Robb Wolf, mental illness, and the bollocks du jour

Just as I was dosing off a few weeks back, my brother mentioned that Robb Wolf (messiah of the paleo diet’s disciples) had tweeted about how vegan diets were linked to mental disorders.1

He read the tweet out to me. At first, I wasn’t particularly concerned about the actual link. I’m very sceptical of the technique used by so many newspapers and link-bait websites whereby a study has arisen about how x gives you cancer, or why you should start drinking more of y because it means you won’t get Alzheimer’s. The reasons for being sceptical are outlined beautifully in the article, broccoli is bad for you.

Continue reading Robb Wolf, mental illness, and the bollocks du jour

The myth of fish oil and the ‘Eskimo diet’

Photo by Ville Miettinen

After discussing veganism with some friends yesterday, the suggestion that inuit diets were the best for preventing heart disease etc came up. I didn’t really know much about it, so I looked it up when I got home, only to discover it’s a myth based on a discredited study from the 70s. Bizarrely though, the fact that it was debunked doesn’t seem to have stopped the craze for fish oil supplements.

Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.

– Jonathan Swift

Photo: Ville Miettinen/flickr

Sean Lock on Richard Branson

Last Friday I saw Sean Lock at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal for a work-in-progress performance. One of my favourite lines of the night was this one about Richard Branson’s business practices:

What Richard Branson does is turn up, fire half the staff, put those left on short-term contracts, paint everything red and then fuck off in his balloon.