Udo Pollmer: "Most people are not too fat"
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Mr. Pollmer, when the morning magazine nutrition expert Hademar Bankhofer was fired by ARD, did you enjoy that?
Pollmer: No, I'm not happy when a colleague is released. Now, after he's gone, they're all hacking on top of him. This is not a sign of decency or courage. Counter question: Are the nutritional information in our women's magazines better?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: But you know what I'm getting at: Mr Bankhofer has been giving flat-rate nutritional advice on an ongoing basis, which you strongly reject in your new book, Who Eats Healthy, Dies Earlier?
Pollmer: There are three requirements for health advice. First, do they demonstrably have a net benefit? Second, what are the main side effects? And third, are they practical at all? To date, no one has cared about these questions. In this respect, none of the many counselors have the right to hack others. If advice is given, the effectiveness of which can be proven, I like to participate. But we do not have a single one that can be recommended in good conscience - unless the food has to be digestible because something unhealthy can not be healthy.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Then the federal government is wrong? She also gives flat rate advice. For example the action "5 a day". As part of this action, the government recommends that half of each meal should be made from fruit and vegetables. Studies have shown that the ingredients in fruits and vegetables had a positive impact on health.
Pollmer: Well then show me the studies. The lower the evidence level, the better the fruits and vegetables, the better the study design and the evaluation the more disappointing the result. Politics is not there to test scientific findings for their resilience. They keep their fingers in the air and see where the wind blows from. If the government realizes that it is commended for the "5 a day" campaign, then the campaign will be supported. If not, then you save yourself the money. The "5 a day" campaign has even publicly stated that it has no scientific basis.
On the next page: is diet advice useless?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: A federal government campaign has no scientific basis?
Pollmer: You know, it's not that only critics like me spread disrespectful opinions. The same opinions occasionally disseminated by the German Nutrition Society. For example, in the "DGE Info", the headline reads: "5 per day campaign: Scientific justification": "There is currently no direct evidence that intervention with vegetables and fruits lowers the risk of cancer or other chronic diseases. " Then the next sentence: "There is also a lack of observational epidemiological data showing that a change in eating habits to increase fruit and vegetable intake in adulthood can reduce the risk of developing cancer and other chronic diseases." So we have no evidence or clues.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: But can not a campaign that recommends eating more fruits and vegetables, so to eat healthier, be futile?
Pollmer: Well, the experts see that differently. I have another issue of the "DGE Info" here. In it, we read from the scientific director of the DGE: "There are no studies that show a lasting positive change in dietary behavior and an increase in fruit and vegetable consumption through public relations and behavioral prevention measures." True: until today, there is no evidence for the benefits of nutritional advice. Then the next sentence: "The long-standing '5 a day' campaign in the USA has not led to a significant increase in fruit and vegetable consumption there."
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: So nutritional advice is useless in your eyes?
Pollmer: The former DGE president, Professor Volker Pudel, said very aptly on the company's 40th anniversary: It would seem to him that 40 years of nutritional education has had one major impact - people eat what they have always eaten, but now with a guilty conscience. Reasonable people conclude that the industry should practice first. But she sees it differently: they want more enlightenment.
On the next page: How Udo Pollmer judges the BMI
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: According to your logic useless education with superfluous nutritional advice.
Pollmer: You have made it calm. There is still a lot to explain. Of course there is also thickness. For example due to illness.These people do not need the indication "but you have to lose weight!", But a diagnosis. One feverish one does not say, "but you have to cool down". One is as intelligent as the other.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What is your opinion, if not the wrong eating habits, that according to the Second Consumption Study, 66 percent of German men and 51 percent of women are overweight?
Pollmer: Two-thirds of men and half of women could not work on the catwalk anymore. This is of course a threatening situation because you do not have the desirable BMI of 20 to 25. You have to know that this desirable BMI has people at the age of 18 years. The "ideal weights" come from investigations on recruits. It should be noted that in each mammal, the fat content and the weight increase in the course of life. Whether you have a cattle or a dietitian in front of you makes no difference biologically. The weight increases until the age of 65. Then it goes down again.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: BMI should not be used as a measure in health policy?
Pollmer: If you have a handsome bust and an attractive butt, then your BMI is of course higher than your competitors. According to Mr. Seehofer, these feminine features contribute to the disruption of our health care system.
On the next page: "Mr. Schwarzengger should eat more salad."
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: So Germany has no problem with obesity, but a problem with the BMI?
Pollmer: In turn. We noted earlier that healthy people increase in the course of life. But that's just one aspect. If you have broad shoulders as a man, then you are quickly above the BMI standard. That's why, according to the Seehofer study, there are more "too fat" men than women, because men are naturally stronger, have a broader cross, and a stronger muscling. Biology speaks of sexual dimorphism. Incidentally, the fat content of the female body is higher on average. Many athletes, apart from marathon runners and ski jumpers, are too fat after Seehofer. According to his standards, even Mr. Schwarzenegger would finally have to start eating a bit of salad and moving his butt to get an acceptable body shape again. A prime example of the ideal physical line is Karl Valentin.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Let's forget the overweight. You also refer to the movie "Super Size Me" in your book, claiming that the experiment is not credible. Do you believe that you can only feed on fast food and stay healthy?
Pollmer: It takes no special expertise to see that the movie "Super Size Me" is anything but believable. The man wants to have increased 400 grams day after day for 30 days. This creates a happy pig, but not a full-grown person. Unless he uses hormonal help. For example, anabolic steroids and thyroid hormones. The former make impotent and cause liver damage, the latter cause a bloated appearance. Exactly these effects but the man complained. If you were impotent by McDonalds, the Americans would have died out by now. So Holzauge be watchful! For many people fast food devil stuff is simply because children like it. The pitfalls of the devil lurk behind it. As with the chocolate. Suppose the Germans eat three times more chocolate than before. What consequences do you think that would have?
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ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: They would increase.
Pollmer: You can see the result of the experiment live and in color. It has been running for decades. An entire nation joins in, the Swiss. They eat three times as much chocolate as we do. You see the devastating consequences: The Swiss are all fat, sick, the health care system can not pay more. The clothing manufacturers have to use tarpaulins to dress the Swiss in a reasonably chic way.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: May I put a brace with the word irony behind this answer?
Pollmer: Yes, you can. I just want to show you how fast you load with the usual food gums in the hocus-pocus. How many mothers warn their children about pizza and pasta? They make you fat, sick and what else do I know? In Italy, the Bambini have been raised for generations with pizza and pasta and thrive excellently. Why are not our dieticians going to Naples and finally telling people about the dangers that lurk in their kitchen?
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: There is another irony-clause due.
Pollmer: All right - but there you would probably miss them with the frying pan the necessary information ...
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What about the equation more sport + less food = slimmer? After all, there are enough success stories to prove.
Pollmer: The result you can look at in the US. Nowhere else are such amounts of calorie-free products, low-fat ice cream, light yoghurt sold as there.Nowhere is so much of the population involved in fitness sports and diets. If that would even help you, the Americans would have to hover as light as a feather over the Great Plains. Do not do it.
On the next page: Viruses can cause overweight
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Can you, in your opinion, influence your weight at all?
Pollmer: There are questions that sound simple, but require sound physiological expertise. There are many factors that affect weight: For example, there are a number of infectious diseases, viruses or hormonal disorders. Take the adenovirus 36. It causes a harmless cold and then you can become damn fat in the following years. In the really fat Americans you will indeed find high antibody levels against this virus. If you take certain medications such as cortisone, you can develop obesity on the stomach. Since people also produce cortisone (cortisol) during severe mental stress, many people gain weight and stress in the abdomen. But not because of the calories
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What would you advise fat people who want to lose weight?
Pollmer: The same thing you would advise big people who want to get shorter.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: Nothing?
Pollmer: Of course. But that's different for every person. And please remember: Most people who want to lose weight are not "too fat" but completely normal. Take a look at the latest research presented by the Robert Koch Institute: Fear of obesity affects adolescents' quality of life more than actual obesity. For many women, that's the same!
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde.com: What I noticed over and over again in the course of this conversation and reading your book is that you seem to be driven by sheer lust for provocation.
Pollmer: I enjoy calling things by their names. It should also make the readers enjoy. But the foundation is science. Not for nothing you will find in almost all my book publications detailed sources. So everyone can check it. The benchmark in the selection and interpretation of the studies is evidence-based medicine. But I am not a ruminant of well-known prejudices, not a counselor who points the way to the usual dead ends. On the contrary: I open windows and then someone can look out and say "Oh, I've never seen anything like this". Or he can shut it up immediately and start the day with health television programs.
Udo Pollmer & Monika Niehaus "He who eats healthy dies sooner" BLV book publisher 12.95 Euro
