29 September 2025
I've just spent an enjoyable week on holiday in Taupō celebrating my 50th birthday. It's amazing to think that this massive lake is actually the caldera of a supervolcano that, for the last 30,000 years or so, has erupted on average around once every thousand years, and that it last erupted about 1,800 years ago. Staying in a property overlooking the lake certainly made me think a little about my own mortality, and my family's wellbeing. Given that, according to Wikipedia, the last eruption “devastated much of the North Island”, I guess it's more than just the local residents who will be affected when the volcano next erupts.
29 September 2025
Some recent research has pointed to some potential health impacts for those on the keto diet long-term. I wrote about the keto diet in the newsletter in May 2023, so I was interested to see this update as we are sorely lacking long term data on the impacts of this diet on healthy people. Although the diet has been used since the 1920s as an intervention for some specific health conditions such as epilepsy, I am more interested in whether it is an unnecessary risk for those who do not have a specific medical condition.
7 July 2025
My quest for finding and reviewing the cheapest products possible has taken an interesting turn. This time I roped in a group of friends to tackle a twist on the Pepsi challenge - testing an array of sugar free cola beverages, seeing what comes out on top and if the no-name brands can stand up to the titans.
7 July 2025
The article from Aaron Davies about blind testing diet colas is a really interesting one for me. As a little background info for you, Aaron is an ex Jehovah's Witness and was a NZ Skeptics committee member a few years ago. In the article I'm the “Mark” mentioned in the testing. So, if you've read the article already, you'll know that when challenged with picking out my favoured beverage, Diet Coke, from a line-up of identical looking drinks in identical looking cups, I successfully identified the Diet Coke.
30 September 2024
A few days ago I tuned eight pianos in one day. That has nothing to do with this article. I just wanted to let you know that, because I think it's impressive. The pianos were all in one location, at a venue/arts complex in Queenstown, and all regulars, and of high quality, so maybe not that impressive I guess, but it was a long day. While there, a kind lady who worked in the complex handed me a bottle of Ārepa. Reading the label on the glass bottle, I instantly sensed that a deep dive might be in order.
5 August 2024
Recently I was listening to the Inner Cosmos podcast, which explores the human brain from a neuroscience perspective. One of the episodes was about intuition, and the host was interviewing an Australian scientist, Joel Pearson, about intuition. During the interview, the scientist mentioned Intuitive Eating. This was a new term for me, so I thought I'd look it up and see what it was all about.
13 November 2023
If you follow NZ Skeptics or the Yeah…Nah! podcast on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, then you obviously know that we are still using that particular hellsite for promotional purposes. And every now and then, it springs a surprise on us. This time, it was an article by Dr. Saul Newman linking the existence of Supercentarians (who are over the age of 110 years) to pension fraud and administrative errors rather than other oft-touted markers of longevity such as social connections and diet (although both of these hopefully contribute to a better quality of life).
17 July 2023
So, I'm a Diet Coke drinker. I don't drink hot drinks, and never have for my whole life. At least from my teenage years, when hot drinks were introduced in the form of tea, I always found them too hot and would burn my mouth. So, at least for the past few decades, I've consumed a reasonable* amount of Diet Coke.
1 May 2023
The ketogenic (keto) diet is based on reducing carbohydrate intake drastically, usually to less than 50g a day, and increasing protein and particularly fat intake.
17 April 2023
Of late I've been seeing some very scammy advertising online for a product that makes astounding weight loss claims. Yes, I know, there are a ton of them out there!
10 June 2018
It's always good to see people who aren't known to me in the skeptical community making complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. Dr Holmes complained to the ASA recently about a Sanitarium Weet-Bix advert for their new gluten free product. In the advert a woman says:
18 March 2018
A quack Chinese doctor from Australia has opened up a clinic in Auckland, to better serve his kiwi patients. Shuquan Liu will likely be selling his weight loss herbal diet in NZ, which consists of getting people to consume nothing but Chinese herbs for two weeks. The diet is an extreme calorie restriction diet (< 200 calories a day), which is likely to be dangerous to those who follow it.
19 March 2017
Back in 2009 Belle Gibson claimed she had cancer, and that she was treating it with "natural" remedies. She released a cookbook and iPhone app (called The Whole Pantry) helping others to use diet to treat medical conditions.
28 August 2016
Julia Rucklidge from Canterbury University has suggested that processed food may be a cause of a mental illness epidemic.
1 August 2012
A new alternative treatment for Alzheimer's doing the rounds seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the underlying science.
1 November 2010
Alison Campbell finds some claims about raw foods hard to swallow.
1 August 2001
The Misinformation Age has arrived at last
1 August 1992
One of the techniques used by quacks is to attack conventional medicine as being a conspiracy against the laiety.