Ask a public-health/nutrition student

[Aractus]

At the moment I'm just studying not working. Doug Graham claims in his book that if you follow his diet (80/10/10) then you won't need to use pharmaceutical medicine (and he also tells his readers/cult-followers not to brush with toothpaste either - just use water according to him).

Given how long he's been selling his diet for - I would have respect for him if he'd stopped and said "you know what, science has advanced a huge amount since I originally wrote all of this, and I now realise I was wrong". But no, he's completely deluded. In fact last year he nearly killed a woman that took his water retreat, and subsequently he's been banned from life from the Woodstock Fruit Festival (an event specifically for 80/10/10 raw food vegans) . For anyone who's interested here's the video from Leah, the woman that almost died (and that's not at all an understatement):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Ge2OCti4I

Notice how even though the man that started the 80/10/10 diet nearly killed her, she still follows it?

I actually stumbled across Freelee when watching some anorexia videos - I wasn't even interested in looking at 80/10/10, and then one of the first videos of hers I watched was one denouncing eggs and dairy. "The body makes cholesterol so we don't need to eat it" - wrong on so many levels. No one has clinically established that holds true for everyone, and besides dietary cholesterol itself doesn't even raise LDL. Just because there isn't a nutrient reference value for it doesn't mean it's OK to make broad-sweeping claims like that (in fact I've learned that NUTTAB doesn't even list the Vitamin D content of food!) She's basically daemonizing one of the body's most essential molecules (the parent steroid from which all other human/animal steroids are made), based on the fact that 20 years ago we didn't know what it did and thought it was "bad". Too much LDL leads to clogged arteries, sure, too little leads to serious mental health conditions.

I met someone a few months back, IRL and outside of university, who'd considered taking a IIN "course". She wasn't stupid though, she saw right through their bullshit and instead enrolled in a university degree. However, IIN specifically tells its "gradates" to go out and be health coaches, so there's a whole culture building around unqualified people who think they have the qualifications necessary to "help" people through nutrition. The problem is that nutrition isn't homoeopathy - it's a science.

As I mentioned before, Freelee freely admits she suffered anorexia. And a drug habit. But she could well be still suffering from an eating disorder such as orthorexia. Obviously you don't blame the patient for suffering from an illness, no matter how obnoxious and downright loony they might be. She's constantly on a sugar-high from eating so much fruit, and sugar is addictive, so she's probably a sugar addict too. The whole movement is like a religion, they're just not interested in hearing real evidence. Instead they get information from people like her: ex-drug addict, ex-eating disorder sufferer, and unqualified to give nutrition advice.

Yes I agree she's the perfect example. She looks in the mirror and says "I'm not emaciated" and "look how great my body is" (even though those are breast-implants, and she appears to be clearly underweight).

The information from Government, WHO, Cancer & Heart NGO's, etc. often isn't packaged nicely or endorsed by celebrities (or loud-mouth idiot youtubers). And no, I only come across these nutters on youtube.