Dr. Mehmet Oz
How much does Dr. Oz know?
A lot of so-called experts achieve their reputations only partly because of their skills and knowledge. They garner attention by way of their charisma, their powers of communication. Take Dr. Oz, for example. Mehmet Oz, M.D., became known as a top-of-the-line cardiologist. But he didn’t stop there. He was granted a national television show and a syndicated newspaper column, expounding through both forums on medical and health topics far outside the boundaries of his professional specialty, cardiovascular issues.
This is where his personality comes in. If you watch his TV show, you see how he dramatizes his points with folksy interplay between himself and guests, waxing witty and generally bringing his topics to life with his light-hearted, good-natured, and zestful manner. It’s all very convincing. Or is it? Putting on a good show is not the same as providing sound advice. Undoubtedly, Dr. Oz knows a lot. But those knowledgeable about some of the health issues in which he professes expertise realize that he is merely spouting the line of mainstream medicine, which has frequently been spectacularly wrong. One wonders about the basis for his opinions in the field of nutrition, and not just because the medical schools barely teach their students anything about it, or at least didn’t when he was undergoing his medical education.
Oz ossified on eggs
Saturated fat in eggs is healthy.
Dr. Oz and his colleague in the column The You Docs, Michael Roizen, M.D., have made assertions about the effects of nutrition on our health that are, in the educated opinions of many nutritionists and alternative-health doctors who are leaders in their fields, just plain wrong. These experts have long held that eggs are abundantly nutritious and should be included in a healthy diet. Oz, the one people rely most on, and Roizen for a long time advised strictly limiting the consumption of eggs. Nutritionist Mike Geary, on the other hand, claims to eat four eggs daily, and if you view his physique and know of the strenuous exercise regimen he follows, you won’t conclude those eggs have harmed him. Why does – or did; he is not as down on eggs as he used to be – Oz condemn eggs? Because they contain an ample amount of saturated fat.
Research proves Oz wrong
Annals of Internal Medicine cover
Recently, The You Docs announced in their column that new research showed saturated fat wasn’t as harmful as mainstream medicine has declared it to be for decades. Note that he didn’t say it wasn’t harmful – just not as harmful. The research the docs referenced had to have been the meta-analysis of 72 studies involving more than 600,000 people, reported in May in the prestigious Annals of Internal Medicine. And that report said saturated fat was found to be not harmful at all. The analysis showed no link between consumption of saturated fat and heart attacks or other cardiovascular problems. You can be sure Dr. Oz knew that’s what the report said. But he’d been sounding off so loud and long about the dangers of saturated fat that he hedged his response to it, rather than admit he’d been flat wrong all those years, thus preventing that fat-loaded egg from covering his entire face. If he and the authoritative medical organizations had heeded the cries in the wilderness from some of the nation’s leading contrary doctors, their mistake could have been aborted long ago, and the health of millions of unsuspecting people who trustingly followed their physicians’ advice would not have been jeopardized.
Media shun report
People’s Pharmacy authors Joe and Terry Graedon
What did the media do with this report? For the most part, nothing. I learned of it through a syndicated People’s Pharmacy column in the Palm Beach Post, but neither read nor heard a news story in the paper or on television. I spoke to a metro editor at the Post, who said he’d pass it on. I emailed the health writer. In vain. A short while later, an op-ed piece in the Post by syndicated columnist Mona Charen lambasted the medical establishment for having mislead the American public for more than 50 years on the issue of saturated fat. She asked, “How could the experts have been so wrong for so long?” She then quoted Nina Teicholz, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “there has never been solid evidence for the idea that these fats cause disease. We only believe this to be the case because nutrition policy has been derailed over the past half-century by a mixture of personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias.” Thus, First Lady Michelle Obama uses the national podium to champion healthy school lunches through elimination of, among other foods, those high in saturated fat, meaning well in her message but ignorant of her error.
Fat chance for change
Saturated fat is important for our bodies.
And what has Dr. Oz had to say about saturated fats since his partial admission that he was wrong? In his columns of May 27, he and Roizen mentioned maladies that could be corrected through exercise and proper diet, one aspect of which was: “Cut out saturated and trans fats.” He was half-right, but almost everybody already had become aware that trans fat were bad. So he’s back to his familiar line that saturated fat is bad, misleading many thousands, perhaps millions, of readers. He obviously cannot tolerate that egg on his face – and thinks ignoring it will make it go away.
