Mehmet Oz, Michael Roizen and Mengele

By Michael Applebaum, MD, JD, FCLM

Time for a thought experiment, everybody!

Now before we begin, here are the rules:

1.         We are not calling or suggesting that anyone mentioned in this rant is bad, incompetent, unqualified, wrong or anything less than perfect.
2.         In fact, until you prove to yourself otherwise, everybody mentioned in this rant, except me of course, is correct about everything they say or do and all the consequences of what they say or do.
3.         Further, in fact, until you prove to yourself otherwise, whenever there is any doubt or difference of opinion, consider that I am wrong.
4.         Remember, this is a rant. Consider it for entertainment purposes only.

That said, let’s start thinking!

Who is the Grim Reaper and what does he do?

A figure commonly used to represent death. The Grim Reaper is a skeleton or solemn-looking man carrying a scythe, who cuts off people's lives as though he were harvesting grain. (grim reaper. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/grim reaper (accessed: May 17, 2007).)

Although fashion is important, it appears as if the essence of his job is the cutting off of people’s lives. Seems as if he could lose the cloak and still do his thing.

So for the purposes of our thought experiment, we will allow GR (notice only 3 letters past “DR,” hmm…) to dress differently. Hey, how about surgical scrubs? Just a thought.

Josef Mengele was a doctor. [i] Practicing in a place called Germany where, despite the perceptible growing popularity of Holocaust denial, he apparently conducted experiments on concentration camp internees which led to their deaths. He is considered by some to be a kind of German Grim Reaper. He did not wear the typical GR cloak.

He was in a form of group practice. There were other docs who also conducted experiments. Docs like:

Dr Johann Paul Kremer

The killing of prisoners was also accompanied by research into the changes that occur in the human organism as a result of starvation--in particular, liver atrophy ("braune Atrophie"). This research was carried out at Auschwitz Concentration Camp by SS-Obersturmführer Johann Paul Kremer, M.D., Ph.D., professor at the University of Münster, where he lectured on anatomy and human genetics. At the Block No. 28 clinic in the main camp, he carried out assessments of prisoners attempting to gain admission to the hospital. Many of them were at the point of exhaustion, in the "Musselman" state, in the final stages of starvation to death. Kremer ordered most of them killed by phenol injection. Kremer selected prisoners who struck him as particularly good experimental material, and questioned them just before their deaths, as they lay on the autopsy table awaiting injection, about such personal details as their weight before arrest and any medicines they had used recently. In some cases, he ordered these prisoners photographed. Before their bodies were cold, they were subjected to autopsies and slides were made for Kremer of the liver, spleen, and pancreas. (From: http://www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl/html/eng/historia_KL/eksperymenty_ok.html)

Seems as if JPK was a form of diet doc. A starvation diet doc, but a kind of diet doc nonetheless.

Perhaps he was the kind of diet doc ahead of his time.

Fast forward to the 21^st century, the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Oprah.

Oprah Winfrey is a fat person. At least I think so. You decide. Here is a picture of her:

She simply cannot lose the weight. She has been trying for years, as in decades.

But she is more than simply a fat person. She is, in my opinion, a fitness moron. I think this, in part, because weight loss is the one component of a fitness program that I believe is IMPOSSIBLE to fail at unless one follows some incredibly bad advice.

Weight control is governed by the Laws of Thermodynamics. Follow the Laws and weight control is a certainty. This is true for weight loss and weight gain. Advice has to be very bad if it “defeats” the universal Laws of Thermodynamics.

Morons likely follow bad advice.

So do idiots. Idiots are very ingenious. That is why the best we can do is fool-proof things. Idiot-proofing is not possible. They are too ingenious. Maybe Oprah is an idiot in the domain of fitness.

Oprah has an apparently unsuccessful trainer (Bob Greene), chef (likely), a cabal of some really “killer,” yet apparently unsuccessful, diet experts (e.g., Jorge Cruise, David Katz, MD) all working to get her into the condition she is in.

Fat. And moronic. Maybe idiotic.

I think, also in part, that Oprah is a moron or idiot, because I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. Being a more than fair person, I want to believe that her choices of experts are borne more from innocent stupidity than more malevolent intents. If the latter, she is, arguably, a calculating killer. If the former, she is merely an extremely dangerous unintelligent, fat-headed cretin who, arguably, facilitates the killing of lots of people and ruins the lives of many, many more. That's all.

She has anointed these experts, i.e., her own experts, who, by extension, due to Oprah’s popularity have become “our” experts. Perhaps that is why we are so fat and getting fatter. We look like many of our experts (e.g., Phil McGraw) and their clients (e.g., Oprah).

I submit that many of us would not take investment advice from:

From: http://www.photographyblog.com/images/photo_of_the_week/28030405/Homeless%20Dinner.jpg

Nor would we take fashion advice from:

So why do we follow weight loss and fitness advice from:

And those she considers experts?

I dunno.

In any event. Let us continue with our thought experiment.

It is no secret, that one reason I believe diets fail is that the experts' diets are starvation diets, i.e., diets that would make Mengele and Kremer beam. Starvation diets are impossible to follow. I have written about it here and here.

Her old pros, Katz and Cruise, I opine advocate starvation diets.

But I think that Oprah and her current diet experts, Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen, may have hit a new low.

Here is an excerpt from their book YOU: On A Diet. Referring to their diet program:

So let’s see how it works.
Say you want to weigh 150 pounds and do an average of 300 physical activity calories (sic) per day – about what you do on our plan (more on some days and fewer on others). That means:

Your basic calories (sic) used are 8 x 150 = 1,200
+ 200 = 1,400
+ 300 in activity = 1,700

So to maintain your desired weight, you’d need about 1,700 calories (sic) per day. To lose a pound a week, you’d need to decrease that by about 500 calories (sic) per day, or increase your physical activity by 500 calories (sic) a day, or a combination of the two. (From pp. 238-239)

Admittedly, I find the language a touch confusing. Are they suggesting that you first determine the amount “you want to weigh,” eat that amount of Calories and then decrease it from there or what?

Whatever.

What is apparent is that these experts of Oprah’s buy into the “safely lose 1-2 pounds per week by decreasing daily caloric intake by 500 – 1000 Calories” nonsense. I believe that I have proven this to be false in my Ebook Why Diets Fail: The Simple Mistake That Ruins Millions of Lives.

But, suppose you feel otherwise. Let’s do a thought experiment!

Let us first assume that you want to “safely” lose one pound per week à la Oz and Roizen. This means that you will cut back their 500 Calories per day. Let us see what that looks like compared to the Wartime Diets and Rations from The Biology of Human Starvation by Ancel Keys, et al. When you look at the spreadsheet, Column Three (Kcal/day) is the number of Calories one eats. The yellow rows are calculated from Oz's and Roizen's numbers, the rows that are not highlighted are compiled from Keys's work. Column Four are the "want to weigh" numbers of Oz and Roizen. To be even more precise, it is proper to subtract the 300 Calories that are burned doing their recommended "physical activity." That leaves a mere 900 Calories for a 150 pound person to live on - about the same amount as Canadian POWs in a Japanese POW Camp Near Hong Kong were fed in January of 1942.

Then let us assume that you want to “safely” lose two pounds per week à la Oz and Roizen. This means that you will cut back their 1000 Calories per day. Let us see what that looks like compared to the Wartime Diets and Rations from The Biology of Human Starvation by Ancel Keys, et al. When you look at the spreadsheet, Column Three (Kcal/day) is the number of Calories one eats. The yellow rows are calculated from Oz's and Roizen's numbers, the rows that are not highlighted are compiled from Keys's work. Column Four are the "want to weigh" numbers of Oz and Roizen. To be even more precise, it is proper to subtract the 300 Calories that are burned doing their recommended "physical activity." That leaves a mere 400 Calories for a 150 pound person to live on - about 25% less than the amount internees at the Dachau, Germany Concentration Camp. were fed in April 1945.

It appears to me as if the unfortunate victims of war, siege and concentration camps fared better than those who follow the advice of Oprah’s experts (again).

Oprah bills Oz as “America’s Doctor.” I guess that Dr. Kevorkian was unavailable (but he will apparently be available on June 01, 2007, so Oprah still has a chance). Mengele and Kremer were dead.

I know which one of John Edwards’ “Two Americas” Oz attends – the “Not Mine” one.

Oprah bills Roizen as a “longevity expert.” Yeah, in the same way that one who knows evil is an expert on good.

Incidentally, if you "increase your physical activity by 500 calories (sic) a day," using their approach, you will be "exercising" 147 minutes or 2 hours 27 minutes daily. (300 Calories takes 55 minutes according to them (p. 238), so 500 Calories worth of their exercise takes another 91.67 minutes for a total of just under 147 minutes.)

They must be insane. Who has time for that? Oprah, maybe. Look what it has done for her.

BUT, there is a much deadlier side to all this, believe it or not. In fact, the book YOU: On A Diet is more aptly titled Murder, They Wrote.

This is from page 238:

An easy way to estimate your resting metabolic rate is to multiply your desired weight in pounds by 8 and add 200...

What this says is that the 1,700 Calories Mehmet and Michael calculated are only for the resting metabolic rate (1,400 Calories) and the 300 Calories you allegedly expend following their dubious exercise recommendations.

The resting metabolic rate represents about 2/3 of the total number of Calories you burn daily. Living a life costs around another 50% or 700 Calories WHICH THEY HAVE NOT EVEN CONSIDERED. Including the neglected Calories needed to lead a life results in a total of 2100 Calories, plus the 300 you need to do their exercises for a total of 2400 Calories.

If you believe their resting metabolic rate formula, this means that from the get-go, at 150 pounds, these guys have you in a 33% Caloric deficit from your needs (2100 Calories) plus they want you to cut back or "exercise" an additional 500 Calories to lose "a pound a week" (or 1,000 Calories to lose two pounds a week).

The end result is that to really see how bad the diet advice is to your safety, subtract an additional 700 Calories (Calories = Kcal) from the charts below for the 150 pounds Weight Goal. You subtract even more for the other Weight Goals.

The results are scary. In the first chart, the effective caloric intake these docs recommend is 500 Calories (1200-700) for a 150 pound person (200 if you subtract the 300 Calories burned "exercising"). In the second chart, the intake is reduced to zero (-300 if you subtract the 300 Calories burned "exercising").

Being math challenged appears to be the norm for these boys.

On page 133, they write:

An average person has about 112,000 calories (sic) stored as fat (that is, if you are at your ideal weight, you typically have about fourteen pounds of fat).

Let us assume they are saying the obvious, that the person at his or her ideal weight carries 14 pounds of fat on his/her body. There are 3,500 Calories in a pound of fat. 14 times 3,500 equals 49,000. In my book, 49,000 does not equal 112,000.

If you divide 112,000 by 3,500 you get 32. This means that the average person has about 32 pounds of fat stored on their body. Well, which is it? Either way, they are wrong and not to be trusted.

Just an aside about Roizen. Apparently this fellow has generated buzz and gotten some fame with his so-called RealAge stuff. I humbly suggest that before you buy into it, you consider his ability (or inability) to calculate much simpler numbers than those that "predict" your future. Consider my ability as well. You might agree with him and not me. Just don't blame me if you drop dead at the RealAge of "too young to die" or if you do not get fitter following the program of this Oprah-proclaimed "longevity expert." (I think the "exercise" program in You: On A Diet, is useless or worse. I opine similarly about Cruise's "exercise" books and the RealAge exercise book.)

When he lives to an age substantially older than his parents and statistically longer than the rest of us, then I might be willing to consider Oprah's appellation. Until then he, like Oz and many other "experts," is another dangerous person to me.

In all fairness, however, I do need to acknowledge one thing about the otherwise terrible book YOU: On A Diet. There is a kernel of truth in it. Actually several. Scattered throughout the book are sidebars, each entitled "Factoid." A "factoid" is:

something fictitious or unsubstantiated that is presented as fact, devised esp. to gain publicity and accepted because of constant repetition. (From factoid. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/factoid (accessed: May 12, 2007).)

A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition... (From factoid. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/factoid (accessed: May 12, 2007).)

In my opinion, the whole book is one big, fat factoid. Kudos to them for telling us.

YOU: On A Diet. Not.

Murder, They Wrote. Yep. (This is CACA-worthy when I get around to it. Who can understand diet recommendations like these? Mengele.)


One Pound Weight Loss Per Week (daily 500 Calories decrease)