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> I'm still dumbfounded how we can have advanced so far in so many areas of science and technology and yet we are in the dark ages when it comes to nutrition s
by chimeracoder 8y ago
> I'm still dumbfounded how we can have advanced so far in so many areas of science and technology and yet we are in the dark ages when it comes to nutrition science. Why is that?
We're not really in the dark ages when it comes to nutrition science - we've actually learned a whole lot in the last century, but we take a lot of those advances for granted because food is such an integral part of our daily lives.
That said, nutrition is also much more difficult to study because not only are there ethical concerns that aren't present in a lot of other scientific fields, but there are an incredible number of confounding variables that make it difficult to perform conclusive, properly controlled experiments for anything but the most basic and straightforward hypotheses.
And that's all before you get into the issue of genetics and nutritional effects varying across a heterogeneous population.
- TheCowboy 8y agoI think you described it well. I'd add that it might feel like we're in some sort of dark ages, but that could stem from a growing awareness where people know more about how much we can't claim to know for certain. That awareness replacing over-confidence might imply things aren't so bleak.
- amanaplanacanal 8y agoIt's incredibly expensive to take a population, then randomize them to two different diets, then see that they actually follow those diets that you have assigned them to, for any length of time. You can't just observe people after the fact, because people don't remember what they actually ate, and even if they did you don't know what all the confounding variables even are. I'm not sure how this can even get any better than it is.