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"Conclusions: Our analysis suggests that higher consumption of eggs (more than 1 egg/day) was not associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but

by JPKab 6y ago

"Conclusions: Our analysis suggests that higher consumption of eggs (more than 1 egg/day) was not associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but was associated with a significant reduction in risk of coronary artery disease." When I was a kid, for a few years, I had a stepmom who was relatively high educated, and was very quick to pivot to the healthy diet of the 90s: grains for breakfast, pasta for dinner. When I would spend the night out, and come home and talk about how much I loved the breakfast at my friend's house (eggs and bacon) she would call them "ignorant rednecks" and talk about how "some people are just too dumb to listen to science or doctors." My "redneck" friends has a much healthier diet than I did. We know this now. Yet people still blindly trust the US public health authorities. I'm not a moron, so I don't inherently mistrust their statements either. I just think a healthy skepticism is warranted with US public health messaging and the science that they fund. Entire careers in academia were flushed down the toilet because a brave few tried to point out how incredibly flawed the "dietary cholesterol causes heart disease" narrative. Think about this: the leading scientists and the scientific community in the 1990s strongly believed that both eggs and avocados strongly increased the risk of heart disease. Avocados. Bad for your health.......... Looking at our collective love of avocados today, it should be a highly publicized rebuke of how awful the FDA's food pyramid campaign was.

thelean12 6y ago
This view is really bad. The only logical thing to do is to follow current scientific consensus the best we can. Adjust ourselves as those views adjust. Anything else is just pure ego saying that you know better than experts. Random examples where you were "right" or the scientific consensus was "wrong" are irrelevant. Edit: I'm just saying that the scientific method is the best tool we have for this kind of stuff, even with the bias and flaws of the studies. It's miles and miles better than Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon.
- ve55 6y ago
  The mistake is when one assumes that the things they read on media outlets and on TV are anywhere close to a 'scientific consensus' in an area such as nutrition.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    Since I'm getting downvoted to oblivion I feel compelled to respond: I never said to assume that.
    - ve55 6y ago
      Correct, I didn't intend it as a critique of you specifically, but rather something that I see a lot of others do, so I apologize for the overly-direct wording (edited it to make this more clear).
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Scientific studies aren't gospel. They can be affected by the sensibilities of grant agencies, funding from industry, flawed experiment design, and p-hacking, among others. Peter Norvig's essay on experiment design comes to mind: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
  - rriepe 6y ago
    > Scientific studies aren't gospel. I've found this depends on the person.
    - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
      >> Scientific studies aren't gospel. >I've found this depends on the person. Good point. It is indeed gospel for some people :) Infact in the new era of Covid, we now have common people parrot the opinion of medical 'experts' verbatim as though it were gospel
  - thelean12 6y ago
    Of course. So what? The current alternative to scientific studies (with their varying degrees of bias and flaws) are Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon that apparently are so compelling that they get upvoted to the top of HN.
    - JPKab 6y ago
      The "facebook-esque anecdote" was intended to point out the failings of acting as if scientific institutions are practicing science in a pure, non-biased way and blindly trusting the humans in these institutions to not be subject to corrupting influences. My stepmother's god-like idolatry of the scientific method was conflated with the very flawed humans who were supposed to be using the scientific method. Your original point is a fair one, but you probably aren't aware of the fact that, on this specific topic, the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices, including destroying the career of a researcher at Harvard who was relegated to obscurity despite later being proven correct. Dissent against Keys' lipid hypothesis of any form was career suicide in the human nutrition community. The viciousness of the attacks against dissenters was particularly remarkable, due to the fervent belief that undermining the "fat is bad" narrative would kill people. They were wrong, and your point of view assumes that it's self-correcting over the long-term, so don't argue. In the case of the lipid hypothesis, it wasn't self-correcting at all. It's been a decades long fight to try to get a bunch of smug asshole academics to admit they fucked over the public for decades with their hubris.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- corn_dog 6y ago
  First figure out if there is any kind of scientific consensus, and how solid it is.
- MrPatan 6y ago
  Ah, there's the problem. The scientific method is great, but it doesn't apply itself. It's scientists that are the problem. Scientists are only human. Let's do an experiment. Or better, let's do a Gedankenexperiment so we sound more like experts: Look around your (virtual) workplace. See that well-spoken idiot who you know is wrong about everything, but who somehow gets the attention and the money to run whatever projects they want? That's the expert. You are not the expert, even though you know more stuff, because nobody asks you. And when you insisted they were wrong, they got rid of you. The same thing happens everywhere, in academia, science, government, medicine... everywhere. We are only human. But not to worry! It's all right. Thanks to the scientific method science actually advances, even if it's one funeral at a time. Just be careful who you trust.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    Your anti-science vibe is terrifying. Be very careful about how you word stuff like this, even if at the end of the day it's just healthy skepticism. It's the same vibe that gives power to conspiracy theories.
    - rhesa 6y ago
      Their comment didn't sound anti-science to me at all. They're critical of academia and how that functions. SMBC had a comic on this recently that illustrates the difference, the issues, and possible improvements: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/science-fictions https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/science-fictions
    - MrPatan 6y ago
      I'm very pro science. But science is very hard to do properly, and even when done it's very hard to find it. Pop science articles you read online, written by journalists? At best just clickbait. (I read them too. Only human...) Unfortunately there is no substitute to thinking for yourself. The best way to start is with the question "does it work?". If the question doesn't make sense no need to carry on, we're off science altogether.
    - vangelis 6y ago
- dennis_jeeves 6y ago
  >The only logical thing to do is to follow current scientific consensus the best we can. Until you figure out that most 'scientists' are morons, and are biased/ignorant/academic. An anecdote from an observant, meticulous, objective layman is far more dependable than the gobbledygook that characterizes most published research.
  - JPKab 6y ago
    Aggressive conformists demand religious adherence to established institutions, because the institutions are a source of comfort to them. The parent poster comes off like an inquisitor silencing heretics, because that's exactly what he thinks he's doing. Sure, this heretic might have a point, but the Church must be protected AT ALL COSTS.
    - thelean12 6y ago
      Incorrect, and you're starting to fly off the rails here. It's fine to critique studies and findings. It's not okay to say that you or your facebook friends know better and can substitute your own thoughts on a subject. That is how we get Covid deniers or vaccine conspiracy theories or the million other misinformation issues we have right now.
- teilo 6y ago
  Regarding nutrition: this view is great until you define "science" as whatever advice your doctor gives you. The problem is that there have been plenty of studies long before these more enlightened times we live in, which demonstrated that saturated animal fats, eggs, salt, and red meat are good for you, whereas high-grain and starch diets, seed oils, sugar, and hydrogenated fats are bad for you. And what happened? These studies went against the FDA guidelines and the nutritional training of an entire generations of MDs, and thus were ignored and ridiculed. This resulted in a massive increase in type-2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. We like to think that the medical experts we rely upon follow the science. They don't. To this day, the majority of MDs in the US follow the 60 year old guidelines that killed so many people prematurely. Despite the resounding preponderance of the evidence. And it doesn't end there. The same is true for related areas like the whole cholesterol debacle that ignores HDL/LDL ratios, and especially ignores blood calcium levels. Even when they know better, i.e., when the research shows that high cholesterol in a healthy ratio with low to non-existent blood calcium levels is perfectly healthy and does not need treatment, they will still prescribe statins, or tell such patients to cut out red meat and eggs. This is not following the science, even while acknowledging that the patient is already healthy. The same story with carnivore diets and diabetes. Even when the tests show that the patient has a vastly improved blood glucose count on a carnivore diet, i.e., they are getting healthier, and the doctor sees it and admits it, and he is aware of research which found the same correlation, he will still insist that they need to go back to eating a predominantly grain-based diet, because his training, and the peer pressure from his colleagues are overriding the science. Because of this, it is up to you to find doctors who actually follow the science. They are out there. You just have to look for them.
cpursley 6y ago
Follow the money. The FDA is a political organization.
- djrogers 6y ago
  The 'food pyramid' doesn't come from the FDA, it's a USDA (department of agriculture) construct, and was designed from all appearances, to prop up or increase our intake of grains grown by US farmers.
  - cpursley 6y ago
    That's right, I meant to say USDA.
giarc 6y ago
It's ironic that now that a study comes out that supports your view, you accept it, but when the big studies said something opposite people were just "blindly trust the US public health authorities".
- undefined1 6y ago
  this is a meta-analysis, not a singular study.
- something98 6y ago
  I've got news for you. There never were any (well done) big studies that said the opposite. However, there were health authorities that repeated really bad "science" because it supported their preconceived notions.
- JPKab 6y ago
  You are making assumptions that I wasn't skeptical of this study. I am. This study has pretty strong data behind it, and a much more rigorous methodology than studies which were literally foundational to Ansel Keys' lipid hypothesis that are borderline fraudulent in how the data was manipulated. The study which had the strongest impact on my opinions with dietary fat consumption was the longitudinal Framingham Heart Study. It's far, far more rigorous (and expensive) than virtually any of the studies being crapped out by the publish or perish grant-chasers. The absolute vitriol and emotional, irrational responses to the contradictions raised by Framingham really taught me lessons about the fashion-driven, corrupt nature of certain communities in academia.
chickenpotpie 6y ago
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but I’m going to nitpick and say a breakfast of bacon and eggs is not healthier than a breakfast of grains depending on what those grains are. White bread vs bacon, debatable. But oatmeal/quinoa is obviously healthier than bacon. I don’t think there are any government agencies pushing the idea that bacon is part of a healthy diet
- zionic 6y ago
  I really don't think you can say definitely that oatmeal is a better breakfast for a growing child than bacon. Oatmeal is tons of empty carbs that will be burned fast, cause an acute insulin response, and ultimately provide less critical protein to a growing child.
  - chickenpotpie 6y ago
    I don’t think the above poster can say that bacon is better than grains considering they’re full of saturated fat, sodium, and nitrates. Oatmeal is also not “empty carbs” it has a lot of fiber, protein, and nutrients
    - aaomidi 6y ago
      Sodium is fine. Nitrates no idea. Saturated fats we can't decide on if they're good or evil. Non saturated fats are newer to our diet as a species too. Just to keep that in mind.
      - reducesuffering 6y ago
        Nitrates and Nitrites are the leading culprit for red meat causing cancer. There is bacon that is cured without them. It's just that they are added to most bacon and almost all processed red meats.
        djrogers 6y ago
        > There is bacon that is cured without them. No, there really isn't. What we have is bacon producers using a loophole to use 'natural' nitrates from things like celery for curing. They're the exact same molecule and perform the same function, but because they used processed celery juice instead of pure sodium nitrite, they get to claim they're nitrate free. They aren't.
52-6F-62 6y ago
Sidenote: I wish I could find good, or even any, low-fat options these days. They all seemed to have been left in the 90's. I had to even quit the seed-filled breads I loved because of my troubled pancreas (non-diabetic). I miss whole eggs so much... Also sidenote: this is the picture regarding cardiovascular health, but with extremely high-fat foods and diets being the mode right now I'll bet we see a bit of an uptick on chronic pancreatitis cases in time. Moderation, as always, is the best course for most... "everything in moderation, especially moderation"
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Does you pancreas actually hurt when you eat an egg, or did your doctor just tell you to stop eating them?
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    I lost a significant portion of my pancreas to necrosis and subsequently went into multiple organ failure—all out of the blue. Almost killed me last June/July. I was told, while lacking a concerted diagnosis, that the only reason I survived or didn't end up in the ICU was because I was in good shape and I was young (far too young for what they were seeing). It wasn't just eggs. It was any dietary fats and alcohol. Eggs just happen to be something I ate most days for breakfast after the gym and suddenly could not keep down, along with most foods, and even water, at the time. Dehydration and kidney failure sucks, no matter what the cool kids tell you. Ended up losing about 50lbs of muscle and body fat in all of a couple of weeks. They didn't want to risk surgery, partially due to the liquid compressing my lungs needed to subside, and since pancreatic necrotic debridement can be problematic in itself, and there had ended up being multiple deposits of necrotic material and other unidentified inflamed regions throughout my abdomen—so the least invasive option was put forward first: a modified diet and pain medication when I need it. I might not feel pain immediately, and it's less the pain that I'm worried about—but until I have more imaging done and receive a diagnosis or the old "all-clear" I'm assumed to be at risk for developing chronic problems, or worse. (One does not simply keep on living without a pancreas) So, I've been on a diet that puts me at below 30g of dietary fats a day total for about seven months now. Of particular concern is overloading the mechanism of pancreatic enzyme production, so that 30g has to be spread throughout the day evenly—can't have concentrated quantities that exists in some foods. It's the saddest diet. Most flavourful foods have a high fat content. Most non-fat options will just throw in some xanthum gum as a thickener and sugar and salt to flavour. It's not the same. In short: it was the summary opinion of about 8 doctors including several surgeons at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, a hepatobiliary surgical oncologist in at St Joseph Hospital in Toronto, my GP, and several others. Eggs are little dietary fat bombs. I miss eggs, they're one of my favourite foods, and they're so healthy—it's where I used to get most of my B12 (I was already deficient). Egg whites are... fine.
rriepe 6y ago
The food pyramid is an enduring icon of institutional incompetence. What they should have done instead is mandate the use of the term "lipids" instead of "fat" on nutrition labels. Vocabulary could do so much to solve our problems. We are a nation of fat people who think that eating fat makes you fat. Then we also think that eating cholesterol gives us high cholesterol. We use a different word for a cow when it's on our dinner plate but we can't do the same for fat? I guess this idea doesn't give the graphic designer anything to do.
zionic 6y ago
Slightly tangential, but your mom might have reduced your height. I recall reading a study a few years ago that found a strong correlation between high protein for breakfast and the length of the femur.
- moltar 6y ago
  Would love to read this study if it’s not too difficult to dig out from history. :)
saghm 6y ago
I expected to see this linked here already, but I don't see it, so here it is https://youtu.be/5Ua-WVg1SsA https://youtu.be/5Ua-WVg1SsA
eej71 6y ago
This College Humor skit captures the evolving advice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA
vidanay 6y ago
When I was in Scouting in the mid 80's, we had an adult leader who would only let us bring one egg per person on weekend camping trips. He was maniacal about how bad eggs are for you. Imaging two dozen 13 year old boys running though the woods and all they had to eat was one scrambled egg and half pound of burnt bacon each.
- souprock 6y ago
  There was a winning move: When you want two dozen eggs, but you can only bring a single egg, choose ostrich. If each of the two dozen boys would like 3 normal eggs, they can share 3 ostrich eggs. Since each boy can bring one egg, 8 such meals are possible. For a weekend trip, everybody could subsist purely on eggs.
phendrenad2 6y ago
Yes, I think that the problem is, we as a society believe that all science is created equal. Obviously dietary science is lagging way behind, say, particle physics. But we blindly accept everything every field of study has reached a 51% consensus on.
- JPKab 6y ago
  The fact that you mentioned the particle physics field is hilarious, because one of the most influential scientific journalists to start attacking the lipid hypothesis was Gary Taubes. Taubes found the lipid story in the course of investigating the "bad science and fraud" that was present in the string theory community within physics. A physicist he was interviewing told Taubes: "If you think the string theory science is terrible, just wait until you see human nutritional science." This prompted a deeper conversation, and when Taubes started digging, he was shocked enough by what he found to write what turned out to be the first of several books on the topic.
suifbwish 6y ago
Keep in mind this study might not be about egg consumption but rather the overall risk of disease in those who happen to eat more eggs than other people. A lot of people who eat several eggs a day are also going to the gym to try to build muscle mass.
1-6 6y ago
I'm also on the fence about how salt is 'unhealthy'. Read the book The Salt Fix by Dr. James DiNicolantonio
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Yeah the human body is exquisitely designed to maintain a salt balance. Sweat, urine, even tears control excretion of excess. Unless your body is compromised, eat all the salt you want.
rmason 6y ago
Saw a movie back in I think the seventies that involved a time traveler coming back to present day America. He's happily eating what was regarded at the time as a very unhealthy diet and is horrified at all the people eating what we all thought was the healthy choice. It was a comedic punchline throughout the movie. I dropped eating eggs for thirty years because we were all lied to by the experts. But as a result it brings me sheer joy to eat eggs for breakfast every single day - at my doctors recommendation ;<). What the experts should have warned us about was our sugar intake. I have reduced mine, it's not that difficult, and only wish I had known to do so decades ago.
- eternalny1 6y ago
  > Saw a movie back in I think the seventies that involved a time traveler coming back to present day America. He's happily eating what was regarded at the time as a very unhealthy diet and is horrified at all the people eating what we all thought was the healthy choice. It was a comedic punchline throughout the movie. You are probably talking about Woody Allen's "Sleeper". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_(1973_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_(1973_film)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kryogen1c 6y ago
  for a less comedic take, take daniel quinn's jellyfish parable in ishmael, an adventure of mind and spirit. an anthropoligst visits an alien planet and talks to a jellyfish about its cultures creation myth. indignant, the jellyfish recoil - they have no such myth, only a scientific account as rational creatures. obviously, agrees the researcher; did life first appear on land or sea? confused, the jellyfish ask what is meant. well, the researcher, says, was the first life here or over there (pointing past the shore inland). the jellyfish are more confused - there is nothing past the shoreline. that is the edge of the great bowl that holds the ocean. https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/chorus/workshop5/173729.shtml https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/chorus/workshop5/17372... it is a simple tale, but its simplicity is somehow lost on most of our population, both scientific and otherwise. the idea that we're at the pinnacle of knowledge for anything is very silly. operate with assumptions, but dont pretend theyre not assumptions. we're still learning.
shireboy 6y ago
Not to get too political, but now do masks/HCQ/covid. It's just tricky. In the end, many "scientists"- and _especially_ science reporters are too confident, and many "armchair scientists" are as well. We should all try to do the best we can to follow the science, keep a healthy dose of skepticism, and be kind and understanding of people who may land on different opinions than us. Imagine if your stepmom had said "I've seen differing studies on this topic, and just come down on the side that bacon and eggs are bad" as opposed to "everybody who disagrees with me is an ignorant redneck". Will leave it to the reader to apply that to today's topic du jur.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  No, the "food pyramid" is different. It's an absolute lie based on no research whatsoever. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rebuilding-the-food-pyramid/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rebuilding-the-fo...
silicon2401 6y ago
Anecdotal, but I have to root for eggs whenever I get the chance. I've eaten at least 3 eggs a day every single day for almost a decade, before which I didn't stick to a number and would often eat 6-8 eggs a day. My doctor recently told my cholesterol was perfect. Maybe I'm an exception or maybe I have the right genes for eggs, no idea. But they're definitely not an automatic health disaster like many people think they are.
- onnnon 6y ago
  When you eat foods with cholesterol, it has little effect on your cholesterol levels because your cells make it by themselves, and the body will only absorb cholesterol if your levels are low. If you have good cholesterol levels, you can eat many eggs and your cholesterol wont go up. High cholesterol is caused from eating too many sugars and starches which causes an insulin spike that tells the cells to make more cholesterol even when they don't need it.
hdhsjjjxj 6y ago
When I was in middle school they had the food guide pyramid which recommended 13 servings of grain, such as cereal, a day. It was just obviously absurd. I would lol thinking of someone trying to eat 13 bowls of cereal
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  That would be 13 cups (unit of measure) of cereal a day, probably 4-6 bowls depending on how generous you are when pouring it into a bowl. Or 13 slices of bread (which is most of a loaf). That doesn't seem at all like a reasonably recommended number. Trying to find real charts, it looks like by 1992 they were recommending a range of 6-11 servings of grains (rice, cereals, pasta, breads). Which is at least a more reasonable number if you swing towards the low end.
spacemanmatt 6y ago
> how awful the FDA's food pyramid campaign was. I would propose s/awful/corrupt

by JPKab 6y ago

thelean12 6y ago

This view is really bad. The only logical thing to do is to follow current scientific consensus the best we can. Adjust ourselves as those views adjust. Anything else is just pure ego saying that you know better than experts. Random examples where you were "right" or the scientific consensus was "wrong" are irrelevant. Edit: I'm just saying that the scientific method is the best tool we have for this kind of stuff, even with the bias and flaws of the studies. It's miles and miles better than Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon.

ve55 6y ago
The mistake is when one assumes that the things they read on media outlets and on TV are anywhere close to a 'scientific consensus' in an area such as nutrition.
- thelean12 6y ago
  Since I'm getting downvoted to oblivion I feel compelled to respond: I never said to assume that.
  - ve55 6y ago
    Correct, I didn't intend it as a critique of you specifically, but rather something that I see a lot of others do, so I apologize for the overly-direct wording (edited it to make this more clear).
SkyMarshal 6y ago
Scientific studies aren't gospel. They can be affected by the sensibilities of grant agencies, funding from industry, flawed experiment design, and p-hacking, among others. Peter Norvig's essay on experiment design comes to mind: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
- rriepe 6y ago
  > Scientific studies aren't gospel. I've found this depends on the person.
  - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
    >> Scientific studies aren't gospel. >I've found this depends on the person. Good point. It is indeed gospel for some people :) Infact in the new era of Covid, we now have common people parrot the opinion of medical 'experts' verbatim as though it were gospel
- thelean12 6y ago
  Of course. So what? The current alternative to scientific studies (with their varying degrees of bias and flaws) are Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon that apparently are so compelling that they get upvoted to the top of HN.
  - JPKab 6y ago
    The "facebook-esque anecdote" was intended to point out the failings of acting as if scientific institutions are practicing science in a pure, non-biased way and blindly trusting the humans in these institutions to not be subject to corrupting influences. My stepmother's god-like idolatry of the scientific method was conflated with the very flawed humans who were supposed to be using the scientific method. Your original point is a fair one, but you probably aren't aware of the fact that, on this specific topic, the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices, including destroying the career of a researcher at Harvard who was relegated to obscurity despite later being proven correct. Dissent against Keys' lipid hypothesis of any form was career suicide in the human nutrition community. The viciousness of the attacks against dissenters was particularly remarkable, due to the fervent belief that undermining the "fat is bad" narrative would kill people. They were wrong, and your point of view assumes that it's self-correcting over the long-term, so don't argue. In the case of the lipid hypothesis, it wasn't self-correcting at all. It's been a decades long fight to try to get a bunch of smug asshole academics to admit they fucked over the public for decades with their hubris.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
corn_dog 6y ago
First figure out if there is any kind of scientific consensus, and how solid it is.
MrPatan 6y ago
Ah, there's the problem. The scientific method is great, but it doesn't apply itself. It's scientists that are the problem. Scientists are only human. Let's do an experiment. Or better, let's do a Gedankenexperiment so we sound more like experts: Look around your (virtual) workplace. See that well-spoken idiot who you know is wrong about everything, but who somehow gets the attention and the money to run whatever projects they want? That's the expert. You are not the expert, even though you know more stuff, because nobody asks you. And when you insisted they were wrong, they got rid of you. The same thing happens everywhere, in academia, science, government, medicine... everywhere. We are only human. But not to worry! It's all right. Thanks to the scientific method science actually advances, even if it's one funeral at a time. Just be careful who you trust.
- thelean12 6y ago
  Your anti-science vibe is terrifying. Be very careful about how you word stuff like this, even if at the end of the day it's just healthy skepticism. It's the same vibe that gives power to conspiracy theories.
  - rhesa 6y ago
    Their comment didn't sound anti-science to me at all. They're critical of academia and how that functions. SMBC had a comic on this recently that illustrates the difference, the issues, and possible improvements: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/science-fictions https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/science-fictions
  - MrPatan 6y ago
    I'm very pro science. But science is very hard to do properly, and even when done it's very hard to find it. Pop science articles you read online, written by journalists? At best just clickbait. (I read them too. Only human...) Unfortunately there is no substitute to thinking for yourself. The best way to start is with the question "does it work?". If the question doesn't make sense no need to carry on, we're off science altogether.
  - vangelis 6y ago
dennis_jeeves 6y ago
>The only logical thing to do is to follow current scientific consensus the best we can. Until you figure out that most 'scientists' are morons, and are biased/ignorant/academic. An anecdote from an observant, meticulous, objective layman is far more dependable than the gobbledygook that characterizes most published research.
- JPKab 6y ago
  Aggressive conformists demand religious adherence to established institutions, because the institutions are a source of comfort to them. The parent poster comes off like an inquisitor silencing heretics, because that's exactly what he thinks he's doing. Sure, this heretic might have a point, but the Church must be protected AT ALL COSTS.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    Incorrect, and you're starting to fly off the rails here. It's fine to critique studies and findings. It's not okay to say that you or your facebook friends know better and can substitute your own thoughts on a subject. That is how we get Covid deniers or vaccine conspiracy theories or the million other misinformation issues we have right now.
teilo 6y ago
Regarding nutrition: this view is great until you define "science" as whatever advice your doctor gives you. The problem is that there have been plenty of studies long before these more enlightened times we live in, which demonstrated that saturated animal fats, eggs, salt, and red meat are good for you, whereas high-grain and starch diets, seed oils, sugar, and hydrogenated fats are bad for you. And what happened? These studies went against the FDA guidelines and the nutritional training of an entire generations of MDs, and thus were ignored and ridiculed. This resulted in a massive increase in type-2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. We like to think that the medical experts we rely upon follow the science. They don't. To this day, the majority of MDs in the US follow the 60 year old guidelines that killed so many people prematurely. Despite the resounding preponderance of the evidence. And it doesn't end there. The same is true for related areas like the whole cholesterol debacle that ignores HDL/LDL ratios, and especially ignores blood calcium levels. Even when they know better, i.e., when the research shows that high cholesterol in a healthy ratio with low to non-existent blood calcium levels is perfectly healthy and does not need treatment, they will still prescribe statins, or tell such patients to cut out red meat and eggs. This is not following the science, even while acknowledging that the patient is already healthy. The same story with carnivore diets and diabetes. Even when the tests show that the patient has a vastly improved blood glucose count on a carnivore diet, i.e., they are getting healthier, and the doctor sees it and admits it, and he is aware of research which found the same correlation, he will still insist that they need to go back to eating a predominantly grain-based diet, because his training, and the peer pressure from his colleagues are overriding the science. Because of this, it is up to you to find doctors who actually follow the science. They are out there. You just have to look for them.

cpursley 6y ago

Follow the money. The FDA is a political organization.

djrogers 6y ago
The 'food pyramid' doesn't come from the FDA, it's a USDA (department of agriculture) construct, and was designed from all appearances, to prop up or increase our intake of grains grown by US farmers.
- cpursley 6y ago
  That's right, I meant to say USDA.

giarc 6y ago

It's ironic that now that a study comes out that supports your view, you accept it, but when the big studies said something opposite people were just "blindly trust the US public health authorities".

undefined1 6y ago
this is a meta-analysis, not a singular study.
something98 6y ago
I've got news for you. There never were any (well done) big studies that said the opposite. However, there were health authorities that repeated really bad "science" because it supported their preconceived notions.
JPKab 6y ago
You are making assumptions that I wasn't skeptical of this study. I am. This study has pretty strong data behind it, and a much more rigorous methodology than studies which were literally foundational to Ansel Keys' lipid hypothesis that are borderline fraudulent in how the data was manipulated. The study which had the strongest impact on my opinions with dietary fat consumption was the longitudinal Framingham Heart Study. It's far, far more rigorous (and expensive) than virtually any of the studies being crapped out by the publish or perish grant-chasers. The absolute vitriol and emotional, irrational responses to the contradictions raised by Framingham really taught me lessons about the fashion-driven, corrupt nature of certain communities in academia.

chickenpotpie 6y ago

I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but I’m going to nitpick and say a breakfast of bacon and eggs is not healthier than a breakfast of grains depending on what those grains are. White bread vs bacon, debatable. But oatmeal/quinoa is obviously healthier than bacon. I don’t think there are any government agencies pushing the idea that bacon is part of a healthy diet

zionic 6y ago
I really don't think you can say definitely that oatmeal is a better breakfast for a growing child than bacon. Oatmeal is tons of empty carbs that will be burned fast, cause an acute insulin response, and ultimately provide less critical protein to a growing child.
- chickenpotpie 6y ago
  I don’t think the above poster can say that bacon is better than grains considering they’re full of saturated fat, sodium, and nitrates. Oatmeal is also not “empty carbs” it has a lot of fiber, protein, and nutrients
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Sodium is fine. Nitrates no idea. Saturated fats we can't decide on if they're good or evil. Non saturated fats are newer to our diet as a species too. Just to keep that in mind.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      Nitrates and Nitrites are the leading culprit for red meat causing cancer. There is bacon that is cured without them. It's just that they are added to most bacon and almost all processed red meats.
      - djrogers 6y ago
        > There is bacon that is cured without them. No, there really isn't. What we have is bacon producers using a loophole to use 'natural' nitrates from things like celery for curing. They're the exact same molecule and perform the same function, but because they used processed celery juice instead of pure sodium nitrite, they get to claim they're nitrate free. They aren't.

52-6F-62 6y ago

Sidenote: I wish I could find good, or even any, low-fat options these days. They all seemed to have been left in the 90's. I had to even quit the seed-filled breads I loved because of my troubled pancreas (non-diabetic). I miss whole eggs so much... Also sidenote: this is the picture regarding cardiovascular health, but with extremely high-fat foods and diets being the mode right now I'll bet we see a bit of an uptick on chronic pancreatitis cases in time. Moderation, as always, is the best course for most... "everything in moderation, especially moderation"

jay_kyburz 6y ago
Does you pancreas actually hurt when you eat an egg, or did your doctor just tell you to stop eating them?
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  I lost a significant portion of my pancreas to necrosis and subsequently went into multiple organ failure—all out of the blue. Almost killed me last June/July. I was told, while lacking a concerted diagnosis, that the only reason I survived or didn't end up in the ICU was because I was in good shape and I was young (far too young for what they were seeing). It wasn't just eggs. It was any dietary fats and alcohol. Eggs just happen to be something I ate most days for breakfast after the gym and suddenly could not keep down, along with most foods, and even water, at the time. Dehydration and kidney failure sucks, no matter what the cool kids tell you. Ended up losing about 50lbs of muscle and body fat in all of a couple of weeks. They didn't want to risk surgery, partially due to the liquid compressing my lungs needed to subside, and since pancreatic necrotic debridement can be problematic in itself, and there had ended up being multiple deposits of necrotic material and other unidentified inflamed regions throughout my abdomen—so the least invasive option was put forward first: a modified diet and pain medication when I need it. I might not feel pain immediately, and it's less the pain that I'm worried about—but until I have more imaging done and receive a diagnosis or the old "all-clear" I'm assumed to be at risk for developing chronic problems, or worse. (One does not simply keep on living without a pancreas) So, I've been on a diet that puts me at below 30g of dietary fats a day total for about seven months now. Of particular concern is overloading the mechanism of pancreatic enzyme production, so that 30g has to be spread throughout the day evenly—can't have concentrated quantities that exists in some foods. It's the saddest diet. Most flavourful foods have a high fat content. Most non-fat options will just throw in some xanthum gum as a thickener and sugar and salt to flavour. It's not the same. In short: it was the summary opinion of about 8 doctors including several surgeons at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, a hepatobiliary surgical oncologist in at St Joseph Hospital in Toronto, my GP, and several others. Eggs are little dietary fat bombs. I miss eggs, they're one of my favourite foods, and they're so healthy—it's where I used to get most of my B12 (I was already deficient). Egg whites are... fine.

rriepe 6y ago

The food pyramid is an enduring icon of institutional incompetence. What they should have done instead is mandate the use of the term "lipids" instead of "fat" on nutrition labels. Vocabulary could do so much to solve our problems. We are a nation of fat people who think that eating fat makes you fat. Then we also think that eating cholesterol gives us high cholesterol. We use a different word for a cow when it's on our dinner plate but we can't do the same for fat? I guess this idea doesn't give the graphic designer anything to do.

zionic 6y ago

Slightly tangential, but your mom might have reduced your height. I recall reading a study a few years ago that found a strong correlation between high protein for breakfast and the length of the femur.

moltar 6y ago
Would love to read this study if it’s not too difficult to dig out from history. :)

saghm 6y ago

I expected to see this linked here already, but I don't see it, so here it is https://youtu.be/5Ua-WVg1SsA https://youtu.be/5Ua-WVg1SsA

eej71 6y ago

This College Humor skit captures the evolving advice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA

vidanay 6y ago

When I was in Scouting in the mid 80's, we had an adult leader who would only let us bring one egg per person on weekend camping trips. He was maniacal about how bad eggs are for you. Imaging two dozen 13 year old boys running though the woods and all they had to eat was one scrambled egg and half pound of burnt bacon each.

souprock 6y ago
There was a winning move: When you want two dozen eggs, but you can only bring a single egg, choose ostrich. If each of the two dozen boys would like 3 normal eggs, they can share 3 ostrich eggs. Since each boy can bring one egg, 8 such meals are possible. For a weekend trip, everybody could subsist purely on eggs.

phendrenad2 6y ago

Yes, I think that the problem is, we as a society believe that all science is created equal. Obviously dietary science is lagging way behind, say, particle physics. But we blindly accept everything every field of study has reached a 51% consensus on.

JPKab 6y ago
The fact that you mentioned the particle physics field is hilarious, because one of the most influential scientific journalists to start attacking the lipid hypothesis was Gary Taubes. Taubes found the lipid story in the course of investigating the "bad science and fraud" that was present in the string theory community within physics. A physicist he was interviewing told Taubes: "If you think the string theory science is terrible, just wait until you see human nutritional science." This prompted a deeper conversation, and when Taubes started digging, he was shocked enough by what he found to write what turned out to be the first of several books on the topic.

suifbwish 6y ago

Keep in mind this study might not be about egg consumption but rather the overall risk of disease in those who happen to eat more eggs than other people. A lot of people who eat several eggs a day are also going to the gym to try to build muscle mass.

1-6 6y ago

I'm also on the fence about how salt is 'unhealthy'. Read the book The Salt Fix by Dr. James DiNicolantonio

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Yeah the human body is exquisitely designed to maintain a salt balance. Sweat, urine, even tears control excretion of excess. Unless your body is compromised, eat all the salt you want.

rmason 6y ago

Saw a movie back in I think the seventies that involved a time traveler coming back to present day America. He's happily eating what was regarded at the time as a very unhealthy diet and is horrified at all the people eating what we all thought was the healthy choice. It was a comedic punchline throughout the movie. I dropped eating eggs for thirty years because we were all lied to by the experts. But as a result it brings me sheer joy to eat eggs for breakfast every single day - at my doctors recommendation ;<). What the experts should have warned us about was our sugar intake. I have reduced mine, it's not that difficult, and only wish I had known to do so decades ago.

eternalny1 6y ago
> Saw a movie back in I think the seventies that involved a time traveler coming back to present day America. He's happily eating what was regarded at the time as a very unhealthy diet and is horrified at all the people eating what we all thought was the healthy choice. It was a comedic punchline throughout the movie. You are probably talking about Woody Allen's "Sleeper". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_(1973_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_(1973_film)
deleted 6y ago
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kryogen1c 6y ago
for a less comedic take, take daniel quinn's jellyfish parable in ishmael, an adventure of mind and spirit. an anthropoligst visits an alien planet and talks to a jellyfish about its cultures creation myth. indignant, the jellyfish recoil - they have no such myth, only a scientific account as rational creatures. obviously, agrees the researcher; did life first appear on land or sea? confused, the jellyfish ask what is meant. well, the researcher, says, was the first life here or over there (pointing past the shore inland). the jellyfish are more confused - there is nothing past the shoreline. that is the edge of the great bowl that holds the ocean. https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/chorus/workshop5/173729.shtml https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/chorus/workshop5/17372... it is a simple tale, but its simplicity is somehow lost on most of our population, both scientific and otherwise. the idea that we're at the pinnacle of knowledge for anything is very silly. operate with assumptions, but dont pretend theyre not assumptions. we're still learning.

shireboy 6y ago

Not to get too political, but now do masks/HCQ/covid. It's just tricky. In the end, many "scientists"- and _especially_ science reporters are too confident, and many "armchair scientists" are as well. We should all try to do the best we can to follow the science, keep a healthy dose of skepticism, and be kind and understanding of people who may land on different opinions than us. Imagine if your stepmom had said "I've seen differing studies on this topic, and just come down on the side that bacon and eggs are bad" as opposed to "everybody who disagrees with me is an ignorant redneck". Will leave it to the reader to apply that to today's topic du jur.

pmiller2 6y ago
No, the "food pyramid" is different. It's an absolute lie based on no research whatsoever. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rebuilding-the-food-pyramid/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rebuilding-the-fo...

silicon2401 6y ago

Anecdotal, but I have to root for eggs whenever I get the chance. I've eaten at least 3 eggs a day every single day for almost a decade, before which I didn't stick to a number and would often eat 6-8 eggs a day. My doctor recently told my cholesterol was perfect. Maybe I'm an exception or maybe I have the right genes for eggs, no idea. But they're definitely not an automatic health disaster like many people think they are.

onnnon 6y ago
When you eat foods with cholesterol, it has little effect on your cholesterol levels because your cells make it by themselves, and the body will only absorb cholesterol if your levels are low. If you have good cholesterol levels, you can eat many eggs and your cholesterol wont go up. High cholesterol is caused from eating too many sugars and starches which causes an insulin spike that tells the cells to make more cholesterol even when they don't need it.

hdhsjjjxj 6y ago

When I was in middle school they had the food guide pyramid which recommended 13 servings of grain, such as cereal, a day. It was just obviously absurd. I would lol thinking of someone trying to eat 13 bowls of cereal

Jtsummers 6y ago
That would be 13 cups (unit of measure) of cereal a day, probably 4-6 bowls depending on how generous you are when pouring it into a bowl. Or 13 slices of bread (which is most of a loaf). That doesn't seem at all like a reasonably recommended number. Trying to find real charts, it looks like by 1992 they were recommending a range of 6-11 servings of grains (rice, cereals, pasta, breads). Which is at least a more reasonable number if you swing towards the low end.

spacemanmatt 6y ago

> how awful the FDA's food pyramid campaign was. I would propose s/awful/corrupt