A big thank you to Dr John Briffa who has responded to a ridiculous blog on the Food Standards Agency web site by Dr Wadge.
Dr Wadge decided to attack Big Fat Lies on the basis of my involvement in golower and the fact I am a lawyer. He does not even begin to challenge the real basis of Big Fat Lies which is science.
Turning to the issue over conflict of interest I suspect that the general public would find it far more worrying that Unilever sit on all the scientific committees. That is a true conflict of interest. Yes I started golower but this is not advertised or promoted in the book which is focusing on science and not product.
The whole problem with the current guidelines on “healthy eating” is that they are not based on robust evidence and experts in evidence are lawyers and not doctors or scientists. The reason I wrote Big Fat Lies is because the evidence supporting a low calorie low fat diet to manage obesity is poor and would not stand up to interrogation in court. It is also true that many of the statements made on the Food Standards Agency website are misleading and fundamentally wrong. If an expert makes misleading or wrong statements which are relied upon then they are breaching a duty of care which exists in law. That is why a lawyer is just the right person to attack the government agency which is actually fuelling the obesity crises by publishing misleading and wrong information.
The shame of Dr Wadge is that he did not confront the science in Big Fat Lies and for that reason it shows that either he doesn’t understand the science or doesn’t know it and in either case he is just another so called expert talking total and utter nonsense with complete disregard for the damage he is doing to the general public who are getting fatter and fatter sicker and sicker..