The UNDEReducated Authority on Nutrition – Don’t Fall For The Lab Coat!

When you want someone to handle your financial portfolio, who do you go to? The guy with a great reputation and proven results, or the one with 12 letters after his name?

Clearly, you avoid the guy that can’t manage to advise himself into a better financial situation:

“I think this guy looks good honey. He’s wearing ripped jeans and a Hawaiin shirt, drives a 1984 Pontiac Sunfire, and lives in low-income housing.”

And sure, you can’t always judge a book by its cover – but in certain situations it’s necessary.

What about when selecting a real-estate agent, mortgage broker, or lawyer?

Or a chef?

Do you select the one with a degree from the fanciest culinary school, or the one that makes the best food?

You obviously choose the one that makes the tastiest dishes – as that’s why you’re hiring them!

And similarly, you choose the realtor that’s going to sell your home the fastest, lawyer that’s going to win your case, and mortgage broker that’s going to give you the best interest rate.

Because when it comes to paying for a service, you want results; and you’re not willing to spend the time or money on some-thing, or some-one, that isn’t giving them to you. Regardless of what their business card says they’ve done, or education implies they know.

….unless of course, we’re talking about nutrition! Where for some reason, all of this performance-based evaluation and rational decision making seems to go out the window.

Unfortunately, when it comes to nutrition, the majority of people are still taking cues from:

DOCTORS AND DIETICIANS!

Who, not only have pushed you towards (and continue to push you towards) an upside down food pyramid that’s made you fatter and sicker than you were before; but the doctor isn’t even qualified to be giving nutrition advice in the first place. With a European study from 2014 in the journal Nature determining that:

Less than 70% of doctors receive nutrition classes in medical school. And those that do, experience a measly 24hrs of class time on the subject!

And that’s before considering the fact that the entire medical system revolves around treating disease (with pharmaceuticals) as opposed to preventing it (with diet and lifestyle).

Test —-> Prescribe —-> Repeat

Though, I suppose we shouldn’t use education as the metric. Given that the dietician has had a full 4 year education…at the University of Kelloggs!

Or, as I like to put it:

One’s under-educated to be advising on anything other than treatment, medication and surgery, and the other one is over-educated in government-regulated Big-Sugar Propaganda.

But more importantly, and as we discussed at the start, if their results are inline with what their preaching, are you sure you want to listen?

Truth be told, most MDs will admit they don’t have the knowledge to make nutritional recommendations, and they only give it because their patients ask and trust them.

So this post isn’t to bash doctors, but rather bring up the fact that you shouldn’t be asking them for nutrition advice, they shouldn’t be dishing it out, and the media shouldn’t be favoring their opinion – even if they are wearing a LAB COAT…

 

Lab-coat effect – human beings are obedient to what they perceive as ‘authority’ no matter what the request.

Unfortunately, we’ve been conditioned to follow the ones in the lab coats with the fancy titles for anything related to nutrition and health. Despite the fact that their advice has burned us in the past, and it continues to burn us today.

Or as research by Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgram, determined in 1963, the majority of us (65%) are willing to blindly obey (perceived) authority, even if it’s harming us or another person. With his experiments showing that participants would continue to deliver an electric shock to a human subject (for every wrong answer in a series of questions) under the command of an authoritative figure in a lab coat. Even though it was beyond a designated danger zone of 300-volts, was causing clear pain and discomfort, and some subjects were even pleading and screaming for them to stop.

Simply put:

Asking your doctor for nutrition advice, is like asking your home inspector how to build a house. He can test for a leak and maybe suggest some repair options, but he doesn’t know how to lay the foundation.

Whether he’s wearing a lab coat or not.

Stay Lean!
Coach Mike


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