It seems some Aussie experts, particularly those at the University of Sydney are spending too much time with the Mad Hatter and others in the Alice story. Their research gets more bizarre as time goes by. Today researchers there announced that: Paleo diet leads to ‘shorter lifespan’.

“The Paleo people will be screaming and howling and they have a personal and professional interest in doing it,” says Professor Simpson the academic director of Sydney University’s Charles Perkins Centre.

“One of the best ways to combat the lure of fad diets is to provide hard, experimental evidence,” he says. He should take his own advice. Not only was his comment above, less than academically articulate but it is dead wrong. He has not used one bit of solid scientific evidence to back up this outrageous claim. Instead he quotes data obtained from mice that were fed a diet that they normally don’t eat, got sick and died earlier than anticipated. Just the sort of dietary advice adjusted for humans that he and the other non-expert dietary pundits have been telling us to eat for the last 30 years with the obvious catastrophic health issues that have resulted.  Instead, the diet we evolved on for over 2.5 million years is described as a fad while something that has been in effect for 30 odd years is ‘normal.’ It doesn’t get much sillier except that you cannot take mice data and extrapolate it to humans as was done here. We have different physiologies.  Really? Yes, silly and sillier…

Paleo, low carb high fat is NOT what mice eat and this invalidates the study. But it gets worse. He then tells us that the Washington University has conducted studies in humans that agree with his findings. They most certainly did NOT. They studied a product of growth hormone called IGF-1 and, using mental gymnastics that impractical academics do so well, they concluded that because IGF-1 was raised in people eating a Paleo-type diet that it might lead to cancer. Really?  Older people with low growth hormone levels (IGF-1) are most at risk of cancer (as are men with low testosterone) but never let an observable fact get in the way of a fantasy in a researcher’s dream.

Prof Simpson goes on: ‘A previous study of 30 diets on 900 mice at the University had found the low protein, high carbohydrate diet was the best diet for a long life.’
ONLY IF YOU’RE A RODENT. These are the current human dietary guidelines that are systematically knocking off millions of people around the world.

Then to cap it off: ‘The message is eat high quality wholegrain carbohydrates which are hard to digest like starches, vegetables and fruit because that is what the mice in this study were fed,’ he said.  Fruit is hard to digest? And he says we should be eating indigestible foods. Seriously?

Well,  Professor Simpson seems to have developed a case of severe cerebral indigestion.  Pass him the Alka Selzer…

What is going on in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney?

The pontiffs of puffery are alive and well in Academia and they love to deliver papal bull with never ending proficiency. With millions around the world discovering the benefits of a paleo-type diet, normalising blood work, reversing type 2 diabetes, it is inconceivable that any research could tell the world that getting fat is healthy as was implied in Prof Simpson’s summation. Wow!

Prof Simpson suggests that the Paleo supporters are just in it for the money! Very professional.

While we are at it, look who funds research at the University of Sydney.

The Training Centre for Food and Beverage Supply Chain Optimisation will operate in cooperation with the University of Newcastle, the CSIRO, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the NSW Department of Primary Industry, and industry partners will include Coca-Cola Amatil, SunRice, the Batlow Fruit Co-operative and Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing.  

From: Food supply management centre to be established, 24 September, 2014 http://www.foodmag.com.au/author/danielle%20bowling

How charming!  Hardly disinterested parties in food research outcomes, would you not agree? Lots of milk and cereals, and a diet drink to boot.  You have to love it.