5 ms·

Well, originally thought was valid. If we eat something, there must be more of it in body. Of course, now we see that body is more complicated in case of SFA, b

by deepsun 12y ago

Well, originally thought was valid. If we eat something, there must be more of it in body. Of course, now we see that body is more complicated in case of SFA, but generally assumption works for other cases. If a cat entered a house, you generally might expect that cat should be inside the house. The reality, as we see, is more complex than that, but generally assumption works, and worked for most of the cases. I just want to say that please don't blame scientists and policy makers. Everyone's smart after the fact.

DanBC 12y ago
> Well, originally thought was valid. If we eat something, there must be more of it in body. Sadly we replaced saturated fats (eg butter) with trans-fats (eg margerine). We know that trans-fats are terrible. That possibly caused some confusion. We knew people we still having heart attacks, we just thought that they were the group still eating saturated fats.
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  And now we may have gotten worse: instead of trans fats (really bad!), we now get highly oxidized poly-unsaturated fats as restaurants have moved to seed oils for frying, which don't handle the temperatures nor the time in use very well. Oxidized fats do nasty things in the body, perhaps worse than trans fats. Bring back the stable saturated fats like coconut oil, palm oil (if sustainably produced), lard and tallow.
mikeash 12y ago
If you eat a cat, do you then contain a cat? No, you contain products of digesting a cat. The supposed cause/effect looks like magical thinking in hindsight.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jere 12y ago
  I think the original analogy refutes itself. If a strange cat enters your house, you remove it. Likewise, the human body has plenty of methods for regulating fats, sugars, sodium, etc. Of course, you can overwhelm those regulatory methods, but in general the assumption that there's a linear relationship between what you consume and the chronic levels seems pretty naive.
  - mtdewcmu 12y ago
    -- and if multiple strange cats enter your house, you start to think about closing the door. Interesting that you mention sodium. I've wondered whether the common advice to restrict sodium to reduce blood pressure actually has any effect. It would only work if your kidneys were not effectively regulating your blood sodium.
    - j_lev 12y ago
      http://www.marksdailyapple.com/salt-what-is-it-good-for/ http://www.marksdailyapple.com/salt-what-is-it-good-for/ According to this (there's a study linked within) salt's effect on blood pressure and other indicators of heart disease seem to follow a j-curve - too little or too much and you're at increased risk.
      - mtdewcmu 12y ago
        The conclusions in there are clear as mud... :)
    - awa 12y ago
      Anecdote, my father has had blood pressure trouble due to both high sodium and low sodium in the past. In the first episode of low sodium, he kept reducing his salt intake thinking that would help. A visit to ER helped fix that notion.
    - hachiya 12y ago
      Here's a recent 8 1/2 minute talk by Dr. George Guthrie (MD) on dietary salt. https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/videos/advanced-study-weekend-experts/george-guthrie/ https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/videos/advanced... He mentions the importance of the potassium-sodium ratio. Also, a 2008 article from Dr. John McDougall on salt and blood pressure: "Salt: The Scapegoat for the Western Diet" https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/aug/salt.htm https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/aug/salt.htm In the context of most dietary factors on health, salt is probably one of the smaller influences.
refurb 12y ago
Well, originally thought was valid. If we eat something, there must be more of it in body. Cholesterol is a great example. Your body makes the majority of cholesterol in your system. Diet only contributes a small amount.
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  Unless you esat a lot, then your body makes relatively little. I love the way our bodies manage cholesterol, including dumping it into the intestines and recycling it if necessary. It's a beautiful example of how well our bodies regulate themselves when fed and tested well. My body has told me it needs 236mg/dL of total cholesterol right now. You couldn't pay me to mess with that.
bluecalm 12y ago
Well... with sugar for example we know for a long time that there is only about 50deciliters*80mg/DL=4grams of glucose in blood in average healthy adult. As people are eating tons of sugar a day (snickers bar has 27g, half a liter of cola has ~50g, half of it fructose but still) it's clear stuff doesn't just go into bloodstream as we would all die before finishing that snickers bar. Somehow though fat magically getting into blood and clogging arteries was something which was accepted as common sense. I do blame policy makers and scientists as healthy amount skepticism was clearly missing.
SoftwareMaven 12y ago
If it were just incomplete science, I'd have no problem with the path we've taken, but it wassn't just a case off incomplete science. It was a case of a handful of scientists deciding on a hypothesis, then fitting data to it. When others rightly complained, a campaign of personal attacks began. Those same scientists got themselves into important positions with organizations like the AHA, giving their arguments a strong appeal to authority, not to mention giving them a huge soap box. Even that probably would have self-corrected, except politicians got involved. In the late 70s, the McGovern commission decided everybody needed a low-fat diet, which eventually entrenched the dogma in all NIH-funded studies as well as government provided food programs like school lunches and food stamps. The really unfortunate thing is these scientists will likely be remembered for this misguided direction, rather than the huge steps they took in figuring out how to even approach nutritional studies in large populations. As Feynman said, you have to make sure you aren't fooling yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. I would argue there was (and continues to be) a lot of self-fooling going on in the field of nutrition. Fortunately, it seems to be getting better, perhaps because of the influence of biochemistry and physiology.
chrismcb 12y ago
That is a poor analogy. The question isn't is the cat in the house, the question is will the cat be in the house tomorrow? How about next week?
mtdewcmu 12y ago
>> If we eat something, there must be more of it in body. That's not scientific thinking. That's more like pre-scientific Ptolemaic reasoning. If you drink more water, do you fill up with water?

by deepsun 12y ago

DanBC 12y ago

> Well, originally thought was valid. If we eat something, there must be more of it in body. Sadly we replaced saturated fats (eg butter) with trans-fats (eg margerine). We know that trans-fats are terrible. That possibly caused some confusion. We knew people we still having heart attacks, we just thought that they were the group still eating saturated fats.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago
And now we may have gotten worse: instead of trans fats (really bad!), we now get highly oxidized poly-unsaturated fats as restaurants have moved to seed oils for frying, which don't handle the temperatures nor the time in use very well. Oxidized fats do nasty things in the body, perhaps worse than trans fats. Bring back the stable saturated fats like coconut oil, palm oil (if sustainably produced), lard and tallow.

mikeash 12y ago

If you eat a cat, do you then contain a cat? No, you contain products of digesting a cat. The supposed cause/effect looks like magical thinking in hindsight.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jere 12y ago
I think the original analogy refutes itself. If a strange cat enters your house, you remove it. Likewise, the human body has plenty of methods for regulating fats, sugars, sodium, etc. Of course, you can overwhelm those regulatory methods, but in general the assumption that there's a linear relationship between what you consume and the chronic levels seems pretty naive.
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  -- and if multiple strange cats enter your house, you start to think about closing the door. Interesting that you mention sodium. I've wondered whether the common advice to restrict sodium to reduce blood pressure actually has any effect. It would only work if your kidneys were not effectively regulating your blood sodium.
  - j_lev 12y ago
    http://www.marksdailyapple.com/salt-what-is-it-good-for/ http://www.marksdailyapple.com/salt-what-is-it-good-for/ According to this (there's a study linked within) salt's effect on blood pressure and other indicators of heart disease seem to follow a j-curve - too little or too much and you're at increased risk.
    - mtdewcmu 12y ago
      The conclusions in there are clear as mud... :)
  - awa 12y ago
    Anecdote, my father has had blood pressure trouble due to both high sodium and low sodium in the past. In the first episode of low sodium, he kept reducing his salt intake thinking that would help. A visit to ER helped fix that notion.
  - hachiya 12y ago
    Here's a recent 8 1/2 minute talk by Dr. George Guthrie (MD) on dietary salt. https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/videos/advanced-study-weekend-experts/george-guthrie/ https://www.drmcdougall.com/health/education/videos/advanced... He mentions the importance of the potassium-sodium ratio. Also, a 2008 article from Dr. John McDougall on salt and blood pressure: "Salt: The Scapegoat for the Western Diet" https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/aug/salt.htm https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/aug/salt.htm In the context of most dietary factors on health, salt is probably one of the smaller influences.

refurb 12y ago

Well, originally thought was valid. If we eat something, there must be more of it in body. Cholesterol is a great example. Your body makes the majority of cholesterol in your system. Diet only contributes a small amount.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago
Unless you esat a lot, then your body makes relatively little. I love the way our bodies manage cholesterol, including dumping it into the intestines and recycling it if necessary. It's a beautiful example of how well our bodies regulate themselves when fed and tested well. My body has told me it needs 236mg/dL of total cholesterol right now. You couldn't pay me to mess with that.

bluecalm 12y ago

Well... with sugar for example we know for a long time that there is only about 50deciliters*80mg/DL=4grams of glucose in blood in average healthy adult. As people are eating tons of sugar a day (snickers bar has 27g, half a liter of cola has ~50g, half of it fructose but still) it's clear stuff doesn't just go into bloodstream as we would all die before finishing that snickers bar. Somehow though fat magically getting into blood and clogging arteries was something which was accepted as common sense. I do blame policy makers and scientists as healthy amount skepticism was clearly missing.

SoftwareMaven 12y ago

If it were just incomplete science, I'd have no problem with the path we've taken, but it wassn't just a case off incomplete science. It was a case of a handful of scientists deciding on a hypothesis, then fitting data to it. When others rightly complained, a campaign of personal attacks began. Those same scientists got themselves into important positions with organizations like the AHA, giving their arguments a strong appeal to authority, not to mention giving them a huge soap box. Even that probably would have self-corrected, except politicians got involved. In the late 70s, the McGovern commission decided everybody needed a low-fat diet, which eventually entrenched the dogma in all NIH-funded studies as well as government provided food programs like school lunches and food stamps. The really unfortunate thing is these scientists will likely be remembered for this misguided direction, rather than the huge steps they took in figuring out how to even approach nutritional studies in large populations. As Feynman said, you have to make sure you aren't fooling yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. I would argue there was (and continues to be) a lot of self-fooling going on in the field of nutrition. Fortunately, it seems to be getting better, perhaps because of the influence of biochemistry and physiology.

chrismcb 12y ago

That is a poor analogy. The question isn't is the cat in the house, the question is will the cat be in the house tomorrow? How about next week?

mtdewcmu 12y ago

>> If we eat something, there must be more of it in body. That's not scientific thinking. That's more like pre-scientific Ptolemaic reasoning. If you drink more water, do you fill up with water?