Comments on: David Gillespie’s new book about vegetable oils is a load of codswallop

By: Bill Shrapnel

Bill Shrapnel — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 23:38:17 +0000

Hello Lucy. In his book David Gillespie says that polyunsaturated fats are the root of all evil and cause heart disease and cancer. What he doesn’t say is that AGE STANDARDISED death rates from heart disease, stroke, prostate cancer, breast cancer and lung cancer in Australia are actually all falling. In other words, 50-year olds and 60-year olds and 70-year olds are dying less from these diseases now than decades previously. This is why life expectancy is increasing.
It’s not all good news as the incidence of type 2 diabetes is increasing in concert with higher rates of obesity, so there is plenty of work to be done.
Mr Gillespie just doesn’t know what he is talking about. He’s a lawyer, not a nutritionist. Regards, Bill

By: Lucy

Lucy — Sun, 12 Oct 2014 08:33:14 +0000

For a sceptical nutritionist it’s quite embarrassing how wrong you got the argument about life expectancy. A life expectancy of 40 years doesn’t mean that people dropped dead when they turned 40. It’s a statistical calculation. Child mortality was much higher back then. When a certain number of children die under the age of 5 and a certain number of people gets live to their eighties, you get an average of somewhere inbetween. I suggest you read the following article on that problem: http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-constant-2-000-years.html
The human life span hasn’t changed much, but the environment has in the last 150 years, dramatically so. The chronic diseases Gillespie mentions didn’t exist because of the different environment.

By: James

James — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 21:11:20 +0000

Except he is asking people to make significant changes to their diet that at best might just be inconvenient or more expensive, and at worst might have negative health consequences. For that reason he is not “a good bloke” but quite dangerous.

By: James

James — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 21:07:53 +0000

Wagner was an antisemite and wrote operas which encourgage antisemites like Hitler.. Therefore in order to get rid of antisemitism we first need to stop watching operas. Bad luck Leonard Bernstein.

By: James

James — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 21:02:54 +0000

“I am a lawyer and the only relevant skill I bring to the table is an ability to gather, understand and synthesise evidence… Just like law, science should be all about the evidence.”

Great article. Last time I checked the total number of practicing lawyers who won Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry or Medicine was precisely 0.

By: Emma Jacobs

Emma Jacobs — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 20:44:43 +0000

David Gillespie makes me so angry! He is a LAWYER with no nutritional education whatsoever. I have read all of his books and he grossly exaggerates facts and twists evidence, using his words to carefully manipulate people into thinking that what he is saying is absolutely and positively correct. He also seems to have such a huge emphasis on being ‘fat’ and what will make us ‘fat’ when the true emphasis should be on health and healthy living. And don’t even get me stared on his comments about exercise!!! The public needs to realise that there are dieticians out there (like myself) who may not be in the spotlight as much as he is but do have qualifications and a little more authority than he does.

By: Naomi

Naomi — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 23:55:00 +0000

I was going to say exactly the same thing! Lawyers aren’t about synthesising data and undertaking analysis, they are all about looking for the exceptions to the rule to exploit to the advantage of the point they are trying to make. In their working lives they are able to make use of a single precedence, or contradictory evidence on which to base a whole case. That’s not science! And drawing such a misleading analogy annoys the crap out of me. Okay. Rant over and thanks for the sensible review.

By: Bill Shrapnel

Bill Shrapnel — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:51:43 +0000

Hello Christine
I think we need to be a bit careful about assuming that the western diet is making us all ill. Let’s not forget the progress that has been made. One hundred years ago thousands of people in the United States died in an epidemic of pellagra (vitamin deficiency disease). Our modern western diet ensures that events like this don’t happen anymore and consequently life expectancy has increased considerably. At the beginning of the 20th Century the life expectancy of an Australian man was one of the longest in the world, but it was only 55 years. Now it’s well over 80 years. So it’s not all bad.
That said, our food is now abundant, tasty and cheap and this encourages consumption, which can easily become overconsumption in a society that doesn’t do much physical activity. Obesity, type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease are predictable outcomes.
One can paint a dark picture about the production of just about any food. But as a nutritionist, my major focus is on what happens to human health when certain foods are consumed. In relation to unsaturated seed oils, the answer is quite clear – blood lipids improve and the risk for coronary disease falls when these oils replace saturated fats (and carbohydrate) in the diet. Regards, Bill

By: Reijo Laatikainen

Reijo Laatikainen — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:31:56 +0000

This is the fun part of being a dietitian -being constantly challenged by uneducated people. Gillespie says “I am a lawyer and the only relevant skill I bring to the table is an ability to gather, understand and synthesise evidence… Just like law, science should be all about the evidence.” Your analysis shows how Gillespie has chosen his side. He is not a scientist, neither is he a judge. Gillespie seems to be prosecutor turning a blind a eye to any contradictory evidence. This is how a lawyer behaves.

By: Another Christine

Another Christine — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 08:42:48 +0000

Whilst David Gillespie may be bowdlerizing the current evidence, doesn’t the fact that these seed oils are predominantly created using industrial chemical extraction methods worry nutritionist?

Whilst the science behind exactly what it is that is making us all ill can be argued indefinitely, one thing for sure is that it is the western diet, i.e. modern processed foods are causing many of the problems. Seed oils certainly fall into that category.