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Sure, nutrition is littered with crackpot theories, voluntarily misleading research funded by corporations, smoke and mirrors, and so on. And if you only look a

by pierrec 10y ago

Sure, nutrition is littered with crackpot theories, voluntarily misleading research funded by corporations, smoke and mirrors, and so on. And if you only look at stuff that hits the news, then yes, things will change drastically every few years, probably forever. That's because people like sensationalism. However, there are reasonable diets that don't make the news, for example the "Mediterranean Diet". While it doesn't come with any extraordinary claims, it seems to have endured with a good reputation from the onset (it was invented in the 70s and first gained popularity in the 90s) (also note that this article awkwardly mentions it in a way that seems to ignore most studies on it, but that's not the point). Look at the boring diets, that's where the good stuff is.

wyager 10y ago
> for example the "Mediterranean Diet". The irony here is delicious. You've gotten sucked into yet another evidence-free fad diet, but you're lecturing me on only listening to fad diets. And no, it's not a matter of "only looking at stuff that hits the news"; the FDA and FNS, which should be following strong scientific principles, change their dietary recommendations and rules all the time, without particularly strong evidence for doing so. > Look at the boring diets, that's where the good stuff is. Do you make this claim based on strong evidence, or does this just sound like good Common Sense (tm) to you?
- novia 10y ago
  The Mediterranean diet has been linked to longer lifespans. http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g6674 http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g6674 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15452459 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15452459
  - wyager 10y ago
    > The Mediterranean diet has been linked to longer lifespans Did you read anything I wrote? Every single fad diet in the world has multiple scientific papers showing how great it is. (p = 0.05. Nevermind that there were 1000 research projects about this fad diet that didn't get published because they didn't reject the null hypothesis, so who cares. Nevermind that nutrition scientists don't practice good behavior to mitigate the effect of the base rate fallacy on popular subjects.) Almost no scientific fields practice enough discipline to have very high predictive power. Particle physics mitigates base-rate failures by having an extremely high confidence requirement (5 sigma). Even with absolute best practices, it's sometimes not enough. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-ou... Nutrition science is nowhere near best practices.
    - novia 10y ago
      It's been a while since I've read Michael Pollan's book, An Omnivore's Dilemma, but if I am remembering correctly, there are several locations in the world where people live an abnormally long time, with good quality of life. Researchers went to those places and found out what people usually eat there. Then, comparing the diets of the different qualifying populations, the diet advice Pollan came up with to live a long healthy life was, "eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables."
      - wyager 10y ago
        > there are several locations in the world where people live an abnormally long time, with good quality of life There are many equally likely explanations that don't involve whatever those people happen to be eating. Regional genetic tendencies, slightly elevated levels of background radiation leading to radiation hormesis, a social tendency towards exercise, etc. It could be all in their diet, but then again, we don't have any really good evidence that it is.
        jmknoll 10y ago
        There's a pretty interesting npr program about this. The researcher visits "Blue Zones," areas where people live for abnormally long times, and finds that, if I recall correctly, long lifespans are correlated with strong social support networks, plant-and-fish-based diets, and consistent, low-intensity exercise. http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/408023272/the-fountain-of-youth http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/408023272/the-fou...
        didibus 10y ago
        I think this is the primary criteria, do you care enough about your health to modify your diet even if the health benefits might be minute or null? If you do, then some diets have better odds, like the Mediterranean diet. It seems to me you don't care enough, or believe a random diet or one selected by the food industry will give you better odds. Sure, diets are not miracle life extenders or cure for disease. At least none of the known diets have been able to confidently show they are. But a diet is not like sending someone to the moon where you need very close to 100% confidence in your technique. A diet just needs to beat the odds of your current diet. In that sense, most diets, even fad ones, probably beats the average American diet odds.
- pierrec 10y ago
  An evidence-free fad diet? We're looking at dozens (maybe hundreds) of research papers published over the past 40 years. Most of them are not based on conjectures but on clinical and dietary surveys looking at long-term health effects. Perhaps you think this is irrelevant because of selection bias, however, if a study found the diet had any relatively negative health effects, I'm pretty sure it would also get published. Of course, this can always turn into an unsolvable "faith in research" argument. "Boring" diets, yes, because these long-term studies are necessary in order to convincingly support the idea that a diet is healthy, which necessarily implies that the diet is pretty old and probably won't hit the news all that much. Finally, and as an edit, don't worry: I haven't gotten sucked into the diet that I'm using as an example. I don't follow or endorse it, in part because it relies too much on unsustainable fisheries.
  - wyager 10y ago
    > We're looking at dozens (maybe hundreds) of research papers published over the past 40 years. And how many nutrition researchers and students do you think there are? How many do you think choose to do a study about a popular diet? Do you think everyone who fails to reject the null hypothesis with whatever mediocre p-value criteria their supervising professor decided on publishes their paper anyway? Do you think most journals would accept such a paper? > however, if a study found the diet had any relatively negative health effects That's the thing. Almost any semi-reasonable diet isn't going to kill you or make you horribly sick. Every dietary recommendation you find online will probably keep you alive and healthy. Then, by the nature of having lots of scientific papers and the way publishing works, you can find as many papers as you like claiming that your favorite dietary recommendation is slightly better than the other ones.

by pierrec 10y ago

wyager 10y ago

> for example the "Mediterranean Diet". The irony here is delicious. You've gotten sucked into yet another evidence-free fad diet, but you're lecturing me on only listening to fad diets. And no, it's not a matter of "only looking at stuff that hits the news"; the FDA and FNS, which should be following strong scientific principles, change their dietary recommendations and rules all the time, without particularly strong evidence for doing so. > Look at the boring diets, that's where the good stuff is. Do you make this claim based on strong evidence, or does this just sound like good Common Sense (tm) to you?

novia 10y ago
The Mediterranean diet has been linked to longer lifespans. http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g6674 http://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g6674 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15452459 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15452459
- wyager 10y ago
  > The Mediterranean diet has been linked to longer lifespans Did you read anything I wrote? Every single fad diet in the world has multiple scientific papers showing how great it is. (p = 0.05. Nevermind that there were 1000 research projects about this fad diet that didn't get published because they didn't reject the null hypothesis, so who cares. Nevermind that nutrition scientists don't practice good behavior to mitigate the effect of the base rate fallacy on popular subjects.) Almost no scientific fields practice enough discipline to have very high predictive power. Particle physics mitigates base-rate failures by having an extremely high confidence requirement (5 sigma). Even with absolute best practices, it's sometimes not enough. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-ou... Nutrition science is nowhere near best practices.
  - novia 10y ago
    It's been a while since I've read Michael Pollan's book, An Omnivore's Dilemma, but if I am remembering correctly, there are several locations in the world where people live an abnormally long time, with good quality of life. Researchers went to those places and found out what people usually eat there. Then, comparing the diets of the different qualifying populations, the diet advice Pollan came up with to live a long healthy life was, "eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables."
    - wyager 10y ago
      > there are several locations in the world where people live an abnormally long time, with good quality of life There are many equally likely explanations that don't involve whatever those people happen to be eating. Regional genetic tendencies, slightly elevated levels of background radiation leading to radiation hormesis, a social tendency towards exercise, etc. It could be all in their diet, but then again, we don't have any really good evidence that it is.
      - jmknoll 10y ago
        There's a pretty interesting npr program about this. The researcher visits "Blue Zones," areas where people live for abnormally long times, and finds that, if I recall correctly, long lifespans are correlated with strong social support networks, plant-and-fish-based diets, and consistent, low-intensity exercise. http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/408023272/the-fountain-of-youth http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/408023272/the-fou...
      - didibus 10y ago
        I think this is the primary criteria, do you care enough about your health to modify your diet even if the health benefits might be minute or null? If you do, then some diets have better odds, like the Mediterranean diet. It seems to me you don't care enough, or believe a random diet or one selected by the food industry will give you better odds. Sure, diets are not miracle life extenders or cure for disease. At least none of the known diets have been able to confidently show they are. But a diet is not like sending someone to the moon where you need very close to 100% confidence in your technique. A diet just needs to beat the odds of your current diet. In that sense, most diets, even fad ones, probably beats the average American diet odds.
pierrec 10y ago
An evidence-free fad diet? We're looking at dozens (maybe hundreds) of research papers published over the past 40 years. Most of them are not based on conjectures but on clinical and dietary surveys looking at long-term health effects. Perhaps you think this is irrelevant because of selection bias, however, if a study found the diet had any relatively negative health effects, I'm pretty sure it would also get published. Of course, this can always turn into an unsolvable "faith in research" argument. "Boring" diets, yes, because these long-term studies are necessary in order to convincingly support the idea that a diet is healthy, which necessarily implies that the diet is pretty old and probably won't hit the news all that much. Finally, and as an edit, don't worry: I haven't gotten sucked into the diet that I'm using as an example. I don't follow or endorse it, in part because it relies too much on unsustainable fisheries.
- wyager 10y ago
  > We're looking at dozens (maybe hundreds) of research papers published over the past 40 years. And how many nutrition researchers and students do you think there are? How many do you think choose to do a study about a popular diet? Do you think everyone who fails to reject the null hypothesis with whatever mediocre p-value criteria their supervising professor decided on publishes their paper anyway? Do you think most journals would accept such a paper? > however, if a study found the diet had any relatively negative health effects That's the thing. Almost any semi-reasonable diet isn't going to kill you or make you horribly sick. Every dietary recommendation you find online will probably keep you alive and healthy. Then, by the nature of having lots of scientific papers and the way publishing works, you can find as many papers as you like claiming that your favorite dietary recommendation is slightly better than the other ones.