Video Friday: The Unhealthy Dichotomy in the way Fats and Vegetables are Messaged Today: Oprah vs Science

14 seconds in, this is announced as the enemy, see the full ad

Two very different health messages – who’s right?

I am struck by Oprah Winfrey’s (@Oprah) new commercial for Soup, part of a branded collection of foods, where it is made clear what the problem in the American diet is – fat – as shown by a large block of cheese followed by a more healthy sounding butternut squash.

See the ad below.

In it, she’s singling out fat as the problem and promoting, essentially, a higher carbohydrate diet, one that’s been shown in a very large study recently to not improve health, and probably to make it worse (to be euphemistic see: Just Read: Validation of Low(er) Carb High(er) Fat Diets: The PURE Study and CVD/Overall Death).

Then there’s Sarah Hallberg, DO, MS, DABOM, from Indiana University (@DrSarahHallberg), with her advice on healthy eating with vegetables, see below

Sarah is a metabolic health expert, researcher, and completing a study of diabetes reversal through medically supervised low-carbohydrate eating.

She (Sarah) ultimately has science on her side, since we now know that the evidence behind prescribing a low-fat diet was not present in a credible way when guidelines were created.

I am a huge fan of Oprah and I understand that she has science on her side; unfortunately, much of it has been found to be without proper backing 40 years after it was presented to the world. The science Oprah’s using made its appearance in these ancestors to Oprah’s commercial:

For more on Sarah’s work:

Enjoy the movies, and let’s all watch the messaging change together.

2 Comments

Ted Eytan, MD