Does it matter if Goldacre has worked as a GP or not?

Does it matter if Goldacre has worked as a GP or not?

Does he refer to himself that way?
Seeing as a lot of his own writing is devoted to criticism of scientific inaccuracy in the mass media, with one of his most famous successes being the withdrawal of the use of the title “Dr” for the unqualified miss Gillian Mckeith, I’m sure he’d enjoy the irony in being termed a GP despite no experience of general practice.

I’m with jon on this one – 1/2 an Asprin a day for me whilst following a varied Vegetarian diet as i have done for 20+ years, The peer revieved medical evidence for taking Asprin daily is mounting up whilst the evidence for the effectiveness of vitamin/dietary supplements is sketchy and skewed heavily in favour to the drug companies.

Our dietary habits should be addressed and changed if necessary as a first point rather than attempt to cover up vitamin/mineral deficiency by use of little more than sugar pills – if vitamin pills worked as a means of delivery then we’d now be in a position to bypass the perceived hassle of preparing fresh food for consumption and swallow a few brightly covered pills instead – a perfect dystopian solution for our increasingly busy lives.

molgrips – Member

I stopped taking them every day when I started the iDiet, since I found I was eating tons of veg and plenty of legumes and eggs, smashing my 5 a day.

I always assumed the 5-a-day myth was more about fibre than vitamins.

I only have them now when I’ve had a couple of days of not eating well. There does SEEM to be a slight improvement in the general ‘meh’ ness that otherwise accompanies such days.

Regression to the mean. If you feel worse than normal for a few days, you will always feel better.

loum – Member

Does he refer to himself that way?
Seeing as a lot of his own writing is devoted to criticism of scientific inaccuracy in the mass media, with one of his most famous successes being the withdrawal of the use of the title “Dr” for the unqualified miss Gillian Mckeith, I’m sure he’d enjoy the irony in being termed a GP despite no experience of general practice.

I’ve got a copy of Bad Science in front of me and the ‘about the author’ bit says:

Ben Goldacre is a writer, broadcaster and doctor best known for the Bad Science column in the Guardian. Trained in Oxford and London, with brief forays into academia, he is thirty-four and works full-time for the NHS.

…attempt to cover up vitamin/mineral deficiency by use of little more than sugar pills – if vitamin pills worked as a means of delivery then we’d now be in a position to bypass the perceived hassle of preparing fresh food…

If vitamin supplements are purely sugar-pill placebos then why are they prescribed and used to treat genuine medical deficiencies?

Pills work as a delivery mechanism. Why wouldn’t they?

They don’t and can’t replace food because they don’t contain calories, carbohydrate, fat or protein.

if vitamin pills worked as a means of delivery then we’d now be in a position to bypass the perceived hassle of preparing fresh food for consumption and swallow a few brightly covered pills instead

They do work in general, so I’ve read. And the warnings are all about getting too much of a particular vitamin, so that would imply that they do actually get into your blood. Some don’t work well in isolation though, there are many examples of certain nutrients only being absorbed and working in conjunction with others – read an article about that a while ago, may have been New Scientist. That’s why they always recommend taking them with a meal.

In theory you could replace food with pills, but the range of nutrients is absolutely huge and hard to replicate. Multivitamins don’t pretend to replace food of course, I imagine they’d be somewhat different if they did. Plus the market for food replacement paste would be fairly small, as we’d get fed up with eating it!

Incidentally, preparations must exist to replace food entirely, because they feed coma patients on it, and babies too.

the 5-a-day myth

How’s the idea of 5-a-day a myth?

My company sponsored the GB sailing team – went to an interesting presentation from one of the team GB doctors. Apparently the only thing they make the athletes take is zinc (speeds up recovery from colds by 30%) and yakult twice a day (reduces colds by 50%). He said those were the only two things with any science to back them up.

molgrips – Member

How’s the idea of 5-a-day a myth?

In Japan it is recommended you have 17-a-day, the World Cancer Research Fund say it should be 10, the Institute of Optimum Nutrition say 8…. (the latter are the focus of criticism in Bad Science btw).

It might not be a myth, but there doesnt appear to be consensus.

In Japan it is recommended you have 17-a-day

Really?? Bloody hell. Surely that can’t be the same size of portions though??

I suspect eating 17 bananas a day, for example, would actually make you quite unwell.

It’d be 1530 calories for a start!

I suspect eating 17 bananas a day, for example, would actually make you quite unwell.

No, the recommended dose is 30 a day!

If you’re a complete nutter, of course.

It might not be a myth, but there doesnt appear to be consensus.

If you are expecting it to be some kind of optimum prescription for invincibility, then you are right – different guidelines would reduce credibility.

However the message is ‘eat plenty of fruit and veg’ which isn’t exactly controversial or difficult to accept, is it? 5 a day is just a token number so that people have an idea of what ‘plenty’ is. You know, the people* who’d whine ‘well I’ve had some lettuce on my burger today so it’s ok’

* before anyone accuses me of jeering at stereotypes, I did watch a tv programme where someone attempted to defend their meal choice via the lettuce in their big mac. They did realise fairly quickly how silly they were being mind.

From the FAQ on that 30BAD site:

A. How do i know im not eating enough calories from fruit?
1. Cooked food starts to look and smell good.
2. Cooked food looks more than the toxic, second rate slop it really is.
..
10. Your so thin and weak that your athletic friends start to get concerned.

😯

I was just reading that too, Graham. It’s rather forceful, which is worrying considering it’s bolleaux

From the FAQ on that 30BAD site

The comments/replies to the articles are the real gold, though. It’s like the Daily Mail comments section.

Hmm.. I never normally do this kind of thing but I am tempted to log on for a windup…

EDIT not tempted for long though… sheesh.