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Kevin Bass PhD MS

@kevinnbass

May 11

Tallow or oil?

Seed-oil deep dive for regular folks: facts and fiction.

You’ve heard "industrial seed oils cause inflammation."

Let’s walk through all the evidence in plain English.

What’s solid, what's iffier, and how to use that knowledge in your own kitchen. 🧵👇

Myth

The idea: "Vegetable oils like soybean, canola, sunflower make your body 'inflamed' and hurt your heart."

The reality: When scientists measure inflammation in people, the oil swap usually lowers it or leaves it unchanged.

This isn't just one or two studies or even dozens.

Big-picture review

A 2023 "umbrella" review mashed together over 200 studies on vegetable oils.

Result: most health outcomes--heart disease, stroke, diabetes risk, inflammation markers--were neutral or better when people used these oils instead of hard animal fats. [1]

Read 24 tweets

Kevin Bass PhD MS

@kevinnbass

Apr 23

FDA is kicking out all petroleum-based food dyes this year.

Sounds great, until you look at what's replacing them.

Here are five "natural" colors that look more dangerous than the old artificial dyes they're replacing.

Thread 1/9 🧵

2/9 Spirulina Blue vs. Blue #1

NEW COLOR: Spirulina extract (phycocyanin)
> Only 90-day studies; no lifetime cancer or fertility work.
> Nickel, mercury, microcystins found in every retail sample screened
> 41% were over WHO limits for consumption for microcystins.

BANNED COLOR: Brilliant Blue FCF (Blue #1)
> 50 yrs of clean rodent & human data.

Why banned? FDA wanted a "zero-petroleum" rule for optics and simplicity, NOT because Blue #1 failed a safety test.

Refs:
EFSA 2010 Blue #1 efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal…
Spirulina heavy-metal survey pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35357944
Spirulina microcystin survey pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37598210

3/9 Butterfly-Pea Blue vs. Blue #2

NEW COLOR: Butterfly-pea-flower extract
> Approved on short-term rat data only; no long-term studies.
> Color fades < pH 3; formulators often "over-dose" in sodas to keep the neon blue.
> Large data gaps.

BANNED COLOR: Indigo Carmine (Blue #2)
> Five full chronic studies, two high-quality; lone rat tumor finding in a single low-quality study not confirmed in any of the other four.

Why banned? "Guilt by association." Keeping one petroleum blue while scrapping the rest looked messy, so FDA tossed it for policy uniformity.

Refs
FDA final rule federalregister.gov/d/2021-19179
EFSA 2014 Blue #2 efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal…

Read 9 tweets

Kevin Bass PhD MS

@kevinnbass

Apr 2

https://twitter.com/nycHealthy/status/1906781097934868806

This is anti-science and harmful. Here's why:

1. N95s fail in clinical trials to meaningfully reduce respiratory viral infections.
2. N95's seal is easily broken. They are not effective over long periods.
3. According to CDC, N95s are harmful if worn over long periods.

🧵1/5

https://twitter.com/nycHealthy/status/1906781097934868806

From Cochrane Collaboration, the world's most respected authority on systematic reviews and meta-analyses:

No benefit of surgical masks vs no masks, and no benefit of N95s vs surgical masks in any population studied in clinical trials

Ref

2/5 cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.10…

2025 study

"Following 2 h of use, approximately 30% of participants failed repeat fit testing, suggesting incomplete respiratory protection."

After using the N95s for a while, they start leaking.

That's why there is no benefit to N95s over long periods of time.

3/5

Read 5 tweets

Kevin Bass PhD MS

@kevinnbass

Mar 28

March 29, 2021

Rochelle Walensky, Director of CDC, infamously declared on MSNBC: "Vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don't get sick."

Emails obtained by FOIA from Jan 30, 2021 show that Walensky knew this was a lie at the time she said it.

1/4

See for yourself.

Without these lies, unconstitutional vaccine mandates would not have been possible.

That's why she lied.

She and her colleagues need to be held accountable for these lies.

2/4

During the pandemic, journalists were restricted to speaking only to Walensky. No other CDC staff, of tens of thousands, were allowed to speak to the press.

This has never happened before.

That is why the media parroted Walensky's misinformation.

It explains so much.

3/4

Read 4 tweets

Kevin Bass PhD MS

@kevinnbass

Feb 28

Doctors often claim that measles is making a comeback because of "antivaxers".

So I plotted measles cases as a ten-year rolling average using CDC data.

And I found that measles is actually not making a comeback.

These "doctors" and "experts" are simply lying to everyone.

It's true that there have always been sporadic outbreaks.

And after the "golden period" of about 5 years in the 2000s when there were only about 80 cases per year, we're up to about 240 cases per year now.

But historically speaking, the 2016-2025 10-year period is the second-lowest for measles cases in American history, second only to 2006-2015.

In the 1990s, there were ~8000 cases per year.

But that's not all.

Read 7 tweets

Kevin Bass PhD MS

@kevinnbass

Dec 31, 2024

A thread breaking down the recent @sciam hit piece and revisionist history by University of Pittsburgh public health professor Steven Albert on @DrJBhattacharya 🧵

The article is so devoid of substance that it does not deserve serious consideration.

However, people do read these articles, so I want to clarify what is being done--and not done--in this piece.

I will do so analytically, not resorting to smears or misrepresentations.

It's important to start with the author. A chaired professor of public health at a good university, he should understand many of the issues he writes about in this article.

This context will inform our interpretation.

Read 35 tweets

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