Nusi: Fill & Download for Free

Look at what Gary Taubes and Peter Attia, MD, are up to at NuSI, the Nutrition Science Initiative. Real tests. Big money. Expecting real results.

When I co-founded NuSI half a dozen years ago, I assumed the primary way out was better science. Hence, if we could fund and facilitate the proper studies, and get teams of influential researchers to do those studies, they might be convinced by the data and that would start the dominoes falling. I still think this can happen but the NuSI experience has been something of a learning experience as well. That’s a longer story then I have time to tell this morning, but if our goal, so far, was to get better science done, we haven’t succeeded. The first publication from a NuSI-funded study had all the typical problems of the research in the field, particularly over-interpreting inherently ambiguous data to suit the bias of the researchers. (And because we funded the study, we could not influence what they wrote.)So I still think the way to fix a scientific endeavor that is embracing failed paradigms is to get better research done, and specifically research that asks the right questions and is rigorous enough to provide meaningful answers. We’re still hoping we can get that done. But I’m also wondering if we can shift the paradigm merely by convincing the research community of the inanity of some of their beliefs. In this sense, the chapter in The Case Against Sugar on the inane energy balance conception of obesity was entitled “The Gift That Keeps on Giving.” I was hoping that by, ahem, sugar-coating the message of this bad science in a book about the evils of sugar, some of the researchers or public health authorities (Marion, are you reading?) might begin to confront the damage that this paradigm has done and how ill-conceived it is and move on to something a little more useful. I may continue to take that tact in the future and see how it works.Finally, I think we’re slowly breaking down these paradigms as variations on the LCHF diets continue to spread and be embraced by folks who recognize their efficacy and accept that they’re a healthy way to eat. Endeavors like Virta Health, taking on type 2 diabetes, will go along way to getting MDs to see the benefits of these diets and by seeing the benefits, they’ll not only prescribe them to their own patients but, I hope, try to learn more about why they work as well.This has always been the great advantage we have with our arguments. The diets work. Regardless of why, they are remarkably efficacious for some large proportion of individuals who try them. I used to tell my colleagues at NuSI that it was like we were playing in a poker tournament with 100s of opponents who all collude with each other and so all cheat. And yet the dealers keep dealing us Aces, which in this case is the efficacy of the diet paired with the pretty simple story of the science and the history — i.e., what basic endocrinology tells us about fat accumulation and insulin resistance, and the fact that obesity researchers have ignored, since the 1970s, what basic endocrinology tells about the regulation of fat accumulation from their understanding of the causes of a disorder of excess fat accumulation.All that said, optimism still makes me nervous.

Till 1977 Kolkata had a preeminent position in independent India. From 1977 onwards Communists ruled the state. They wanted to keep the state backward so that they can remain in power. One by one all leading nusinesses. Dunlop India, Britannica etc either closed down or shifted to other parts. During the left rule people took pride to be poor. Mow without government support and subsidy they cannot have two proper meals. The present Mamata government is even worse. Has mixed religion in politics.Successive governments are competing with each other on their appeasement of a particular community. Both the left and TMC have been encouraging illegal Bangladeshi infiltration.Mamata’s appeacement has emboldened the muslims and many riots are happening in WB. In Dulagarh riots many Hindu families lost their life and properties.Mamata is posing as if she is the poorest. She expects others to take pride to be poor. Probably WB is the only state to grow poorer year after year.WB is suffering from too many chit fund scams of Sharada, Narada, Rose Valley. Chit Fund scams.The people are fed up. Government is following its own policy to keep the people poor and underdeveloped, so that they will be loyal to them for ever.