[aimee]

Spycar

You wrote “… he is not faithful in how he represents the ones that have been done. For example, he makes a claim that dogs fed “coconut oil lost less weight and had more body fat than dogs on diets with other sources of fat.” What he leaves out of the summary is that the dogs in the study found the food with more coconut in the mix (relative to vegetable oils) much more palatable than the dogs with foods high in vegetable oil, and these dogs were allowed to eat their fill. Not honest science here. No mention by Skept Vet that the study lacked portion control. Big suprise that dogs given unlimited access to food ate more of the delicious food. Good grief.”

I’d encourage you to go back and read the study. It appears that you are not understanding the study and then falsely accusing skeptvet of dishonesty. Why would skeptvet report that “the study lacked portion control” when portion control measures are clearly outlined for the weight loss study? Why are you faulting skeptvet for not reporting something that didn’t occur?

In a palatability test the dogs had free access to food for a 5 min interval and they ate significantly more of the diets in which coconut oil was used. For the weight loss study it reports that caloric intake was tightly controlled and adjusted every 2 weeks to maintain weight loss of 1-2%. The energy intake table reports that at the 6 week mark all groups were eating ~ 800 kcals a day. From that point onward both coconut oil groups had caloric adjustments downward to maintain weight loss whereas it looks like the soybean/canola group had to have caloric intake slightly increased. This would have been done in response to the dogs losing more than 2% /week. At the end of the study the two coconut oil groups were eating about 725 kcals a day while the soybean/canola group was at 800 kcals.

To me it appears that you are starting out with a strong bias against skeptvet and then proceed to take things out of context, read into whatever he writes your own skewed interpretation and then call him out. Makes no sense to me.

As I said if you look to his peer review he has scored some pretty high marks!