For the Sake of Science

Over at FTSOS’ sister blog Without Apology, Paula B. has posted an excellent response to Andreas Moritz’s bullshit and lies.

I was first intrigued by Moritz’s AMAZING LIVER CLEANSE book until I started looking at some of the incredibly broad claims he made, one of which really caught my attention. He claims that “Over 2/3 of the world’s population is vegan and has no access to animal protein. It [presumably this ‘vegan population’] shows no signs of such degenerative illnesses as heat disease, cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis, etc.” p77

It caught my attention because my well-meaning but occasionally gullible fiance decided that this book was law and that he meant to change his lifestyle accordingly, and become vegan, because he felt so great while on the “cleanse.” Well, I didn’t feel great, myself, because I was lethargic and was craving protein and fat and felt like sleeping for a week–so this broad claim that 2/3 of the world’s population (roughly 4.5 billion, based on the 6,827,100,000 estimate of total world population of the US Census, June 4, 2010) is vegan hit me like a ton of bricks–SURELY I would have heard that before, having so many vegan friends, if that were the case. Thinking about the world’s cuisine, most countries have meat recipes–how could this possibly be true? Well, researching online gave me the impression that the world population of vegetarians (not even vegan) was closer to 2.5-5%, NOT 67%, so I started questioning what other “facts” were in this book that just a month before, we were so in awe of, since it sounded so scientific (we’re both kind of gullible when it comes to pseudoscience). I found lots of other “liver flush” recipes, and people raving about them, but also found they were saying the stones “melted” and were “squishy” which seemed to contradict what Wikipedia said about gallstones, and might instead be saponified olive oil from the cleanse when exposed to the bile salts. So I got very suspicious, and was wary, because, as I said, I was doing this “cleanse” too, and suddenly it didn’t seem like such a great idea. But (maybe to say “I told you so! to my fiance) I did anyway, though I did NOT take the last dose of epsom salts, because I was tired of being hungry and going to the toilet every 5 minutes–enough is enough! I know that people claim to gain wonderful benefit from it, and supposedly Moritz himself does it twice a year even though no “stones” come out. Me and my fiance didnt’ notice a lot of “stones” (pseudoliths?), either, though, but that might have more to do with how our bodies deal with 120ml of olive oil. We’ve both decided, however, that we can do without it for the future, and I’m so looking forward to eating ice cream again, despite Mr. Moritz’s dietary guidelines.

Furthermore, I wanted to add that the danger of unsubstantiated disinformation–if such there is–is that people often read things without considering their source, then remember the (dis)information, not remembering where they heard/read about it, making it harder to trace where certain ideas came from, and therefore examine them. I guess this is a lot of what “conditioning” is about, come to think about it. But just reading that one sentence (sited in my previous post) caused me to doubt this whole book that I’d mostly read, and had already internalized, to some extent, which astonishes me–who would have thought that “open-minded” somehow became “gullible,” but I think the connection certainly exists. Therefore, a lot of disinformation can be spread to people without a “bullshit meter,” making us vulnerable unless we doubt everything. It broke my trust in the author, that’s for sure.

Crazy how all those facts get in the way of Moritz and his shenanigans.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: AMAZING LIVER CLEANSE, Andreas Moritz, Lies, Liver Cleanse, Paul B., Quack quack quack | 3 Comments »