I have been saying this for at least two years. Now. as usual, others are catching up to me. This is from Paul Mulshine at nj.com
the consensus was that the amounts of saturated fats and cholesterol in the diet are related to the levels of cholesterol in the blood and “that reducing the one will lower the other,” the Post wrote.
That seemed to be the case at the time. But there were dissenters who claimed carbohydrates, particularly refined ones, were the more likely triggers for obesity and heart disease. That led the mainstream authorities to hold a “Consensus Conference” in 1984. The result was a national policy emphasizing low-fat diets as a means of combating obesity and heart disease.
Soon the market was inundated with low-fat foods. But they weren’t having the desired effect. By 2002, the cracks in the consensus were so evident that the New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy and well-researched article by noted science writer Gary Taubes headlined “What if it’s all been a big fat lie?”
“It used to be that even considering the possibility of the alternative hypothesis, let alone researching it, was tantamount to quackery by association,” Taubes wrote. “Now a small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along.”
Last month, the prior consensus was turned on its head by a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. A meta-analysis of 76 studies and clinical trials showed no link between fat, even saturated fat, and increased heart-disease risk.
There was a consensus for the elements being earth-air-fire-water; there was a consensus for a geocentric universe; there was a consensus for burning being the absence of something called “phlogiston”; there was a consensus for the immutability of species; there was a consensus for a 4,400 year-old earth; there was consensus that the transmutation of lead into gold was possible; there was a consensus in the 19th century that we were missing a planet in our solar system; there was a consensus the man was heating the atmosphere by the emission of carbon dioxide.
Consensus is just the agreed-upon state of our ignorance.
– Dalwhinnie’s aphorism for the day
enth (or non