213
The Myths of Nutritional Medicine
I
t is no big secret that eating right keeps you healthy. Hundreds of
thousands of papers are published every year, describing scientific
studies which have looked at some aspect of this issue and come to
the same inevitable conclusion. The only people who don’t seem to have
heard the good news are members of the medical profession! I’m not
speaking disparagingly of individual doctors – many of my colleagues are
very switched on to nutrition and diet – but it is a sad truth that the vast
majority of practicing physicians and surgeons have either never heard of
the benefits of good nutrition, or have disregarded it or have remained so
pathetically ignorant of what is required that they neither teach nor apply
the principles of good diet to their suffering patients.
A really cynical critic would argue that maybe the doctors don’t
want their patients restored to health and happiness; that they only want
dollars for treating conditions that could be resolved naturally. That may be
too harsh. I think the trouble is that doctors never get past Nutrition 101
in med school. Instead of becoming competent with this vital tool, they are
taught only falsehoods and half-truths.
Doctors have it drummed into them that:
• Fats are bad for us, whereas in fact certain fats are essential to survival and
form part of our all-important cell membranes. Gosh, even our brains are
forty percent fat; how would we even think without good clean fats? Low
fat diets I see handed out by doctors are destructive to health because some
of our vitamins can only be absorbed in the presence of fats (A, E and
D). These vitamins in turn enhance the absorption of essential minerals.