Fat

Francis Bacon 1617

Gary Taubes, a science writer, has written an essay dissing a report from the American Heart Association. He opens with this quote:

The human understanding, once it has adopted opinions, either because they were already accepted and believed, or because it likes them, draws everything else to support and agree with them. And though it may meet a greater number and weight of contrary instances, it will, with great and harmful prejudice, ignore or condemn or exclude them by introducing some distinction, in order that the authority of those earlier assumptions may remain intact and unharmed. – Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620

He goes on at some length laying out just what is wrong with the AHA's report, but Frank's quote pretty much sums it up.

The AHA wants you to believe animal fats are bad for you and vegetable fats (oils) are good for you. Gary thinks their evidence has been cherry picked. I think the AHA is operating on a political mandate to get people to eat more vegetables and less beef, because that will cut their grocery bill and it will make it look like inflation is not as bad as it really is. But wait, they have already removed beef from the consumer price index calculations, so maybe that's not it. Maybe they just hate ranchers and pig farmers. I don't why that would be, but I will wager that big money is a factor.

Via Detroit Steve.