11 ms·

Of course there are, this is pervasive. This has been done for decades by the tobacco industry, by the meat, dairy and eggs industry and others that try to buy

by vfc1 8y ago

Of course there are, this is pervasive. This has been done for decades by the tobacco industry, by the meat, dairy and eggs industry and others that try to buy scientific studies that favor their product.

raverbashing 8y ago
And also by the sugar (possibly the HFCS) industry to shift blame to fats
- bad_user 8y ago
  The whole nutrition field is an absolute disgrace, giving a bad name to the medicine and science. We basically resort to having beliefs instead of depending on science, with the parent confirming husband own biases in only a couple of words. When something like 80% of studies on nutrition are either compromised or never confirmed by independent sources, it’s no wonder that people turn to the alternative medicine promoted by Fake News media outlets, no wonder that anti-vaxers are a thing in the 21st century.
  - cageface 8y ago
    Not really. Most studies support the consensus findings of nutrition studies for the last several decades. Unfortunately the meat and dairy industries have managed to muddy the waters enough to get most people to just throw up their hands and eat what they want. Processed foods are bad for you. Refined carbs and sugars are bad for you. Saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you. A diet centered around whole fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains will do more to extend your healthy lifespan than any other.
    - megaman22 8y ago
      This is no less ideological than what you purport to oppose, which is the problem in a nutshell. In the absence of religion, most of us have become religious about little, largely inconsequential lifestyle choices, with food being the most common hill to die upon, and producing some of the most strident adherents. Beware anyone telling you what you should or should not eat, because they're invariably a charlatan pushing some agenda. Ideally, you'd make some experiments and see what your body tolerated the best, but it's far easier to just cargo cult onto the trendy or virtue-signalling diet trend. As long as you're not trying to live on pixie sticks and cheetos, you're going to be okay.
      - cageface 8y ago
        There are a mountain of studies supporting this kind of diet. And it's the diet the healthiest populations in the world eat. The only diet religion is people trying to somehow claim that stuffing yourself with butter and bacon is healthy.
        megaman22 8y ago
        Oh, there are certainly a multitude of diet religions out there. Paleos, vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, non-celiac glutenphobes, ketos, the list goes on and on. Recently my mother-in-law read a book blaming all of the ills of the world on lectins that she took to heart, and wouldn't eat beans or tomatoes or grains for months. The most aggravating thing about the diet religions is that nobody seems to be able to keep to themselves and practice quietly, they are compelled to evangelize and convert the heathen to the True Way. It's very tiresome when you have more important things to be concerned about than what you are putting down your gullet.
      - bjoli 8y ago
        Those stagements are pretty much consensus among educated (as opposed to self-propelled) nutrition experts. There is little controversy in saying such a thing. Note however that the person said "centered around" not "should consist of". That allows for leeway in any direction. Another discussion is that of dietary choices being "inconsequential": Food production has large consequences, and small individual choices can on a population level be far from inconsequential.
    - galangalalgol 8y ago
      Saturated fat has been vindicated by a majority of modern studies while polyunsaturated has been crucified. Selling us industrial vegetable oils as food was clever. That doesn't mean we should eat a aide of bacon a day, but avoiding whole unprocessed foods containing saturated fats for any reason other than calorie count is flawed. And dietary cholesterol does not correlate with ldl, nor does ldl strongly correlate with death.
      - cageface 8y ago
        Numerous direct intervention studies have shown the clear causal link between dietary saturated fat and blood cholesterol levels. You can obscure this fact by playing games with population meta studies because individual baseline levels vary a lot and are genetically determined. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-set-up-to-fail/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-s... Anecdotally, I and several people I know have dramatically dropped our blood cholesterol levels by cutting this stuff out of our diets.
        ryanworl 8y ago
        Why are you concerned with blood cholesterol as opposed to e.g. calcium scoring or actual inflammation markers you can measure almost as easily as a lipid panel? One does not spontaneously develop atherosclerosis from elevated blood cholesterol. That just doesn’t make sense from a metabolic perspective.
        cageface 8y ago
        Elevated LDL is very highly correlated with heart disease. Studies that show that people born with genetically very low cholesterol levels are practically immune to heart disease reinforce this. The mechanism for this is well understood.
        bad_user 8y ago
        There are many studies confirming no link between high LDL and heart disease. It’s a myth.
    - hrnnnnnn 8y ago
      Yep. There's an effort called the True Health Initiative where they got a bunch of doctors to basically say "eat more vegetables". http://www.truehealthinitiative.org/ http://www.truehealthinitiative.org/ https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2016/11/08/David-Katz-reThink-Food-Nutrition-advice-doesn-t-keep-changing https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2016/11/08/David-K...
    - matwood 8y ago
      > Processed foods are bad for you. This is really the key, and would do wonders for a majority of the population. Even if eggs and bacon is not ideal, switching out PopTarts/donuts for an egg and slice of bacon is a healthier alternative. Add some mushrooms and a tomato on the side and you have breakfast. The other half of this equation is exercise. The benefits are enormous, yet few people do it consistently.
thermodynthrway 8y ago
Auto, oil, and tech industries too. Tech industry currently has the most pervasive and convincing propaganda. Probably 30% of what makes it to HN front page is industry shills. I'll never forget when I dumped on one of the big 5 in a thread here and got a thinly veiled legal threat from it. That's why I use throwaways now (although I keep them around for a long while to avoid ire of the mods)
- Dolores12 8y ago
  What company was it?
  - true_religion 8y ago
    It never happened. These comments pop up every so often, indicating conspiracy but naming no names, or giving no details.
    - thermodynthrway 8y ago
      Isn't that exactly what you would expect if the threats were real? I'm not a believer in conspiracies but some of the large tech companies are well known for trying to silence critics. Although the same could probably be said about any company with so much money and power. Silicon valley tries to maintain a squeaky clean image, but as we're finding out from Facebook, some of them are no better than say Comcast. From what I've seen, tech companies generally outsource all the shady bits so they have someone to point fingers at. I've been at companies they've outsourced this work to...
      - Dolores12 8y ago
        >Isn't that exactly what you would expect if the threats were real? as soon as it is throwaway account s/he should be safe
- orf 8y ago
  A threat emailed, or commented?
jamklda 8y ago
You lump them all together as if they are the same (tobacco, meat, dairy, eggs) yet you conveniently left out the Grain farming industry and Vegetarian/Vegan food industry, these industries buy scientific studies and food & nutrition organizations too.
- cageface 8y ago
  There's an order of magnitude difference between the marketing and lobbying budgets of the animal agriculture industry and the others you mentioned. There is no "big broccoli" funding dodgy nutrition studies.
  - omegaham 8y ago
    Find the facts that Big Lentil doesn't want you to know!
    - ced 8y ago
      You jest, but in Canada at least, that's a thing. http://www.lentils.org/ http://www.lentils.org/
      - cageface 8y ago
        I didn't realize until I saw this DW documentary that Canada supplies a lot of the world's lentils: https://www.dw.com/en/lentils-food-for-the-future/av-43702431 https://www.dw.com/en/lentils-food-for-the-future/av-4370243... Luckily lentils are one of the healthiest things you can eat.
        swombat 8y ago
        Says who? I bet if we do a proper study we will find out the truth: that every kind of food eventually leads to death. Of course, that's what the Fasting industry wants you to think...
        8y ago

by vfc1 8y ago

raverbashing 8y ago

And also by the sugar (possibly the HFCS) industry to shift blame to fats

bad_user 8y ago
The whole nutrition field is an absolute disgrace, giving a bad name to the medicine and science. We basically resort to having beliefs instead of depending on science, with the parent confirming husband own biases in only a couple of words. When something like 80% of studies on nutrition are either compromised or never confirmed by independent sources, it’s no wonder that people turn to the alternative medicine promoted by Fake News media outlets, no wonder that anti-vaxers are a thing in the 21st century.
- cageface 8y ago
  Not really. Most studies support the consensus findings of nutrition studies for the last several decades. Unfortunately the meat and dairy industries have managed to muddy the waters enough to get most people to just throw up their hands and eat what they want. Processed foods are bad for you. Refined carbs and sugars are bad for you. Saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you. A diet centered around whole fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains will do more to extend your healthy lifespan than any other.
  - megaman22 8y ago
    This is no less ideological than what you purport to oppose, which is the problem in a nutshell. In the absence of religion, most of us have become religious about little, largely inconsequential lifestyle choices, with food being the most common hill to die upon, and producing some of the most strident adherents. Beware anyone telling you what you should or should not eat, because they're invariably a charlatan pushing some agenda. Ideally, you'd make some experiments and see what your body tolerated the best, but it's far easier to just cargo cult onto the trendy or virtue-signalling diet trend. As long as you're not trying to live on pixie sticks and cheetos, you're going to be okay.
    - cageface 8y ago
      There are a mountain of studies supporting this kind of diet. And it's the diet the healthiest populations in the world eat. The only diet religion is people trying to somehow claim that stuffing yourself with butter and bacon is healthy.
      - megaman22 8y ago
        Oh, there are certainly a multitude of diet religions out there. Paleos, vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, non-celiac glutenphobes, ketos, the list goes on and on. Recently my mother-in-law read a book blaming all of the ills of the world on lectins that she took to heart, and wouldn't eat beans or tomatoes or grains for months. The most aggravating thing about the diet religions is that nobody seems to be able to keep to themselves and practice quietly, they are compelled to evangelize and convert the heathen to the True Way. It's very tiresome when you have more important things to be concerned about than what you are putting down your gullet.
    - bjoli 8y ago
      Those stagements are pretty much consensus among educated (as opposed to self-propelled) nutrition experts. There is little controversy in saying such a thing. Note however that the person said "centered around" not "should consist of". That allows for leeway in any direction. Another discussion is that of dietary choices being "inconsequential": Food production has large consequences, and small individual choices can on a population level be far from inconsequential.
  - galangalalgol 8y ago
    Saturated fat has been vindicated by a majority of modern studies while polyunsaturated has been crucified. Selling us industrial vegetable oils as food was clever. That doesn't mean we should eat a aide of bacon a day, but avoiding whole unprocessed foods containing saturated fats for any reason other than calorie count is flawed. And dietary cholesterol does not correlate with ldl, nor does ldl strongly correlate with death.
    - cageface 8y ago
      Numerous direct intervention studies have shown the clear causal link between dietary saturated fat and blood cholesterol levels. You can obscure this fact by playing games with population meta studies because individual baseline levels vary a lot and are genetically determined. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-set-up-to-fail/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-s... Anecdotally, I and several people I know have dramatically dropped our blood cholesterol levels by cutting this stuff out of our diets.
      - ryanworl 8y ago
        Why are you concerned with blood cholesterol as opposed to e.g. calcium scoring or actual inflammation markers you can measure almost as easily as a lipid panel? One does not spontaneously develop atherosclerosis from elevated blood cholesterol. That just doesn’t make sense from a metabolic perspective.
        cageface 8y ago
        Elevated LDL is very highly correlated with heart disease. Studies that show that people born with genetically very low cholesterol levels are practically immune to heart disease reinforce this. The mechanism for this is well understood.
        bad_user 8y ago
        There are many studies confirming no link between high LDL and heart disease. It’s a myth.
  - hrnnnnnn 8y ago
    Yep. There's an effort called the True Health Initiative where they got a bunch of doctors to basically say "eat more vegetables". http://www.truehealthinitiative.org/ http://www.truehealthinitiative.org/ https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2016/11/08/David-Katz-reThink-Food-Nutrition-advice-doesn-t-keep-changing https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2016/11/08/David-K...
  - matwood 8y ago
    > Processed foods are bad for you. This is really the key, and would do wonders for a majority of the population. Even if eggs and bacon is not ideal, switching out PopTarts/donuts for an egg and slice of bacon is a healthier alternative. Add some mushrooms and a tomato on the side and you have breakfast. The other half of this equation is exercise. The benefits are enormous, yet few people do it consistently.

thermodynthrway 8y ago

Auto, oil, and tech industries too. Tech industry currently has the most pervasive and convincing propaganda. Probably 30% of what makes it to HN front page is industry shills. I'll never forget when I dumped on one of the big 5 in a thread here and got a thinly veiled legal threat from it. That's why I use throwaways now (although I keep them around for a long while to avoid ire of the mods)

Dolores12 8y ago
What company was it?
- true_religion 8y ago
  It never happened. These comments pop up every so often, indicating conspiracy but naming no names, or giving no details.
  - thermodynthrway 8y ago
    Isn't that exactly what you would expect if the threats were real? I'm not a believer in conspiracies but some of the large tech companies are well known for trying to silence critics. Although the same could probably be said about any company with so much money and power. Silicon valley tries to maintain a squeaky clean image, but as we're finding out from Facebook, some of them are no better than say Comcast. From what I've seen, tech companies generally outsource all the shady bits so they have someone to point fingers at. I've been at companies they've outsourced this work to...
    - Dolores12 8y ago
      >Isn't that exactly what you would expect if the threats were real? as soon as it is throwaway account s/he should be safe
orf 8y ago
A threat emailed, or commented?

jamklda 8y ago

You lump them all together as if they are the same (tobacco, meat, dairy, eggs) yet you conveniently left out the Grain farming industry and Vegetarian/Vegan food industry, these industries buy scientific studies and food & nutrition organizations too.

cageface 8y ago
There's an order of magnitude difference between the marketing and lobbying budgets of the animal agriculture industry and the others you mentioned. There is no "big broccoli" funding dodgy nutrition studies.
- omegaham 8y ago
  Find the facts that Big Lentil doesn't want you to know!
  - ced 8y ago
    You jest, but in Canada at least, that's a thing. http://www.lentils.org/ http://www.lentils.org/
    - cageface 8y ago
      I didn't realize until I saw this DW documentary that Canada supplies a lot of the world's lentils: https://www.dw.com/en/lentils-food-for-the-future/av-43702431 https://www.dw.com/en/lentils-food-for-the-future/av-4370243... Luckily lentils are one of the healthiest things you can eat.
      - swombat 8y ago
        Says who? I bet if we do a proper study we will find out the truth: that every kind of food eventually leads to death. Of course, that's what the Fasting industry wants you to think...
        8y ago