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Review of “All About Bacteria” in Livemint

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On March 30th, Livemint newspaper published a review of All About Bacteria, my health book.  Here is a link to that review.

http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/dr38zJeq70PsydY6TmC5JP/Book-Review–All-About-Bacteria.html

I took exception to some of the comments by the reviewer, and wrote an open letter to him. The letter is below. I am trying to post my comments on the Livemint site as a comment to the review, but the Livemint moderators are not allowing me to do so.

Dear Jacob P. Koshy,

I am Ravi Mantha, the author of “All About Bacteria”.  First of all I would like to thank you for reviewing my book and for the generally positive comments with which you start off the review. I have Googled your work and see that you are highly intelligent and articulate and I am so happy to have this author-critic relationship with you.  I truly wish you the very best and look forward to your achieving greater heights as a critic in the future, and I have enjoyed reading some of your other posts.

I do have a few bones to pick about the substance of your review, and I hope you won’t take it personally.  I know that this is the age of tight deadlines where you get maybe ten minutes to look through a book and then half hour to crank out a review.  If you are going to give my book this kind of a treatment, that’s fine, but then you should then stick only to positive comments that are less likely to put the spotlight on your research.  If you are going to write negative comments and generally show off your critical thinking skills and blast my three years of research saying it was “breezily written”, then I have to hold you as a critic to a higher standard, and I expect you to actually read the book fully, refer to my blog and understand my work properly.

I am afraid that your review falls flat because you actually “breezily read” my book, and you have clearly not looked at my blog.  Let’s go through your comments one by one.

For instance, I spoke of oral/dental health as the easiest things one can do to get on the road to preventing heart disease, because all it takes is regular visits to the dentist.  At no point did I say that if you have clean teeth then that’s all you need to do to prevent heart disease; good oral health is just the low hanging fruit which we can all achieve. The main point of that section is that the stress hormone cortisol is the culprit, and one of the many reasons people have elevated cortisol is because they have gum disease.  The biggest cause of heart disease is actually sugar inflammation, which is diet-related.

It is amazing that you say “iffy syllogisms without attribution or any reference to proven studies”.  If you actually read the book to the end, you would find that there are nearly a hundred citations to scientific studies in the book, which are carefully indexed in the back.  Did you really miss this part, or was it not essential in the review to mention this crucial piece of information?

You then talk about “egregious errors of perfunctory research” when quoting me on the carb-based diet in many parts of Asia, and you quote the Journal of Obesity on a study conducted in India.  This is what we call a straw man attack, where you create an imaginary argument and debunk it.

Jacob, anyone who has read my blog www.ravionhealth.com  or has heard me speak, or who is following my diet, knows that I am a big enemy of fast-carbs and sugar.  As an anti-diabetes crusader, I am a huge advocate of reducing carbohydrates in the Indian diet!  The main point of my quote there is that Asia is not just India.  When I mention in that section that “large parts of Asia eating carbs without any problem”, I am talking about the Chinese, the Japanese and the Koreans who share our vast continent, not Indians.  If you read my book, you will know that the longest lived people in the world are inhabitants of Okinawa in Japan, who eat a predominantly carb-based diet.  Northern Asians have evolved to eat more carbs than South Asians, so their rates of diabetes are much lower on a rice-based diet.  I will let the audience judge whether it is you or I who is guilty of “egregious errors of perfunctory research”.

You mention “Mantha’s breezily-written, well-structured book degenerates into pop advocacy rather than what could have been a classy science book about the mysterious and intriguing world of bacteria”.  Thank you!  I take this as a huge compliment because I did not set out to write a classy science book. The whole point was to make microbiology accessible to a broad audience.  If I have pissed off a professional critic and science reporter like you because the book is “pop advocacy”, then I have surely succeeded in reaching my real audience, which is not you but the large numbers of people out there who need information on preventive health.

Let me close by quoting Professor Eugene Rosenberg of Israel, the worlds’ leading authority on microbiology, and the author of over a 100 papers and books on the topic over five decades.  Professor Rosenberg really knows what he is talking about in microbiology, plus he has an added advantage over you; he actually read the whole book.

“What a joy-  a book that explains modern microbiology in simple terms, full of helpful  advice that can help you lead a healthy life. ” Professor Eugene Rosenberg

 

Why six small meals a day is a totally bogus concept

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“Ravi, Ravi , I feel so much better these days”, Aunt Sunitha breezed into the room, out of breath.

“I went to my nutritionist recently, and she suggested that instead of three meals a day, I should have six small meals!  This has totally controlled my hypoglycemia!”

I looked at Aunt Sunitha, who was as rotund as ever.  This was going to be a long afternoon!

“But Auntie, did you ask what was the reason for you to do this?”

“Beta, apparently it makes your blood sugar more even throughout the day instead of the up and down spikes!”

“Auntie,if that is the case, why are you not getting up four times in the middle of the night to eat a small meal?”

Aunt Sunitha fell silent.

Let’s look at whether the six meals a day concept makes any sense at all.

Everyone who has ever had a baby knows a simple fact.  Babies wake up every two hours and have to feed.  For the first few months, they feed up to twelve times a day, as every bleary-eyed mother would attest.  After that, something happens; we stop feeding them during the night.  The result is a life-long habit of night-time fasting, and thank goodness for that.  Imagine waking up every two hours to eat a small meal!

The point is that the human body adapts to a wide range of diets and the timings of the meals.  People with certain body types don’t get hungry in the mornings, and they can live on two meals a day.  Some people even live on one meal a day with no noticeable effect on their health.

In that case, what is wrong with having six or even twelve small meals a day, you may ask.  The problem is not the body’s ability to process food (it can do that just fine whether you eat once or twelve times in a day).  The problem is something more complex…it is the fact that our bodies did not evolve for plentiful balanced food taken six times a day!

There is increasing evidence that intermittent fasting is good for the body, and on the other side there is also evidence that people who eat six small meals a day are much fatter than the average person.

The simple fact is that if you are getting your food calories predominantly from good fat and protein, your energy levels tend to be constant throughout the day, and you don’t get that gnawing hunger from sugar cravings.

But if you are getting your calories from fast carbs and sugar, you will have fluctuating energy levels…and you will crave six or even eight meals a day.  Ironically, six meals a day then simply becomes a vehicle for feeding your sugar addiction.  The solution is simple.  Get off the sugar addiction!

I always advocate an outcome based approach to eating and fitness.  If you are dropping body fat or you are already in the optimal health range (below 18% fat for men and 23% for women), then continue doing whatever it is you are doing.  If you are getting fat eating six meals a day, you need a new nutritionist.