A Diet Of Alternative Facts

The events culminating in our election outcome were characterized as the advent of a “post truth era.” We have since devolved from post-truth, to “alternative facts:” essentially, a choice between bald-faced lies about verified reality ― or delusion, calling out for medical care. Either way, we are being fed a daily diet of unpalatable (to most of us), insalubrious (for all of us) deceit. Tempting as it is to address that matter, I have a related case to make that keeps me ensconced more decisively in my native professional purview. We are now all dealing with a diet of alternative facts. While that’s a new twist, alternative facts about diet have been our cultural standard for decades. The perils overlap, and it may even be that alternative facts about diet were the appetizer, and a culture-wide diet of alternative facts the inevitable main course to follow. Nutrition has been mired in a post-truth era in the U.S. since long before anyone in our country had thought to coin the term. Let’s go back a little over half a century. Leaving aside the contentious particulars, rival perspectives, and forays into revisionist history, we may simply note that Ancel Keys did indeed note an association between variations in dietary patterns, and variation in the rates of heart disease. In this country, where corporate interests got involved early, that ultimately came to mean: eat low fat junk food, and all will be w...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news