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Just to pick on a tiny part of that post, consuming anti-oxidants hasn't been reliably shown to have any health benefits. If consuming anti-oxidants has any ef

Just to pick on a tiny part of that post, consuming anti-oxidants hasn't been reliably shown to have any health benefits. If consuming anti-oxidants has any effect, it's not necessarily a positive one, since the body uses oxidation for various processes, for example the immune system. You might be consuming anti-oxidants aiming to benefit your health, yet be negatively impacting your immune system's ability to fight infection and prevent cancer.

deleted 12y ago
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mapleoin 12y ago
I hope you're being ironic, because this attitude is exactly what the article is declaiming.
- spingsprong 12y ago
  Nope, not ironic. But if your aim is to increase people's health, you're going to do a better job using accurate information. The initial studies showing anti-oxidants have health benefits have struggled to be replicated, and new studies have shown anti-oxidants may be having negative health impact. Edit: since a couple of people have asked, here's one fairly good source, there are others if you search. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22419320 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22419320
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - arethuza 12y ago
      I can recommend Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" - I read this in book form, any time I see "anti-oxidant" in the context of nutrition I also start to engage full skepticism mode. Here is an article from Bad Science pointing to a Cochrane Collaboration review of the effectiveness of anti-oxidants: http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunniford-carole-caplin-the-60bn-food-supplement-industry-and-the-quantum-xrroid-dude-refute-a-cochrane-meta-analysis/ http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunni... Michael Shermer, the author of Why People Believe Weird Things, also had an interesting direct experience with nutritional pseudo-science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things
- Liesmith 12y ago
  Why would he be ironic? Consuming too many antioxidants have been tested and turn out to have some pretty ugly negative effects, just like too much of anything else at all.
  - slavoingilizov 12y ago
    Care to show us such a test or study?
    - DanBC 12y ago
      http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunniford-carole-caplin-the-60bn-food-supplement-industry-and-the-quantum-xrroid-dude-refute-a-cochrane-meta-analysis/ http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunni... That links to a 2008 Cochrane review. Here's the updated review: http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007176/antioxidant-supplements-for-prevention-of-mortality-in-healthy-participants-and-patients-with-various-diseases http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007176/antioxidant-supplemen...
      - joel_perl_prog 12y ago
        Isn't the study (not the blog, because...honestly, who cares about a blog reference) about supplements, though? My smoothie is made from whole foods, only. Supplements are a very complicated thing. I can't even venture to say whether they're good or not, based on all the conflicting information.
- safeaim 12y ago
  I'd suggest you to review the current science literature on this subject as it so far it's starting to look bad for proponents of the "You need more vitamins"-campaign. Antioxidants Could Spur Tumors by Acting on Cancer Gene http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6170/477.summary http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6170/477.summary Supplement Alert: Antioxidants May Protect Cancer Cells Instead Of Protecting Us From Them http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/02/08/supplement-alert-antioxidants-may-protect-cancer-cells-instead-of-protecting-us-from-them/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/02/08/suppleme...
- mhd 12y ago
  I see this as the perfect example why the article is mostly wrong. It supposes a personal motivation for "ignoring" allegedly good advice, whereas I'd bet that a lot more readers are looking at things from a objective, scientific angle where just anecdotes don't really count ("every person I tried this on" ain't that much better than "it works for me!"). Probably some variation/inversion of Hanlon's Razor. Not everyone who wants to see more evidence for every claim and trick is doing that out of sheer denial. There might be some room for the Nirvana fallacy here ("SuperMegaFoodStuff didn't make me into an Adonis in a week, so it's crap"), but in general I'm pro-skepticism.
oxymoron 12y ago
Anti-oxidant supplements are now generally believed to provide no real benefit, and might even have detrimental effects. See http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=709255 http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=709255 This research is about _supplements_, though. It doesn't say that it's a bad idea to consume vegetables and fruits where the anti-oxidants occur naturally, which is what OP was referring to. That said, the real gain of eating vegetables is probably not that they happen to contain anti-oxidants. Rather, they contain any number of things that are good to us which are hard to quantify individually but has been observed to do us good as a whole. To attribute the positive health effects of something as complex as an apple to a single class of components - such as anti-oxidants - is most likely cargo-cult science in its purest form.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mapleoin 12y ago

I hope you're being ironic, because this attitude is exactly what the article is declaiming.

spingsprong 12y ago
Nope, not ironic. But if your aim is to increase people's health, you're going to do a better job using accurate information. The initial studies showing anti-oxidants have health benefits have struggled to be replicated, and new studies have shown anti-oxidants may be having negative health impact. Edit: since a couple of people have asked, here's one fairly good source, there are others if you search. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22419320 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22419320
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I can recommend Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" - I read this in book form, any time I see "anti-oxidant" in the context of nutrition I also start to engage full skepticism mode. Here is an article from Bad Science pointing to a Cochrane Collaboration review of the effectiveness of anti-oxidants: http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunniford-carole-caplin-the-60bn-food-supplement-industry-and-the-quantum-xrroid-dude-refute-a-cochrane-meta-analysis/ http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunni... Michael Shermer, the author of Why People Believe Weird Things, also had an interesting direct experience with nutritional pseudo-science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things
Liesmith 12y ago
Why would he be ironic? Consuming too many antioxidants have been tested and turn out to have some pretty ugly negative effects, just like too much of anything else at all.
- slavoingilizov 12y ago
  Care to show us such a test or study?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunniford-carole-caplin-the-60bn-food-supplement-industry-and-the-quantum-xrroid-dude-refute-a-cochrane-meta-analysis/ http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunni... That links to a 2008 Cochrane review. Here's the updated review: http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007176/antioxidant-supplements-for-prevention-of-mortality-in-healthy-participants-and-patients-with-various-diseases http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007176/antioxidant-supplemen...
    - joel_perl_prog 12y ago
      Isn't the study (not the blog, because...honestly, who cares about a blog reference) about supplements, though? My smoothie is made from whole foods, only. Supplements are a very complicated thing. I can't even venture to say whether they're good or not, based on all the conflicting information.
safeaim 12y ago
I'd suggest you to review the current science literature on this subject as it so far it's starting to look bad for proponents of the "You need more vitamins"-campaign. Antioxidants Could Spur Tumors by Acting on Cancer Gene http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6170/477.summary http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6170/477.summary Supplement Alert: Antioxidants May Protect Cancer Cells Instead Of Protecting Us From Them http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/02/08/supplement-alert-antioxidants-may-protect-cancer-cells-instead-of-protecting-us-from-them/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/02/08/suppleme...
mhd 12y ago
I see this as the perfect example why the article is mostly wrong. It supposes a personal motivation for "ignoring" allegedly good advice, whereas I'd bet that a lot more readers are looking at things from a objective, scientific angle where just anecdotes don't really count ("every person I tried this on" ain't that much better than "it works for me!"). Probably some variation/inversion of Hanlon's Razor. Not everyone who wants to see more evidence for every claim and trick is doing that out of sheer denial. There might be some room for the Nirvana fallacy here ("SuperMegaFoodStuff didn't make me into an Adonis in a week, so it's crap"), but in general I'm pro-skepticism.

oxymoron 12y ago

Anti-oxidant supplements are now generally believed to provide no real benefit, and might even have detrimental effects. See http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=709255 http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=709255 This research is about _supplements_, though. It doesn't say that it's a bad idea to consume vegetables and fruits where the anti-oxidants occur naturally, which is what OP was referring to. That said, the real gain of eating vegetables is probably not that they happen to contain anti-oxidants. Rather, they contain any number of things that are good to us which are hard to quantify individually but has been observed to do us good as a whole. To attribute the positive health effects of something as complex as an apple to a single class of components - such as anti-oxidants - is most likely cargo-cult science in its purest form.