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Due to some fairly serious diet-related personal health issues (obesity and several related co-morbidities), 5 years ago I started closely following nutrition s

Due to some fairly serious diet-related personal health issues (obesity and several related co-morbidities), 5 years ago I started closely following nutrition science. In this time, the clearest thing I've learned is that the vast majority of "Nutrition Science" is poor science - to the extent of hardly being science at all. * If the data is based on diary data, it's noisy to the extent of being nearly useless and no causation can be implied. * Doing rigorous controlled studies on humans is very difficult and astronomically expensive. Even then, it's incredibly easy for significant confounds and errors to slip in. * With nutrition studies in general, animal models are usually weak proxies for humans. A large number of significant nutrition results in animals fail to replicate in humans. * Humans metabolic responses to nutrition are highly variable and contingent on everything from genetic make-up and ethnicity to behavior and environment, etc. So, even in the rare cases statistical causation is demonstrated, it probably still depends on other variables. * There is a high degree of bias in nutrition science. This includes many funding sources having vested interests from commercial (food lobbies (meat, wheat, milk, etc)) and many researchers having ideological biases (anti-meat vegetarians, anti-meat climate concerns, anti-meat animal welfare, etc) * Accepting any result as significant requires skeptically examining the methods, statistics and history of the authors and funders.

copperx 4y ago
I agree. And al of that leads to information fatigue. After reading many studies, I'm even worried about "common sense" nutrition knowledge, for example: * I'm worried about increasing my fruit and vegetable intake, because that will raise my pesticide burden. It is not clear whether the benefits of fruits and vegetables make up for the increased probability of cancer of pesticide consumption. Organic produce is not a solution, as the pesticide burden is even higher. * Increasing fish consumption of even "healthy" dishes will increase heavy metal consumption. Is it worth it? * Taking Omega 3 supplements greatly increases the risk of prostate cancer. Is it really worth it? You can't rely on anything to make dietary decisions for longevity. The best one can aim for is dietary advice to maintain a healthy weight. That, at least, can be quickly proven empirically.
- mrandish 4y ago
  I agree it's confusing. If longevity is a goal then moderation and balance in all things is key. I think there's also decent evidence for keeping your body on the "lean" side of "healthy weight" per the age-adjusted BMI charts through moderate caloric restriction. The evidence is growing for the near-term health benefits of minimizing consumption of processed foods. Primarily all the stuff in bags and boxes that can sit on store shelves for weeks and months and not spoil. I've also learned to not place much value on "organic" labels. It's expensive and hard to do correctly and not universally better even when it is done correctly. The external verification requirements are almost entirely based on remotely filed "self-reports" with inspections.

copperx 4y ago

I agree. And al of that leads to information fatigue. After reading many studies, I'm even worried about "common sense" nutrition knowledge, for example: * I'm worried about increasing my fruit and vegetable intake, because that will raise my pesticide burden. It is not clear whether the benefits of fruits and vegetables make up for the increased probability of cancer of pesticide consumption. Organic produce is not a solution, as the pesticide burden is even higher. * Increasing fish consumption of even "healthy" dishes will increase heavy metal consumption. Is it worth it? * Taking Omega 3 supplements greatly increases the risk of prostate cancer. Is it really worth it? You can't rely on anything to make dietary decisions for longevity. The best one can aim for is dietary advice to maintain a healthy weight. That, at least, can be quickly proven empirically.

mrandish 4y ago
I agree it's confusing. If longevity is a goal then moderation and balance in all things is key. I think there's also decent evidence for keeping your body on the "lean" side of "healthy weight" per the age-adjusted BMI charts through moderate caloric restriction. The evidence is growing for the near-term health benefits of minimizing consumption of processed foods. Primarily all the stuff in bags and boxes that can sit on store shelves for weeks and months and not spoil. I've also learned to not place much value on "organic" labels. It's expensive and hard to do correctly and not universally better even when it is done correctly. The external verification requirements are almost entirely based on remotely filed "self-reports" with inspections.