Friday, March 21, 2014

Hate-reading skincare quackery

Anyone want to join me? I hate to drive traffic to this person's blog, but please, I need someone to hold my hand through this one. It's about how there's this one superhero renegade doctor who has discovered the truth (by citing studies from the 1950s) about how polyunsaturated fats are the "real" cause of aging. Rather than sun damage or, you know, age. So the list includes all vegetable oils, except coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil, basically, as well as fish oil. If you want to avoid wrinkles, according to this theory, you have to stop eating fish, avocados, seeds and nuts, etc.

This information is not coming from some marginal "natural" website, but from an apparently well-established beauty blogger, who was a former beauty editor of Elle Canada.

One of my favorite parts is when someone asks in the comments about whether or not her guru has published any peer-reviewed studies. The author responds:
Haha no. Scientific journals are mainly funded by pharmaceutical companies and food industries. Their financial interests result in a lot of bias and fraud, and they exert heavy influence over what gets published.  [. . .]  [Y]our choices would either be to a) change your position i.e. “go along to get along”, and get the prestige/money/published papers/top positions or b) go out on your own, as he has done with his own books and newsletters. Most people in this world obviously choose a).

Fascinating. Any scientists out there who would like to share their experiences with choosing between lying about omega-3s or being kicked out of science? Sounds like an exciting story. I'd like to hear about the techniques that Big Fish Oil uses to pressure you to compromise your integrity.

Another quotation from the author's comments:
From Ray Peat’s [the guru in question] coconut oil article: Many people have asked me to write something on coconut oil. I thought I might write a small book on it, but I realize that there are no suitable channels for distributing such a book–if the seed-oil industry can eliminate major corporate food products that have used coconut oil for a hundred years, they certainly have the power to prevent dealers from selling a book that would affect their market more seriously.
Wow, Big Canola even controls the publishing industry! How deep does it go? Do you think the Illuminati are involved somehow? "I’m genuinely curious how you think I could harm myself from not eating PUFA oils? Because Canada’s Food Guide says saturated fats are bad for you? It must be true then! (haha)" OMG, they control the Canadian government too! (Also from the comments.)


If you really want your head to explode, look at this list of people whose research supposedly supports the theory of her guru, which includes such figures as Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, William Blake, Ivan Pavlov, Peter Kropotkin, Baruch Spinoza, and Ivan Illich. I don't even . . . is it just a list of names that she thinks sounds impressive?

Okay, I'll stop now before I have a stroke. But it bothers me because there are so many people in the comments convinced now that they've been damaging their faces by eating salad.

12 comments:

  1. This is pretty much the stupidest thing I've ever read in my whole life. Vegetables are toxic? Rully?

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    1. In one of the comments she said that she doesn't eat vegetables as per his instructions) because they have toxins. I'm flabbergasted by this stupidity.

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  2. Ugggggghhhhh why did I just spend half an hour digesting that load of garbage? Her know-it-all attitude makes her replies sound so condescending and the smugness is jacked up with all those smiley emojis. I almost slammed my head against the table but this bitch ain't worth the concussion ;D

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  3. Oh dear. That's all I can say. I'm a 30-year-old who eats a vegan (lots of nuts and seeds) diet, so I guess I'm doomed...

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    Replies
    1. And obviously you look like you're 100 years old, right?

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  4. I wonder who paid her to write this crap. I hate that people are reading this and following her blindly.

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    1. Yes, let's just hope that most of the commenters aren't really motivated enough to give up their varied diets in favor of this, but best case scenario, they are going to feel shitty because they think they are eating the wrong things. There's enough of that in the world without adding salmon and a bunch of other healthy things to the list.

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    2. I just hate that she hides her "this is only just my opinion, duh." in the comments but leads the "article" with an inflammatory and misleading headline so people think this crap is in fact truthful.

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    3. It's totally just her opinion! But if you have a different opinion you're obviously brainwashed by mainstream science "experts" and you're probably ugly too!

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  5. The easiest way to get at least five people to believe whatever bullshit you're selling these days is to cloak it in some conspiracy nuttery. All you have to do is invoke "This is something THEY don't want you to know" and you're pretty much golden. So many people really want to believe they're being lied to about everything that they'll blindly believe that the "Seed Oil Industry" (that's a thing?) really is lying to them about....seeds and oils.

    I so just wanna tell these dopes that reading beauty blogs causes crow's feet and saggy jowls just to see how many people lose their shit. Do I have any proof? Course I do but I can't publish it because "The Man" is preventing me from doing so.

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