8 ms·

“Joy of Cooking” versus the Food Scientist

118 points by elsherbini 9y ago

ballenf 9y ago
https://nutritionfacts.org https://nutritionfacts.org has some of the most understandable analyses of published food and nutrition research. Really well done. I use just by searching an ingredient or topic of interest and see whether he's covered it. Then compare with other sources, of course. He'll often point out the conflicts of interest behind the funding of various studies as well as analyzing them on their face.
- saosebastiao 9y ago
  There is an obvious vegan bias from anything by Michal Greger. In nutritionfacts.org, it is blatantly obvious cherry picking and editorial bias. For example, he goes through great lengths to show which studies are funded by the various animal product industries when they contradict his viewpoint, but makes no such effort for studies on plant-based foods. He also has a habit of highly weighting small sample or small effect studies that have never been replicated when they agree with his viewpoint, but requiring much higher rigor when contradicting it. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illness-curable-by-veganism/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illnes...
  - spodek 9y ago
    > but makes no such effort for studies on plant-based foods . . . specifically whole plant-based foods. He describes the health problems of hydrogenated oils, sugar, and products made from them. Is there a whole plant based food industry funding studies on broccoli and collard greens? If not, is he biased or simply stating what his research implies?
    - saosebastiao 9y ago
      Yes there is. Almost every major class of produce has an industry association (or several) which promote the interests of their industry, including funding research. In fact, a family member of mind sits on the board of two such associations in California, one for peach growers and one for tomato growers, both of which have funded tons of research out of UC Davis. That isn't to say that the research is flawed, but somehow Greger only sees this funding mechanism to be fundamentally bad when they contradict his predetermined conclusion...he conveniently doesn't see any reason to question a study on kale funded by the kale industry. And yes, Greger is biased. His opinions start with the premise that vegan==good and anything else is bad, and he works backward from there to shape a view of research that bolsters that premise. It's no different than Mormon scientists attempting to prove that coffee is bad for you, or Muslim scientists that attempt to prove that pork is bad for you. The idea that humans shouldn't eat animals or animal products has a valid philosophical foundation, and while a vegan diet is likely far more healthy than the average diet, editorializing the science to attempt to prove nutritional superiority of that philosophy is irresponsible pseudoscience.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        > It's no different than Mormon scientists attempting to prove that coffee is bad for you, or Muslim scientists that attempt to prove that pork is bad for you. Assuming the proper procedures are observed I don't think I see something wrong in principle with these examples. Certainly if they're massaging the data we're talking about something different.
        saosebastiao 9y ago
        If they're principled about the science and the procedure, sure. The problem with deeply held philosophical or religious beliefs in science is when they start with the conclusion and then contort the process to arrive at that conclusion.
        mikekchar 9y ago
        There is certainly no problem doing a study and having a hypothesis that X is bad. There is a huge problem with going through the literature and selecting studies that agree with your point. Part of the problem lies in the fact that X is usually not completely good nor completely bad. For example, let's say that 10% of all studies are poorly executed. If there are 100 studies that conclude that X is good, I can find 10 of them that are poorly executed. Let's say there are 20 studies that conclude that X is bad. If 10% of them are poorly executed, then I can find 18 which are well executed. In reality there are 90 good studies concluding that X is good and 18 good studies concluding that X is bad. However, I can show the 10 poor studies showing something is good and the 18 well done studies showing it is bad, leading you to conclude that there is some kind of conspiracy, even though most of the evidence concludes that X is good. Meta studies are particularly prone to selection bias in this way.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      Sure. Broccoli is a cash crop, and 90% is grown in California. There are growers associations, etc.
tahw 9y ago
It's kinda amazing that Wansink has so much reach when his work has been the subject of an upsetting amount of retractions: https://retractionwatch.com/2017/12/28/another-retraction-appear-cornell-food-scientist-brian-wansink/ https://retractionwatch.com/2017/12/28/another-retraction-ap...
- llimllib 9y ago
  > It's kinda amazing that Wansink has so much reach it's kind of amazing that he has a job
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Research metrics measure quantity, not quality :(
    - conistonwater 9y ago
      I don't see how that works, retractions hurt quantity too, don't they?
      - Erlangolem 9y ago
        In the same way that correcting a headline seems to hurt media.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        Nope, the publicity is still there.
  - cornholio 9y ago
    > it's kind of amazing that he has a job No less than as head of a research lab at Cornell, in one of the top 10 applied economics schools in the world.
  - intended 9y ago
    I dont know, that article linked says this- >...the inaccuracies stemmed primarily from a statistical and reporting/formatting error that led to further inaccuracies. >The review found that there was no intended deception or evidence of deliberate misconduct, and that the significance of the results and discussion in the article would not change because of the errors. >However, since the number of errors is too voluminous to be executed by issuing a correction statement, the journal is withdrawing the article and will republish it as a corrected version in a subsequent issue, and will utilize the same DOI as the originally published version of the article. The authors agree with this decision. This is good/ Not bad?
neonate 9y ago
http://archive.is/VsIV7 http://archive.is/VsIV7 works for me.
jsonne 9y ago
Tl;dr 1. Dishes with the same name are conflated despite being completely different. 2. Many dishes don't have a serving size they simply yield things like "1 cake". 3. The researcher choose a particularly small sample size (18 out of ~4500) As a cooking enthusiast I find it frustrating that a researcher forces a narrative that home cooked meals are the problem when the reality is that all the fast an processed foods we have today are much more likely the culprit of obesity. We need to be encouraging people to cook for themselves with fresh ingredients and not publishing dubious studies that suggest to do the opposite.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The researcher choose a particularly small sample size It wasn't a sample, it was supposedly (but very much not, in fact) the entire universe, that is, the set of recipes that were present across the entire time period from the first to the most recent edition, and thus could be compared across time.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I think it seems accurate enough: > Wansink also insisted on only comparing recipes that bore identical names in different “Joy” editions, regardless of the accompanying recipes, which sometimes led him to compare two entirely different dishes. He liked to point to gumbo as one of the most egregious calorie gainers, but the recipe from 1936, a clear soup of chicken and sliced vegetables simmered in water, has almost nothing in common with the sausage-studded, roux-thickened chicken variety featured in the 2006 book. “It’s like comparing a Chateaubriand to a whole roast steer,” Heathers said, “and saying they’re both roast beef.” Presumably this would also exclude many recipes whose names were changed but are basically the same.
  - cwyers 9y ago
    It was a sample. Wansink's conclusion wasn't that the Joy Of Cooking got fattier, it was that home cooking got fattier, and Joy of Cooking was a proxy for that. So it was a sample from the larger universe of home cooking.
- 9y ago
628C6l0 9y ago
> (When my parents’ ragged copy of the 1964 edition succumbed to water damage a few years ago, my mother delivered the news as if a relative had died.) I'm willing to bet my life that the author has taken liberties with this "delivered the news as if a relative had died" part. I bet if there still exist actual record (say an email) of the delivery that it would be something he wouldn't want us to see. It's a small lie, sure, but it's so unpleasant. In an article whose supposed topic is honesty no less.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Beep boop does not compute
jwilk 9y ago
> his famous “Bottomless Bowls” study concluded that people will eat soup indefinitely if their supply is constantly replenished. Huh? That's not what the study concluded. Participants who were unknowingly eating from self‐refilling bowls ate more soup […] than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1038/oby.2005.12 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1038/oby.2005.12
- pbreit 9y ago
  Perhaps not “indefinitely” but the description doesn’t seem unreasonable.

118 points by elsherbini 9y ago

https://nutritionfacts.org https://nutritionfacts.org has some of the most understandable analyses of published food and nutrition research. Really well done. I use just by searching an ingredient or topic of interest and see whether he's covered it. Then compare with other sources, of course. He'll often point out the conflicts of interest behind the funding of various studies as well as analyzing them on their face.

saosebastiao 9y ago
There is an obvious vegan bias from anything by Michal Greger. In nutritionfacts.org, it is blatantly obvious cherry picking and editorial bias. For example, he goes through great lengths to show which studies are funded by the various animal product industries when they contradict his viewpoint, but makes no such effort for studies on plant-based foods. He also has a habit of highly weighting small sample or small effect studies that have never been replicated when they agree with his viewpoint, but requiring much higher rigor when contradicting it. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illness-curable-by-veganism/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illnes...
- spodek 9y ago
  > but makes no such effort for studies on plant-based foods . . . specifically whole plant-based foods. He describes the health problems of hydrogenated oils, sugar, and products made from them. Is there a whole plant based food industry funding studies on broccoli and collard greens? If not, is he biased or simply stating what his research implies?
  - saosebastiao 9y ago
    Yes there is. Almost every major class of produce has an industry association (or several) which promote the interests of their industry, including funding research. In fact, a family member of mind sits on the board of two such associations in California, one for peach growers and one for tomato growers, both of which have funded tons of research out of UC Davis. That isn't to say that the research is flawed, but somehow Greger only sees this funding mechanism to be fundamentally bad when they contradict his predetermined conclusion...he conveniently doesn't see any reason to question a study on kale funded by the kale industry. And yes, Greger is biased. His opinions start with the premise that vegan==good and anything else is bad, and he works backward from there to shape a view of research that bolsters that premise. It's no different than Mormon scientists attempting to prove that coffee is bad for you, or Muslim scientists that attempt to prove that pork is bad for you. The idea that humans shouldn't eat animals or animal products has a valid philosophical foundation, and while a vegan diet is likely far more healthy than the average diet, editorializing the science to attempt to prove nutritional superiority of that philosophy is irresponsible pseudoscience.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      > It's no different than Mormon scientists attempting to prove that coffee is bad for you, or Muslim scientists that attempt to prove that pork is bad for you. Assuming the proper procedures are observed I don't think I see something wrong in principle with these examples. Certainly if they're massaging the data we're talking about something different.
      - saosebastiao 9y ago
        If they're principled about the science and the procedure, sure. The problem with deeply held philosophical or religious beliefs in science is when they start with the conclusion and then contort the process to arrive at that conclusion.
      - mikekchar 9y ago
        There is certainly no problem doing a study and having a hypothesis that X is bad. There is a huge problem with going through the literature and selecting studies that agree with your point. Part of the problem lies in the fact that X is usually not completely good nor completely bad. For example, let's say that 10% of all studies are poorly executed. If there are 100 studies that conclude that X is good, I can find 10 of them that are poorly executed. Let's say there are 20 studies that conclude that X is bad. If 10% of them are poorly executed, then I can find 18 which are well executed. In reality there are 90 good studies concluding that X is good and 18 good studies concluding that X is bad. However, I can show the 10 poor studies showing something is good and the 18 well done studies showing it is bad, leading you to conclude that there is some kind of conspiracy, even though most of the evidence concludes that X is good. Meta studies are particularly prone to selection bias in this way.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Sure. Broccoli is a cash crop, and 90% is grown in California. There are growers associations, etc.

tahw 9y ago

It's kinda amazing that Wansink has so much reach when his work has been the subject of an upsetting amount of retractions: https://retractionwatch.com/2017/12/28/another-retraction-appear-cornell-food-scientist-brian-wansink/ https://retractionwatch.com/2017/12/28/another-retraction-ap...

llimllib 9y ago
> It's kinda amazing that Wansink has so much reach it's kind of amazing that he has a job
- pjc50 9y ago
  Research metrics measure quantity, not quality :(
  - conistonwater 9y ago
    I don't see how that works, retractions hurt quantity too, don't they?
    - Erlangolem 9y ago
      In the same way that correcting a headline seems to hurt media.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Nope, the publicity is still there.
- cornholio 9y ago
  > it's kind of amazing that he has a job No less than as head of a research lab at Cornell, in one of the top 10 applied economics schools in the world.
- intended 9y ago
  I dont know, that article linked says this- >...the inaccuracies stemmed primarily from a statistical and reporting/formatting error that led to further inaccuracies. >The review found that there was no intended deception or evidence of deliberate misconduct, and that the significance of the results and discussion in the article would not change because of the errors. >However, since the number of errors is too voluminous to be executed by issuing a correction statement, the journal is withdrawing the article and will republish it as a corrected version in a subsequent issue, and will utilize the same DOI as the originally published version of the article. The authors agree with this decision. This is good/ Not bad?

neonate 9y ago

http://archive.is/VsIV7 http://archive.is/VsIV7 works for me.

jsonne 9y ago

Tl;dr 1. Dishes with the same name are conflated despite being completely different. 2. Many dishes don't have a serving size they simply yield things like "1 cake". 3. The researcher choose a particularly small sample size (18 out of ~4500) As a cooking enthusiast I find it frustrating that a researcher forces a narrative that home cooked meals are the problem when the reality is that all the fast an processed foods we have today are much more likely the culprit of obesity. We need to be encouraging people to cook for themselves with fresh ingredients and not publishing dubious studies that suggest to do the opposite.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> The researcher choose a particularly small sample size It wasn't a sample, it was supposedly (but very much not, in fact) the entire universe, that is, the set of recipes that were present across the entire time period from the first to the most recent edition, and thus could be compared across time.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I think it seems accurate enough: > Wansink also insisted on only comparing recipes that bore identical names in different “Joy” editions, regardless of the accompanying recipes, which sometimes led him to compare two entirely different dishes. He liked to point to gumbo as one of the most egregious calorie gainers, but the recipe from 1936, a clear soup of chicken and sliced vegetables simmered in water, has almost nothing in common with the sausage-studded, roux-thickened chicken variety featured in the 2006 book. “It’s like comparing a Chateaubriand to a whole roast steer,” Heathers said, “and saying they’re both roast beef.” Presumably this would also exclude many recipes whose names were changed but are basically the same.
- cwyers 9y ago
  It was a sample. Wansink's conclusion wasn't that the Joy Of Cooking got fattier, it was that home cooking got fattier, and Joy of Cooking was a proxy for that. So it was a sample from the larger universe of home cooking.
9y ago

628C6l0 9y ago

> (When my parents’ ragged copy of the 1964 edition succumbed to water damage a few years ago, my mother delivered the news as if a relative had died.) I'm willing to bet my life that the author has taken liberties with this "delivered the news as if a relative had died" part. I bet if there still exist actual record (say an email) of the delivery that it would be something he wouldn't want us to see. It's a small lie, sure, but it's so unpleasant. In an article whose supposed topic is honesty no less.

emodendroket 9y ago
Beep boop does not compute

jwilk 9y ago

> his famous “Bottomless Bowls” study concluded that people will eat soup indefinitely if their supply is constantly replenished. Huh? That's not what the study concluded. Participants who were unknowingly eating from self‐refilling bowls ate more soup […] than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1038/oby.2005.12 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1038/oby.2005.12

pbreit 9y ago
Perhaps not “indefinitely” but the description doesn’t seem unreasonable.