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Seriously, one day we read an article saying a diet "near starvation" will help us live longer and the next we read "excess pounds" is the way to go. The key i
by bgray 17y ago
Seriously, one day we read an article saying a diet "near starvation" will help us live longer and the next we read "excess pounds" is the way to go. The key is doing everything in moderation.
- tokenadult 17y agoThe trick in defining moderation is knowing what the extreme values are, which is why I find reports on optimal body mass indexes interesting.
- drcode 17y agoThe only way to run an experiment that could determine optimal BMI would be to lock up groups of randomly selected people in a jail-style environment for decades, where their diet could be accurately controlled. In other words, we'll never know the answer to this question for humans, despite what this article claims. We've done these experiments in animals and those experiments suggest an extreme starvation diet leads to the longest lifespan.
- tokenadult 17y agoI appreciate you mentioning the issue of experiment design in your reply. I enjoy posting in HN comments a link to Peter Norvig's article about that issue http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html which mentions some of the trade-offs involved in different forms of study designs. The history of the prescribed drug Rimonabant (Acomplia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant illustrates some of the problems with using animal studies to establish safety of interventions for human beings. The animal studies have to be done, and they are generally very helpful, but some aspects of human behavior are sufficiently complicated and not analogous to animal behavior that what looks safe and effective for animals turns out not to be beneficial for human beings.
- drcode 17y agoThanks for the great Norvig link
- bgray 17y agoAgain, body mass index is only a valid measurement if you know you're unhealthy (plenty of people are "athletic" but BMI tells them they're overweight). At that point, you don't need a semi-random telling you so. Body composition is a better measurement.
- jcromartie 17y agoExcept it seems like they're telling us moderation will kill you faster.