Optimal thought and optimal fitness through reason, logic, science, passion, and wisdom.
Case Study: How to Analyze and Understand Factual Claims
Case Study: How to Analyze and Understand Factual Claims

Case Study: How to Analyze and Understand Factual Claims

In his post “ABC’s big meal propadanda,” Dr. Eades dismantles a nutritional Trojan Horse. ABC tries to present us disinformation and ideas that, contrary to what ABC says, we would follow to our detriment, but Dr. Eades exposes the bad ideas contained within the smiling faces. He shows how to reason out and analyze claims people make: we need to put things in context; appeal to logic, reason, and induction; and establish a chain of reasoning based on the evidence of the senses and first principles. Here’s an excerpt of Dr. Eades’ post:
[Charlie] Gibson leads into the segment about two reporters who underwent self experimentation on the adverse effects of unhealthy eating.  The reporters, ABC’s Yuji de Nies and Jon Garcia, set out to see what would happen if they consumed a giant meal containing…6,190 calories, which included 187 grams of saturated fat. … It’s pretty impressive when the lab tech holds up the tube of blood taken after the meal and compares it to the one taken before the meal.  There is a lot of fat swimming in the serum, that’s for sure.  What the producers of this piece (and, sadly, the doctors commenting although they should know better) want you to take away from all this by the way they set it up is that all that saturated fat went directly into the blood.  And how can you argue with them?  It’s there for all to see. Problem is, that’s what blood samples look like after almost any meal, especially one that contains carbohydrates.  The fat you see isn’t the fat the two reporters ate; it is the fat the liver has made from the carbohydrate.  It’s the same picture a tube of blood would show after either of the two doctors had eaten a high-carb, low-fat lunch. The blood samples were taken two hours after the meal.  Dietary carbohydrate is absorbed directly into the blood and makes a pass through the liver where it stimulates the production of triglycerides, the fat you see in the blood.  Fat, especially long-chain saturated fat digests very slowly, and doesn’t reach the blood until much later than the two hour mark.  While carbs go directly into the blood, fats take a different route. …As I say, the fat in the blood you see on the video didn’t come from the saturated fat in the diet, although that was definitely the implication.
Interesting. There’s lots more good information and analysis in the post. Recommended reading. Recommended reasoning.

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