I've been lurking for some time and decided to join.
I live in Ontario Canada near Toronto.
I've been influenced by the following books:
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
The Fat of the Land
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Good Calorie, Bad Calorie
Manufacture of Consent
Guns, Germs and Steel
I am a philosopher by training so I tend to be pretty analytical and deconstructionist.
I recently stumbled upon the radio series "How to Think About Science" on CBC.
(
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html)
I highly recommend it. It's a little technical but is still very accessible.
Lately I find myself become more and more critical of all the "science" I see paraded around
in the popular press. As Taubes details in GCBC, there is very little science going on in the
fields of weight loss, nutrition, and chronic disease. If you haven't read GCBC, it's a must read.
The other book which really explains the overall process at work is "Manufacture of Consent".
Most academic and scientific disciplines are very poorly grounded in hard science. Instead, they
abuse their power as monopolists over certain areas of knowledge to basically do as they please.
Usually this means making lots of money. But it also allows them to institutionalize their own pet
theories and personal bias essentially free of the bounds of reality. Taubes does an excellent job
detailing all this. As Chomsky points out, "truth" has very little to do with the consent or the reality
that various groups with power are able to create.
