Review by LMN Editorial -- Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks
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Review by LMN Editorial -- Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks
[Following is a volunteer review of "Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks" by Morton E Tavel, MD.]
1 out of 4 stars
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Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks: A Physician’s Advice
Health Information to Liberate ups from “Snake Oil”
By Morton E. Tavel MD
Rating: 1 out of 4
Review
The book is too long by at least a third. It is filled with redundancies, repetitions, and rephrasings of the same tired information we have all heard more eloquently elsewhere. I got to Chapter Six before I came across the first tidbit of new information: there is a correlation between chocolate consumption and Nobel laureates. The more chocolate consumed in a country, the more Nobel Prize winners that country produces. Clearly this is a correlation without causation, but it was the first interesting thing in the book. I didn’t find another until Chapter 19 where Dr. Tavel explained the reasons he thinks white rice is better for you than brown.
In that same chapter, however, he talked about cooking rice by boiling it. But rice is actually steamed (that’s why you have to keep the lid on while it cooks). If he doesn’t know this, what else is he wrong about?
I kept hoping for something new, or at least something well written, but the good doctor seems never to have met a cliché he didn’t adopt, and while trying to make his chapter heading clever he sometimes loses touch with what actually makes sense. What does it mean to “Sleep Nice or Pay the Price”? I imagine he meant sleep well, but that doesn’t rhyme with price. But while there are situations in which “nice” and “well” have similar meanings, they are not interchangeable.
I was hopeful that the Myths section would provide something more useful, but the first one is the tired discussion of the vaccine/autism debate, which anyone picking up this book already knows was settled science years ago. Energy drinks are bad for you, and they are deceptively labeled. Really? Even the people I know who drink them know this. Then things got worse. Dr. Tavis started talking about GM foods and ended up endorsing Golden Rice, a product that remains quite controversial in most scientific and economic studies. He then goes on to suggest that there is no difference between commercially grown and organically grown food, stating that the levels of pesticides found on the commercially grown produce fall “within acceptable levels”. One of the reasons people go organic is they don’t think the government’s acceptable levels are acceptable.
He is better on the gluten free craze, noting that most people don’t need to eliminate this protein from their diets, and most food altered by manufacturers to be gluten free becomes less healthy in other ways in the process. And he is right about paper towels being better for cleanliness and drying than blowers, but that won’t do you much good in a public bathroom equipped only with blowers. And the idea that using paper towels might be good for our lumber industry is absurd – paper towels should be made from recycled post-consumer materials to avoid cutting down more trees and causing further damage to our environment and climate.
Chapter 54 offers some common sense reminders regarding spotting health scams or scare tactics that would be beneficial to most people in this age of internet connectivity. That is followed by some specific scams and tricks to be avoided such as drinking alkaline water and eating aloe vera.
Overall, the information contained here is so basic that I would be surprised if most readers got much new out of it, and it is written in such a flat and uninteresting way that even those to whom most of it is new will have a hard time getting past the clichés, un-funny asides, and repetition.
******
Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
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1 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks: A Physician’s Advice
Health Information to Liberate ups from “Snake Oil”
By Morton E. Tavel MD
Rating: 1 out of 4
Review
The book is too long by at least a third. It is filled with redundancies, repetitions, and rephrasings of the same tired information we have all heard more eloquently elsewhere. I got to Chapter Six before I came across the first tidbit of new information: there is a correlation between chocolate consumption and Nobel laureates. The more chocolate consumed in a country, the more Nobel Prize winners that country produces. Clearly this is a correlation without causation, but it was the first interesting thing in the book. I didn’t find another until Chapter 19 where Dr. Tavel explained the reasons he thinks white rice is better for you than brown.
In that same chapter, however, he talked about cooking rice by boiling it. But rice is actually steamed (that’s why you have to keep the lid on while it cooks). If he doesn’t know this, what else is he wrong about?
I kept hoping for something new, or at least something well written, but the good doctor seems never to have met a cliché he didn’t adopt, and while trying to make his chapter heading clever he sometimes loses touch with what actually makes sense. What does it mean to “Sleep Nice or Pay the Price”? I imagine he meant sleep well, but that doesn’t rhyme with price. But while there are situations in which “nice” and “well” have similar meanings, they are not interchangeable.
I was hopeful that the Myths section would provide something more useful, but the first one is the tired discussion of the vaccine/autism debate, which anyone picking up this book already knows was settled science years ago. Energy drinks are bad for you, and they are deceptively labeled. Really? Even the people I know who drink them know this. Then things got worse. Dr. Tavis started talking about GM foods and ended up endorsing Golden Rice, a product that remains quite controversial in most scientific and economic studies. He then goes on to suggest that there is no difference between commercially grown and organically grown food, stating that the levels of pesticides found on the commercially grown produce fall “within acceptable levels”. One of the reasons people go organic is they don’t think the government’s acceptable levels are acceptable.
He is better on the gluten free craze, noting that most people don’t need to eliminate this protein from their diets, and most food altered by manufacturers to be gluten free becomes less healthy in other ways in the process. And he is right about paper towels being better for cleanliness and drying than blowers, but that won’t do you much good in a public bathroom equipped only with blowers. And the idea that using paper towels might be good for our lumber industry is absurd – paper towels should be made from recycled post-consumer materials to avoid cutting down more trees and causing further damage to our environment and climate.
Chapter 54 offers some common sense reminders regarding spotting health scams or scare tactics that would be beneficial to most people in this age of internet connectivity. That is followed by some specific scams and tricks to be avoided such as drinking alkaline water and eating aloe vera.
Overall, the information contained here is so basic that I would be surprised if most readers got much new out of it, and it is written in such a flat and uninteresting way that even those to whom most of it is new will have a hard time getting past the clichés, un-funny asides, and repetition.
******
Health Tips, Myths, and Tricks
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like LMN Editorial's review? Post a comment saying so!
