The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)(undark.org)
undark.org
The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
https://undark.org/2019/07/18/science-of-eggs/
135 comments
Nutritionfacts is ideologically driven operation. They only present one side of the argument. Plant based diet first, facts second. Being a nonprofit doesn't make you immune from bias. It's not just money perverting the field, but also ideology.
The whole field of nutrition is divided into camps, when they conduct meta-analyses of all the literature, they pick inclusion/exclusion criteria so that the side that they are championing wins.
Where should one get the other side? Genuinely interested
Your comment is valuable, but at least Nutrionfacts seems to present one side of the argument factually.
There are operations like 'Brand Power'[1] which masquerades like consumer fact checking service but in fact they just 3rd party advertisers for brands.
When I first saw their Ads in India, I thought it's disingenuous and then I learnt that they do the same even in developed countries.
https://www.brandpower.com/us/en/
There are operations like 'Brand Power'[1] which masquerades like consumer fact checking service but in fact they just 3rd party advertisers for brands.
When I first saw their Ads in India, I thought it's disingenuous and then I learnt that they do the same even in developed countries.
https://www.brandpower.com/us/en/
While you accurately describe Brand Power, it really has nothing to do with the topic at hand —- the biases surrounding nutritional research.
You're correct, I shared Brand Power because of their representation of what they claim as 'Nutritional Facts'[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7N-ABnVPZk&t=13s (Tamil)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7N-ABnVPZk&t=13s (Tamil)
It's even more hypocritical than just cherry picking studies. Points in his books are refuted by the same studies he cites! He ignores similar / better outcomes that don't match his bias.
Politics in everything, the world feels broken. What happened?
Politics was always in everything.
The internet happened, and now you can discuss things and get facts and opinions from sides you previously couldn’t, with not much more than a click.
The internet happened, and now you can discuss things and get facts and opinions from sides you previously couldn’t, with not much more than a click.
Misaligned incentives are certainly part of the problem, but this article points to it being more than just that - even if you want to run a good study, it is incredibly difficult to do so.
I have spent a bunch of time on that site and read Dr. Greger's book "How Not to Die". He certainly works hard to understand how studies could be flawed, but he is still limited by the fact that really good underlying studies are hard to come by.
A few things stood out to me reading that book:
1) So, so many studies are hopelessly flawed.
2) Even ones that seem relatively good often have other studies showing the opposite result.
3) The evidence for a plant-based diet seemed fairly overwhelming, but some of the specific recommendations felt more questionable.
4) If you combine all of the claimed increases/decreases in disease risk for a given set of foods, you can fairly quickly get to a ridiculous result where you have something like a 1 in a billion chance of getting a relatively common ailment or are almost guaranteed to get 3 different cancers tomorrow.
I have spent a bunch of time on that site and read Dr. Greger's book "How Not to Die". He certainly works hard to understand how studies could be flawed, but he is still limited by the fact that really good underlying studies are hard to come by.
A few things stood out to me reading that book:
1) So, so many studies are hopelessly flawed.
2) Even ones that seem relatively good often have other studies showing the opposite result.
3) The evidence for a plant-based diet seemed fairly overwhelming, but some of the specific recommendations felt more questionable.
4) If you combine all of the claimed increases/decreases in disease risk for a given set of foods, you can fairly quickly get to a ridiculous result where you have something like a 1 in a billion chance of getting a relatively common ailment or are almost guaranteed to get 3 different cancers tomorrow.
The non profit university researchers do just as bad, the whole field is one where good research is very very rare.
To be a little fair, we don't really understand much about nutrition or have easy ways to do high quality studies. A "gold standard" study is just the best of a bad lot. It's the rarest of humans that can say, "I spent 3 years of my life doing a study and didn't find anything significant".
To be a little fair, we don't really understand much about nutrition or have easy ways to do high quality studies. A "gold standard" study is just the best of a bad lot. It's the rarest of humans that can say, "I spent 3 years of my life doing a study and didn't find anything significant".
This is definitely part of it, but I feel like it underplays the fundamental difficulty of studying nutrition.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who wants to study this, and you rapidly see the problems. Effects of nutrition take many years to show, so you're generally going to need to track people for years. People move, get bored of talking to you, die, etc. Their diet also varies greatly over time. They don't always remember what they ate, and certainly can't quantify it with any degree of accuracy.
If you perform some intervention, it's hard to know that the people actually complied with it. You can do it in the short term by having an in-patient setting, but again you miss the long term effects, which are really what matters to most people.
I feel like people reach too easily for conspiracy theories these days…
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who wants to study this, and you rapidly see the problems. Effects of nutrition take many years to show, so you're generally going to need to track people for years. People move, get bored of talking to you, die, etc. Their diet also varies greatly over time. They don't always remember what they ate, and certainly can't quantify it with any degree of accuracy.
If you perform some intervention, it's hard to know that the people actually complied with it. You can do it in the short term by having an in-patient setting, but again you miss the long term effects, which are really what matters to most people.
I feel like people reach too easily for conspiracy theories these days…
It would be great if this website answered the question “what is a healthy diet”, instead of trying everywhere to get me to watch some of its hundreds of videos.
I feel like this attitude is part of why nutrition science is the way it is.
People are boxed into this "healthiness is a one-dimensional scale" thinking. Are eggs healthy or not healthy? Are potatoes healthy or not healthy? Is pizza healthy or not healthy?
But reality is way more complex and nutrition science knows very little about "healthiness" (to the extent that you can distill diet into a one-dimensional scale). Scientists only claim, "X is maybe correlated with Y (in Z population)".
So this simplification, plus the lack of definitive known truth, leads people to latch onto B.S. like "eating eggs is unhealthy because eggs have cholesterol".
People are boxed into this "healthiness is a one-dimensional scale" thinking. Are eggs healthy or not healthy? Are potatoes healthy or not healthy? Is pizza healthy or not healthy?
But reality is way more complex and nutrition science knows very little about "healthiness" (to the extent that you can distill diet into a one-dimensional scale). Scientists only claim, "X is maybe correlated with Y (in Z population)".
So this simplification, plus the lack of definitive known truth, leads people to latch onto B.S. like "eating eggs is unhealthy because eggs have cholesterol".
I don't think it's an attitude problem that people expect nutritional advice to be actionable in some way. Because at the end of the day the only decisions I'm able to make is choosing to eat or not eat something. If you can't write down a set of rules for me to follow that eventually halts and resolves to a "yes" or "no" then there's no point.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that there be a landing page that says “most healthy people should follow a Mediterranean diet” or similar.
Sure, there are food allergies - I have some myself - but this site seems like it’s trying to get me to buy the book and give the video views. I want information in text quickly. Then if I want to learn more, more information in longer text. This is how almost all valuable information is conveyed across all topic areas.
Sure, there are food allergies - I have some myself - but this site seems like it’s trying to get me to buy the book and give the video views. I want information in text quickly. Then if I want to learn more, more information in longer text. This is how almost all valuable information is conveyed across all topic areas.
Here you go, best TL;DR he has: https://nutritionfacts.org/2021/07/29/dr-gregers-daily-dozen...
"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."
Isn't that literally impossible, because there are so many different things that a subset of people need to avoid eating? e.g., if you have a nut allergy, your healthy diet can't include nuts; if you're lactose-intolerant your healthy diet shouldn't include lactose; if you have coeliac disease, your healthy diet can't include gluten; if you have IBS your healthy diet shouldn't include anything that triggers it (which is different per person); if you have diabetes (type 1 or 2) your healthy diet can't include sugar; etc., etc. And god forbid you have 2 or more dietary issues...
Plus different activity levels make different diets healthy - if you're a professional athlete needing 6,000+ calories per day, "healthy" for you is very different to healthy for me, who sits at their desk all day.
This isn't even accounting for personal preferences like being vegan, or religious restrictions.
Plus different activity levels make different diets healthy - if you're a professional athlete needing 6,000+ calories per day, "healthy" for you is very different to healthy for me, who sits at their desk all day.
This isn't even accounting for personal preferences like being vegan, or religious restrictions.
I think you're misunderstanding the claim. It's name a healthy diet. A single one. A diet which followed to the letter for the time span its prescribed will not cause any health problems traceable back to it. Make whatever assumptions about the hypothetical person you need and assume that they follow the diet for only as long as those assumptions hold.
I think you're misunderstanding the response.
There is no "healthy diet" that is universally applicable. Go back and look at the list of different possible restrictions in the parent post.
Then add the fact that many people are allergic to all kinds of different things.
Then add to that the fact that people of different ethnic backgrounds are adapted to do better with different balances of nutrients.
Any "hypothetical person" such as you describe would, fundamentally and inevitably, "normalize" one specific type of person and "other" everyone else. Claiming that "this is a healthy diet" in such a way would be grossly irresponsible, even if you then went on to list the features of a person it is "healthy" for.
Finally, even if you wanted to make such a description, the whole point of this thread is that we do not have a scientifically-rigorous-enough idea of what it would be to be able to do so with a high degree of certainty, even for a clearly-defined set of parameters for who would be eating it.
There is no "healthy diet" that is universally applicable. Go back and look at the list of different possible restrictions in the parent post.
Then add the fact that many people are allergic to all kinds of different things.
Then add to that the fact that people of different ethnic backgrounds are adapted to do better with different balances of nutrients.
Any "hypothetical person" such as you describe would, fundamentally and inevitably, "normalize" one specific type of person and "other" everyone else. Claiming that "this is a healthy diet" in such a way would be grossly irresponsible, even if you then went on to list the features of a person it is "healthy" for.
Finally, even if you wanted to make such a description, the whole point of this thread is that we do not have a scientifically-rigorous-enough idea of what it would be to be able to do so with a high degree of certainty, even for a clearly-defined set of parameters for who would be eating it.
I didn’t ask for it to be universally applicable, or even broadly applicable. Or even applicable to more than the person the question imagines. I asked if we have enough information to know one single example of a healthy diet for one imaginary person who you are allowed to assume has no complicating factors.
Because if we can’t answer this much much simpler problem then we have no hope of giving nutritional advice to a population that is as varied as you describe.
Because if we can’t answer this much much simpler problem then we have no hope of giving nutritional advice to a population that is as varied as you describe.
I don't want to go through a bunch of training to learn how to write good software. It would be great if a website just told me which buttons to press on the keyboard.
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Don’t be snide, it’s unbecoming.
There are paid-for studies but the studies that aren't paid for don't seem to have a lot of predictive power either.
he sells and promotes his book.
Imagine how rigorous nutritional science can be when state-of-the-art double-blind scientific tests are pretty much impossible or extremely expensive to do, and when there is a lot of $$$ interest and lobbying in presenting one outcome or the other.
Nutrition is not rocket science, we are all expert in eating and especially in how our body reacts to certain food types, yet we take studies of abysmal quality for granted and preach them to our fellow human as if they were the ultimate truth.
I can say I'm going to run a marathon naked in Antarctica and everyone would cheer me, but if I mention I'm going vegan, carnivore or adding some butter or tofu to my cheeseburger, everyone, from both camps, is ready to point out why I am killing myself and on the way to premature death. Yet they are not speaking from experience, but mostly from hearsay from their favourite echo chamber.
I've stopped caring what common wisdom around nutrition is, and since I've started listening to how my body reacts I feel much better, healthier, and I roll my eyes every time I read the latest "nutrition" article or comment thread posted on here or anywhere else.
We're still in the middle ages of nutritional sciences.
Nutrition is not rocket science, we are all expert in eating and especially in how our body reacts to certain food types, yet we take studies of abysmal quality for granted and preach them to our fellow human as if they were the ultimate truth.
I can say I'm going to run a marathon naked in Antarctica and everyone would cheer me, but if I mention I'm going vegan, carnivore or adding some butter or tofu to my cheeseburger, everyone, from both camps, is ready to point out why I am killing myself and on the way to premature death. Yet they are not speaking from experience, but mostly from hearsay from their favourite echo chamber.
I've stopped caring what common wisdom around nutrition is, and since I've started listening to how my body reacts I feel much better, healthier, and I roll my eyes every time I read the latest "nutrition" article or comment thread posted on here or anywhere else.
We're still in the middle ages of nutritional sciences.
“the study tracked participants’ health outcomes over periods ranging from 13 to more than 30 years, and participants were queried about their diet only once, at the beginning of the study. Can we assume that the participants gave a reliable depiction of their diet at the outset, and then that they maintained that same diet for the years — in many cases, decades — that followed?”
That seems like an awful way to design an experiment.
That seems like an awful way to design an experiment.
I was going to say something defensive about the science, like it’s really difficult to do a double-blind large randomised diet study over decades, but then I read this bit. It is beyond bad science. If someone makes an error in statistics, well, happens, we can’t all be experts. But this is almost taking the mick.
Eggs could easily be replaced with salt. Consuming too much salt (more than 2g a day) is heavily discouraged by some because it is said to increase the risks of cardiovascular diseases as well as increase blood pressure to a dangerous level, but others repudiate these claims and assert they are untrue, and that salt has positive health benefits above this limit.
Even if we take a group of people, put them in a closed place and strictly control what they eat, it is extremely difficult to say if a certain food has had a particular impact on X or not. There are some many elements which are unrelated to nutrition at play that X could decrease or increase for any reason other than what one ate: stress, tiredness, physical activity, mood...
Now, I reckon the wisest thing to do is to follow what the author concludes with: eat moderately and have a balanced nutrition. I doubt we'll ever get concrete and truthful research on nutrition soon enough. We first need to learn more about the extremely complex system that is the human body.
Even if we take a group of people, put them in a closed place and strictly control what they eat, it is extremely difficult to say if a certain food has had a particular impact on X or not. There are some many elements which are unrelated to nutrition at play that X could decrease or increase for any reason other than what one ate: stress, tiredness, physical activity, mood...
Now, I reckon the wisest thing to do is to follow what the author concludes with: eat moderately and have a balanced nutrition. I doubt we'll ever get concrete and truthful research on nutrition soon enough. We first need to learn more about the extremely complex system that is the human body.
Relevant Scientific American article about the dubious scientific foundation the general vilification of salt is based on: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...
> it is said to increase the risks of cardiovascular diseases
How? Salt is a convenient bogeyman, but nobody can demonstrate what it role it plays as an agent of disease. Every cell in your body regulates isotonic balance and excess sodium is rapidly excreted. Complex lifeforms wouldn't exist without this fundamental ability.
How? Salt is a convenient bogeyman, but nobody can demonstrate what it role it plays as an agent of disease. Every cell in your body regulates isotonic balance and excess sodium is rapidly excreted. Complex lifeforms wouldn't exist without this fundamental ability.
It is very simple. If you suffer from high blood pressure (above 140/90mm Hg) and your sodium intake is considerable, your blood pressure rises even more. You can easily set up a study with a control group and test it repeatedly, the results will be the same.
However, the mitigating factor is potassium. If you consume an adequate amount of foods rich in potassium, the negative effect of sodium on your blood pressure is neutralized somehow. The exact behaviors depend on the amounts of each.
And here's the problem: in salt, sodium is very concentrated. You would have to eat a large amount of foods considered rich in potassium, such as tomatoes, in order to neutralize a teaspoon of salt.
However, the mitigating factor is potassium. If you consume an adequate amount of foods rich in potassium, the negative effect of sodium on your blood pressure is neutralized somehow. The exact behaviors depend on the amounts of each.
And here's the problem: in salt, sodium is very concentrated. You would have to eat a large amount of foods considered rich in potassium, such as tomatoes, in order to neutralize a teaspoon of salt.
> If you suffer from high blood pressure (above 140/90mm Hg) and your sodium intake is considerable, your blood pressure rises even more. You can easily set up a study with a control group and test it repeatedly, the results will be the same.
How do you square this with jonasmerlin's sibling post of a Scientific American article, pointing out that the foundations of this belief do not stand on rigorous science?
How do you square this with jonasmerlin's sibling post of a Scientific American article, pointing out that the foundations of this belief do not stand on rigorous science?
That article focuses not on the mechanics of action (increase of sodium intake -> higher blood pressure), and doesn't question the fact that reducing salt intake lowers blood pressure somewhat (albeit not by a significant amount), but that at a global level reducing salt intake in populations does not reduce overall mortality from heart-related conditions.
There might be many confounding factors at play. As the authors say, every study about negative effects of salt can be offset by an opposing one, so it is definitely something to be studied in more depth.
There might be many confounding factors at play. As the authors say, every study about negative effects of salt can be offset by an opposing one, so it is definitely something to be studied in more depth.
You don’t even have to have high blood pressure for above ‘normal’ (~2000mg/day) salt intake to create the effect. It’s observable in people with normal blood pressure as well, and pronounced in a subset of the population with a gene that appears to worsen the effect.
The potassium factor is why many doctors often recommend sea/himalayan salt — these salts usually have a bunch of other minerals, including potassium.
For anyone wondering, no, it’s not a good idea to try to self medicate the combination of high blood pressure + a sodium heavy diet with potassium supplements. Do it wrong and you’ll end up with hyperkalemia, which is both very uncomfortable and potentially life-threatening.
The potassium factor is why many doctors often recommend sea/himalayan salt — these salts usually have a bunch of other minerals, including potassium.
For anyone wondering, no, it’s not a good idea to try to self medicate the combination of high blood pressure + a sodium heavy diet with potassium supplements. Do it wrong and you’ll end up with hyperkalemia, which is both very uncomfortable and potentially life-threatening.
> doctors often recommend sea/himalayan salt
Himalayan salt is 99% sodium chloride and doesn't contain significant potassium to make a difference. Someone recommending it as a healthier alternative should not be taken seriously.
Himalayan salt is 99% sodium chloride and doesn't contain significant potassium to make a difference. Someone recommending it as a healthier alternative should not be taken seriously.
> If you suffer from high blood pressure
People who already have a disease that requires salt regulation doesn't prove any causative role.
People who already have a disease that requires salt regulation doesn't prove any causative role.
The link between high sodium intake and elevated blood pressure is well documented. This is mostly because of the attempt of body systems to maintain isotonic balance.
There’s also a signficant portion of the population with a genetic predisposition to have above-average increases in blood pressure shortly after consuming large amounts of salt, to the point that it will even cause hypertension in some people that had otherwise normal blood pressure.
Salt -> elevated blood pressure -> complicating factor in pulmonary and cardiac disease.
There’s also a signficant portion of the population with a genetic predisposition to have above-average increases in blood pressure shortly after consuming large amounts of salt, to the point that it will even cause hypertension in some people that had otherwise normal blood pressure.
Salt -> elevated blood pressure -> complicating factor in pulmonary and cardiac disease.
Higher salt levels raise blood pressure. High blood pressure leads the body to strengthen blood vessel walls, which make them less flexible. Less flexible blood vessels put more strain on the heart, which in cardiac patients (who are operating with a damaged heart) is obviously suboptimal.
There is a ton of studies about this and heart patient life expectancies have been going up for the last several decades because we have figured this (and a few other things) out.
There is a ton of studies about this and heart patient life expectancies have been going up for the last several decades because we have figured this (and a few other things) out.
> Every cell in your body regulates isotonic balance and excess sodium is rapidly excreted.
If I eat something salty for dinner, I wake up with swollen eyes, with others in my immediate family doing the same. My family uses very little to no salt. My wife can eat as much salt as she wants, without any visible effect at all. Her family uses, in my perspective, extreme amounts of salt. My naive assumption is that salt sensitivity is somewhat genetic, with research suggesting the same [1]. Maybe related, near hypotension runs in my family, while hypertension runs in hers.
1. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180705115632.h...
If I eat something salty for dinner, I wake up with swollen eyes, with others in my immediate family doing the same. My family uses very little to no salt. My wife can eat as much salt as she wants, without any visible effect at all. Her family uses, in my perspective, extreme amounts of salt. My naive assumption is that salt sensitivity is somewhat genetic, with research suggesting the same [1]. Maybe related, near hypotension runs in my family, while hypertension runs in hers.
1. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180705115632.h...
Salt is something regulated well in all higher organisms. Probably dating from when we evolved in a salt-water ocean. That said, in a modern diet with lots of sodium, but also lots less of other important minerals like magnesium, potassium, etc., who knows?
Probably depends on the totality of the diet, for instance if you are getting a lot of salt "artificially", and eating an otherwise nutrient-poor diet, maybe lowering salt intake is a good thing. But if you are eating a varied and mostly natural diet, so that you're getting a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, sun-exposure etc., your absolute sodium intake may not matter much.
Probably depends on the totality of the diet, for instance if you are getting a lot of salt "artificially", and eating an otherwise nutrient-poor diet, maybe lowering salt intake is a good thing. But if you are eating a varied and mostly natural diet, so that you're getting a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, sun-exposure etc., your absolute sodium intake may not matter much.
EXCESS salt raises BP, which raises the chances of a cardio event. Excess sodium is not rapidly excreted, in fact the body requires far more hydration to balance it out. https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...
It was demonized because of the vast quantities contained in many processed foods but you're right and to add to that you'll die much quicker from a lack of salt than from excess salt.
I think the issue with salt and eggs is that we talk of humans in the aggregate.
For eggs, there is some small percentage of the population that passes the cholesterol into actual high levels of serum LDL.
For salt, there is some small percentage of the population that reacts to high sodium levels with hypertension.
And these subsets of population studies skew the results to a degree that adversely affects the conclusions for the median case.
For most of us, dumping salt onto a plate filled with eggs is not only fine, but healthy.
Medicine deals in aggregates, averages, and statistical variation, which is to some degree useful. But it does precisely nothing to offer testing to tell you if you are in a reactive or nonreactive group to stimulus X, which would be extremely useful.
We do this with allergies - stick 50 different allergens on a grid pattern into your back to determine your precise reactivity. But with nutrition? Haha, go screw yourself, all humans are the same, eat your 14 servings of grains, regard bacon and eggs as poison, and we'll medicate you for your resultant metabolic syndrome.
For eggs, there is some small percentage of the population that passes the cholesterol into actual high levels of serum LDL.
For salt, there is some small percentage of the population that reacts to high sodium levels with hypertension.
And these subsets of population studies skew the results to a degree that adversely affects the conclusions for the median case.
For most of us, dumping salt onto a plate filled with eggs is not only fine, but healthy.
Medicine deals in aggregates, averages, and statistical variation, which is to some degree useful. But it does precisely nothing to offer testing to tell you if you are in a reactive or nonreactive group to stimulus X, which would be extremely useful.
We do this with allergies - stick 50 different allergens on a grid pattern into your back to determine your precise reactivity. But with nutrition? Haha, go screw yourself, all humans are the same, eat your 14 servings of grains, regard bacon and eggs as poison, and we'll medicate you for your resultant metabolic syndrome.
This is very true, a few years ago that I started eating around 4-6 eggs a day because it seemed a good source of nutrients and I had seen various articles saying the cholesterol thing was a myth etc. After about 3 weeks of that many eggs per day, I ended up at the doctor feeling lightheaded and not quite right and turned out my blood pressure was insanely high and after a blood test my cholesterol was through the roof.
I cut out the eggs but otherwise kept my diet fairly similar and about a month later my bloodwork showed I was back to normal cholesterol.
Definitely there are some people who when they eat eggs it will spike their blood cholesterol significantly, but I have also seen other people who can eat lots of eggs and it doesn't seem to change their cholesterol in bloodwork at all.
I cut out the eggs but otherwise kept my diet fairly similar and about a month later my bloodwork showed I was back to normal cholesterol.
Definitely there are some people who when they eat eggs it will spike their blood cholesterol significantly, but I have also seen other people who can eat lots of eggs and it doesn't seem to change their cholesterol in bloodwork at all.
Pretty much. Same with humans with a "leaky" blood-brain barrier. They can actually get GABA and other amino acids from the stomach to the brain, leading to vastly different effects than the majority of people get.
Agreed. The thing that irritates me so much in all these studies is how they conflate correlation and causation. Studies to truly isolate just one ingredient would be both time and cost prohibitive. We are better served by just eating as varied and unprocessed a diet as possible.
I constantly see people suffer through painful cramps after exercising because they refuse to replace the salt they lost through sweating due to salt being bad for you.
So... I think I have 3 points.
First is worst. Looking back over a few generations, standard nutritional advice informing doctors, institutions and the public have been poor. Not only inaccurate, but de facto pushing people down bad paths. Low fat & low cholesterol labels led to foods, with processed foods with high sugar & many additives. Cereal instead of a boiled egg.
Second is that many norms, like the food pyramid hanging in classrooms during the 80s & 90s were based on long forgotten, often arbitrary decisions. Self correction was fatally weak. Challenging norms had a higher burden for proof than the norm had faced. Proof is really hard, it turns out.
Third is that "what's a healthy diet?" was never answered better by science than book gurus or old cultural understandings of nutrition. That is, a practicable, science based understanding of nutrition wasn't achieved. Lots of things about nutrition have been learned but it doesn't really add up to a Big Theory.
I think the real issue here is "what to do when we bust." Science doesn't predictably produce answers to questions we think it should answer. We discover what we discover. But, what do you do when hospitals, health ministries and such need scientific guidelines? IDK is not an acceptable answer. I do know is not a scientific one. "Lets not do science " doesn't (didn't?) work either. The only choice left is between a lie and a delusion. Postmodernism is inevitable.
First is worst. Looking back over a few generations, standard nutritional advice informing doctors, institutions and the public have been poor. Not only inaccurate, but de facto pushing people down bad paths. Low fat & low cholesterol labels led to foods, with processed foods with high sugar & many additives. Cereal instead of a boiled egg.
Second is that many norms, like the food pyramid hanging in classrooms during the 80s & 90s were based on long forgotten, often arbitrary decisions. Self correction was fatally weak. Challenging norms had a higher burden for proof than the norm had faced. Proof is really hard, it turns out.
Third is that "what's a healthy diet?" was never answered better by science than book gurus or old cultural understandings of nutrition. That is, a practicable, science based understanding of nutrition wasn't achieved. Lots of things about nutrition have been learned but it doesn't really add up to a Big Theory.
I think the real issue here is "what to do when we bust." Science doesn't predictably produce answers to questions we think it should answer. We discover what we discover. But, what do you do when hospitals, health ministries and such need scientific guidelines? IDK is not an acceptable answer. I do know is not a scientific one. "Lets not do science " doesn't (didn't?) work either. The only choice left is between a lie and a delusion. Postmodernism is inevitable.
You are leaving out one of the biggest reasons "science" has failed us - big food industry has been heavily influencing politics, public opinion through PR campaigns, and even science by funding their own studies.
> like the food pyramid hanging in classrooms during the 80s & 90s were based on long forgotten, often arbitrary decisions.
The food pyramid was not arbitrary, it was the result of highly concentrated lobbying.
The food pyramid was not arbitrary, it was the result of highly concentrated lobbying.
>Self correction was fatally weak. Challenging norms had a higher burden for proof than the norm had faced.
This is the biggest problem, in my opinion. People don't want to look foolish, so it's difficult to change. Doubly so if you made it part of your identity, as diet so often is. It's also why obstructing progress is much easier than creating the conditions for progress. If the status quo serves the powerful, it's going to be difficult to change, because they have more to lose by looking foolish.
This is the biggest problem, in my opinion. People don't want to look foolish, so it's difficult to change. Doubly so if you made it part of your identity, as diet so often is. It's also why obstructing progress is much easier than creating the conditions for progress. If the status quo serves the powerful, it's going to be difficult to change, because they have more to lose by looking foolish.
Actually, IDK is a great answer if it’s true
In theory, sure. In practice, skepticism can be impractical. The guys printing the food pyramid postor needs science's guidelines. The hospital director wants to provide guidelines for the catering contract. Etc. IDK is fine, but they'll just ask the next guy until they get an answer. What do you mean science doesn't know what we should eat? Oh FredPret, you're such a contrarian. Don't be difficult.
The "food pyramid" people were emphatically not even slightly interested in "science's guidelines". They were marketers making propaganda to force on helpless kids.
We were told for decades that saturated fat was really bad for us.
Now it turns out (as some pointed out even back when it started) that saturated fat is absolutely fine. All the people dropping dead from heart disease were being poisoned by trans fats, which were being added to everything (as e.g. Crisco, and margerine).
There is something wrong in (American) beef, but it's not the saturated fat. We lost decades, blaming the fat, and still don't know what it is.
Now we are being poisoned by the fructose in sugar that is added to everything. It is really hard to buy things made in the US without a phenomenal amount of sugar dumped in. Bread, pickles, salad dressing, soy milk, you name it.
The US massively subsidizes production of corn, to the point there is so much more than the market wants that they have to turn it into sugar and pump that into everything. That's not enough, so they also have to feed cows, pigs, and chicken on it, which makes them sick. That's not enough, so they have to make it into ethanol and add it to gasoline.
What is ironic is that actual corn sugar, glucose, is fine.
But they catalyze corn into fructose because it is sweeter when cold. And, incidentally, toxic. Your liver can neutralize a strictly limited amount of almost any toxin, including fructose, but most Americans take in much more than that.
So, before you eat/drink sugar, think: how much sugar do I expect to need to neutralize today?
For more actionable information, consult Robert Lustig lectures on Youtube.
Now it turns out (as some pointed out even back when it started) that saturated fat is absolutely fine. All the people dropping dead from heart disease were being poisoned by trans fats, which were being added to everything (as e.g. Crisco, and margerine).
There is something wrong in (American) beef, but it's not the saturated fat. We lost decades, blaming the fat, and still don't know what it is.
Now we are being poisoned by the fructose in sugar that is added to everything. It is really hard to buy things made in the US without a phenomenal amount of sugar dumped in. Bread, pickles, salad dressing, soy milk, you name it.
The US massively subsidizes production of corn, to the point there is so much more than the market wants that they have to turn it into sugar and pump that into everything. That's not enough, so they also have to feed cows, pigs, and chicken on it, which makes them sick. That's not enough, so they have to make it into ethanol and add it to gasoline.
What is ironic is that actual corn sugar, glucose, is fine.
But they catalyze corn into fructose because it is sweeter when cold. And, incidentally, toxic. Your liver can neutralize a strictly limited amount of almost any toxin, including fructose, but most Americans take in much more than that.
So, before you eat/drink sugar, think: how much sugar do I expect to need to neutralize today?
For more actionable information, consult Robert Lustig lectures on Youtube.
Recent studies point to fructose and vegetable oils being toxic for the human body, at least in the proportions used in mainstream dietary advice.
Big supermarket brands in UK are still selling low fat variants of food, more often than not packed with sugar for taste.
Because of course, fat in the arteries comes from dietary fat, isn't it obvious?
Let's not even start with the red meat propaganda.
Big supermarket brands in UK are still selling low fat variants of food, more often than not packed with sugar for taste.
Because of course, fat in the arteries comes from dietary fat, isn't it obvious?
Let's not even start with the red meat propaganda.
Actually I am seeing hints in recent lectures that the problem with American beef has to do with residual iron.
And the egg and cholesterol example is even more complex.
Because the cholesterol that is ingested does not necessarily increase amount of cholesterol in your body. Because body produces cholesterol on its own and when you ingest cholesterol -- it just produces less of it.
At least assuming you are healthy person. If you are not and your body already has problems regulating cholesterol - adding more cholesterol might actually be a bad idea.
This shows how important it is to actually understand processes and relations and not just rely on correlations.
Studies are flawed because we are looking for correlations and then immediately try to look at study result as a general rule to guide our decision process.
What we should do instead, we should still do these studies, but then we need to follow with more research to actually understand where these correlations come from exactly. Like understand actual biochemistry of what is going on.
Because the cholesterol that is ingested does not necessarily increase amount of cholesterol in your body. Because body produces cholesterol on its own and when you ingest cholesterol -- it just produces less of it.
At least assuming you are healthy person. If you are not and your body already has problems regulating cholesterol - adding more cholesterol might actually be a bad idea.
This shows how important it is to actually understand processes and relations and not just rely on correlations.
Studies are flawed because we are looking for correlations and then immediately try to look at study result as a general rule to guide our decision process.
What we should do instead, we should still do these studies, but then we need to follow with more research to actually understand where these correlations come from exactly. Like understand actual biochemistry of what is going on.
I eat astonishing numbers of eggs, and salt nearly everything heavily. My N=1 study shows its all good for you, letting you stay active for life with low cholesterol and no health issues.
It reminds me of the 100+ year old lady asked "What do you attribute your advanced age?" and she replied "Whisky and a cigar every day!" I wonder if she was in this study?
It reminds me of the 100+ year old lady asked "What do you attribute your advanced age?" and she replied "Whisky and a cigar every day!" I wonder if she was in this study?
Another anecdote: My grandma lived to 98, and only couldn't get around so well and lost mental sharpness around 96. She grew up on "southern" cooking, complete with lard at almost every meal. She refused to eat anything green. Most of her diet in her later years, when she just didn't feel like cooking any more, was KFC chicken, Papa John's wings, and Domino's pizza, and always a sugary dessert. Her joke was the grease kept her lubed. She never went to the doctor for checkups, and the only time she set foot in a hospital was when she had a cancer on her neck in her late 80's. The doctors asked what she did to stay so healthy for so long, and she said, "I just keep breathing". She died of nothing more than old age. I hope I got most of her genes.
Some people are obsessed with diets and risk factors that amount to pretty much nothing over the course of one's life.
There's heavy alcoholics and smokers living to 90, then there's the poor sods doing everything "right" and dying of cancer at 50. Nutrition is just a very small, imo insignificant, part of it - assuming you're not starving or eating the exact same thing every day for years.
There's heavy alcoholics and smokers living to 90, then there's the poor sods doing everything "right" and dying of cancer at 50. Nutrition is just a very small, imo insignificant, part of it - assuming you're not starving or eating the exact same thing every day for years.
It's probably more genetic; I know a family that lived to about the same age (late 80s, early 90s) but they suffer from dementia at around the 70s.
(I'm the guy from reddit, I noticed your account got suspended and reverse searched your username)
You'd have to be more specific, but yeah, amazing, isn't it. God forbid you share something real, we don't do that now. All about that money and happy people probably pay more. Very good, greed is a big part of any downfall.
Not like I was complaining much, I had my own subreddit with exactly one post lol.
It's fine though, such a society is bound to go to shit soon enough. If I live, I will buy drugs illegally, I will forge papers, I will import and sell drugs and more, and then I will do whatever I can to help bring this motherfucker down.
Come on, ban me here, too. I'm fucking done with this circus.
Not like I was complaining much, I had my own subreddit with exactly one post lol.
It's fine though, such a society is bound to go to shit soon enough. If I live, I will buy drugs illegally, I will forge papers, I will import and sell drugs and more, and then I will do whatever I can to help bring this motherfucker down.
Come on, ban me here, too. I'm fucking done with this circus.
I've always wondered what it felt like to live in the fall of civilizations and what could have been done to prevent it. For instance, the Emperor of Qing Dynasty China wanted to industrialize and modernize, but instead his bureaucrats diverted funds meant for modernizing the Navy into building another summer palace. Then that summer palace burned down during a war with Britain.
Well guess fucking what, I'm living in a failed state.
Well guess fucking what, I'm living in a failed state.
Many years ago my uncle told me eggs were bad because cholesterol. So naturally, I ate 6-8 eggs a day for a few weeks, then went for a lipid panel. My HDL went from 50 to 60 and my LDL went from 80 to 70. I think I had two ramen noodles right before that too. Granted, the initial readings were from a year before, so maybe it wasn't the eggs.
It's been awhile since I went down the cholesterol rabbit hole, but there was this guy out there claiming he could control his colesterol, and unless he was lying, the measurements back him up. He'd check his cholesterol daily and could influence which direction it was headed with his diet.
Yeah my total cholesterol has always been between 120 and 140. Not sure what the details are, but it seems to work for me.
the answer to your question is why cholesterol exists. why does your body produce the majority of cholesterol? If your body produces the majority, why would diet (the minority) make an impact?
My experience with this is that you have to take a n=1 approach to nutrition. You need to figure out what works for you by experimenting.
Getting regular assays of all relevant biomarkers to make informed choices in your diet seems like a lot of work that I would like to outsource to some team of scientists...
Even if N=1 is fine, accurate measuring is hard. There are many variables and placebo works very well. Is there any good way?
Do researchers even get taught about the difference between correlation and causation? People who eat large numbers of eggs probably also eat large amounts of bacon (compared to others), and bacon as a highly cured meat with high levels of salt and other toxic compounds, could easily explain the results. And then there is this:
> But on the other hand, the study tracked participants’ health outcomes over periods ranging from 13 to more than 30 years, and participants were queried about their diet only once, at the beginning of the study.
Wow I don't know what to say.
> But on the other hand, the study tracked participants’ health outcomes over periods ranging from 13 to more than 30 years, and participants were queried about their diet only once, at the beginning of the study.
Wow I don't know what to say.
Yeah, I had a hard time believing that. Surely there's no way you could publish a paper purporting to be about health affects of what people ate if you only asked them once what they ate and used that to evaluate a multi-decade time frame. That hardly seems better than basing your findings on intuition.
Even if eggs are somewhat unhealthy you also have to balance that with the fact that they have every possible nutrient and micronutrient needed to create a living animal.
You could be getting trace nutrients we don’t even know we need.
You could be getting trace nutrients we don’t even know we need.
I think these types of takes are too harsh on nutrition. Nutrition are not only observational studies, you know? For example, we know that LDL is causally connected to our killer number one (atheroschlerosis). We are pretty pretty pretty sure that it is true (both clinical interventions with statins as well and mendelian studies confirm that). So, if that is the case, we can just split people into groups that consume one pattern of food and another one that acts like control. What happens to their LDL after some weeks? See, not that hard. There are a bunch of other biomarkers as well that can be used to do experiments like that. There are of course always a possibility that these changes on biomarkers don't mean anything at all, but this is something that will eventually show up on data. So... I don't really understand all these skepticism about nutrition as a field. People are too dramatic and react weirdly with all this "omg they are lying to me! I can't trust anyone" and go on to trust bro science. Grow up. Obesity epidemic is very real and somewhat there is this idea that we don't know anything about what a healthy diet is. This is ridiculous and shouldn't be that hard to discredit. Tribalism perpetuates that shit.
> Most experts recommend avoiding processed foods as much as possible and sticking with a Mediterranean-like diet because it makes intuitive sense. It is not too restrictive. It is heavy in fruits and vegetables. It has the right kinds of fats and some grains. It includes fish and generally lean proteins.
But that’s the point of the article, who’s to say what the right kind of fats are? Or if grains should be part of your diet, etc?
But that’s the point of the article, who’s to say what the right kind of fats are? Or if grains should be part of your diet, etc?
Part of the problem is that nutrition is incredibly nuanced and unknown, but people want simple, absolute answers.
Different people have much different bodies: they react to foods differently, have different metabolisms (at least based on sex/age/height/weight/bodyfat/exercise), and different preferences. Bodies are also complex, and there are 500 different causes that can all lead to you feeling like garbage.
But that wouldn't sell papers, there wouldn't be much to write. So people make blunt statements. Most of what I see online seems to be geared towards the "average American". Which ironically means, the people reading these articles who actually care about their nutrition, most of it doesn't even apply to them.
And this isn't even getting into another factor, which is that people get particularly defensive about nutrition. So others take these blunt, over-generalized statements as fact and double down on them. I see this in-person by people who are otherwise really smart.
Examples: "eat less salt and more fiber" - you don't know how much salt / fiber I'm eating. "Almonds keep you full" - idk some people eat loads of almonds. "Keto changed my life / I hate keto" - that's your anecdote, it only applies to you.
Specifically, for eggs: if someone has high cholesterol, it will show up on bloodwork, and if the eggs raise their cholesterol, cutting / reintroducing them will show up too. If I eat 6 eggs a day and have great cholesterol, some study that says on average people who eat eggs die of a heart attack, that means nothing to me. If I eat 6 eggs a day and have terrible cholesterol, and after I stop eating eggs my cholesterol lowers, some study that says eggs usually don't spike cholesterol, that also means nothing.
Different people have much different bodies: they react to foods differently, have different metabolisms (at least based on sex/age/height/weight/bodyfat/exercise), and different preferences. Bodies are also complex, and there are 500 different causes that can all lead to you feeling like garbage.
But that wouldn't sell papers, there wouldn't be much to write. So people make blunt statements. Most of what I see online seems to be geared towards the "average American". Which ironically means, the people reading these articles who actually care about their nutrition, most of it doesn't even apply to them.
And this isn't even getting into another factor, which is that people get particularly defensive about nutrition. So others take these blunt, over-generalized statements as fact and double down on them. I see this in-person by people who are otherwise really smart.
Examples: "eat less salt and more fiber" - you don't know how much salt / fiber I'm eating. "Almonds keep you full" - idk some people eat loads of almonds. "Keto changed my life / I hate keto" - that's your anecdote, it only applies to you.
Specifically, for eggs: if someone has high cholesterol, it will show up on bloodwork, and if the eggs raise their cholesterol, cutting / reintroducing them will show up too. If I eat 6 eggs a day and have great cholesterol, some study that says on average people who eat eggs die of a heart attack, that means nothing to me. If I eat 6 eggs a day and have terrible cholesterol, and after I stop eating eggs my cholesterol lowers, some study that says eggs usually don't spike cholesterol, that also means nothing.
Another article recommending Mediterranean diet. The healthy Greek and Italian people I know seem to have coffee and a cigarette for breakfast. It seems traditionally food was tight and often in the winter they'd skip meals and go hungry, so Med diet is probably closer to intermittent fasting.
Yeah - the bullshit of attributing differences to diet, and ignoring lifestyle differences. For example cars per capita: US=0.8 Italy=0.7 and Greece=0.5 (so Greece has more than twice as many people without a car – ignoring distribution).
my own observation is that when money is tight, sugar based products tend to disappear. When money is loose, they appear. The hitch is that industry has found a way to produce highly refined carbs cheaply.
Ya know, technically,...
"Nutrition research tends to be unreliable because nearly all of it is based on observational studies, which are imprecise, have no controls, and don’t follow an experimental method."
You could say the same things about astronomy.
"Nutrition research tends to be unreliable because nearly all of it is based on observational studies, which are imprecise, have no controls, and don’t follow an experimental method."
You could say the same things about astronomy.
Ya if astronomy was done by taking photos of the sky 30 years ago, erasing them, and only using their verbal descriptions after 30 years to draw a hypothesis.
But observation is the point of most astronomy. Determining causatiom is usually not the goal.
Observing people's weight over time is ome of the reliable and useful things nutritiom research has accomplished. But the goal of the kind of research being discussed here though is to study causation.
Observing people's weight over time is ome of the reliable and useful things nutritiom research has accomplished. But the goal of the kind of research being discussed here though is to study causation.
In 1695 Edmond Halley predicted the return of his comet in 1758. That was one of the first astronomical experiments, but it was hardly the last.
Predicting the movement of the stars is a vastly simpler problem that predicting the health effects of food.
The concept of sticking to one particular form of eating has always bothered me. It's always felt like an attempt to find a panacea that doesn't require much analysis by the person of what they input to their bodies. Realistic eating is a lifelong responsibility of paying attention to what you're eating and the effects it has on your body. Perhaps what we need is a faster feedback loop of what the current state of your body is so you can make an adjustment.
There are definitely some foods that are better than others, but choosing a diet because it'll solve all your problems is the wrong way to address health.
There are definitely some foods that are better than others, but choosing a diet because it'll solve all your problems is the wrong way to address health.
I am trying to shed quite a lot of weight. The only guideline I strictly follow is trying to keep my caloric intake slightly under my usage. (Altough, I am additionally aiming towards cutting out as much added sugar as possible and instead consuming more fiber and protein)
A specific diet would just lead to me giving up and rebounding.
A specific diet would just lead to me giving up and rebounding.
Most “science” that denies the reality of studying complex systems is broken. The concept of studying strength of correlations, even applied in the context of randomized controlled trials is only really effective in low dimensional spaces and linear dependences (I’m being very loose here, for brevity). But complex systems break all those assumptions.
To steal a quote, researchers use data/statistics like a drunkard uses a lamp post — for support, rather than illumination.
This applies to nutrition, medicine, ecology, economics, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if their experimental arms run largely on confirmation bias.
To steal a quote, researchers use data/statistics like a drunkard uses a lamp post — for support, rather than illumination.
This applies to nutrition, medicine, ecology, economics, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if their experimental arms run largely on confirmation bias.
Industrial egg production is bad for the chickens, especially male chicks. I consume egg alternatives such as Just Egg and use alternatives (e.g. tapioca starch) for baking and no one notices.
You can find locally raised free range eggs in almost any city/town in the Americas... Egg alternatives are nutritionally inferior to real eggs.
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Industrial anything production is bad for the thing.
> Industrial egg production is bad for the chickens
Most successful bird in the planet. Almost 26 billions of chicken lives in this planet because egg production. But yeah, farming is bad. Dodos are fortunate to live such wild and happy lives currently.
Most successful bird in the planet. Almost 26 billions of chicken lives in this planet because egg production. But yeah, farming is bad. Dodos are fortunate to live such wild and happy lives currently.
You'd be wishing for the fate of the dodo if you were trapped inside a cage 1.5x your volume for your entire life, your only consolation being there's another 100 billion of you. "How successful of me," you'd be saying to yourself?
> You'd be wishing for the fate of the dodo if jailed
Not, I wouldn't.
To be alive and bored is better than to be dead and rotten. Rethink your priorities.
Chicken are equal to humans only in totalitarian dreams
And by the way only idiots and cowards choose suicide when life is not so good as the expected
Not, I wouldn't.
To be alive and bored is better than to be dead and rotten. Rethink your priorities.
Chicken are equal to humans only in totalitarian dreams
And by the way only idiots and cowards choose suicide when life is not so good as the expected
There are many scenarios worse than death.
Now imagine being the most successful bird on the planet but not living a short life of suffering before being killed. Eggs can be produced without torturing the birds. It just costs more.
Complex synergistic systems are notoriously challenging to understand. They can have multiple moving parts, with various intertwined causes and effects. But with our limited tooling, we often have to isolate a part from the whole to get but a glimpse at how it works. The approach is scientific, often clean and elegant. It's quite tempting. It also gives the illusion of predictability. I wish scientists would realize that sometimes, all they've actually discovered is exactly that, how the part works in isolation, with no guarantee that the sum of the set can predict the outcome of the whole.
I'm having deja vu. We had a top story on HN recently where either the article or the consensus of the comments was "you pretty much cannot believe any studies about food or nutrition."
The problem is that humans are incredibly complex and diverse, react to stuff in wildly different ways, and you cannot A/B test on the same individual, as you cannot reseg it to the same starting state, you cannot run two experiments on them, and you cannot get two completely matching people.
And it's somewhat-to-entirely unethical and logistically impossible to conduct even uncontrolled studies over a human's entire lifespan, which is really what we're talking about here. I don't think anybody is worried that eating eggs every day will cause health problems for an otherwise-healthy 25-year-old.
That's too dramatic. If we were that different, research into medications would be a waste of time.
Example: any drug can have some side effects with some probability.
So basically an unknown set of people will have the side effect.
But there is no way for me to objectively test whether I will have the side effect.
The description of some drugs even contain: we have no idea how this works, it just does (for some people, also with unknown “parameters”).
So basically an unknown set of people will have the side effect.
But there is no way for me to objectively test whether I will have the side effect.
The description of some drugs even contain: we have no idea how this works, it just does (for some people, also with unknown “parameters”).
Are you really concerned about the side-effects of eating broccoli?
I’m not sure what you are referring to. Could you please elaborate?
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
Side note: Why do we constantly cry about recommendations from the 1970s being different from today's recommendations? That's a lot of time. Over time we tend to figure things out. It doesn't mean that in 40 years today's recommendations will be overturned.
Side note: Why do we constantly cry about recommendations from the 1970s being different from today's recommendations? That's a lot of time. Over time we tend to figure things out. It doesn't mean that in 40 years today's recommendations will be overturned.
The reason we cry about it is because they were extremely confident in their conclusions then, although in retrospect the evidence was terrible, and half of it even apocryphal. There's no break in continuity from the experts then to the experts now that I'm aware of.
The problem is not the gradual improvement through study, it's the cargo-culting, "common sense" that became prevailing consensus, and political motivations from the funders of research.
Science seems to know a lot about poisons, but not a lot about nutrition. It's like how neuroscientists know a lot about the results of ablations, but not a lot about normal function.
The problem is not the gradual improvement through study, it's the cargo-culting, "common sense" that became prevailing consensus, and political motivations from the funders of research.
Science seems to know a lot about poisons, but not a lot about nutrition. It's like how neuroscientists know a lot about the results of ablations, but not a lot about normal function.
The point is that in the absence of really solid evidence we should make no recommendations at all rather than having recommendations that change over time.
> Side note: Why do we constantly cry about recommendations from the 1970s being different from today's recommendations?
Because hardly anything in nutrition "science" has proven to be predictive. It's all junk. Most of it intentional junk pushed by political and business interests.
For example, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." is just nonsense based on junk "science" funded by vegan/vegetarian aligned interest groups. I'm guessing with major multinational corporations peddling veganism, we'll get more junk nutrition science.
Considering life expectancy, health and development has increased with more meat consumption. This is true of the countries with the highest life expectancy - japan, switzerland, spain, etc.
Since we are omnivores, perhaps we should eat a variety of everything in moderation.
Because hardly anything in nutrition "science" has proven to be predictive. It's all junk. Most of it intentional junk pushed by political and business interests.
For example, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." is just nonsense based on junk "science" funded by vegan/vegetarian aligned interest groups. I'm guessing with major multinational corporations peddling veganism, we'll get more junk nutrition science.
Considering life expectancy, health and development has increased with more meat consumption. This is true of the countries with the highest life expectancy - japan, switzerland, spain, etc.
Since we are omnivores, perhaps we should eat a variety of everything in moderation.
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That is not a vegan take. I am not vegan.
>perhaps we should eat a variety of everything in moderation.
That's what the quote means?
>perhaps we should eat a variety of everything in moderation.
That's what the quote means?
> That is not a vegan take. I am not vegan.
Didn't say you were vegan. Just like mothers telling their children "eat your veggies" makes them vegan. But the prevalence of that saying today is due to the vegan lobby.
> That's what the quote means?
Nope. A balanced diet perhaps, but certainly not your quote. Your quote part of vegan propaganda. Sneakily get the naive to accept "mostly vegetables" and then "why not only vegetables".
You see it everywhere on social media. It's a propaganda campaign funded by the largest corporations in the world and the vegan fanatics teaching kids/people a toxic and unnatural diet to humans.
Didn't say you were vegan. Just like mothers telling their children "eat your veggies" makes them vegan. But the prevalence of that saying today is due to the vegan lobby.
> That's what the quote means?
Nope. A balanced diet perhaps, but certainly not your quote. Your quote part of vegan propaganda. Sneakily get the naive to accept "mostly vegetables" and then "why not only vegetables".
You see it everywhere on social media. It's a propaganda campaign funded by the largest corporations in the world and the vegan fanatics teaching kids/people a toxic and unnatural diet to humans.
I disagree. I think it's helpful because many eat too much meat.
> Since we are omnivores, perhaps we should eat a variety of everything in moderation.
That's even worse. Moderation is meaningless except in retrospect - in this context it just means the correct amount. It's not even the moderation fallacy - if I eat from 1-3 hamburgers every day, moderation doesn't tell me that I should be eating 2 because it's in the middle.
At least the "mostly plants" part of the yuppie diet cliché takes some sort of falsifiable stand. I can know for sure that I eat mostly plants, I can never know when I'm eating "moderately," or "not too much."
That's even worse. Moderation is meaningless except in retrospect - in this context it just means the correct amount. It's not even the moderation fallacy - if I eat from 1-3 hamburgers every day, moderation doesn't tell me that I should be eating 2 because it's in the middle.
At least the "mostly plants" part of the yuppie diet cliché takes some sort of falsifiable stand. I can know for sure that I eat mostly plants, I can never know when I'm eating "moderately," or "not too much."
Honestly I expect diet doesn’t matter that much unless you are trying to lose weight, except that eating lots of sugar is probably not good for you. Exercise is probably more important for long term health than what particular kinds of animals or plants you eat.
my experience has been exercise moderately, avoid sugar, and life is good.
N=1. I was eating eggs daily. My cholesterol was high and my doc wanted to put me on statins. I said let me try diet and exercise. I changed it what I was eating (no more daily eggs) and 6 months later I dropped 50 points in bad cholesterol.
Did you do the exercise as well? There is a lot more evidence that exercise lowers your cholesterol than that eating eggs raises it.
Not only is your anecdote N=1, but you also probably changed severak variables with controlling any of them.
Not only is your anecdote N=1, but you also probably changed severak variables with controlling any of them.
I did do the exercise. I'm not sure of the exact timeline, because part of it was me eating heavy breakfast ham & cheese croissants, but I also was eating eggs leading up to my wedding as part of the slow food diet to lose weight. I don't remember at which points my cholesterol was measured, but I did stop doing the daily eggs.
I eat 3 eggs a day - I hadn't heard of that study that more than 2 would kill me!
In general I aim for lots of protein, a good bit of fat and less carbs.. with a specific aim to avoid carbs from bread, fries, cakes, chips/crisps
In general I aim for lots of protein, a good bit of fat and less carbs.. with a specific aim to avoid carbs from bread, fries, cakes, chips/crisps
IIRC in the 80s, the Dutch Nutrition board said max 1 egg a week. They just discovered Cholesterol or something.
"Dr. Mehmet Oz even touted it on his television show." Yeah, no.
I remember him initially being sort of balanced and reasonable then he started pushing supplements etc. Then a few years later, he started showing up in infomercials pushing all sorts of crap.
I liked his cookbook, I presume it was ghost written.
I liked his cookbook, I presume it was ghost written.
His usual shtick is to have a guest on who promotes quack notions and he just sits there pitching softball questions without challenging the BS coming from their mouth. That gives him cover when Congress calls him in to testify about misleading the public.
50% of what he says is wrong or fake...
https://futurism.com/50-dr-oz-says-no-evidence-contradicted-...
https://futurism.com/50-dr-oz-says-no-evidence-contradicted-...
There is also this
"Other nutrition research critics, such as John Ioannidis of Stanford University"
There is a good appeal to authority for you.
"Other nutrition research critics, such as John Ioannidis of Stanford University"
There is a good appeal to authority for you.
John Ioannidis is a critic of bad clinical research in general, not just nutrition. This is his most widely cited paper on the topic.
Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Ioannidis has zero credibility at this point.
The venal, profit-driven corruption in academic nutrition science is exactly why we should stop paying attention to it and start paying much more attention to philosophies of health that humanity has tested over decades and centuries: ayurveda, TCM, and osteopathy.
I strongly recommend going to https://nutritionfacts.org/ for your information -- a nonprofit that never sells anything or promotes any products, just tries to distill research on nutrition in easy-to-understand videos and posts.
Here's an example: "How the Egg Board Designs Misleading Studies" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s25RaOZsFM