If there’s anything in life that we should demand evidence for, it should be that which affects the health and wellbeing of ourselves and our families.
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Why do so many of the videos on this site seem to be biased against certain foods? For the same reason that the website of the American Lung Association probably seems biased against tobacco. The Philip Morris Corporation has come up with more than a hundred ( studies showing the health benefits of smoking. For example, the nicotine may help ( schizophrenics with psychotic symptoms and smoking may affect immune function sufficient to benefit ( ulcerative colitis. The tobacco industry used these studies to accuse former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop of “selective reporting” ( when he argued that smoking caused cancer.
The reason Dr. Koop chose to focus on anti-tobacco studies is presumably because he was trying to accurately reflect what was in the scientific literature. The best available balance of evidence strongly suggests smoking is bad for people’s health overall, and the same could be said for many foods. So when the tobacco industry dismisses public health professionals as being biased against tobacco–of course they’re biased against tobacco! To be biased against smoking is to be biased against death and disease. That’s kinda their job.
No one has to smoke, but everyone has to eat. So there’s an additional opportunity cost to eating unhealthy foods beyond just how bad they themselves may be for our health.
This video is part of an experiment to find ways to appeal to those new to the site. So much of what I do is targeted towards those who already know the basics, but in the user survey about a thousand of you filled out a few weeks ago, many of your asked for me to take a step back and do some videos targeted more towards those new to evidence-based nutrition.
So with the volunteer help of videographer Grant Peacock ( I came up with ten introduction and overview-type videos for both new users to orient themselves, and for long-time users to use to introduce people to the site.
The first three are already up:
• The Story of NutritionFacts.org (
• Why You Should Care About Nutrition (
• Taking Personal Responsibility for Your Health (
Stay tuned for:
• Behind the Scenes at NutritionFacts.org (
• How Not to Die from Heart Disease (
• How Not to Die from Cancer (
• How Not to Die from Diabetes (
• How Not to Die from Kidney Disease (
• How Not to Die from High Blood Pressure (
What we’re going to do is alternate between these broader overview-type videos and the regularly scheduled content so as not to bore those who just crave the latest science.
Have a question about this video? Leave it in the comment section at and someone on the NutritionFacts.org team will try to answer it.
Want to get a list of links to all the scientific sources used in this video? Click on Sources Cited at
If you’d rather watch these videos on YouTube, subscribe to my YouTube Channel here:
Thanks for watching. I hope you’ll join in the evidence-based nutrition revolution!
-Michael Greger, MD FACLM
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