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Yet another nutrition study. here's a counterpoint: > Nutrition has made no progress. It has discovered no stable facts. Everything nutritionists have said, t
by biorach 3y ago
Yet another nutrition study.
here's a counterpoint:
> Nutrition has made no progress. It has discovered no stable facts. Everything nutritionists have said, they have said the opposite ten or twenty years later (if not much sooner). They literally know nothing. After a century of countless experiments, the most common, most basic problem they’ve addressed—the optimal ratio of fat, protein, and carbohydrate—is completely unsolved. If they can’t figure that out, anything more sophisticated seems hopeless.
https://metarationality.com/nutrition https://metarationality.com/nutrition
- londons_explore 3y agoI think the problem is it is unethical to do the kinds of experiments necessary to come up with any certain facts in the field of nutrition. At a minimum, you would need to force people to eat a certain diet, with no option to sneak in a few snacks while the researchers aren't watching. And you probably need to do this for a whole generation (ie. from birth until death) to really get good data to prove that diet X leads to better outcomes than diet Y.
- closeparen 3y agoSomething I have always wondered: many people get most/all their nutrition from an institutional cafeteria (college campus, military base, arguably tech company). Why couldn’t they consent to experimentation on what it serves them?
- L_226 3y agoHow do you know they didn't - how many people read the full T&C's for anything?
- mschuster91 3y agoMost people only get lunch from cafeterias, not to mention all the unhealthy shit we snack on all the time.
- FredPret 3y agoWhat about the confounding variable that your test population all have something non-nutritional in common: the institution. Large-scale high-quality research on humans isn't possible.
- Auracle 3y agoHere's an example of study that was done like that and the results were never published: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/records-found-in-dusty-basement-undermine-decades-of-dietary-advice/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/records-found-in-...
- n8henrie 3y agoLeaving out the "birth to death" part, metabolic ward studies aren't unethical or unheard of, they're just terribly expensive and tend to be short in duration because they are so onerous. But they certainly have some advantages over, say, studies based on food frequency questionnaires.
- bryanrasmussen 3y agoCooking with The Truman Show!
- Finnucane 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iG6Hrh4v08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iG6Hrh4v08
- dobin 3y ago> Physics has made no progress. It has discovered no stable facts. Everything physicist have said, they have said the opposite ten or twenty years later (if not much sooner). They literally know nothing. After a century of countless experiments, the most common, most basic problem they’ve addressed —the basic elements of particles— is completely unsolved. If they can’t figure that out, anything more sophisticated seems hopeless. A very generic counterpoint.
- purpleflame1257 3y agoOn the contrary! The basic elements of particles is the most complex problem. Simpler issues like orbital mechanics have been solved.
- omginternets 3y agoYour counterpoint is demonstrably wrong. We landed men on the moon as a direct result of our understanding of physics, to say nothing of bridges built, supersonic planes flown, the fluid mechanics that underpin popelines, dams, etc. Nutritional science has no such trophies
- isaacfrond 3y agoYou'll love this study. They select 50 common ingredient from cookbooks, and looked studies about them. 40 of them caused cancer, but often times conflicting studies were also found. They conclude: Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak. Effect sizes shrink in meta-analyses. Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review; Jonathan D Schoenfeld 1, John P A Ioannidis. 10.3945/ajcn.112.047142
- csours 3y agoYes, because getting older is associated with cancer. If you don't eat, you don't get older (paradoxically calorie restriction is associated with longevity).
- arcticbull 3y agoI’m not sure it’s really paradoxical. Consuming and metabolizing food creates oxidative stress, and caloric restriction slows down your metabolism. As much as 21.4% over just two weeks [1], sometimes permanently [2]. Which is also why dieting fails the vast majority of people people, as they experience it as a plateau [3]. Eating less reduces your need for food ('adaptive thermogenesis'), and hence total oxidative stress load. This almost certainly reduces your risk of cancer and also more than likely slows aging. [4] [1] https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/jappl.1958.12.2.230 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/jappl.1958.1... [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27136388/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27136388/ [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/ [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5927356/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5927356/
- csours 3y agoThanks for the links and explanation! I was kind of joking - people generally have to eat to live.
- PragmaticPulp 3y ago> > They literally know nothing This entire article reads like someone only understand the field by reading clickbait headlines about nutrition (“Eggs are good for you now”) and then assumes the scientists and journalists are one and the same. It also sets up a lot of straw man arguments that rationalists are likely to come up with but that you would hear from actual science, such as the idea that they’re searching for a rationally perfect diet. I don’t know what’s going on with that site but it’s not really a good resource. Identifying some areas where the science isn’t clear or where observations has changed and then trying to use that to dismiss an entire field is a classic anti-science trope used by people who prefer to feel superior to scientists and to downplay science. It’s most commonly used on topics like climate science or anti-vaccine research.
- llm_nerd 3y agoThere is a growing trend that when research doesn't hold up (especially in regards to its significance/magnitude/importance), we resort to blaming the journalists who printed the article hyping it. That is seen on here constantly. Only if one looks any deeper they find that the journalists printed the summary provided by the researchers. That they accurately captured the message the researchers were pushing. Researchers want eyeballs, and they want the funding that comes with attention, along with the personal prestige, and this has proven incredibly corrupting. Add that a pretty good percentage of nutrition research is funded by parties with deeply conflicted interests. In any case, the site is largely accurate. The nutrition field has made extraordinarily little progress. Right now, in 2023, pretty much the only solid nutrition conclusion is "don't eat too much. Eat a variety". Almost everything else does not stand any scrutiny at all. It seems entirely valid to dismiss the nutrition field given the past forty years. It's actually interesting watching a subreddit like /r/nutrition. The place could as easily be people discussing their healing crystals and chakras. That's where we're at right now.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago<< we resort to blaming the journalists What is your point? Are you suggesting that they are not to blame? They certainly write the articles. They may even be a part of juicing up the headline sufficiently to become a perfect clickbait. Only few months ago, an article was written about recovering in 'no work' spaces, which happened to include cars. Fortune title? Scientists say car is your meditation spot ( I am paraphrasing a little since I am quoting from memory ).
- abhayhegde 3y ago> If they can’t figure that out, anything more sophisticated seems hopeless. I disagree. What seems simple enough may actually be the last piece to be figured out. We don't have as much knowledge about the fundamental blocks, atoms, as we would like, but that has seldom stopped us from building sophisticated applications using it. If anything, us not figuring out could only be an indication of how inherently complex nature can be.
- notacoward 3y ago> What seems simple enough may actually be the last piece to be figured out. In the early days of AI, before the winter, people thought that getting computers to play chess would be hard but walking or recognizing faces would be easy. Turns out that difficulty is often not where we expect, except for a general tendency for more complex more macro-level things to be harder. Even then there are exceptions, but nutrition has not shown any signs of being one.
- travisporter 3y agoYeah this really is not logical. You could have said this about so many things in the Dark ages - science, astronomy, government.
- miobrien 3y agoIs the author associated with the LessWrong community?
- astrange 3y agoSocially associated (so similar writing style) but isn't a member of their cult so the content is different ie actually reasonable. You can spot them in the comment section being upset about the page on how probability theory doesn't actually let you replace all human thoughts.
- CPLX 3y agoI guess so. I think the basic Michael Pollen formulation, which is "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants" has held up pretty well.
- balderdash 3y agoYeah - I struggle to do so, but I’m pretty sure if you stay away from processed foods and carbs, eat plant based vegan ~85% of the time, full omnivore the other ~15% (again excluding processed sugars, carbs etc.) that’s the model
- Maximus9000 3y agoAgreed. Pollen's advice basically translates to the "Mediterranean diet", which has also held up well.
- breakingrules 3y ago[dead]
- yboris 3y agoMy understanding for the confusion with nutrition studies are all the lies - industry-funded one-sided "findings" in favor of the industry. Why do you think there is any confusion about the overall health effects of eating meat, eggs, and dairy? With $ billions at stake - of course they find unethical ways to find some statistical anomaly to make their products good along some narrow dimension - and then have their money-funded media stories amplifying the lies. I strongly recommend https://nutritionfacts.org/ https://nutritionfacts.org/ - a non-profit focusing on finding the signal through the noise.
- cbsmith 3y agoFortunately there's no industry around nutrition.
- 293984j29384 3y agoI disagree. nutritionfacts.org is a biased site that has been created by a vegan doctor who built his entire career on paid speaking about vegan pseudoscience. Several of the claims made by him have been debunked by independent sources.
- the_gastropod 3y agoInteresting. Do you have any examples? I'm familiar with Dr. Greger overstating certain things, but haven't been aware of any outright falsehoods.
- 293984j29384 3y agoFeel free to Google additional examples, there are plenty. The link below only analyzes a single video by Dr. Greger and finds it riddled with errors, mistakes and what I would consider outright lies. Many of the studies quoted as "evidence" are either flawed, incomplete, or simply misrepresented by Greger to fit his prefered narrative. I'm actually a believer in plant based diets but this guy is a modern day snake oil salesman. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illness-curable-by-veganism/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illnes... https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nutritionfacts-org/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nutritionfacts-org/
- antisthenes 3y ago> the most common, most basic problem they’ve addressed—the optimal ratio of fat, protein, and carbohydrate—is completely unsolved. Anyone who makes this statement and doesn't understand that this ratio depends on personal behavior is a flat out absolute idiot and shouldn't make any public facing statements. No way to sugar coat it. This is regardless of whether nutritionists made any progress.
- smolder 3y agoAdditionally, there are different types of fats, carbs, and proteins, and many different sources of them. So, any general advice on an "optimal ratio", even for a given persons activity level and metabolism, is not likely to hold up for variations on the types and sources of macronutrients.
- _8j50 3y agoThat's so dumb, like saying "if medicine still hasn't cured the simple common cold, anything more sophisticated seems hopeless"
- FredPret 3y agoMedicine is about making injured/diseased people healthy and has cured many things now, if not the common cold. Nutrition is the smaller field about about what to eat, but it still can't say what to eat!
- _8j50 3y agoIt can tell us what not to eat. Thanks to nutrition I know drinking a can of soda everyday will probably give me diabetes. Everyone knows too much of anything is bad, what nutrition has done is better approximate how much exactly of different types of foods is too much.
- lisasays 3y agoI get the point you're trying to make - but the above itself such a pat counterargument. If we can even call it that. A combination of extreme hyperbole an straw-man attack, basically, laced with seductively sweet soundbites. Even worse than the standards of the field you're attacking.
- best_one_there 3y agoI don't think that it's possible to seperate diet from exercise meaningfully enough for most people. The optimal diet for someone who is completely sedentary is going to be completely different to the optimal diet for someone who gets a reasonable amount of exercise, and it's not going to be a flat multiplier. The protein needs of an athlete are completely different. Simple carbohydrates are processed differently if eaten prior to heavy exercise. That's just the basic stuff. The best advice I've read is to just eat and move like a mature adult. That doesn't necessarily mean never having a sweet or a beer, but it does mean prioritising full real meals over stuff like donuts, cakes, 50g sugar "coffee" drinks etc.
- arensc 3y agothis is pretty much on point, and this is why fasting and IF and reducing carbs increasing fat intake (without sugar) has been the main course action for most people concerned for their health.
- ETH_start 3y agoWe have a very good idea what constitutes a healthy diet. No one is engorging themselves on fast food every day not understanding that it's unhealthy.
- arcticbull 3y agoFor years we’ve replaced fats with sugars and advocated it as healthy. That alone should disprove the thesis we’ve got this figured out.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ETH_start 3y agoThe general scientific consensus on optimal nutrition is not perfect, and does change, but most major nutritional recommendations have remained unchanged for decades.
- paulddraper 3y ago> Nutrition has made no progress. It has discovered no stable facts. Nutrition facts that have been known for 20+ years: 1. Increased calorie consumption causes weight gain. 2. Diabetics are unable to properly metabolize carbohydrates without insulin. 3. Fat is necessary to hormone production. 4. Protein is necessary to create or maintain muscle mass. 5. Carbohydrates with high glycemic index cause fluctuations in blood sugar and energy levels. 6. Fiber promotes bowel regularity. 7. People with Celiac diseases have an autoimmune response to gluten, a protein found in grains. 8. Iron is necessary to cognition, motor development, and energy levels. 9. Vitamin A promotes eyesight. 10. Calcium is necessary for bone strength. 11. Vitamin D promotes Calcium absorption. Not a comprehensive list, just what I could think of off the top of my head.
- omginternets 3y ago#1 is credibly debated. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 come from cellular and molecular biology, not nutritional science. Nutritional science is roughly concerned with the question, "what constitutes a healthy diet?", and it has failed to produce even partial answers at every turn.
- paulddraper 3y ago> #1 is credibly debated Please cite your source. Just one source of many: https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3580 https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h3580 (2015) (I was concerned you'd say that's so obvious it doesn't count, not the opposite...) > 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 come from cellular and molecular biology, not nutritional science. These have all have nutritional studies. For example, #7 dates back to the late 19th century, decades before molecular biology.
- omginternets 3y agoThe obvious counter-example comes from the intermittent fasting literature, wherein adipose tissue loss occurs even when the net calories consumed in the IF diet are higher than in the ordinary diet. Another vastly replicated result you can find quite easily: low-glycemic-index diets and ketogenic diets can produce weight loss despite caloric excess. And lastly, a reasoning from first principles reveals a prima facie credible flaw in the caloric balance hypothesis: the body is not a closed system, ergo the law of conservation of energy does not apply. More vulgarly: you can do things like "work up an appetite" or "shit excess food". Google Scholar is positively littered with relevant literature, so I'm somewhat surprised by your skepticism. Good key words to enter are: "carbohydrate-insulin model" vs "energy balance model". The carbohydrate-insulin model is also credibly debated, of course, but the question of whether this is the right alternative is distinct from the question of whether the energy-balance model is correct. In no specific order, here is a pair of completely arbitrary papers, intended only to show that relevant papers can be found with minimal effort: - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0026049565901149 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002604... - https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/115/5/1243/6522166 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/115/5/1243/6522166 I'm not objecting to the energy-balance model, which may well be correct in an important way. I am merely pointing out that nutritional science has not managed to reach consensus on this fundamental issue. >These have all have nutritional studies. The nutritional studies did not produce these initial findings. Without pointing to specific papers, it's hard to be very precise, but I would be willing to bet that these are either dietary studies building off of biological first principles, or replication-checks in broader studies. Both are totally fair practices, but can't be considered as an indication that nutritional science is a fruitful field.
- SergeAx 3y ago> optimal ratio of fat, protein, and carbohydrate Why do you think that said optimal ratio even a thing? We are omnivores evolutioned to be able to survive on any type of food.