Some cultural wars that throw science out the window - anti-DDT, anti-vaccine, anti-GMO, anti-evolution - are baffling. Others at least have some science basis - smoking, for example - but sometimes bandwagon charlatans use the obvious to make all kinds of exaggerated, silly claims. Where smoking harm was once clearly denied by Big Tobacco companies, exaggerated claims of all the ills smoking may cause are now so commonplace people assume that everyone with lung cancer got it from smoking. And when that isn't true, they get even crazier ideas. Donna Summer, the disco singer, never smoked but got lung cancer. She believed the terrorist attack of September 11th, 2001 'caused' it.
More recently, the hyped-up perils of saturated fat has taken the stage. It's one thing to ban something that is being deceptively marketed but there is no Big Saturated Fat funding denial about its harms. Instead, they were invented from whole cloth but giant government mechanisms that Exist To Protect You From Yourself have lumbered into existence in order to keep you from eating.
But saturated fat causes heart disease' is so prevalent that denying it would be silly - except it was always untrue - yet researchers who exist to create scary studies have now claimed it harms your brain as well.
Does it? No, but journalists like the story of the Oppressed Underdog and the topsy-turvy "scientists are baffled by" hook so a study claiming that saturated fat, found overwhelmingly to help the brain, actually hurts the brain, has immediately become popular.
Cameron English at PolicyMic has the takedown.
Saturated Fat is Not Bad For Your Brain, and You've Been Lied to by Cameron English, PolicyMic.com
