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The Dissolution of the Nutrition Science Initiative
- armchairhacker 5y agonutrition science is really hard, in part because different people react to foods differently. The general advice is: eat mostly whole foods, not too much, exercise sleep and avoid stress. After that, it’s really up to you to find what foods make you feel better and more satisfied (and of course taste better)
- gloryjulio 5y agoMissing 1 major point. You need to follow macro nutrition guidelines. There are appropriate for most people besides the outliers.
- kspacewalk2 5y agoI like Michael Pollan's three-part food mantra: 1) eat food 2) not too much 3) mostly plants 2 and 3 are mostly self-explanatory. 1 is to differentiate between food (things you make yourself or ones with a small number of pronuncible ingredients) from the rest, the vaguely edible processed food-like substances that aren't often good for you.
- rasz 5y ago>nutrition science is really hard, in part because different people react to foods differently. Nutrition science is really hard because people LIE, and all western run studies use self reporting. 'My 600-lb Life' is all you need to know about self reporting.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoMetabolism is still a mystery in a lot of people.
- m_ke 5y agoGood talk about one of their recently published studies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJLK3sVexIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJLK3sVexIk
- beefman 5y agoSome of the papers mentioned, with free full text links: Energy expenditure and body composition changes after an isocaloric ketogenic diet in overweight and obese men (2016) https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/104/2/324/4564649 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/104/2/324/4564649 Effects of a low carbohydrate diet on energy expenditure during weight loss maintenance: randomized trial (2018) https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4583 https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4583 Effect of Low-Fat vs Low-Carbohydrate Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults and the Association With Genotype Pattern or Insulin Secretion (2018) https://sci-hub.se/10.1001/jama.2018.0245 https://sci-hub.se/10.1001/jama.2018.0245 Effect of a Low Free Sugar Diet vs Usual Diet on Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Adolescent Boys (2019) https://sci-hub.se/10.1001/jama.2018.20579 https://sci-hub.se/10.1001/jama.2018.20579 Dietary sugar restriction reduces hepatic de novo lipogenesis in adolescent boys with fatty liver disease (2021) https://www.jci.org/articles/view/150996 https://www.jci.org/articles/view/150996
- hirundo 5y agoI hope we someday get the story of why Peter Attia mysteriously bailed out of his own project.
- nradov 5y agoThis article provides some of the background on why he resigned. https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-dollar40-million-nutrition-science-crusade-fell-apart/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-dollar40-million-nutrition...
- arboghast 5y ago> But the subjects all lost weight even before they cut out carbs. Taubes contended that was because the standard diet didn’t have enough refined sugary beverages to depict average American consumption. That explains it.
- exhilaration 5y agoI feel like this should be the top comment.
- temptemptemp111 5y agoTaubes et al has a rough time reconciling the idea that fructose is toxic with the (established) fact that the brain produces its own!
- omginternets 5y agoI don't think that's fair. Poison is regarded as a dose, not a substance, and Taubes' argument precisely hinges on the quantity of sugar over time.
- ianai 5y agohttps://www.wired.com/story/how-a-dollar40-million-nutrition-science-crusade-fell-apart/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-dollar40-million-nutrition... From that article, it’s clear their funded study didn’t back up their priors and they ultimately cut funding and discredited the research. From the link: "If this was an animal study, they’d have thrown them out,” he says. “Euthanized them and started over.”
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
- olliej 5y agoThe human body produces many things that are toxic if ingested. Top of my head: * Carbon dioxide - albeit just to get rid of, but it does make it :D * Hydrochloric acid * Hydrogen peroxide * Ammonia * Formaldehyde Then of course the human body creates pyrogens to fight off illness, even if they literally cook your sugar creating brain :D
- dr_dshiv 5y agoFascinating research. It is crazy how hard it is to do such well controlled nutrition science. Why is it dissolving, though? Not enough continued funding?
- kuhewa 5y agoTaubes interview on Peter Attia's podcast is fascinating. He starts by laying out his career in journalism bringing light to scientific malpractice and otherwise very sharp minds totally deluding themselves when they get stuck on a pet hypothesis. The second half of the podcast was about his later career where he took on sugar. He then illustrates all of the self delusion and poor scientific thinking he had just described. It's kind of amazing. https://peterattiamd.com/garytaubes/ https://peterattiamd.com/garytaubes/
- omginternets 5y agoCan you point to specific instances of self-delusion and poor scientific thinking? The goalpost for these accusations, as far as I'm concerned, is that you would need to show a pattern of ignoring contradicting evidence, which -- it should be noted -- is distinct from arguing that there are fundamental flaws in studies that prima facie invalidate his theory. In the latter case, it's just scholarly disagreement. It's late at night, and I'm not sure how to write this comment without it sounding like a loaded question, so please accept my assurances that it is not. It's been a while since I've read Taubes, and while the sugar/obesity debate is hardly settled, my impression was not one of delusion, nor of poor scientific reasoning. Certainly, it was a cut above the average quality of nutritional science research (though this is admittedly a very low bar).
- kuhewa 5y agoMy comment was not just with regards to the facts of the subject but the way of thinking epistemologically about hypotheses in science, because he literally spends the first hour talking about how brilliant physicists could get it so wrong in their thought process toward science. He calls it pathological science. Peter even comments on it (listen starting around 2:08 but I think might be closer to 2:12), right after Taubes says there is absolutely no way to reconcile the standard model with his hormone regulation hypothesis and that it isn't even wrong, he says that 99.9% of the time someone says that they are a quack. Not long after, he says the problem with pathological science is they establish what they are seeing based on premature data, go public, and then dig in their heels at that point — he's saying it about an adversary but could easily be said about himself. Its like he's almost self aware, but he's so sure of his view that his framework for understanding bad science doesn't apply to him. I think there's a bit of a motte and bailey that happens with Taubes proponency, where one can say there is this underappreciated role of insulin in obesity, vs the hard line he takes which is the standard energy balance model is "not even wrong", i.e., absolutely no role for a caloric surplus outside of his framework. So sure, demonstrating that a keto diet can be a game changer for a type 2 diabetic is great and Taubes has a hand bringing that to the mainstream. But that doesn't also affirm his hard, and hard to believe stance on the topic. I think what I mean is clear if you listen to the conversation about Doritos starting around 2:16, where Taubes suggests there is no hyperphasia without near-instant hormonal disregulation from adipose tissue in response to a dorito entering the mouth, and it has nothing to do with the team of food scientists that make sure they are additively delicious. Taubes could be 50-90% correct in his hypotheses, but he takes it beyond that point to the absurd and further that there is no reconciling his beliefs with competing hypotheses. I hate to be the 'just listen to the 200 minute podcast' guy, but it really is fascinating in the juxtaposition I mentioned and I'd be keen to know how much you agree or think I am off base if you did give it a listen.
- ncmncm 5y agoPromotion of sugar in the English-speaking world's diet is a much bigger public-health disaster than, e.g., COVID-19. Packaged food should have a mandatory "mg fructose-equivalent" labeling requirement.
- tasty_freeze 5y agoOne problem with your analogy is that if you eat too much sugar, it doesn't affect my health.
- Reichhardt 5y agoObesity is a major risk factor for severe COVID, and hence transmission and hospital occupation. Like the supposed factors that we are segregating the unvaccinated for.
- tasty_freeze 5y agoObesity doesn't increase the likelihood of transmission, just the severity of the outcome for that individual.
- ncmncm 5y agoThus, "severe COVID".
- mulvya 5y agoObese carriers shed lot more virus, so they would be expected to have higher attack rates. ---- Exhaled aerosol increases with COVID-19 infection, age, and obesity https://www.pnas.org/content/118/8/e2021830118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/8/e2021830118 In our observational cohort study of the exhaled breath particles of 194 healthy human subjects, and in our experimental infection study of eight nonhuman primates infected, by aerosol, with SARS-CoV-2, we found that exhaled aerosol particles vary between subjects by three orders of magnitude, with exhaled respiratory droplet number increasing with degree of COVID-19 infection and elevated BMI-years.
- Snoozus 5y agoThis is very sketchy. The guy came in with an agenda. He wrote the book first, then raised money to do the research to prove his hypothesis and finally failed to do so. Now apparently they're shutting down and we are non the wiser. All these studies can be explained by the long known effect that changing diets makes you use more energy temporarily. There might also be some truth to the old story that reducing your calories is easier when eating salad and chicken than when eating cake and ice cream. How disappointing.