Hacker News Reader

Comment by slaxman | Hacker News Reader

23 pointsslaxman19 comments

If you do a Google search on this guy, you'll find http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/lundell.html, which does not make him seem like the "world renowned heart surgeon" this article's headline claims he is.

Admittedly, this is an attack on his authority and the ideas could be correct, but I guess I'd prefer to hear them from a doctor who has a medical license and pays his taxes. There's certainly not enough information in this "article" (really a "release" according to the footer) to persuade me that current practices are flawed.

This whole article screamed so link-baity it could have been called "Surgeons secret to heart disease that scientists don't want you to know."

If the point of this is to do most of your shopping in the produce aisle, then it really isn't anything new. People who have underlying allergies or medical conditions may need special diets, but otherwise eating simple whole foods is adequate.

Being healthy -> KISS.

The first Google result for "Dwight Lundell" is http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/lundell.html

Apparently he had his license to practice medicine in Arizona revoked back in 2008: http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/2008/10/...

I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a climatologist. I'm not an epidemiologist or a biologist or a physicist. When it comes to things outside my areas of expertise, my best bet is to subscribe to academic consensus[1]. Of course it's not always correct, but I don't have time to research everything as thoroughly as the academic community.

1. Unless of course there's a page on http://www.gwern.net/ that says otherwise. Then I go with Gwern's opinion.

Damn, wish I could upvote this a couple more times.

I've heard the sugar-is-bad, fat-is-not argument but this is the first time someone explained the underlying mechanism.

Sugar Spike -> Inflammation -> Damaged Blood Vessels.

He does not explain the mechanism. He states that blood sugar spikes cause inflammation. There is nothing in the article that explains that at all.

I agree. The explanation seems so obvious on an after thought. Unfortunately, mainstream doctors will take a while to change 50 years of opinion.

I am especially surprised that sunflower & soya oil are bad for health. Almost every one says the opposite.

Makes the whole med. diet anomaly make sense as well.

It's easy to believe things are obvious when explained in this way, but what it doesn't tell you is that these so-called obvious facts are not true.

This is no more science than the miracle tonics of 100 years ago. If it sounds too good to be true, maybe it is.

I wish eating unprocessed foods would be made easier in this country. During and after college I didn't care too much what I put in my body but seeing some of the first negative effects about three years into that little experiment made me (slowly) focus on eating right. I started to compare what people in Germany (where I was born and raised) and America do differently. The first major difference I happened to come across was how real sugar is replaced with high fructose corn syrup (which is a more processed ingredient?) in almost any product here in the U.S. Not that real sugar is that much better for you but it made me notice that clocks tick differently over here.

The Fat/Cholesterol diet to Heart Disease explanation has always been based on correlation and the work to find an physiological mechanism has always been weak.

It is still early days on the gut bacteria/TMAO hypothesis but it does fit with my knowledge of the relevant biology. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/health/study-points-to-new...

The arguments that fructose is toxic to the liver also seem compelling. I try to classify sugar in the same category as alchohol in my diet.

Apples and oranges are toxic to the liver? I don't buy it.

Apples and oranges aren't toxic to the liver, fructose is. [1][2][3] When found in fruit, fructose is bound up tightly with fiber, which drastically slows the rate at which it is absorbed and metabolized. Unbound, in fructose-sweetened products, it pretty much slams into your liver, which is then forced to deal with the onslaught.

[1] Fructose Consumption as a Risk Factor for Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2423467/

[2] Abundance of fructose not good for the liver, heart: http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Heart_Lett...

[3] High Fructose Corn Syrup Linked to Liver Scarring, Research Suggests: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322204628.ht...

Americans are chronically inflamed. It's an epidemic. The lifestyle and diet are horrible. I was at a Broadway play tonight attended mostly by tourists from "non-NY America." I noticed how many people in the audience had chronic dry coughs (which is symptomatic of inflammation). This is in the summer where people are generally not sick. It was annoying but also alarming, this is something that goes away if you treat your body right.

This is the magic elixir: A big helping of common sense, a sprinkle of logical sounding but groundless assertions, and little bit of inflated accomplishments for a nice appeal to authority. Season it with a pinch of "everything you know is wrong!" then stir well and people will pay you $4.95 to read you extended-sales-pitch of a book and then $245/month to talk to you for an hour.

Pure, unadulterated blogspam at the top of HN. Nice.

> Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables.

Wait, what? I thought colorful fruits, which are sweet, have simple carbohydrates - aka sugar, which is why they are sweet?

Ugh, how does this quack keep getting publicity? This is all unscientific baseless hogwash.

Flag it and forget it.

I'll take a steak over candy any day.

This reads like complete quackery, starting off with the infomercial-like "World Renowned!". Further some of the statistics don't seemed to mirror reality-

"and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before."

Population adjusted, heart disease as a cause of death has been on a major decline since peaking in, I believe, in the 1960s: People raised on those rustic "like your grandmother served" foods were dying by the loads in their 50s.

Not saying there isn't some truth in there, but I was ready for the sales pitch for some magic pill to appear with each paragraph. Maybe it was there and I missed it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com