (Barrister) from Dublin, Ireland.” He states, “The core values behind Alinea Nutrition are critical thinking that is clear, objective, rational, free from dogma, and informed by evidence” (Flanagan, 2020a). Alinea being his website’s name.

He commences his post:

“To say that hysteria about the health effects of polyunsaturated fats [PUFA] has reached fever pitch may be an understatement.

“It can be interesting watch [sic] a trend of thought gain traction when that train of thought is inconsistent with a substantial total body of evidence, from multiple converging lines of inquiry.

“It speaks to something at play beyond scientific discourse, and frankly much of the “debate” regarding PUFA is steeped in a mix of narratives, from fantasies about our evolutionary past to conspiracy theories about governments, scientists, the food industry, and ‘BigPharma’.

“I have a few thoughts as to why the PUFA-hysteria appears to have exponentially increased in recent years. It’s likely not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the more common narratives I’ve observed….”

Well, I’ve been told I’m in a good part responsible for the “PUFA-hysteria”, so I guess I have an interest in defending it.

Post has moved to Substack.

Interview: "Seed Oil Research with Prof. Bruce Hammock, Prof. Bruce German, and Tucker Goodrich" on A Neighbor's Choice with David Gornoski

For a change, I'm doing the interviewing, thanks to David who arranged this. A really mind-bending discussion.

"In this special roundtable podcast, David Gornoski and nutritional researcher Tucker Goodrich talk with distinguished professors Bruce Hammock and J Bruce German to discuss what their research of linoleic acid has revealed about our immune system, severe burns, pain blockers, ARDS mortality, mass consumption of vegetable oils, and more. How can we increase Omega-3 fatty acids without increasing Omega-6 in our bodies? Does decreasing Omega-6 in our bodies also decrease the susceptibility to severe cases of COVID?

"Bruce Hammock PhD is the Distinguished Professor of Entomology and UCD Comprehensive Cancer Center and Director of the NIEHS-UCD Superfund Research Program at University of California, Davis. "J. Bruce German PhD is a chemist and food scientist at UC, Davis. Professor German researches the role of fats and other components in the diet.

(I will update this post if I get any new info, there are a few missing references below.

P.S. Finished the show notes, 32 and above are new. Still missing a few references.)

It's probably better to watch the video if you can, there's a lot of non-verbal communication going on!

Here's the podcast:

And here's the direct link to ANC.

Show notes:

Bruce D. Hammock: Hammock Laboratory of Pesticide Biotechnology

J. Bruce German

References in order of mention (see the names in the references section below for links to the study):

1. Hammock recent research on leuktoxin and COVID-19: (McReynolds, Cortes_Puch, et al., 2021; McReynolds, Cortes-Puch, et al., 2021).
2.  Japanese research on burns and leukotoxin: (Hayakawa et al., 1990; Kosaka et al., 1994).
3. Diols, not epoxides are the actual toxin: (Moghaddam et al., 1997; Zheng et al., 1998)
4. Stearic acid in plaques of American soldiers in Korean war: TK
5. Crocodile oil study: (Watkins et al., 2001)
6. Leukotoxin and brown fat: (Kulterer et al., n.d.; Lynes et al., 2017)
7. N-6 (omega-6) PUFA and ARDS survival: (Bursten et al., 1996)
8. Arachidonic acid metabolic pathways: (Hildreth et al., 2020)
9. "Seventy-five percent, by weight, of the drugs sold in the world: (Rice, 2020)
10. COX and LOX inflammatory pathways: (Archambault et al., 2020).
11. Discovery of soluble Epoxide Hydrolase (sEH): (Kodani & Hammock, 2015)
12. sEH, horses, and tendonitis (laminitis): (Guedes et al., 2013; Rice, 2020)
13. Human trials of sEH inhibitor: (Hammock et al., 2021)
14. Diabetic pain & neuropathy: TK
15. Bill (William E. M.) Lands: (Wikipedia, 2020)
16. Dietary omega-6 fatty acid lowering increases bioavailability of omega-3 [n-3] polyunsaturated fatty acids in human plasma lipid pools: (Taha et al., 2014)
17. Age-related Macular Degeneration and N-6: TK
18. "We're funded by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse"... (Hammock et al., 2021)
19. Excess linoleic acid: (Okuyama et al., 1996)
20. Fred Kummerow: trans fats researcher, on his diet: (Kummerow, 2015)
21. Vernoleate bursting into flames, "another name for leukotoxin": (Bafor et al., 1993)
22. Synthetic n-3 and farmed fish: (Kitessa et al., 2014)
23. "The Environmental Impact of Vegetable Oils": (Nobbs, 2021)
24. Dog study on leukotoxin: (Fukushima et al., 1988)
25. Elevated leukotoxin in CVD and T2DM: TK
26. N-6, sEH, and dementia ("Walter Swardfager in Toronto"): (Yu et al., 2019)
27. HNE inducing amyloid plaque: (Arimon et al., 2015)
28. Unsaturated aldehydes and tear gas: (Corson & Stoughton, 1928)
29. Omega-3 and COVID-19: (Arnardottir et al., 2021)
30. ARDS and trauma victims: (Plurad et al., 2009)
31. John Kinsella and ARDS (may not be right paper): (Riyami et al., 1990)
32. Kathleen Gura and Omega-6 infusions: (de Meijer et al., 2010)
33. K-rations and Ancel Keys: (Oliver, 2004)
34. Ancel Keys and Minnesota Coronary Experiment: (Ramsden et al., 2016)
35.  Seed oils and torpor/hibernation: (Geiser & Kenagy, 1987; Ruf & Geiser, 2015)
36. Linoleic acid diols and hibernation: TK
37. Susan Allport, linoleic acid lowers BMR: (Allport, 2010)
38. sEH and diabetes; sEH with n-3 eliminates T2DM w/ less n-6 (work by "Joan de Clerin"?): TK
39. Mothers and babies: (German, 2011)
40. Generational effects of high n-6: (Mamounis et al., 2020)
41. Breast milk high in omega-6 (Tsimane vs American): (Martin et al., 2012)
42. Bill Lands "NIX6 and EAT3" web site: EFAEducation.org

References:

Allport, S. (2010, November). One person’s response to a high omega-6 diet [Magazine]. American Oil Chemists’ Society. https://www.aocs.org/stay-informed/inform-magazine/featured-articles/one-persons-response-to-a-high-omega-6-diet-november-2010?SSO=True

Archambault, A.-S., Zaid, Y., Rakotoarivelo, V., Doré, É., Dubuc, I., Martin, C., Amar, Y., Cheikh, A., Fares, H., Hassani, A. E., Tijani, Y., Laviolette, M., Boilard, É., Flamand, L., & Flamand, N. (2020). Lipid storm within the lungs of severe COVID-19 patients: Extensive levels of cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase-derived inflammatory metabolites. MedRxiv, 2020.12.04.20242115. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.04.20242115

Arimon, M., Takeda, S., Post, K. L., Svirsky, S., Hyman, B. T., & Berezovska, O. (2015). Oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation are upstream of amyloid pathology. Neurobiology of Disease, 84, 109–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbd.2015.06.013

Arnardottir, H., Pawelzik, S.-C., Öhlund Wistbacka, U., Artiach, G., Hofmann, R., Reinholdsson, I., Braunschweig, F., Tornvall, P., Religa, D., & Bäck, M. (2021). Stimulating the Resolution of Inflammation Through Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids in COVID-19: Rationale for the COVID-Omega-F Trial. Frontiers in Physiology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2020.624657

Bafor, M., Smith, M. A., Jonsson, L., Stobart, K., & Stymne, S. (1993). Biosynthesis of vernoleate (cis-12-epoxyoctadeca-cis-9-enoate) in microsomal preparations from developing endosperm of Euphorbia lagascae. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 303(1), 145–151. https://doi.org/10.1006/abbi.1993.1265

Bursten, S. L., Federighi, D. A., Parsons, P. E., Harris, W. E., Abraham, E., Moore, E. E. J., Moore, F. A., Bianco, J. A., Singer, J. W., & Repine, J. E. (1996). An increase in serum C18 unsaturated free fatty acids as a predictor of the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome. Read Online: Critical Care Medicine | Society of Critical Care Medicine, 24(7), 1129–1136. https://doi.org/10.1097/00003246-199607000-00011

Corson, B. B., & Stoughton, R. W. (1928). REACTIONS OF ALPHA, BETA-UNSATURATED DINITRILES. Journal of the American Chemical Society. https://doi.org/10.1021/ja01397a037

de Meijer, V. E., Le, H. D., Meisel, J. A., Gura, K. M., & Puder, M. (2010). Parenteral Fish Oil as Monotherapy Prevents Essential Fatty Acid Deficiency in Parenteral Nutrition Dependent Patients. Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, 50(2), 212–218. https://doi.org/10.1097/MPG.0b013e3181bbf51e

Fukushima, A., Hayakawa, M., Sugiyama., S., Ajioka, M., Ito, T., Satake, T., & Ozawa, T. (1988). Cardiovascular effects of leukotoxin (9,10-epoxy-12-octadecenoate) and free fatty acids in dogs. Cardiovascular Research, 22(3), 213–218. https://doi.org/10.1093/cvr/22.3.213

Geiser, F., & Kenagy, G. J. (1987). Polyunsaturated lipid diet lengthens torpor and reduces body temperature in a hibernator. The American Journal of Physiology, 252(5 Pt 2), R897-901. https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpregu.1987.252.5.R897

German, J. B. (2011). Dietary lipids from an evolutionary perspective: Sources, structures and functions. Maternal & Child Nutrition, 7(s2), 2–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-8709.2011.00300.x

Guedes, A. G., Morisseau, C., Sole, A., Soares, J. H., Ulu, A., Dong, H., & Hammock, B. D. (2013). Use of a soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor as an adjunctive analgesic in a horse with laminitis. Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia, 40(4), 440–448. https://doi.org/10.1111/vaa.12030

Hammock, B. D., McReynolds, C. B., Wagner, K., Buckpitt, A., Cortes-Puch, I., Croston, G., Lee, K. S. S., Yang, J., Schmidt, W. K., & Hwang, S. H. (2021). Movement to the Clinic of Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase Inhibitor EC5026 as an Analgesic for Neuropathic Pain and for Use as a Nonaddictive Opioid Alternative. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 64(4), 1856–1872. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.0c01886

Hayakawa, M., Kosaka, K., Sugiyama, S., Yokoo, K., Aoyama, H., Izawa, Y., & Ozawa, T. (1990). Proposal of leukotoxin, 9,10-epoxy-12-octadecenoate, as a burn toxin. Biochemistry International, 21(3), 573–579. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2222499/

Hildreth, K., Kodani, S. D., Hammock, B. D., & Zhao, L. (2020). Cytochrome P450-derived linoleic acid metabolites EpOMEs and DiHOMEs: A review of recent studies. The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, 86, 108484. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnutbio.2020.108484

Kitessa, S. M., Abeywardena, M., Wijesundera, C., & Nichols, P. D. (2014). DHA-Containing Oilseed: A Timely Solution for the Sustainability Issues Surrounding Fish Oil Sources of the Health-Benefitting Long-Chain Omega-3 Oils. Nutrients, 6(5), 2035–2058. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu6052035

Kodani, S. D., & Hammock, B. D. (2015). The 2014 Bernard B. Brodie award lecture-epoxide hydrolases: Drug metabolism to therapeutics for chronic pain. Drug Metabolism and Disposition: The Biological Fate of Chemicals, 43(5), 788–802. https://doi.org/10.1124/dmd.115.063339

Kosaka, K., Suzuki, K., Hayakawa, M., Sugiyama, S., & Ozawa, T. (1994). Leukotoxin, a linoleate epoxide: Its implication in the late death of patients with extensive burns. Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 139(2), 141–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01081737

Kulterer, O. C., Niederstaetter, L., Herz, C. T., Haug, A. R., Bileck, A., Pils, D., Kautzky-Willer, A., Gerner, C., & Kiefer, F. W. (n.d.). The presence of active brown adipose tissue determines cold-induced energy expenditure and oxylipin profiles in humans. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. https://doi.org/10.1210/clinem/dgaa183

Kummerow, F. (2015, February). My Diet. World Nutrition. http://archive.wphna.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/WN-2015-06-01-02-72-78-Idea-Fred-Kummerow-My-diet-JF.pdf

Lynes, M. D., Leiria, L. O., Lundh, M., Bartelt, A., Shamsi, F., Huang, T. L., Takahashi, H., Hirshman, M. F., Schlein, C., Lee, A., Baer, L. A., May, F. J., Gao, F., Narain, N. R., Chen, E. Y., Kiebish, M. A., Cypess, A. M., Blüher, M., Goodyear, L. J., … Tseng, Y.-H. (2017). The cold-induced lipokine 12,13-diHOME promotes fatty acid transport into brown adipose tissue. Nature Medicine, 23(5), 631–637. https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.4297

Mamounis, K. J., Shvedov, N. R., Margolies, N., Yasrebi, A., & Roepke, T. A. (2020). The effects of dietary fatty acids in the physiological outcomes of maternal high-fat diet on offspring energy homeostasis in mice. Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, 11(3), 273–284. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2040174419000540

Martin, M. A., Lassek, W. D., Gaulin, S. J. C., Evans, R. W., Woo, J. G., Geraghty, S. R., Davidson, B. S., Morrow, A. L., Kaplan, H. S., & Gurven, M. D. (2012). Fatty acid composition in the mature milk of Bolivian forager-horticulturalists: Controlled comparisons with a US sample. Maternal & Child Nutrition, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-8709.2012.00412.x

McReynolds, C. B., Cortes-Puch, I., Ravindran, R., Khan, I. H., Hammock, B. G., Shih, P. B., Hammock, B. D., & Yang, J. (2021). Plasma Linoleate Diols Are Potential Biomarkers for Severe COVID-19 Infections. Frontiers in Physiology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2021.663869

McReynolds, C. B., Cortes_Puch, I., Ravindran, R., Khan, I., Shih, P.-A. B., Hammock, B. D., Yang, J., & Hammock, B. G. (2021). Lipid mediators detected in COVID-19 patients and healthy controls (Version 4, p. 135850 bytes) [Data set]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.25338/B8M92X

Moghaddam, M. F., Grant, D. F., Cheek, J. M., Greene, J. F., Williamson, K. C., & Hammock, B. D. (1997). Bioactivation of leukotoxins to their toxic diols by epoxide hydrolase. Nature Medicine, 3(5), 562–566. https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0597-562

Nobbs, J. (2021, March 30). The Environmental Impact of Vegetable Oils [Blog]. Jeff Nobbs. https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/the-environmental-impact-of-vegetable-oils

Okuyama, H., Kobayashi, T., & Watanabe, S. (1996). Dietary fatty acids—The n-6n-3 balance and chronic elderly diseases. Excess linoleic acid and relative n-3 deficiency syndrome seen in Japan. Progress in Lipid Research, 35(4), 409–457. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-7827(96)00012-4

Oliver, M. (2004, November 25). Ancel Keys, 100; Diet Researcher Developed K-Rations for Troops. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-nov-25-me-keys25-story.html

Plurad, D., Green, D., Inaba, K., Belzberg, H., Demetriades, D., & Rhee, P. (2009). A 6-year review of total parenteral nutrition use and association with late-onset acute respiratory distress syndrome among ventilated trauma victims. Injury, 40(5), 511–515. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.injury.2008.07.025

Ramsden, C. E., Zamora, D., Majchrzak-Hong, S., Faurot, K. R., Broste, S. K., Frantz, R. P., Davis, J. M., Ringel, A., Suchindran, C. M., & Hibbeln, J. R. (2016). Re-evaluation of the traditional diet-heart hypothesis: Analysis of recovered data from Minnesota Coronary Experiment (1968-73). BMJ, 353. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i1246

Rice, M. E. (2020). Bruce D. Hammock: Science Should Be Fun. American Entomologist, 66(1), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1093/ae/tmaa010

Riyami, B. M., Tree, R., Kinsella, J., Clark, C. J., Reid, W. H., Campbell, D., & Gemmell, C. G. (1990). Changes in alveolar macrophage, monocyte, and neutrophil cell profiles after smoke inhalation injury. Journal of Clinical Pathology, 43(1), 43–45. https://doi.org/10.1136/jcp.43.1.43

Ruf, T., & Geiser, F. (2015). Daily torpor and hibernation in birds and mammals. Biological Reviews, 90(3), 891–926. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12137

Taha, A. Y., Cheon, Y., Faurot, K. F., MacIntosh, B., Majchrzak-Hong, S. F., Mann, J. D., Hibbeln, J. R., Ringel, A., & Ramsden, C. E. (2014). Dietary omega-6 fatty acid lowering increases bioavailability of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in human plasma lipid pools. Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes, and Essential Fatty Acids, 90(5), 151–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plefa.2014.02.003

Watkins, S. M., Lin, T. Y., Davis, R. M., Ching, J. R., DePeters, E. J., Halpern, G. M., Walzem, R. L., & German, J. B. (2001). Unique phospholipid metabolism in mouse heart in response to dietary docosahexaenoic or α-linolenic acids. Lipids, 36(3), 247–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11745-001-0714-8

Wikipedia. (2020). William E.M. Lands. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_E.M._Lands&oldid=994164694

Yu, D., Hennebelle, M., Sahlas, D. J., Ramirez, J., Gao, F., Masellis, M., Cogo-Moreira, H., Swartz, R. H., Herrmann, N., Chan, P. C., Pettersen, J. A., Stuss, D. T., Black, S. E., Taha, A. Y., & Swardfager, W. (2019). Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase-Derived Linoleic Acid Oxylipins in Serum Are Associated with Periventricular White Matter Hyperintensities and Vascular Cognitive Impairment. Translational Stroke Research, 10(5), 522–533. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12975-018-0672-5

Zheng, J., Plopper, C., & Hammock, B. (1998). Leukotoxin-diol produces greater acute lung injury in mice than does leukotoxin. FASEB Journal, 12(5). https://ucdavis.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/leukotoxin-diol-produces-greater-acute-lung-injury-in-mice-than-d

What Prevents Us From Losing Weight?

One of the biggest failures of the diet and nutritional science worlds is the inability to help people lose weight and keep it off. 

"Treatment of obesity by reducing calorie intake, despite having a good success rate in promoting initial weight-loss, has a generally poor outcome for long-term weight control [7]." (McNay, 2013)

I recently came across McNay 2013, a fascinating study that looks at how this happens (in mice, but seems quite relevant!): "High fat diet causes rebound weight gain."

They used a fairly standard "high-fat diet" (HFD) to induce obesity in mice. The fats in the diet were lard and soybean oil, the usual suspects.

A very busy chart. From (McNay 2013)
Fig. 1 a and b. (AL = ad libitum)

What's interesting is that they then attempted to cure the obesity they had caused, using a variety of approaches: a high-carb diet (HCD), a high-protein diet (HPD), and a ketogenic diet (KD), and calorie restriction (CR)—a "diet" of the eat less variety.

CR worked best, regardless of the composition of the diet—they were under-eating by 30%, and that's easy to do to a mouse in a cage. However, this had a negative effect on the mice's brain.

The other diets also worked for weight reduction, in the order of KD best, then HCD, then HPD. The HFD mice stayed fat (Fig. 1a). For final weight of the mice allowed to eat to their heart's content, they KD also worked best, then the control, the HPD, the HCD, and the HFD was the worst (Fig. 1b).

The HFD also had a negative effect on the brains of the mice, regardless of how much they were eating. This effect also persisted to a small extent even when the mice were switched to one of the other, weight-loss-inducing diets.

However, once the CR mice were again allowed to eat as much as they pleased on their diets:

"As expected, all mice showed significant rebound weight gain after release from CR... However, rebound BW [body weight] was significantly different across treatment groups with obese mice treated with HFD-CR rebounding to a higher BW than controls.... Although DIO [diet-induced obesity] mice treated with non-HFD showed a trend towards higher  rebound BW than controls, this only reached statistical significance at a one point in the case of HCD.... Hence the failure to achieve long-term weight control following CR only occurred in obese mice fed HFD during CR, coinciding with the maintenance of altered hypothalamic remodelling."

So the damage to their brain from the HFD persisted even though weight-loss due to dieting (CR).

However, "The increase in rebound BW in DIO mice treated with HFD-CR was not permanent but resolved after 6 weeks of ad-lib chow re-feeding."

Now the HFD wasn't actually the high-fat diet, here, that's a bit of a misnomer. It was 45 % energy. The KD was 93.4 % energy from fat—that's a high-fat diet!

"It is of particular interest that the specific effect of moderately high fat diet  (HFD) to alter hypothalamic proliferative remodelling is not shared by ultra high fat ketogenic diet (KD)."

So fat alone isn't the problem. It's the combination of fat and carbohydrate, and a good dose in seed oils (provided here from lard and soybean oil), as has been shown in other studies. In other words, the diet we are told to eat by the dietary guidelines.

And the "eat less" advice we constantly hear doesn't work at all, unless you also change your diet.

"These data support the view that treating obesity with CR does not by itself cure obesity despite treating the overt symptom of increased BW."

(My colleague Peter at the Hyperlipid blog also had some thoughts on this paper.)

---

Dobromylskyj, P. (2021, May 19). Of mice and men (2) In the brain [Blog]. Hyperlipid. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2021/05/of-mice-and-men-2-in-brain.html

 
McNay, D. E. G., & Speakman, J. R. (2013). High fat diet causes rebound weight gain. Molecular Metabolism, 2(2), 103–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molmet.2012.10.003

Interview: The Seed Oil/COVID-19 Connection—Discussing Leukotoxin on A Neighbor's Choice with David Gornoski

From last Friday, May 7th: discussing some follow-up data to this post from last year: 

Does Consumption of Omega-6 Seed Oils Worsen ARDS and COVID-19?

"David Gornoski is joined by nutritional researcher Tucker Goodrich. The two talk about camping as a break from modern excessiveness; the connection between linoleic acid and COVID; and more. Are people who are high in Omega-6 fatty acids more susceptible to COVID? What is ARDS? Should chicken consumption be decreased? Is butter bad for us as certain “studies” claim? Are peanut and palm oils good for us? Listen to the full episode to find out."

Here's the direct link, and here's the embedded player: 

Interview: "Tucker Goodrich Talks Seed Oils" with David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice

 I know, what a shocking topic!

"Nutritional researcher Tucker Goodrich returns to the show and joins David Gornoski in a fascinating conversation on the COVID effects on immunity, the validity of mask mandates, seed oils, and more. Should science be made subject to the whims and fancy of whoever that funds it? Is Fauci’s advice on virology unquestionable?"

Here's the direct link, and here's the embedded player: 

This is, by the way, a radio show released after the fact as a podcast. It's very cool to be getting some feedback from a mass audience.

How the Food Industry Implemented the Dietary Guidelines

"On being challenged on the incompleteness of the science, Senator McGovern said 'Senators do not have the luxury that the research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in...'"

Senator George McGovern

That was 1977, at the occassion was the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, which ultimately led to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines under which we continue to live.

The American Medical Association's response was "The evidence for assuming that benefits [are] to be derived from the adoption of such universal dietary goals … is not conclusive, and there is potential for harmful effects," which may be one of the great understatements of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Senator McGovern, having left government and failed while attempting to run a business due in part to excessive regulation, reflected in 1992:

"The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don't have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often."

It's nice that Senator McGovern, who by all accounts was a decent person, had this revelation later in his life. Unfortunately, we continue to live under the regime of the Dietary Guidelines he implemented. Fuller accounts of those guidelines and the flaws thereof are available elsewhere, what I'd like to focus on is what happened after they were implemented.

In 2011,  the Institute of Food Technologists published an account:

"The American Dietetic Assn., Inst. of Food Technologists, Intl. Food Information Council (IFIC), and the North American branch of the Intl. Life Sciences Inst. convened 2 expert roundtables of rigorous discussions, whose purpose was to enable the 2 key scientific audiences to interact, innovate, and close the knowledge gaps that are crucial to integrating and translating the DGA [Dietary Guidelines for America]. As stated at the outset, the content of this paper is formed from the proceedings of the roundtables held in early October 2010 in Chicago, Illinois, and in Washington, D.C."

Upon reading this, many years later, I was appalled to see what had gone on in the food industry in response to these so-called Guidelines. I published what I will confess was a Star Wars-inspired, somewhat hyperbolic tweet-thread, from which this post is taken.

I've found the Evil Empire (Food Division)'s plans for all of us. The roadmap for the conspiracy is open access, as it happens. First, the marching orders (the Soviets would've loved the tone):

"A coordinated strategic plan that includes all sectors of society, including individuals, families, educators, communities, physicians and allied health professionals, public health advocates, policy makers, scientists, and small and large businesses (e.g., farmers, agricultural producers, food scientists, food manufacturers, and food retailers of all kinds), should be engaged in the development and ultimate implementation of a plan to help all Americans eat well, be physically active, and maintain good health and function...."

"It is important that any strategic plan is evidence-informed, action-oriented, and focused on changes in systems in these sectors (United States Dept. of Agriculture 2010a)." Note well: only "evidence-informed", weaker language even than evidence-based.

Who's the audience? "Food scientists and nutrition scientists (dietitians and nutrition communicators)" The stormtroopers of the New Food Order, in other words.

How are they doing? “What has been done till now isn't working. To do nothing more effective than we have, means that five years from now we'll be in an even worse situation."

That's harsh! Who said that? "Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine at the Northwestern Univ. and chairman of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee." Well, she should know! (Van Horn was again on the Advisory Committee in 2020.)

So what are our Food Lords going to do about this "unconscionable" (Van Horn) failure? "Food scientists, dietitians/nutrition communicators, and government representatives" have a plan, with some gobbledygook:

"Reduce the incidence and prevalence of overweight and obesity in the U.S. population by reducing overall caloric intake;" They're going to starve us...

"Shift food intake patterns to a more plant-based diet that emphasizes vegetables, cooked dry beans and peas," Make us (more) malnourished...

"Reduce intake of foods containing added sugars, solid fats (SoFAS), refined grains, and sodium (USDA 2010a)." And make us hate our food.

"Two well-known successes cited were the consumer switch to whole-wheat products and the move away from trans fats." Who got us to eat trans-fats in the first place?

"Richard Black, PhD, a nutrition scientist at Kraft Foods, offered the group some of his company's insights about the obesity issue:" It's quite sensible, actually, read the whole thing. Let's hear it for industry pushback!...

Black: "Recommending dietary change that is so extreme as to be only aspirational rather than achievable will not serve the greater public need for dietary guidance to address the obesity epidemic.... After all, we are asking people to fundamentally change how they think about food, shop for food, prepare food, and eat food. This will take time, patience, commitment and trust from everyone."

I think he was sealed in Carbonite after. 

Next speaker: "...consumer taste likes and dislikes, some of which are genetically based, are a major challenge to vegetable acceptability." New Food Man is required, in other words. GMO foods are not enough, we need GM people! "Nelson Almeida, PhD, FACN, a food scientist with Kellogg Co." Made it perfectly clear that more plant-based means more carbs: “Currently, the wheat flour tortilla is the fastest growing product line of all grain-based products."

"Penny Kris-Etherton, PhD, The Pennsylvania State Univ." advocates brainwashing: "cognitive-behavioral strategies have proved effective in behavior change—notable among these is motivational interviewing, with its well-ordered feedback and monitoring."

"Robbie Burns, formerly of Cadbury" offered more common sense: "Since their inception in 1980, Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) have included, in some form, advice to decrease dietary intakes of added sugars, solid fats, refined grains and sodium.... As a result and to meet consumer desires for more healthful products, the food industry has developed alternatives where all these negative components are reduced and in some cases eliminated.”

They called for "Trust and mutual understanding" between parties implementing the DGA; but for, the victims? "Stealth vs persuasion Consumers have been resistant to dietary change, partly because of established food preferences: “stealth” methods of change are... effective..."

"Food scientist participants of the roundtables informed their dietitian colleagues that food companies typically spend 60% to 70% of their research and development budgets on renovation and only 30% to 40% on innovation of new food products." Woah!

"Dietary change advocates have argued that the food industry, with its highly persuasive... marketing departments, can simply produce products with healthier nutrition profiles and “sell them” to consumers. The 80% to 90% failure rate of new products is a sobering reality check."

"A public preference for extremely short ingredient lists on processed food products also poses major challenges to food scientists in renovating/reformulating food."

So if you're wondering why opposition to people like Professor Tim Noakes and Nina Teicholz and the whole idea of Real Food is so vehement, it's literally a conspiracy. 

Read it and weep (Rowe et al., 2011).

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McGovern, G. (2012, October 21). George McGovern in the Journal. Wall Street Journal. https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203406404578070543545022704.html

Rowe, S., Alexander, N., Almeida, N., Black, R., Burns, R., Bush, L., Crawford, P., Keim, N., Kris-Etherton, P., & Weaver, C. (2011). Food Science Challenge: Translating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to Bring About Real Behavior Change. Journal of Food Science, 76(1), R29–R37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.01973.x

Who’s On The Guidelines Committee. (n.d.). The Nutrition Coalition. Retrieved April 23, 2021, from https://www.nutritioncoalition.us/news/2020-dietary-guidelines-committee

Why Does the Federal Government Issue Damaging Dietary Guidelines? Lessons from Thomas Jefferson to Today. (2018, July 10). Cato Institute. https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/why-does-federal-government-issue-damaging-dietary-guidelines-lessons-thomas