My son and I watched a few minutes of Dr. Oz’s TV show on overcoming obesity last night. The show airs on Discovery Health. For fun, we both decided to watch a few minutes of the show and see how many things Dr. Oz got wrong until the next commercial break.
It didn’t take long, I can assure you!
First of all, Dr. Oz seems obsessed with having overweight people work out every single day.
I realize that physical activity is an important part of losing weight, but unless you are eating the right foods to give you stable blood sugar and lasting energy, the fitness habit will just never happen. The participants just get too worn out and quit their required workout routines very quickly.
The next thing that made my son and I nearly fall off the couch was Dr. Oz teaching some poor gal in his own kitchen how to eat what he thought were “healthy foods”.
First, he gives her a bowl of fat-free plain yogurt mixed with some blackberries and a plate of edamame beans to eat.
This guy can’t be that out of touch with reality, can he? Â Evidently so.
If someone fed me a bowl of fat-free yogurt and a bunch of edamame, I would go and very quickly stick my entire head in a large bag of potato chips and I don’t even have a weight issue.  Can you imagine what feeding this unsatisfying fare to an obese person would do to his/her hunger cravings?
Remove the creamy, luscious fat from the top of a container of yogurt and you have a meal that will leave you scrounging for cookies, donuts, and chips in very short order.
Then, there’s the edamame.  Shame on Dr. Oz for not being up on the dangers of soy to the thyroid gland.  An obese person should be running for the hills away from soy, not eating it as a recommended snack! Soy is a potent goitrogen (thyroid suppressor) and contributes greatly to hypothyroidism which an obese person would almost certainly suffer from.  Any doctor who advises an obese patient to be eating soy should have his head examined.
We turned the TV off at that point.  I couldn’t watch it anymore and it had only been about 10 minutes.   Those poor folks trying to lose weight on that show don’t have a prayer of slimming down and maintaining it for any length of time.
As soon as the cameras stop rolling, they will be diving back into their processed foodways once again, I have no doubt.   Only Real Food that contains lots of natural, unprocessed animal fats like eggs (with the yolks!), whole milk, butter, cheese, cream, coconut oil, grass-fed meats with all the fat will satisfy that hunger and stabilize the blood sugar enough to help them finally let go of the carb and sugar addiction that is the true cause of their obesity and ill health.
Until the truth of the nutritional paradox that whole, unprocessed fats do not make you fat actually goes mainstream, then America’s obesity epidemic will only get worse.
Dr. Oz is a ding dong.
I wished he'd go away. I'd love to see Dr. Eades and Gary Taubes on tv with their own shows.
Tina
I saw, why didn'I before, duh!, your sprouted flour article! Great!
I love you. I do. This article you wrote is so good and it is true. I can't stand when people say soy is good for you. And they put it in everything. Try to find bread without it! I only have found a few.
I have arthritis and do the low carb thing. And I do eat fat-but the good ones you listed. Eggs-we have our own chickens and I will not throw away the yoke! The fats you mention are good and we eat them, and I eat almonds, too. I feel so much better this way, stay slim, exercise a good 50 minutes every day, and have energy when I eat like this. I KNOW it is carbs and sugar that make me sick. As soon as I start going off this my weight balloons and I start having lots of pain-especially if I get sick enough that I cannot exercise.
One thing I am confused about is soy lecithin. Is this also something I need to avoid? My son eats more liberally than I do and so I need some kind of snack for him. He is slim, 25, but does want something so I try to buy some stuff at our health food store but sometimes it still has this in it. So, confused on that.
Also I would like to find sprouted bread for him but I cannot find any without soy so maybe I should make my own but do not know if that is possible.
Thanks for this. Good info!
I'm doing a research assignment on hypothyroidism and for that condition it is so important to have fat in ones diet. Why? Well as you know we need fat to absorb fat-soluble vitamins, and one of the most important vitamin (apart from iodine) to help improve thyroid function is vitamin A which is fat-soluble!
But horray for real foodies and butter and coconut oil and all other good foods out there!
Yeah, that meal would have me sticking my head in a bag of potato chips, too! In fact, when I was big on conventional dieting a couple years ago, that's exactly what I was doing–eating sparse, fat-free meals all day and then binging on ice cream later that night! And I thought it was a willpower issue, lol.
I tried to watch Dr. Oz once. I didn't even get to the first commercial break before I turned the TV off and had to go count to 10 so I could calm down and stop shouting at the television! (It didn't help that the show was about vegetarianism and how awful animal foods are for you!)
Ah, yes, it's just one more powerful reminder of why I don't watch television in the traditional sense anymore!
Eleanor, that is so funny and you are right – he is hard to understand. He got his big break by being on Oprah and Oprah promoting him via her media empire same as what happened with Dr. Phil. I think he means well but he is extremely dangerous as he doesn't know what he REALLY DOESN"T KNOW and he has this huge platform to spread his misinformation.
Dr. Oz deserves credit for emphasizing the importance of healthy eating, unlike many mainstream physicians who are only interested in pharmaceutical solutions. Unfortunately, as you said, he's woefully misinformed about nutrition, and he's spreading this misinformation to his enormous (in every sense of the word) audience. Also: how did this guy ever get a career in broadcasting? He talks as if he has marbles in his mouth. Does anyone else have trouble understanding him?
I agree. He’s horrible to listen to and I’ve only heard him once. That was just recently when he had Dr. Joe Mercola on his program. It was a good segment and I think it’s on YouTube now. Dr. Oz tries to talk too fast and almost sounds as though he has a speech impediment or like his tongue won’t keep up with his brain or something. Weird guy.
And, between you and me and the grand piano, I agree with Sarah that his trying to be on the side of alternatives but not really making the entire switch is more dangerous to his viewing audience than pushing pfarma pills. His listeners begin to think he might know what he’s talking about and he doesn’t know diddly. Thus he leads them down the garden path to a whole bunch of wrong conclusions.
“Marbles in house mouth” is exactly how I describe his speech! I have not cared for his advise since day one. He has his specialty and if he wants to speak about the heart fine. Stay away from all the other topics! Medicine is to broad to speak as an expert on everything.
You're right, Mama G. Dr. Oz hits gets it right once in awhile (he is much more open to herbs and alternative medicine). The ones who make me sick are "The Doctors", especially Dr. Lisa Masterson. They are so drug oriented, fat fearful, and western med loving that I can't watch them for 5 minutes without blowing up!
Mama G, I agree that Dr. Oz is more open than most. I even saw him promote cod liver oil on Oprah years ago and I was very very briefly a fan of his until I found out his other nutritional teachings which are completely wrong. By being open on some things and clueless on the really important things, he lures people into an incorrect and dangerous way of eating. It is folks promoting partial truths that are the most dangerous, I think.
You should watch the whole show. It's exactly what you think, whole wheat bread baked with soy oil and all. Despite that I will say for a conventionally educated medical doctor Dr. Oz is more open to true wellness (vs. just illness management) than most of his contemeporaries. Does he have a long way to go? Yes. But at least he is open to things considered alternative and encourages patients to take charge of their own health and health care decisions. This alone sets him apart from many of the doctors I've consulted with. Still, if you think the show was bad, try reading "You, Having a Baby".