Saturday, November 06, 2010

Eat good-flavored cheese

The NY Times has a long article on the dairy industry promoting dairy products, as if it were some sort of national scandal. It says:
Dr. Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health and a former member of the federal government’s nutrition advisory committee, said: “The U.S.D.A. should not be involved in these programs that are promoting foods that we are consuming too much of already. A small amount of good-flavored cheese can be compatible with a healthy diet, but consumption in the U.S. is enormous and way beyond what is optimally healthy.”
Willett is a leading nutrition expert, but why is he saying that we have to limit our cheese to what is "good-flavored"? Sometimes I think that these experts are more influenced by what they like to eat, rather than any hard science. The guy claims to have written a 1000 research papers, but he does not have any on his Harvard web site. I don't trust any researcher who is afraid to post his own research.

The article exposed govt documents that offer inconsistent advice about cheese -- some say to eat more, and some say to eat less. It says that the feds have stockpiled $4 billion of cheese in Missouri caves! I had no idea that we were so well prepared for a cheese shortage. But the official advice on nutrition is inconsistent in a lot of ways, because of unscientific reasoning.

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