Doctor Martínez-González: "The dream of pharmaceutical companies is to put a medicine on you every day that does not cure anything"

This nutrition expert publishes "What do you eat?"

to alert us that the food and pharmaceutical industries bribe many scientists, who then investigate according to their interests.

It denounces in the book that there are many researchers 'smeared' by the food industry. Yes.

They are like business partners of food companies and the danger is when they are companies that sell junk food or drink.

The congresses, dietary guides and publications of these researchers are

n a brutal information intoxication.

Why is it allowed? If you were the food industry, you would not only do this, but you would have lobbies who influence politicians, who are the ones who could stop it. These lobbies exist, above all, in Brussels. He also ensures that the pharmaceutical industry is no longer satisfied with medicating the sick, but also the healthy. Yes. I ask a question: How many drugs do you have on your bedside table? There are pharmaceutical industries that would like all healthy people to have to take medication. It is your dream of a niche market. For people it is very comfortable. I puff up on steaks and hamburgers and then take a cholesterol pill that fixes everything. But don't tell me what to eat. This is a hoax. Pure business. Cholesterol levels get lower and lower to make it look like you have high cholesterol. This is a matter of infiltrating some scientific allies into the committees that decide which are good and bad cholesterol. Every few years the recommendations change. The statin has been the goose that lays the golden eggs for some pharmaceutical companies. The dream of any pharmacist is to put on a drug that does not cure anything, but you have to take it every holy day until you die. So is the cholesterol pill useless? Statins for cholesterol have saved many lives, but those of high-risk people. Given the drugs to people who are at low risk they can do more harm than good. In the US, thousands of people have died from the opioid epidemic. Does everything go unpunished? There have been executives of two pharmaceutical companies who have been convicted. Millionaire conciliation agreements have also been reached with the victims, as happened with the tobacco industry. There were two companies that received advice from a consulting firm who told them to pay a number of doctors to over-prescribe opiates for pain and to stick with high doses for a long time. In this way, they got more addicts. Once people get addicted, they buy the drugs. This resulted in many overdose deaths. The funny thing is that this consultant is now advising the World Health Organization. Tremble! What do you eat? I follow the Mediterranean diet and am a caffeine addict. I drink about four cups of coffee a day. The book explains that coffee is not harmful. Yes. This morning I had a whole wheat toast with extra virgin olive oil and Serrano ham for breakfast. Is there a whim? I can have a cake if it is made at home. I run away from croissants and buns. Sometimes I have a cookie with coffee, just one, because there are no healthy cookies. They are loaded with sugar and have low-quality fats. What advice would you give us when going to the supermarket? That one buy foods that do not have a label. If you buy a melon or a chicken breast, you know what you are buying. Another very different thing is the nugget. Anyone knows what is in a nugget. What's inside? What should have been removed is recycled, added salt, chemical additives and sold. In the book she dismantles many myths such as that you have to drink three glasses of milk a day. Dairy has been sold as a paradigm of health because in the United States they had a large surplus of dairy. The Government bought the surpluses and did not know what to do with them and they invented everything about dairy products as a healthy diet. I save yogurt, as long as it doesn't have many added sugars. It also charges against pizza, which saves families from so many dinners. Pre-cooked and frozen pizzas have a lot of cheese, salt, and are made with refined flour. However, speak well of eggs. We have done a study and we see that there is no problem telling people that they can consume eight or nine eggs a week without any cardiovascular problems. If you analyze the egg yolk, you see that it has a lot of cholesterol, but something very different is what happens with cholesterol in the blood. When the egg is consumed, the good and bad cholesterol rises and the effect is neutral. It is a very complete food and an excellent source of protein, he thinks the loaf of bread is a bomb. It is highly recommended for families to switch from white bread to whole wheat. That it is made 100% with whole wheat flour. We digest white bread very quickly and turn it into sugar. Another belief that refutes is that nuts are fattening. The largest study of nuts has been done in Spain and has been around the world. It has shown great benefits. A 30% reduction in heart attacks and cardiovascular deaths. Eating three 30-gram servings a week is spreading around the world as healthy advice. And we are seeing that they do not get fat. Nuts have a very high percentage of fat and are high in calories, but what happens to people when they eat them is another matter. For that you have to take 2,500 people, give them nuts for free and see what happens to their weight after five years. They have been bloated to eat nuts and we have not seen a growth of their abdominal girth. Iberian ham is also saved from burning. Another study from the University of Navarra has shown that there is no risk of hypertension. We have not found an increased risk of cancer or cardiovascular disease or weight gain. We are talking about four servings of 50 grams a week. In the country of feasts, claim frugality. Here two very powerful factors come together: the pressure from the food industry that makes food engineering so that you start eating and not stop and, on the other hand, an excessively consumerist culture. We teach children when they are little that the prize is sweets. Birthdays are celebrated in hamburgers. You have to change that culture. The pleasure of immediate gratification does not always have to prevail. The Mediterranean diet was originally frugal. Why do we gorge ourselves now? The food industry was scared when it saw that the population was not growing at a good rate, after the

.

Then he thought that if the population did not grow, he would have to increase the size of the rations.

How big was a soda bottle in 1970 and what size is it now?

We have gotten used to two-liter bottles, but in 1970 it would have seemed outrageous.

You go to a gas station to have a soda and the least you can find is half a liter.

The human being has many more dimensions besides eating.

There has been a well-known multinational soft drink company that set up the institute of happiness.

Hey, the spark of life isn't just drinking your sodas!

There are other sparks of life such as love, generosity, music, literature ... What is the most harmful diet of all? The biggest mistake has been the raw vegan diet, which prohibits cooking food beyond 40 degrees .

This diet produces many nutritional deficits.

But the one that has spread the most among young people is the McDonalds pattern.

That is the most destructive thing there is.

It is a diet free of the main nutrients that are deficient, such as vitamin D, fiber, and folic acid.

Unfortunately, it is the diet that has replaced the Mediterranean diet and that is why we have so much childhood obesity.

Spain is in the worst positions in the world.

Does obesity kill more than Covid? Yes, it causes four million deaths a year in the world.

The virus is also primed with obese, diabetic and hypertensive patients.

A Mediterranean diet reduced in calories can be an excellent recipe to be protected against Covid.

Young people if they have obesity it is much easier than if they catch the virus they need intensive care.

Obesity must be fought now especially.

How do you assess the handling of the crisis? I support what my colleagues have said in 'The Lancet' that an independent and apolitical audit must be carried out.

It is necessary to scientifically identify without any political orientation or partisanship what has happened in this country so that we have that record number of mortality.

Official mortality is not credible.

That there is an excess of 50,000 deaths over what is expected in Spain means that something has been done wrong.

The fact that there has been so much delay in performing diagnostic tests on nursing home caregivers, health workers and that we have the record of infected professionals is something that draws my attention.

That the professional associations sue the Government is something very exceptional.

How is it possible that nothing has been learned and we are facing the second wave of coronavirus? I look at Taiwan that has 22 million inhabitants and there have been seven deaths from coronavirus being next to China.

My metaphor is that of a fire: if you take drastic measures in a fire when a cigarette butt has fallen, it's over.

If you start taking the measures when the forest is already half burned, no matter how drastic, you will have the worst results.

Not all scientific societies have been summoned here, as Angela Merkel did.

I direct the department of preventive medicine that publishes the most in Spain and my department has never been asked anything.

It is catastrophic that politics gets involved in all this.

You have to separate politics from science and make decisions based strictly on scientific grounds.

To continue reading for free

Sign inSign up

Or

and you will have access to all the web content of El Mundo

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more