“It is the mark of an educated mind
to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it.”
Aristotle

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.

The ability to entertain a thought and examine it from multiple perspectives, without necessarily accepting the premise of the thought, is a mark of an educated mind and a mature philosophy because it demonstrates a lack of fear for new ideas, a solid understanding of – and trust in – one’s own position and it implies a willingness to change one’s mind. Conversely, actively avoiding entertaining opposing thoughts, demonstrates a fear of those thoughts and implies an unwillingness to adapt to new ideas.

Entertaining thoughts that might contradict what one already believes is a cornerstone of science.   Scientists actively search for thoughts that might contradict established theories, even – sometimes especially – their own.  Aristotle’s quote above means that we can think about an idea without automatically accepting it. We can choose to look at things from an objective point of view and weigh the facts carefully before making a decision.

It ALSO means that it is unnecessary to make a decision to accept, or to reject, every single concept that crosses our minds.

As much as we might like the idea of trusting  the Body to tell us when and how to eat, sometimes our Body’s Hunger is a Lie.

Here are a couple of articles about the Science of Willpower, which discuss some of the reasons why the Body’s wisdom can’t always be trusted.

The Ghrelin Gremlin 
           by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.
                          Published on June 22, 2010 in Psychology Today

One of the most popular ideas in weight loss right now is:

 "trust your body's wisdom."
The body knows what it wants. The body never lies.
If you listen to signals like hunger and satiety, your body will never steer you wrong.

This is a lovely sentiment, and it's true that the body is a great source of wisdom.
Until it's not.

A new study presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society shows how the brain can be tricked by the body into overeating and choosing fattening foods over healthier choices. [1]

The study set-up was simple enough: bring in hungry participants and ask them to choose between high-calorie, high-fat foods (e.g. pizza, cake, chocolate) and less fattening foods (e.g. salad, vegetables, and lean protein). Not surprisingly, hungry participants preferred the less healthy choices. Their bodies craved energy. The researchers then had participants makes similar choices, but 90 minutes after eating a meal. They weren't as hungry, and they made healthier choices. They "listened" to their bodies and choose a more appropriate snack, given their fullness.

But the researchers didn't stop there. They were interested in whether they could mimic the effects of fasting by manipulating participants' level of a hormone called "ghrelin." Ghrelin stimulates appetite and plays a big role in the body's signals of hunger and cravings. It is typically regulated by things like how recently you ate your last meal and blood sugar level, making it a good signal of the need to eat. But it can also be influenced by many other things, including stress and sleep. This means that as much as you'd like to trust the body, the signal of hunger can be a lie.

Back to the lab: On one visit, participants who had recently eaten a full meal were injected with ghrelin. And this time, the participants behaved as if they were starving. They found the higher-fat, higher-calorie foods more appealing and were more likely to choose them--even though the body was actually quite satiated.

This injection was just a quick-and-dirty stand in for all the things that can push ghrelin levels up in the real world. If you're sleep deprived, your body is pumping out more ghrelin to get you to eat. [2]

It's a poor substitute for sleep, but high-fat, high-sugar foods are a source of the energy you desperately need. The same is true for stress. And research shows that high-sugar foods  - especially drinks, includ...

 

We now have enormous access to miscellaneous information via the internet. This means that a relatively intelligent, ordinary person, with a bit of formal education (such as myself), can be exposed to a myriad of possibilities…   together with little or no personal ability to determine the accuracy of the information provided.

Online time exposes us to ideas that are relatively new to us, and leads us to discover data and publications… including books and videos … that would have been otherwise unavailable to us.
Such exposure and discoveries make me think about things in ways I’ve not previously considered.  There are many great Theories in the world which modern Societies in general consider to be true…but .. chances are, some of them probably are not.

Along with many other people living in the “civilized” societies of the present, I am interested in my own eating and digestive process. Yes, eating is necessary for sustaining life, but I want to know more about how I can enjoy food  without getting fat.  In a way, eating is like sex. If there was no enjoyment in the process, people would be doing a whole lot less of it.

  So, what if the details we THINK we know about Food and the Digestive system are inaccurate?

I find it interesting to consider the possibility that much of the knowledge which we take for absolute truth about diet and nutritional information (which is often referred to as “conventional wisdom”), might be WACKED. When I say “wacked”, I mean “out of order, crazy, not in proper condition, screwed up, incorrect, so messed up it could be broken.”

What if?  

What if the state of our current knowledge regarding nutrition and the body is similar to that previous accepted Truth = “the world is flat”? Societies of the past functioned for long periods of history with what we consider now to be only minimal knowledge. Back in time, people did a great deal of traveling before they discovered that “the world is round”. We now tend to think of them as ignorant, but they were as knowledgeable and forward thinking as was possible at the time. People in the future might consider those of us who live here in the present, to be ignorant and backward.

   I recently read the following about how “calories” were discovered:

Up unt...

Yesterday, my article was about the

Difference between Correlation and Causation.

Below are two examples of media
handling the same recent health research study.

 

 

7 Daily Servings of Fruits, Veggies Best for Happiness,
Study Finds 'Strive for 5' might need an update. 
        Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) 

"People who eat seven servings of fruit and vegetables a day have the highest levels of happiness and mental health, according to a new study.

In a joint effort with Dartmouth University, researchers at the University of Warwick examined the eating habits of 80,000 people in England and found that mental well-being rose with the number of daily servings of fruits and vegetables, peaking at seven servings a day.

The study, which appears in the journal Social Indicators Research, defied a serving as about 80 grams (2.8 ounces).

"The statistical power of fruit and vegetables was a surprise. Diet has traditionally been ignored by well-being researchers," study co-author Sarah Stewart-Brown, a professor of public health, said in a university news release.

Further research is needed to learn more about the reasons behind the findings, she added.

"This study has shown surprising results, and I have decided it is prudent to eat more fruit and vegetables. I am keen to stay cheery," study co-author Andrew Oswald, a professor in the economics department, said in the news release.

Currently, many Western governments recommend that people eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day to protect against heart disease and cancer, the release noted.

While the study found an association between fruit and vegetable servings and well-being, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship."

 

 Here’s another take on the same Research.

Study: If You're 'Keen to Stay Cheery,'
7 Fruits and Vegetables a Day
  &nbs...

One of the most common errors in the press is the confusion between correlation and causation in scientific and health-related studies.

In theory, these are easy to distinguish … an action or occurrence can CAUSE another (such as smoking causes lung cancer), or it can CORRELATE with another (such as smoking is correlated with alcoholism). If one action causes another, then they are most certainly correlated.

But just because two things occur together does not mean that one caused the other, even if it seems to make sense.

In general, we should all be wary of our own bias. We like explanations. The media often concludes a causal relationship among correlated observances when causality was not even considered by a research study itself. Without clear and definite reasons to accept that one thing CAUSES another, the fact that a correlation exists is all we should accept. Again, two events occurring in close proximity does not imply that one caused the other, even if it seems to makes perfect sense.

Once upon a time, this type of error wasn’t too bad.
If one ate a berry and got sick, it was wise to see meaning in that data. (Better safe than sorry). The same goes for a red-hot coal. Only one touch will give all the correlations needed. Being bullied by a primitive world of nature, it's far worse to miss a link than it is to make one up. A false negative yields the greatest risk.

Now conditions are reversed.
People in modern civilization are bullies over nature. New claims about causation are often made so we can make large interventions in nature. A false positive today often means approving drugs that have no effect, or imposing regulations that make no difference, or wasting money in schemes to limit unemployment. Now, as science grows more powerful and government more technocratic, the stakes of correlation…. of making counterfeit relationships and bogus findings,… grow larger and larger. A false positive is now more burdensome than it's ever been. The only thing we have to fight this attitude is the catchphrase. “correlation is not causation”.

I suggest that we be very cautious in the way we allow media claims to influence us into making personal changes in our own behaviors, ... especially in relation to the way they tend to limit our personal choices of the foods we eat, and the way they tend to add to our personal expense and health risks through recommendions of unnecessary drugs. 

Mistaking correlation for causation finds a cause that simply isn't there.