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Timing your meals may help with weight loss. That’s what it seems to do in mice

• ineedasername 9y ago
  Wow there's a lot wrong with this article, but let's go with the low hanging fruit: They're reasoning from a correlated effect in mice to humans, and doing so without asking & then answering a very basic question: "Does human physiology respond the same way to a fast as a mouse's physiology?" Yes, the mention the existence of studies where TFR had an impact in humans, but because it reduced calorie consumption, not necessarily a global impact on metabolic efficiency. That's throws the "timing" piece well out. The problem isn't that it's a story about unproven research, the problem is that it's presented as the next weight-loss gimmick, because from the title to the intro, that's how the story is packaged. This is how science that turns out to be incorrect winds up in the public consciousness, spurring on diet myths and urban legends, for years. Further, it erodes public trust in the scientific process: How many times has popular health media flip flopped on something like this, and a few years later the research is completed or something new comes along to say "Nope, actually egg yolks won't kill you". It undermines credibility of the process to up-sell the positive spin while only paying lip service to the "But we still don't really know" side of things.