Hi avid readers of mine,
Once a week I will publishing my comments from the edge, in this post I kick off with a critique of Barry Groves.
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| Barry Groves |
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Godfather of American fitness the late Jack LaLanne once quipped "
I can’t die, it would ruin my image".
This was certainly the case with Barry Groves a retired electrical engineer from the Cotswold. Who image and credibility took a nose dive after he died back in 2013 from a heart attack in his 70's.
As for years he pedalled a dietary regimen that he
implied would protect people form such a fate.
A dietary regime based on eating a large volumes of cheap cooked meats swimming around in grease, at the expense of fruit vegetables and whole grain.
About the time he became an honorary member of the Weston Price Foundation an organisation whose members follow a similar diet.
Barry had acquired dodgy doctorate from some overseas university.
It makes you wonder how credulous a person has to be to take diet and lifestyle tips of a man who looks like a used car salesman who his tan out of a bottle and in possession of such a qualification.
Several national newspapers who ran articles on Barry and his diet advice, certainly came across utterly credulous.
They didn’t seem to pick up on his dodgy doctorate in nutritional science or question why the dietary regime he was peddling was completely contradictory to NHS guidelines. Guidelines based on the most up to date research and science.
But one has to remember in the UK the word “
doctorate" is not a protected word by law.
So he was within his rights to say he had a doctorate even without having completed a proper accredited course. His was based on his "
life experience" and apparently brought.
After Barry death another self-style diet guru this time from the wrong side of the Atlantic wrote about Barry's and his diet "
It allowed him to live a long and healthy robust life".
Clearly the author didn't bother to read the numerous articles on Barry website or he would have known that Barry openly admitted he had suffered and underwent conventional treatment for bowel cancer.
Barry was anything buy healthy and was certainly unfit. He shunned exercise as was evident on his website.
I could spend hours writing about Barry skewed nutritional opinions and unsubstantiated claims.
Such gems as implying smoking is harmless and might even be beneficial and other nuggets of shite supported with evidence drawn from out-of-date poorly done old studies.
What Barry called research consisted of giving reports on medical studies and giving a different set of conclusions to the data that the researchers found.
I will start to conclude by saying that Barry followed and promoted a diet regimen that certainly had no benefits to his own health.
His father and brother who I believe was called Richard died apparently from the very same condition a he did at a similar age.
Which pointed to to the fact that Barry probably had some sort of genetic abnormality. Which meant the diet regime he actively promoted would have had no benefit for him.
Either way his books and websites in my humble opinion are full of advice that should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Or if your following Barry diet and health tips several tablespoons of the stuff, along with a cigarette and big fry-up. Which according to Barry was a panacea for or ills.
Regard
Paul Jones Phd
Please Note:
With all that said, a death is an unpleasant experience and my sympathies are with his family for their loss.
Also not everything he wrote was shite, its just that a large amount of it was and went unchallenged.
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