Gary Taubes's The Soft Science Of Dietary Fat

Great Essays
Scientific research is supposed to bring humanity into a new age. As humans progress and grow, they believe they left the fallacies and myths of the past behind. Instead of liberating humans, science seems to be unintentionally hindering its own progress. However, this is not science’s fault, it is the fault of human beliefs. Instead of science guiding human beliefs toward a brighter future, human beliefs have been guiding science and stopping science from continuing. Instead of scientists spending time finding cures for diseases, they are forced to spend countless hours convincing people that proven theories should be treated as such. Gravity is just a theory, and yet people do not go around saying that gravity does not exist, and yet people …show more content…
In the twenty first century, almost everyone is concerned with prolonging their own lives, and they love hearing about the newest “super fruit” that will prevent them from getting cancer. However, although all these studies are going on, so many Americans do not listen to the studies already done from accomplished scientists and instead listen to buzzfeed.com. In Gary Taubes’s article “The Soft Science of Dietary Fat,” he discusses the misconception of the low fat diet. He explains that in the 1950’s when old men were dying of heart attacks, they quickly jumped to the conclusion that high fat foods were the cause of all their problems. However, since then, studies have shown that the overall health of the nation has gone down with the introduction of the low fat diet. In Taubes’s article, William Harlan says “Most of us predicted that if we could get the population to change its fat intake, with its dense calories, we would see a reduction in weight. Instead, we see the exact opposite.” Since studies have come out saying that the low fat diet is actually worse for health, humans have not changed their belief in the low fat diet. Even though it is past the point where low fat diets are proven to not be any healthier than any other diet, people still follow the low fat myth. Scientists spend more time and money trying to convince the populace what the scientific community has known for …show more content…
It has almost fifty five years since the civil rights movement, and still there are people who believe in the racist values of the past. Although everyone should be embracing the new scientific discoveries, because of the racist past, science is being used to keep these awful ideas alive. According to the “Genome in Black and White and Gray” written by Robin Henig written in 2004, humans have advanced far enough to use the genome to tailor medications to different people. Since this article has been published the medication BilDil in the article has become commercially available. In the article Henig discusses that there is only a one tenth of a percent difference between people, and this is the difference between some medical problems as well as skin color. This information can then be used to “reduce health disparities between the races,” as Collins says in Henig’s article. However, as it has shown, this information can also be used to perpetrate the racist ideals of humans. This should be a huge scientific breakthrough, but instead people are using it for their own

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