5 ms·

Kind of questionable perhaps, but a good place to do these studies would be on prisoners. You could potentially do it by simply monitoring their intake and not

Kind of questionable perhaps, but a good place to do these studies would be on prisoners. You could potentially do it by simply monitoring their intake and not actually changing anything in the offering. It should be fairly reasonable to get a reliable intake report.

superqd 5y ago
Yeah, the ethics would be tough, but essentially to really do nutrition research, you MUST control the food intake. Control for age, weight, calories and activity, and vary only the dietary makeup to varying degrees, etc.
- flukus 5y ago
  > Yeah, the ethics would be tough What sort of ethical issues are you thinking? I would have thought higher grade meals than you'd find in a standard prison would entice all the volunteers you could want. There's probably other groups were some good quality meals would be just as enticing, like college students. A bigger practical issue in prisons would be things like the high prevalence of hepatitis and drug use along with all the confounding factors (like poverty) that lead them to end up in prison.
  - superqd 5y ago
    I just don't know how ethical it would be to force a particular diet that might affect someone's life expectancy without their consent. I mean, I suppose you could get volunteers...
  - ghancock 5y ago
    In the US, federally funded research institutions have to follow certain rules when doing human subjects research. When I was a researcher the training I took said prisoners generally could not be used as subjects just because they were convenient, and that the two situations where they could typically be studied were cases where prisons, crime, or something else that was inherently specific to prisoners was being studied and cases where some condition very highly over represented among prisoners was what was being studied (the example given was HIV).
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Proposal and other issues aside, I’m not sure you rely on food served to be food consumed. Prisons in most places still buy food at commissary. But I’ll agree that you might be able to quantitative compare prison A vs prison B if you can get a control prison and account for differences. Just a diet of 20% more carbs between A/B would be interesting. I imagine someone has “done science” on prisons in other areas already. Way more ethical than the typical proposals I see for prisoners/prisons on the internet.
- superqd 5y ago
  Every time I've considered how to really do nutrition research, it essentially amounts to a prison, even if voluntary. You would need to be able to lock different populations away from any source of food than what you provide, and control their daily activities, etc, for at least 2 years, though you could likely get some results after only 6 months.
gremlinsinc 5y ago
Why not self-imposed prisoners... like at a rehab-type facility. You can leave whenever you want but you don't get paid...then pay them like $5k for 1 month, or 5k/month for however long the study goes... Then it's not prison -- it's controlled but "at will"

superqd 5y ago

Yeah, the ethics would be tough, but essentially to really do nutrition research, you MUST control the food intake. Control for age, weight, calories and activity, and vary only the dietary makeup to varying degrees, etc.

flukus 5y ago
> Yeah, the ethics would be tough What sort of ethical issues are you thinking? I would have thought higher grade meals than you'd find in a standard prison would entice all the volunteers you could want. There's probably other groups were some good quality meals would be just as enticing, like college students. A bigger practical issue in prisons would be things like the high prevalence of hepatitis and drug use along with all the confounding factors (like poverty) that lead them to end up in prison.
- superqd 5y ago
  I just don't know how ethical it would be to force a particular diet that might affect someone's life expectancy without their consent. I mean, I suppose you could get volunteers...
- ghancock 5y ago
  In the US, federally funded research institutions have to follow certain rules when doing human subjects research. When I was a researcher the training I took said prisoners generally could not be used as subjects just because they were convenient, and that the two situations where they could typically be studied were cases where prisons, crime, or something else that was inherently specific to prisoners was being studied and cases where some condition very highly over represented among prisoners was what was being studied (the example given was HIV).

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

Proposal and other issues aside, I’m not sure you rely on food served to be food consumed. Prisons in most places still buy food at commissary. But I’ll agree that you might be able to quantitative compare prison A vs prison B if you can get a control prison and account for differences. Just a diet of 20% more carbs between A/B would be interesting. I imagine someone has “done science” on prisons in other areas already. Way more ethical than the typical proposals I see for prisoners/prisons on the internet.

superqd 5y ago
Every time I've considered how to really do nutrition research, it essentially amounts to a prison, even if voluntary. You would need to be able to lock different populations away from any source of food than what you provide, and control their daily activities, etc, for at least 2 years, though you could likely get some results after only 6 months.

gremlinsinc 5y ago

Why not self-imposed prisoners... like at a rehab-type facility. You can leave whenever you want but you don't get paid...then pay them like $5k for 1 month, or 5k/month for however long the study goes... Then it's not prison -- it's controlled but "at will"