8 ms·
The article contains this astonishing statement: the meta-analysis "found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart dise
by gruseom 17y ago
The article contains this astonishing statement: the meta-analysis "found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease". No association! Yet this has been public-health, government, industry dogma for more than a generation. The history of this catastrophe has barely begun to be written.
- Andys 17y agoIt usually takes about a generation for bad ideas to pass.
- irrelative 17y agoIt's too bad that this is the case for facts as well as ideas. Ideally science can turn on a dime when the data is overwhelming, but in practice there's a huge lag.
- stretchwithme 17y agoIt depends on whether government gets behind a bad idea or not. Bureaucracy doesn't like diversity of thought and tends to reinforce current thinking. Look at how long its taken for alternative medicine to get blessed.
- demallien 17y agoHuh? Bad example. "Alternative medecine" that actually works just becomes "medecine". The fact that this happens rarely is due to the fact that most products marketed as alternative medecine are a crock and don't hold up when tested. If anything, the fact that government allows these things to be marketed at all is a perfect example of bureaucracy accepting diversity of thought (when it really shouldn't!)
- Andys 17y agoI'd rather the government accept medicines with centuries of empirical evidence than lab-synthesised chemicals which have been pushed rapidly through official process using cherry-picked clinical trials and promises of lucrative paid positions for soon-to-be-ex-FDA officials.
- Robin_Message 17y agoThat is a false dichotomy and you know it. What you want, and everyone wants, is fair, unbiased testing of any medicine, regardless of origin. Peer reviewed science and FDA approval tests are not perfect, but in the vast majority of cases they are better than "centuries of empirical evidence." The placebo effect is very real; if people are paying money, betting their lives, and putting potentially dangerous compounds into their bodies (whatever the origin), then we'd like better than that. Also, I would add that alternative medicines tend to fail by not working at all, whereas (what we'll call) lab medicines tend to fail by having unforeseen, unexpected, longer-term side effects.
- demallien 17y agoCitation needed. But seriously, as far as I'm aware (and I try to stay current on this topic), there is no 'medicine' out there with "centuries of empirical evidence" that isn't already accepted. There are loads of compounds that claim to be effective, but when tested they are found to be no better than placebo. Even if a compound is found to be effective, it isn't enough to make a good medicine. The active ingredient needs to be identified, extracted, and stabilised in a product that allows doctors to safely control the dose that a patient receives. Skipping all of that work and just trying to take an uncontrolled substance is dangerous - you can't tell if the active compound has broken down, or just isn't present in a particular sample, or conversely, is present in dangerous amounts. Furthermore, the naturally occurring compound may have other, undesirable compounds included with it. Modern medicine aims to control for all of this, and yes, the complexity can be off-putting compared to the simplicity of "natural" solutions, but there are good reasons for that complexity existing.
- jseifer 17y agoNo kidding. Now we need more research about how bad unsaturated fat is for you.
- MikeCapone 17y ago"Science advances one funeral at a time" -- Max Planck
- dmm 17y agoTry telling that to the singularity folks...
- MikeCapone 17y agoIt's not a law of nature; in certain fields, there's less of an establishment to fight and replace, so new ideas can move faster.
- Alex3917 17y agoI think you're missing the joke. (That is, transhumanists believe that we'll live forever.)
- MikeCapone 17y agoOh, I did miss the joke, which is a bit sad considering that I agree with transhumanists that fighting aging is a noble cause. If people no longer die so much of the diseases of aging, it might cause some problems, but I think they would be small compared to the benefits (few things compared to 100-150k dying each day after getting frail and sick).
- eavc 17y ago"In Defense of Food" has an interesting account of how that came to pass. Basically, scientists told the politician, "We don't know what's causing it. Our advice is to eat less meat and dairy and less food overall." The politician said, "I can't say that. I live in an agricultural state! I need something more specific to say... What's in meat and diary that MIGHT be to blame?" And thus, fat and saturated fat were thrust into the mainstream as things to avoid despite there being little to no evidence to that point.
- jseifer 17y agoDo you have sources for that info? I would love to read more about how the whole saturated fat recommendation came to be widely accepted.
- eavc 17y agoI'm sorry, I don't have any sources other than Michael Pollan's book, "In Defense of Food," which I highly recommend anyway.
- cdr 17y agoSome of the claims Pollan makes are sketchy. I don't recall that passage, but I'd probably want to see a source before believing it.
- jseifer 17y agoSide note: I've seen Food, Inc but I haven't read his books. I thought it was a huge leap for him to go from talking about food and where it comes from to giving nutritional advice in Food Rules.
- ig1 17y agoHarvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating and Gary Taubes book on Calories both have two different arguments for how the current dietary advice became mainstream (and why it's wrong)
- JunkDNA 17y ago