Last Friday, Melnick posted her article, "
Sometimes a 90% Fat Diet Is Good For You." This article reveals interesting news to me and probably to you too. She talks about an author form the
New York Times Magazine, Fred Vogelstein. Volgestein shares that his young son has epilepsy and the diet that his doctor has currently put him on. This diet is supposed to cause epileptic episodes to decrease. The diet involves taking in 90% of fat every day. Melnick says,
To treat him, the family has put Sam on a special diet: a typical breakfast consists of eggs mixed with heavy cream and served with bacon; lunch is full-fat yogurt mixed with coconut oil; dinner: hot dogs, cheese, nuts, more bacon.
I think she mainly wrote the article because she was shocked by the news that she read about in Vogelstein's article about his son. It is interesting to think that a 90% fat diet would actually help bring someone back to good health. It can be an interesting news for everyone, since nobody really finds that much fat appealing to eat in one day, but for this boy, its what is keeping him healthy. Melnick agrees that this treatment, even though a newly arrived treatment, is good for some people's health. This diet is obviously not right for everyone. Also, even though the diet can have side effects, she still believes it is a good treatment because the great results outweigh the side effects.
- "... research suggests that there are few long-term health effects of the diet after you stop it."
- 'that 38 percent of patients on the diet had their seizure frequency reduced more than 50 percent and that 7 percent had their seizure frequency reduced more than 90 percent.'
- "The diet, which contains nearly 90% fat, is designed to trick the body into starvation mode, forcing it to burn fat for energy instead of carbohydrates — the body barely gets any carbohydrate to burn.
I think Melnick is using scare tactics like, " Minor slips are unacceptable; this is an exact science of grams, ratios and dire consequences: after eating half a piece of his friend's toast, Sam went into uncontrolled seizures for a week." This shows that this treatment is not a joking matter. Some people might see this as a way to persuade others to make sure that if they take part in the diet that they have to be precise or their health could worsen. This article is directed, I think, more toward people that have epilepsy of know someone that has epilepsy. These scare tactics are effective because they are also backed up with facts and statics of what will happen if one goes through with the diet and flows every instruction carefully. This is effective because it shows both sides of the scenario so the audience can evaluate which is better, which is basically made obvious in the article.
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| bacon is one of the main components of the diet: for breakfast and dinner. yummm! |
