As a "lay" person how do you decide what is good or bad research and thus what is good or bad for you?

Coconut is a saturated fat and with all the hype about low fat diets it has been ostracised, but just type into Google search "dangers of low fat diets" and look at the wealth of information that is now starting to appear to the contrary.

At VGPM, we looked at these aspects and could see there were oddities about a lot of the information we, the public, are given about diets and health. To the person who likes to "find out for himself" it is becoming clear that all is not well in the world of business and politics today with, as we see in the UK, the scandal of money to the Labour party, causing the line to become blurred between the 2 elements - this in turn starts to raise the question who's running who?

What this does, is raise the question "when you see something about health being pushed by the government which guides public opinion towards or away from a particular type of product you have to ask who informs or advises the government"?

If you look into the history of coconut oil it is clear that a "job" was done in destroying its place in the market and now, when you look at a lot of the information about fats, the evidence on the problems of vegetable oils and the benefits of coconut oil have been known for many years.

The point is it takes money to be able to "fool" as many people as have been fooled by the idea that we shouldn't eat a diet with saturated fats in.

"The idea that saturated fats cause heart disease is completely wrong, but the statement has been 'published' so many times over the last three or more decades that it is very difficult to convince people otherwise unless they are willing to take the time to read and learn what...produced the anti-saturated fat agenda." (Dr. Mary Enig, Consulting Editor to the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association, and noted lipids researcher.)

When VGPM first started looking at coconut oil, you can imagine our surprise when we saw the number of benefits it was reported as having, which raised the question why wasn't it in greater use?

How do you decide?

Well this brings me to the reason for this article - As a "lay" person how do you decide what is good or bad research and thus what is good or bad for you?

The scientists can take all the technical data they want and pontificate over it as much as they want for as long as they want, but if someone does a simple test like the one below, you and I as "lay" people can safely assume that saturated fat isn't linked to heart disease. So from there we can leave the scientist to find out the reason why - the important thing is the EVIDENCE, unless of course your evidence doesn't help sell your product!

The results

Our world today is full of evidence, is obesity on the increase - yes, is heart disease a thing of the past - no, is cancer being handled - no, is diabetes being prevented - no and these problems have been with us for many years as has the "low fat diet" and if the idea of the low fat diet worked there would have been a decline in these problems.

You don't need to be a "rocket scientist" to figure this out. So if what were being told isn't working the next best thing is to look for evidence as shown below of a large enough scale that demonstrates what does or doesn't work/happen.

A recent study involving over 40,000 middle-aged and older American men over a period of six years found that there was no link between saturated fat intake and heart disease in men. It also supported the contention that linolenic acid (a form of fat) is preventive against heart disease. (Ascherio A et. al. Dietary fat and risk of coronary heart disease in men: cohort follow up study in the United States. British Medical Journal, 1996 Jul 13, 313:7049, 84-90.)

(Leinolenic acid is omega 3, generally found in fish oils.)

At VGPM we are saying "stop allowing yourself to be spoon fed all your facts" that we are continually being fed with and take a look for yourself - take control of your life and make your own decisions. VGPM is not saying that coconut oil is the be all and end all to westernised mans ailments, but it has properties that can contribute to better health and well being.

Go to our links page and click the link "the world's biggest fad diet" to see more information

VGPM Team