Monday morning (February 21, 2011), I found references in
six different newspapers and health-related Internet sites
to a new study which demonstrates that breakfasts with cereal
and milk are the healthiest way to start one's day.
Two curious similarities were present in each article.
First, each link included a POPUP advertising cereal,
a remarkable coincidence.
Second, each story omitted the name of the scientific
journal and the names of the researchers.
After utilizing my own research skills, I soon found
the study in question. It will appear in the March, 2011
issue of an obscure British nutrition bulletin which
is published once every three months.
{Nutrition Bulletin, Volume 36, Number 1, March 2011 ,
pp. 78-86(9)} The senior author is Sigrid Gibson.
I should have stopped after reading the first sentence
of this study, but the author expressed herself so
brilliantly, that I had to go on. I had a bad night's
sleep, and needed some humor in my life. The abstract's
first sentence reads:
"Studies suggest that eating breakfast, as opposed to
skipping breakfast, has nutrition and health benefits."
I am stunned. Food has nutrition and health benefits?
Eating no food has no nutrition or health benefits?
This is profound, as in "lost and profound."
Just who is this Sigrid Gibson person? She is not a
scientist. She is not a doctor. She is not a scientific
researcher. She is not a college professor. She is a
nutritionist, and that in itself ain't so bad, but for
four years (1986-1990) Sigrid was the nutritionist for
the National Milk Board.
That's the good news. It's all downhill from here...
Sigrid is for hire. She'll try and convince you that
sugar is a health food if you pay her enough. Her website:
http://www.sig-nurture.com/about-us.html
Some of Ingrid's clients, by her own admission, include:
The Sugar Bureau, World Sugar Research Organization,
Cadbury Chocolates, Kelloggs, Unilever, and the world's
largest yogurt manufacturer and distributor, Danone.
Sigrid's astonishing findings from her own abstract:
"Approximately 1 in 5 adults consumed no solid food
between the hours of 0600 and 1000, one-third ate a
breakfast that included ready-to-eat cereal or porridge,
and 45% consumed a non-cereal breakfast."
What did the other two percent of the early birds eat,
I wonder. Worms?
So, were the cereal and milk eaters healthier? What did
Sigrid find?
"...cereal breakfasts (containing a ready-to-eat cereal
or porridge, usually consumed with milk) were associated
with significantly better macronutrient composition ... Compared
with skipping breakfast, micronutrient intakes were marginally
higher on days when non-cereal breakfast was consumed but 30-90%
higher on days where cereal was consumed."
What do we learn from Sigrid's publication? Three things.
1) Any dummy can publish a paper and call it research.
2) Conflicts of interest are rarely investigated by newspapers
eager to print falsehoods, so long as there is potential
revenue attached to deceit.
3) Eating provides significantly more nutrition as opposed
to not eating, which contains no nutrition at all.
Chew on that, folks!
Oh, one more thing. Sigrid's clients also include Pepsico
and the Coca Cola company. If you do not believe that
sugar is great nutrition, you can always suck up the Coke
and Pepsi containing Monsanto's NutraPoison. When the
artificial sweetener was first developed by Searle (sold
to Monsanto when Clarence Thomas was Monsanto's attorney),
the president of Searle was the great humanitarian, Donald
Rumsfeld. Is any of this beginning to make sense to you?
If so, please explain it to me while I take time out
to eat a big bowl of Wheaties with heavy cream, three
eggs, twice over, 1/4 pound of bacon, and two heavily
buttered pieced of Wonder Bread which helps build
strong bodies 12 ways ... accompanied by a diet Coke.
Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com
http://www.Twitter.com/TheRealNotmilk
