5 ms·

There is just such a lack of good, well-done dietary research that it's almost impossible to know what advice is true, what advice is probably true and what adv

There is just such a lack of good, well-done dietary research that it's almost impossible to know what advice is true, what advice is probably true and what advice is just made up. Obviously these studies are extremely difficult to do well, and hence why they haven't been done. But the cost to society is much, much greater than the cost of these studies.

coaxial 8y ago
I remember reading that it's because they're impossible to do: the only option would be to lock people up in a room and only feed them exactly the same food on a schedule for months.
- enturn 8y ago
  There were some interesting observations about salt with people who did a 135-day simulation of life on the Mir space station. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/health/salt-health-effects.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/health/salt-health-effect...
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  There is also the confounding factor of gut microbiome (people who had more fiber continuously IIRC having a more diverse/probably better for health, microbiome) influencing results of diet or vice versa.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Haven't they done nutrition studies in the military and in prisons because of the level of control over food intake?
  - coaxial 8y ago
    Maybe, but how biased is the population? People in the army do a lot more physical exercise than most, people in jail have a different way of living than the rest of the population because of their circumstances.
    - cimmanom 8y ago
      Isn't that what control groups are for? Then you could rule out exercise or jail conditions as a factor.
cageface 8y ago
There are also a ton of "studies" funded by various industry groups. In a lot of cases you don't even have to prove that your product is healthy, you just have to cast doubt on any previous research that says it isn't. Sow a bit of confusion and people just throw up their hands and eat what they want. It's a tactic the tobacco industry used to fend off attacks for decades.
narag 8y ago
There is a way to know: self-experimentation. I do realize you mean knowledge as a society. But I'm happy there's at least a way to resist the generalized brainwashing. And maybe if more people tried by themselves, it would be more difficult to get away with the current bs. A few advantages are that you find out what's good for you in particular, not every body works the same, that you don't get confused with partial results that get canceled and, my fav, that you learn what works in practice: it's useless to know that you can lose fat with a diet you are unable to follow. You've probably realized that my experience is about losing weight and general wellness, but that's just the problem with nutrition for most people.
- skookum 8y ago
  Given the number of variables that can be adjusted, the extent to which they can be adjusted, and the time it takes to see results, self-experimentation is barely viable for even trivial short-term goals. How many chances does one have to try a different set of inputs for 3 months apiece? Even for short-term goals anything non-measurable is highly prone to confirmation bias - e.g.: "I feel more energetic on this keto diet!" because I expected to feel more energetic on this keto diet and these Instagram accounts I follow keep reinforcing that this is what I should expect. Additionally there is the issue that the human body is a complex system where things that seem good in the short term can be quite bad in the long term - e.g.: "These 6 cigarettes a day are really helping with the over-eating I'd been struggling with!". For many of us who care to research nutrition more than superficially the goals tend to be more long-term ones like not developing Alzheimer's, cancers, atherosclerosis, organ failures, etc., all in support of staying healthy & active for as long as possible. Those goals don't lend themselves to a hill-climbing optimization via self-experimentation.
  - narag 8y ago
    How many chances does one have to try a different set of inputs for 3 months apiece? No need to spend three months. The body raise all kind of signals in reaction to food, almost instantly. Even for short-term goals anything non-measurable is highly prone to confirmation bias Are bathroom scales also affected? Are keto test sticks too? For many of us who care to research nutrition more than superficially the goals tend to be more long-term ones like not developing Alzheimer's, cancers, atherosclerosis, organ failures, etc. Don't worry. Considering the level of aggressiveness industry has shown against low carbs diets, if any of those scares had any minimum basis, we would know by now. Look, this post is no longer in front page, so it's doubtful anyone except us is reading it. I take for granted that you genuinely think what you say and hope you give me the same benefit of doubt. I haven't done keto in like twenty years? (not sure) but I can't tell you this: it works. Last time I did it, I spent two years in low carb with no adverse effects whatsoever. I ran every other day, was in a very good shape. I can't help chuckling when I read hit pieces like what Wikipedia has to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet If you read carefully you'll see that they suggest that it doesn't work at all and that it's just placebo, "nutritional nonsense", water losing or simply caloric reduction due to unpalatable plan. That's idiotic, as you can see if you go to other more technical article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis Surprise! It seems that there is actually a non-contentious, perfectly known mechanism to burn fatty acids induced by fasting or reducing carbs intake. Try to reconcile that with: The Atkins diet is promoted with questionable claims that carbohydrate restriction is the "key" to weight loss. Questionable my ass. That's what the diet is and it works. If you don't like the kind or food you need to eat to follow the diet, it's OK and it's really the reason most people quit. If you're worried about unknown long term risks, choose your poison: do you think it's safer to be fat? can you achieve the same results as easily with other diets? Power to you. But don't believe the army of liars that's been spreading FUD consistently over the years.
billfruit 8y ago
But isn't there, atleast for Americans, the FDA, who is a final authority on food product safety; So till the time that FDA is convinced to make an advice, there is no credible advice; irregardless of any other published study.
acdha 8y ago
One important distinction is between research and the dietary guidelines issued. Most of the bad advice given in the 20th century was not well supported but there were strong ideological reasons which pushed it forward. There was an interesting interview with one of the people on the Nixon-era group which was repurposed from focusing on hunger to the obesity crisis on the political aspects: «Dr. Mark Hegsted, professor of nutrition at Harvard University and one of the three nutritionists who helped write the report, said: "There will undoubtedly be many people who will say we have not proven our point; we have not demonstrated that the dietary modifications we recommend will yield the dividends expected. "The question to be asked therefore, is not why should we change our diet, but why not. "What are the risks associated with eating less meat, less fat, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, less sugar, less salt and more fruits, vegetables, unsaturated fat - and cereal products - especially whole-grain cereals? There are none that can be identified and important benefits can be expected."» https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/01/20/recommending-drastic-diet-changes/a3c005b5-2b89-4784-8782-83c0055b7aa4/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/01/20/... I don’t think they set out intending to make the problem worse, or that they were getting paid off by industry, and they weren’t wrong about everything but the President wanted To Do Something and they went ahead even though the evidence for salt, fat, cholesterol, and meat was very sketchy at the time and generally debunked with a decade or so when people did bigger studies with good methodology, in particular having good control groups. The problem is that by then you had a bunch of senior people whose careers had been based on this who weren’t keen on substantially reversing the recommendations and so it’s taken much longer to reverse them than it did to create them.

coaxial 8y ago

I remember reading that it's because they're impossible to do: the only option would be to lock people up in a room and only feed them exactly the same food on a schedule for months.

enturn 8y ago
There were some interesting observations about salt with people who did a 135-day simulation of life on the Mir space station. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/health/salt-health-effects.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/health/salt-health-effect...
stevenwoo 8y ago
There is also the confounding factor of gut microbiome (people who had more fiber continuously IIRC having a more diverse/probably better for health, microbiome) influencing results of diet or vice versa.
cimmanom 8y ago
Haven't they done nutrition studies in the military and in prisons because of the level of control over food intake?
- coaxial 8y ago
  Maybe, but how biased is the population? People in the army do a lot more physical exercise than most, people in jail have a different way of living than the rest of the population because of their circumstances.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Isn't that what control groups are for? Then you could rule out exercise or jail conditions as a factor.

cageface 8y ago

There are also a ton of "studies" funded by various industry groups. In a lot of cases you don't even have to prove that your product is healthy, you just have to cast doubt on any previous research that says it isn't. Sow a bit of confusion and people just throw up their hands and eat what they want. It's a tactic the tobacco industry used to fend off attacks for decades.

narag 8y ago

There is a way to know: self-experimentation. I do realize you mean knowledge as a society. But I'm happy there's at least a way to resist the generalized brainwashing. And maybe if more people tried by themselves, it would be more difficult to get away with the current bs. A few advantages are that you find out what's good for you in particular, not every body works the same, that you don't get confused with partial results that get canceled and, my fav, that you learn what works in practice: it's useless to know that you can lose fat with a diet you are unable to follow. You've probably realized that my experience is about losing weight and general wellness, but that's just the problem with nutrition for most people.

skookum 8y ago
Given the number of variables that can be adjusted, the extent to which they can be adjusted, and the time it takes to see results, self-experimentation is barely viable for even trivial short-term goals. How many chances does one have to try a different set of inputs for 3 months apiece? Even for short-term goals anything non-measurable is highly prone to confirmation bias - e.g.: "I feel more energetic on this keto diet!" because I expected to feel more energetic on this keto diet and these Instagram accounts I follow keep reinforcing that this is what I should expect. Additionally there is the issue that the human body is a complex system where things that seem good in the short term can be quite bad in the long term - e.g.: "These 6 cigarettes a day are really helping with the over-eating I'd been struggling with!". For many of us who care to research nutrition more than superficially the goals tend to be more long-term ones like not developing Alzheimer's, cancers, atherosclerosis, organ failures, etc., all in support of staying healthy & active for as long as possible. Those goals don't lend themselves to a hill-climbing optimization via self-experimentation.
- narag 8y ago
  How many chances does one have to try a different set of inputs for 3 months apiece? No need to spend three months. The body raise all kind of signals in reaction to food, almost instantly. Even for short-term goals anything non-measurable is highly prone to confirmation bias Are bathroom scales also affected? Are keto test sticks too? For many of us who care to research nutrition more than superficially the goals tend to be more long-term ones like not developing Alzheimer's, cancers, atherosclerosis, organ failures, etc. Don't worry. Considering the level of aggressiveness industry has shown against low carbs diets, if any of those scares had any minimum basis, we would know by now. Look, this post is no longer in front page, so it's doubtful anyone except us is reading it. I take for granted that you genuinely think what you say and hope you give me the same benefit of doubt. I haven't done keto in like twenty years? (not sure) but I can't tell you this: it works. Last time I did it, I spent two years in low carb with no adverse effects whatsoever. I ran every other day, was in a very good shape. I can't help chuckling when I read hit pieces like what Wikipedia has to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet If you read carefully you'll see that they suggest that it doesn't work at all and that it's just placebo, "nutritional nonsense", water losing or simply caloric reduction due to unpalatable plan. That's idiotic, as you can see if you go to other more technical article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis Surprise! It seems that there is actually a non-contentious, perfectly known mechanism to burn fatty acids induced by fasting or reducing carbs intake. Try to reconcile that with: The Atkins diet is promoted with questionable claims that carbohydrate restriction is the "key" to weight loss. Questionable my ass. That's what the diet is and it works. If you don't like the kind or food you need to eat to follow the diet, it's OK and it's really the reason most people quit. If you're worried about unknown long term risks, choose your poison: do you think it's safer to be fat? can you achieve the same results as easily with other diets? Power to you. But don't believe the army of liars that's been spreading FUD consistently over the years.

billfruit 8y ago

But isn't there, atleast for Americans, the FDA, who is a final authority on food product safety; So till the time that FDA is convinced to make an advice, there is no credible advice; irregardless of any other published study.

acdha 8y ago

One important distinction is between research and the dietary guidelines issued. Most of the bad advice given in the 20th century was not well supported but there were strong ideological reasons which pushed it forward. There was an interesting interview with one of the people on the Nixon-era group which was repurposed from focusing on hunger to the obesity crisis on the political aspects: «Dr. Mark Hegsted, professor of nutrition at Harvard University and one of the three nutritionists who helped write the report, said: "There will undoubtedly be many people who will say we have not proven our point; we have not demonstrated that the dietary modifications we recommend will yield the dividends expected. "The question to be asked therefore, is not why should we change our diet, but why not. "What are the risks associated with eating less meat, less fat, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, less sugar, less salt and more fruits, vegetables, unsaturated fat - and cereal products - especially whole-grain cereals? There are none that can be identified and important benefits can be expected."» https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/01/20/recommending-drastic-diet-changes/a3c005b5-2b89-4784-8782-83c0055b7aa4/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/01/20/... I don’t think they set out intending to make the problem worse, or that they were getting paid off by industry, and they weren’t wrong about everything but the President wanted To Do Something and they went ahead even though the evidence for salt, fat, cholesterol, and meat was very sketchy at the time and generally debunked with a decade or so when people did bigger studies with good methodology, in particular having good control groups. The problem is that by then you had a bunch of senior people whose careers had been based on this who weren’t keen on substantially reversing the recommendations and so it’s taken much longer to reverse them than it did to create them.