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The article you linked is about supplementing Omega 3. Many times in science we isolate out the one thing we think that is causing the health benefit and suppl
by JohnJamesRambo 10y ago
The article you linked is about supplementing Omega 3. Many times in science we isolate out the one thing we think that is causing the health benefit and supplement more of it. Usually we don't find the result we are looking for. Food is a very complex item and it could be many factors and they all need to be present together to get the effect. Lycopene supplementation doesn't seem to have the health benefits seen with eating tomatoes, etc., etc.
- ranit 10y agoSo true and still consistently ignored by a lot of scientists. Especially these working for (or getting grands from) pharmaceutical industry.
- criddell 10y agoThat's not really an indictment of the scientific method though. So isolated lycopene isn't as good as eating a tomato. Surely there are scientists that are iterating on that, trying to find the combination of compounds that does give the desired outcome, right?
- darkmighty 10y agoThat wasn't a critique on science, just noting that the simplest approach (trying to pin down health benefits to a single substance) doesn't work well in this case. It's a good idea to start with the simplest hypothesis; if that is rejected you move to more complex ones. In that case multiple substances are probably acting non-independently in our physiology, thus your experiments need to accommodate that.
- rdlecler1 10y agoThere may be other factors, or the form it is delivered in which creates the bioavailability. It's not always additive.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]