SBS Australia runs an infomercial for the medical/pharmaceutical industry on how to "Cure" obesity via a lifetime of dependence on drugs: A reply to "The Obesity Myth" & the propaganda.

Click on the screen grab (left), to enlarge and read a scathing reply to SBS's spin, left in this FB thread. According to the central proponent of their new documentary (Joseph Proietto MBBS, PhD, FRACP), the way to lose weight is to starve patients with food replacement drinks and one carbohydrate-free meals in the evening, to induce ketosis. This ketotic state makes the patient feel so nauseated/sick they lose their appetite and forget they're starving. After this (or even during if the ketosis isn't bad enough to strip them of their desire for food), they're supposed to go on a lifetime of appetite suppressing drugs, followed by bariatric surgery if their bodies are still stubbornly resisting the punishment.

Proietto then goes on to lament at one point how Australia's public health system is failing to subsidise his treatment regime/drug therapy by not making the pharmaceuticals he uses available on the PBS scheme. Yep, I bet he's extremely sorry about that, considering 70% of Australia's population is either overweight or obese. Corporate profits would go through the roof if that particular Pandora's box was opened. There's an awful lot of cash riding on that agenda.

Makes we wonder if there's a pattern emerging here with our public broadcasters, a pattern which promotes a very big business (which would like to grow even bigger). The BBC deliberately attacked and distorted the work of a highly respected (and very popular), nutrition scientist whose work strongly promotes a more natural approach - and now SBS Australia is spruiking a punishing regime which requires a lifetime of medication (preferably funded by the public purse if the drug companies get their way).    

BBC Horizon spruiks the pharmaceutical industry's corporate agenda? Aunty ignores science and enters the twilight zone . . .

Who would you rather trust for health advice, the BBC's chubby faced front man,

a non-medical doctor of just over 20 years experience who evangelises for drug treatment of obesity, approvingly tweets pictures of butter-filled junk food and is a self-proclaimed unchangeable carnivore geneticist - or the much senior and healthier-looking Dr. Kim Williams (2015 President of the American College of Cardiology) with an impressive cv spanning nearly four decades?  The choice is a no-brainer, but the BBC (quite bizarrely), headlined the former while ignoring the latter in attempt to portray avoiding animal products and highly processed foods (in favour of wholegrains, legumes, vegetables and fruit), as extreme an unhealthy.

But it gets even more surreal, they also censored the distinguished Dr. Esselstyn who sits on the nutrition committee of the American College of Cardiology, runs a successful and respected hospital-based programme treating cardio-vascular patients primarily with nutrition, has published his impressive research results in respected medical journals, presents officially accredited continuing education for doctors, dieticians and nurses and who's book (and approach), is openly endorsed by Kaiser Permanente, the USA's largest health insurer. 

Then if you think it couldn't get any wackier, it does. Scientifically speaking, Giles Yeo is barely out of nappies compared to his elder, Prof. T. Colin Campbell. Yeo wasn't even born when Campbell began his career and Campbell's vast body of research remains unchallenged (via peer review), in the scientific press. However, they're clearly drinking a potent brand of Koolaid at the BBC now, as these salient facts were simply ignored in favour of an unscientific smear campaign against the good Professor.

So what "Harmless" treatments is Giles Yeo spruiking? Well Oxyntomodulin (via daily injection) appears to be on the list at Imperial College London, that's the venerable institute Yeo directly advertises in this Daily Mail article.  It's adverse effects may include: Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, pancreatitis (including fatal and non-fatal hemorrhagic or necrotising pancreatitis), increased incidence of C-cell hyperplasia and medullary thyroid cancer, excessive loss of skeletal muscle mass, increases in heart rate and mean arterial pressure and a trend towards blood pressure increase. Perhaps BBC Horizon should expose some of the projects Giles Yeo is pushing, rather than attempting to discredit the simple of approach of just eating ad libitum amounts of whole plant foods? Call me old fashioned, but I'd prefer a of plate brown rice and veggies to a dose of  "Necrotising pancreatitis." 

So why this high profile attack on whole-food, plant-based eating? I'm reminded of this quote . . .

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"  Mahatma Gandhi 

Quite simply, since the official medicalisation of obesity this newly labelled "Disease" is (potentially), a corpulent cash cow (not to mention a massive money spinner), for the pharmaceutical industry. However, increasing formal recognition of whole-food, plant-based eating as a viable treatment option (see my comments re this in the first few paragraphs above), is a significant rival to these monied interests. In other words, plant-based advocates should rejoice, we're now a worthwhile (and quite worrying), adversary.

Further, this isn't the first time the BBC has been accused of pushing the corporate wheelbarrow at the expense of science and objectivity. George Monbiot at The Guardian had a few choice (and scathing), words for them too, here and here.

Quite honesty Aunty, your reputation's going down the drain fast as the social media (and high profile commentators like Monbiot), expose your business driven agenda. I guess money speaks with a very loud voice at the BBC now?