Tom Cruise

Once again, America is missing the irony.

You see, it's not that Tom Cruise is an idiot. He has every right to be an idiot. This is America. It's the right of any red blooded American actor with his head so far up his own ass that he hasn't seen daylight in years to express his beliefs in anything he wants, including the belief that a megalomaniacal dead science fiction writer from the 50's channels the word of God. No problem there.

The issue is that we're actually talking about it.

We are actually having a national debate with this idiot about the existence of chemical imbalances and the nature of medical treatment in America.

Now that's irony.

So we have the spectre of Matt Lauer on The Today Show trying to reason with this imbecile, earnestly asking him "Gee, Tom, doesn't drug treatment have a place in some medical circumstances?" Let's everyone lean into the set now and find out the answer.

I say, why stop here? Let's interview Lindsay Lohan on China's currency manipulations. Personally, I'd like to know what Paris Hilton thinks about CAFTA. And for goodness sake, can't we get Ashton Kutcher on the McLaughlin group? (Gosh, I can already hear McLaughlin's booming voice: "Item: The Supreme Court ruling on eminet domain. Does it violate the 5th Ammendment? Ashton Kutcher." I can even imagine Nicole Ritchie's publicist pitching Tim Russert: "Hey, Tim, how about Nicole for Meet the Press? She's got some very compelling views on the Bolton nomination."

The perplexing part of this is that Tom Cruise is not 100 percent wrong. As the saying goes, "Paranoids have enemies too." Sometimes the loony birds get a piece of it right. For example: Back in the 60's, the Black Muslims — whose theology included a "scientific" account of how the "white devil" was "created" in a test tube by a mad black scientist named Yakbar (I did not make that up) — were nonetheless correct about the mistreatment of blacks in America.

So Cruise happens to be "right" that the history of psychiatry is not exactly unblemished. No thoughtful person could deny that much of the history of the American Medical Association- particularly during the reign of Morris Fishbein- was downright disgraceful. And next month I'm speaking at Robert Crayhon's Boulderfest, an annual convention of some of the brightest minds in healing and health, and I would venture a guess that 90 percent of the attendees would probably agree that drugs are overused, that there are natural remedies for many health ills, and that the "drug for every symptom" default position of much of conventional medicine needs rethinking. I would also venture a guess that Dr. Daniel Amen, who has done groundbreaking research in brain imaging and has isolated 6 different patterns for ADD would himself strongly support the notion that Ritalin is not a cure-all and in some cases — but not all — makes things worse.

But... er... there's a tiny itty bitty difference.

Dr. Amen came to his positions by scrupulous research and rigorous philosophical, ethical and scientific thinking. And he isn't promoting an agenda. Tom Cruise came to his positions because of the modern day equivalent of hearing voices through the fillings in his teeth. He actually leaned into Matt Lauer and said, his voice filled with gravitas, "Matt, you don't understand the history of psychiatry," a history, I might add, that wing-nut learned in its entirety from that great medical and social historian, L. Ron Hubbard.

Hey, when you've got L. Ron, who needs books?

Now listen. Don't get me wrong. Tom Cruise has the right to never open a book or a newspaper. There are men in higher office who exercise that same right. As I said, this is America.

And we have the right to tell him to go peddle his crap to people who actually care — like the dewey eyed dim-witted wanna-be's on Hollywood Boulevard at the "Celebrity Center."

Oh, Penn and Teller, where are you when we need you?

Sure, there may occasionally be an area of agreement between the ravings of a cult member who believes you can "audit" brain waves through a tin cup and one of the great healers of our generation. But does that mean the opinions of both are equally worthy of attention? Remember, even a broken clock is right twice a day. I wouldn't recommend using it to actually tell time though.

Anyway, I have to go. Chris Matthews is about to do a Hardball special on the Kyoto treaty and global warming. He's going to interview Puff Daddy to find out what the US should do.

I wouldn't wanna miss that.

The Single Biggest Error People Make About Nutrition

Bet you thought I was going to tell you something about which foods are bad to eat, didn’t you?

Nope.

The biggest error people make about nutrition has nothing to do with food.

It has nothing to do with vitamins.

It has nothing to do with supplements.

It's much more basic than that.

The single biggest error people make about nutritional information is to assume it's not political.

For some reason, we Americans have been seduced by the religion of "science." We worship at its altar, and we believe its information is "objective." Even if that were completely so — which it's not — it would be a somewhat minor error compared to the bigger problem, which is this: We think that what we hear about "studies" on television and in the newspapers actually represents an accurate description of what happened in those studies.

Sorry, Cholly.

Take dairy. The other day I saw a television commercial that showed undulating perfect bodies, women in tube tops and cut offs, with taut tight bellies that you see in real life about as often as a Supernova cuts through the galaxy, all of them happily spooning some fruity, sugary crap made from yogurt into their smiling mouths as they danced and moved to the soundtrack of the commercial. The voiceover — a male voice booming with James Earl Jones style authority — announced confidently that "studies show dairy can produce weight loss."

The message: Eat more of this sugary fake crap yogurt and you'll get skinny.

So here's the scoop: In 2004, a researcher named Michael Zemel did a study which compared "high dairy eating" folks with "low dairy eating folks" and found that, all things being equal, the "high dairy eating folks" lost about 5 percent more weight over time than the low dairy group. He has since done a couple of other studies showing similar effects. All of the people in his studies who lost weight were not just eating dairy — they were also on calorie reduced diets. The mechanism proposed here is that calcium suppresses a hormone called calcitronin which contributes to fat storage. Much of Zemel's research has been sponsored by the dairy industry.

So is it a slam dunk? Hardly. Number one, many researchers agree that a calcium deficient diet can make it hard to lose weight, but that hardly means that adding a ton more dairy to your diet will knock pounds off. Since Zemel's research, other studies have come out, completely contradicting his results. Last April a study was published showing that women women who added extra milk to their diets for a year lost no more weight than women who consumed the same number of calories but drank less milk.

And just the other day a new study was published showing that in older children and teens, drinking more than three servings of milk a day actually promotes weight gain.

Of course none of the dairy industry propaganda about milk causing weight loss mentions the associations between higher milk consumption and osteoporosis, or milk consumption and prostate cancer.

The point is this: Calcium is important, but the studies examining the relationship between milk and body fat are very very mixed at best. And no study — not even Zemel's — would support the clear message in the ad: Don't worry, be happy. Drink a ton of milk, eat a ton of sweetened yogurt, and you too will look like you won the genetic lottery when it comes to ab muscles. Even Zemel himself cautioned against such a ridiculous conclusion.

So how is this political?

Glad you asked.

Science — real science — almost never "proves" something without a doubt. Researchers look at dozens of different variables, with different populations, under different conditions, and examine and compare laboratory results to test hypothesis, which are then re-tested, re-examined, and re-formulated. The pace of knowledge is glacially slow. But when an observation comes out that seems to advance the agenda of an industry, you can be sure that that "fact" will be cherry-picked from the mass of data that exists, and before you know it a full blown ad campaign has been launched... Milk causes weight loss. Soy is a health food.

The NY Times today reported on how the Chief of Staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality "edited" scientific reports on global warming by inserting a few key words to indicate doubt and uncertainty wherever the reports pointed in a direction that didn't advance this administration's agenda. (As Lenny Bruce might say, "I'm so shocked.") The food industry does this constantly. The tobacco industry did it remarkably well in the 50's and 60's — "There's no real proof that cigarettes cause lung cancer," they would say, and then point to a host of studies from which they could cherry pick a fact or two pointing to — if you squinted hard enough and had a couple of Jack Daniels' — some hazy doubt. And defense lawyers do this in their closing arguments every day of the week. Anyone remember "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit?"

Point is this: When you see an advertising campaign telling you to eat more crap in order to lose weight because "studies prove it works," treat those ads like you would that e-mail asking you to give your bank account number to a Nigerian diplomat so he can transfer a few million out of his country.

Politics and Obesity: The Strange case of Tucker Carlson

Tucker who? Tucker Carlson. The talking head on cable news. Blank stare. The one with the bow tie. Oh that Tucker Carlson. Of course.

Tucker Carlson, who refers to his bow-tie as "my built in anti-adultery device" is one of two, maybe three, conservative pundints that liberals might actually like to have a beer with. In my opinion, he's one of the, oh I don't know, ten brightest talking heads in television. I like Tucker Carlson.

But Tucker, you've let me down with your latest obesity rant.

I can forgive you for a lot of things I think you're wrong about — (you gained a lot of points with last week's rant against the killing of baby seals in Canada) — but dude, you're so off the mark on this obesity thing, well, I just had to let you know about it.

As a lot of you know, the CDC recently recalculated the risk from death by obesity, which it previously said was the number two preventable cause of death and set to overtake number one, which is smoking. Now they think they made a mistake. The CDC mathematicians crunched some numbers and said, hey, we probably overstated the case, obesity is really "only" number seven.

Now let me explain something here: It's wickedly difficult to calculate the exact, perfect, mathematical relationship between obesity and death. Why? Because obese people are rarely, if ever, "just" obese. They have heart disease, they have diabetes, they have Metabolic Syndrome, they have inflammatory complications, they have arthritis for God's sake. They are typically on multiple medications. So while we know obesity is associated with a myriad of chronic illnesses including cancer, it's not always possible to say "this guy died from being fat."

In addition, we have more and more ways of treating these chronic diseases and keeping people alive, which inflates the survival rate but doesn't address quality of life issues. (My father lived his last year virtually unconscious, incontinent and miserable most of the time, but as a statistic he adds to the "longer life expectancy" numbers we keep hearing about, which are not, by the way, a measure of health at all — just a measure of technology.) So it's hard to know exactly how many people are specifically "killed" by obesity.

At the very very least, we know obesity is a significant risk factor for diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome and some cancers. None of which are great things to have. And all of which are killers.

So what does Tucker say about this new CDC info?

That the whole obesity thing has been overstated, and is a plot hatched against poor and unattractive people by the liberal elite Hollywood media who value being thin and attractive and are looking for a way to "stigmatize" fat people who, as it turns out, are perfectly healthy. In fact, he points to a related finding that he (wrongly) explains as "being moderately overweight actually increases life expectancy."

Tucker is hardly alone in his smug drenched glee. An organization calling itself "The Center for Consumer Freedom" has deluged the media with press releases accusing those concerned with the epidemic of obesity of being little more than food scolds, alarmists, and worse. Its website has articles like "Peta kills animals!" (Subtext: They're all hypocrites!) There are dark hints of ties between the drug companies and the scientists sounding the obesity alarm. See folks? It was all a liberal plot to take away your freedom to enjoy McDonald's! Pass the fries.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is entirely funded, incidentally, by the restaurant industry and the food companies. The head of the operation is a former lobbyist for the tobacco industry.

It's politics, folks.

Tucker and his pals don’t want "food police" — they don't want government intervention in our food habits, they don't want lawsuits against McDonald's, they don't want taxes on high-sugar foods, and they don't want limits on advertising. They want business as usual.

Now, look. Let me be clear: I'm not a big fan of the government telling me what to do either. But the fact remains that obesity and overweight are huge problems. They shorten life, they reduce the quality of life, and we should do everything we can to avoid them.

And to some extent this means holding Big Food responsible for the crap they sell and the way they market to kids.

But politics makes strange bedfellows, and there are no clear cut answers here. I can't stand the Center for Consumer Freedom, whose motives are as transparent as Saran Wrap, but at the same time I'll be the first to write my senator at the first scent of a bill that allows the government to interfere with my right to buy vitamins.

There's only one thing that seems really clear in this whole mess: The more responsible consumers are for their own health and choices the better.

Power to the people.

I told you politics makes strange bedfellows.