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AMA brands Pete Evans as “irresponsible”

Answering your critics? That went well.

If My Kitchen Rules judge Pete Evans thought he was silencing his critics with his Sunday Night interview he was wrong.

After was interviewed by Alex Cullen over his Paleo lifestyle and his controversial thoughts on fluoride, dairy and sunscreen. But many media accused the segment of being little more than a 20-minute promotion for his commercial ventures like MKR, his speaking tours and cookbooks.

The AMA even tweeted, that Evans was “putting his fans’ health at risk with extreme advice on diet, fluoride, calcium. Celebrity chef shouldn’t dabble in medicine.”

AMA President Dr Michael Gannon later told SKY News Evans relies on “fairly flaky ideas” and is receiving dodgy advice.

“I think that Pete should stick to pearl couscous, and the scientists can stick to pertussis,” he said. “Some of his comments are so irresponsible.

“He is an opinion leader, and when it comes to things like the importance of adding fluoride to the water… when it comes to some of his comments about nutrition and about important dietary sources of calcium, and now he’s dipped a toe in the water when it comes to vaccination, he needs to be more responsible.”

On his Facebook page on Monday morning Evans hit back at the AMA, suggesting it is “in the pockets of the pharmaceutical industries”.

“How much nutritional training does the AMA provide for their doctors?” he asked. “Remember ‘you don’t need to be qualified to have common sense!'”

Source: Fairfax, BuzzFeed

7 Responses

  1. Does the ama actually ever look themselves in the mirror and wonder why people seek alternatives. I would assume when most people have a health issue they would see guidance from mainstream medicine but when that repeatedly fails then they would seek alternatives. Then its up to the discerning consumer to determine what alternatives have merit and what doesn’t. Surely if you’ve been screwed over by the medical system a few tweets and appearances by the ama isn’t going to do much if people have found alternatives that help.

    Isn’t it time for some slight out of the square thinking on some areas of health by the ama and medical industry as a whole. Clearly what currently happening for areas like obesity, back and neck problems and pain isn’t working.

  2. ““How much nutritional training does the AMA provide for their doctors?”
    Any good doctor, like mine, will refer you to an independent diet educator, which is covered by Medicare.
    The Sunday Night item was very one-sided, no right of reply from a medico, which is contrary to basic Year 1 Journalism.

    1. They actually did have a gp to counteract his claims but as I posted yesterday on another thread I don’t think he was the right person to counteract all those claims.
      tvf March 27, 2017 10:42 am
      Pete’s story on Sunday Night lacked balance. If your going to have a story where you have one person make certain claims and another person counteract them then have the appropriate person counteract them. Its quite common knowledge that doctors get barely any nutrition training so why have one counteract food claims? If you go to a gp and ask about your teeth they will immediately tell you not my area. So again why have a gp counteract dental claims? It had the appearance of cutting corners.

    1. Infant mortality & its effect on average/mean vs median vs mode. In the Paleolithic average life expectancy at birth was ~35, but for a teenager it was more like 70~80.

      Despite the fact that paleo diets are mostly a load of old tosh, there’s pretty good evidence that life expectancy dropped dramatically in the Neolithic when we started farming and didn’t catch up again until the Second Agricultural Revolution. If you ignore advances in surgical intervention, life expectancy peaked in the 1950-60’s, so your best bet for a long life is probably to eat like your grandparents did – lots of boiled veges, a little meat, all wiped up with a side of bread & dripping… 😉

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