Book review: Trick and Treat by Barry Groves

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(subtitled “how ‘healthy eating’ is making us ill”) by Barry Groves is the most thought-provoking book I’ve ever read.
Unlike many books by alternative practitioners, it is not a theory built around a single clever idea, but a collection of theories based on a wealth of mainstream scientific research which has not seen much daylight. Barry Groves is not a doctor or a scientist. He is one of those rare individuals who has learned everything possible about a subject on which he feels strongly over the last 30 years and is simply passing that information on. Too many things are misdescribed as a tour de force, but that description certainly applies here.

I urge you to read it, though it is dense and a slow (but absorbing) read, because what it has to say will turn everything you know about healthy eating on its head. And it is supported by 51 pages of scientific references, from medical journals to newspapers and scientific committees .

“The high levels of chronic degenerative diseases we see today – obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, senile dementia, and so on, need not – indeed, should not – happen. These conditions, which were previously rare or even unheard off, really ‘took off’ in the last century.” (page 3)

Chapter 1 explores the fact that the health industry has consistently been shown to be corrupt. There is money to be made from healthy people being made to believe they are sick. The level of “normal” blood pressure and of “normal” cholesterol has been reduced time and time again, to bring more people into the medical net, for example. And drug companies routinely bribe doctors to promote their products, because statistics have shown they are six times more likely to prescribe them than doctors with no inducements.

“Based on the known, reported accidents, one in 10 people admitted to a hospital in Britain every year will suffer an incident that will harm them” according to the Commons Public Accounts Committee. That figure includes 974,000 medical ‘accidents’. (page 33)
There is a lot more to it than this, but it’s best if you read it for yourself.

Chapter 2 is all about disease screening.
“In absolute terms less than 1% of women who are invited for screening will benefit from it, whereas a greater percentage will have to face the problems of false alarms, unnecessary surgery, unnecessary labelling as having cancer.” (page 37)
On cancer: “While there have been advances over the past few decades in the treatment of some of the rarer cancers such as childhood leukaemia, melanoma and testicular cancer, there have been no similar advances in treatments of the more common cancers despite the vast resources that have been thrown at them”. (page 39)
“By the time a breast cancer is large enough to be detectable by hand, it has usually been growing, on average, for some eight years. Mammography may detect it at about six years. Mammography will only make an appreciable difference to the outcome, therefore, if the tumour metastasizes (spreads) during the two years in between – and there is no reason to believe it will”. (page 40)
The same chapter also talks about the difference between relative and absolute risk and how this changes your perception. Which would reassure you more – a headline which says there is a 50% decline in cancer deaths or a headline that says 10 deaths in one year vs 20 deaths a year in the previous one? The drug companies prefer you to read the first version, to rush you towards their products. And the media happily complies, because they read the helpful press releases sent their way.

High blood cholesterol is commonly believed to be a predictor for heart disease. And possibly it is. Along with another 245 identified predictors.
Identifying what’s a problem level is difficult, though, as blood cholesterol is produced by the body itself and is also constantly changing. That doesn’t even take into account that a standardised level of 5.2 mmol/L was arbitrarily set for political reasons in 1984
(page 49).

Still feel confident about cholesterol? Chapter 22 talks about the documented dangers of low cholesterol (which tends to shorten your life or increase your risk of stroke and of cancer), which few doctors know about. Instead they have lots of statins to prescribe you – the best-selling drug company product there is.

Chapter 3 talks about our historic diet of animal origin and fats and how they have protected us. Before you tell me about increased lifespans in recent decades, I’ll point out that the pre 20-th century average lifespan was unfairly skewed by the high infant mortality rate. We’re dying at the same kind of age as we used to, for the most part. And “child deaths from diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever and whooping cough also fell dramatically – long before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization”. (page 57) Mostly, it was down to better sanitation and nutrition.

The same chapter also explains how cholesterol was implicated in the furring up of the arteries (artherosclerosis) and thereby in heart disease, even though research done in 1936 compared blood cholesterol levels and artherosclerosis in a large number of traffic accident victims conclusively demonstrated the lack of correlation. 1936!

Fats aren’t the cause either. There are other countries whose diets don’t conform to our definition of a healthy diet, although they are clearly working for the people who eat them, even though they may be completely different from each other. And so we have the French Paradox, the Spanish Paradox, the Alpine Paradox, the Greek Paradox, the Italian Paradox, the Northern Ireland Paradox, the Israeli Paradox and the Indian Paradox … or perhaps we should stop thinking about ‘healthy eating’ as the norm.

Chapter 4 talks about how we can learn from history, by looking at traditional diets rather than looking at current western ones.
Dr Sylvan Lee Weinberg, a former President of the American College of Cardiology and of other respected organisations published in 2004 the following critique of ‘healthy eating’ (abstract quoted):

“The low-fat ‘diet heart’ hypothesis has been controversial for nearly 100 years. The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, promulgated vigorously … may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid (blood fat) abnormalities, type II diabetes and metabolic syndromes. This diet can no longer be defended by appeal to the authority of prestigious medical organizations or by rejecting clinical experience and a growing medical literature suggesting that the much-maligned low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet may have a salutary effect on the epidemics in question”. (page 87)

‘Healthy eating’ advice dating from 1984 now tells us to
- reduce our intake of fats to less than 35% of calories
- change from eating ‘saturated’ fats to eating polyunsaturated vegetable oils and margarines
- base meals and snacks on starchy foods (bread, pasta, breakfast cereals etc)
- eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day
- eat less salt
- take more exercise

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! And this book clearly explains why this is so, along with scientific backing and lots of experiential data.
This is not the Atkins Diet. It is all about eating animal produce, full fat, and cutting down on carbohydrates, sugars (including fruit) and processed foods. You can eat eggs and full fat milk with equanimity. Once you have your nutrition sorted, your health will improve and the weight will fall off, without punishing hours of exercise. Animals don’t do it, so why should we?

I could write for hours and hours on this, but it would be a tedious read. Far better to get Trick and Treat and read it all at source. I know it is a dense (though fascinating) read, but not a sentence is wasted on guff. If you are not horrified by the way we have been misled over the last 20 years, I don’t know what would change your mind!
Read it, please.
Morag
Morag Gaherty is the nappy lady, she helps mums choose the right kind of real nappy.

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