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To whom is an apology owed, by whom, and for what? The best science at the time indicated that saturated fats were killing people(which was true), and so publi

To whom is an apology owed, by whom, and for what? The best science at the time indicated that saturated fats were killing people(which was true), and so public advocacy groups lead campaigns to lower the consumption of saturated fats. It turns out the replacement is also killing people, but it wasn't widely known for a few decades. The reality is that nutrition isn't a priority for most Americans, and our regulations and levels of research funding reflect that. The fact is that it was preferable for most people to continue to eat fatty foods made with substances of unknown safety than to stop eating fatty foods. There was no conspiracy.

jerf 11y ago
The book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" has been read by virtually nobody. You can tell this, because it is widely believed the book is about a low-carb diet, or how bad carbs are. It's a misunderstanding that's understandable between the cover and the name, and heck, even the publisher-provided blurbs on Amazon, but what the book is actually about, by bulk of words, is the story of how the standard nutritional consensus got to be such garbage in the first place. It is primarily a history book, rather than a science work. There is a very good case to be made that the science never supported what we were told, and that it was sourced in naked political power plays. When, of course, the consensus was still the Standard Consensus, that was not an argument that the body politic could hear, but as it becomes increasingly clear that the Standard Consensus was in fact wrong [1], it becomes an increasingly important book. Nutrition is hard, and we'll be studying it for decades more. But it is not so hard that it was simply expect that we should be this fundamentally wrong, and more importantly, this wrong for this long. This took effort, and if we refuse to study what happened, we'll learn nothing from it. If indeed it the standard consensus is wrong, the signal telling us it was wrong was STAGGERINGLY ENORMOUS. We call it the "obesity epidemic". The only comparably sized epidemiological signal that comes to mind is the one that said "Lead is bad to put in the air." Those who ignored it are the ones who owe us apologies. If you're even beginning to suspect that the standard consensus is wrong, I highly recommend getting yourself a copy and reading it. The science is a bit outdated now... the history, as is the nature of history, is not. [1]: I phrase it that way because I'm still hedged a bit on my bets, though "The standard consensus was very wrong" is getting pretty high on my Bayes-O-Meter, even as I'm not really bought in to any of its replacements yet. I suppose it's worth pointing out that in previous HN discussions on these sorts of topics I've always been a bit more circumspect; my Bayes-O-Meter was merely in the "highly suspicious" range. But with the announcement from the government that they are actively reversing something previously issues forth as "truth", I've finally tipped over in outright ideologue on the topic. For the record, this is actually a considered decision, not brute emotionality or fad-following. It is also, for what it's worth, the exact reaction that I'm accusing these people of trying to avoid. They are trying to avoid exactly the anger I'm expressing here from becoming widespread, but if I'm correct, the anger would be fully justified, and the only honorable thing for them to do is to go ahead and incur the anger instead of holding us back. As you can see, I'm still hedging a bit with conditional phrases, but at this point I'm having an increasingly difficult time imagining that we're suddenly going to get a spate of (honest) studies re-confirming the standard consensus. And to be clear... I'm not asking for them to be right. That would be an unfairly large request. I'm asking for them to stop being so aggressively wrong.
- CreRecombinase 11y ago
  I used to work in molecular epidemiology for a few years and while that never included nutrition, I did become close friends with some of the best minds on the topic. The scientific establishment was not wrong about the danger of high fat diets. This has been demonstrated over and over. What the establishment got wrong was that they didn't predict the extent to which people would replace fats with sugars in their diets. Another point I think it's really important to make is that a lot of the argument about low fat or low carb is academic and I think harmful. We've known for years that a low calorie, low fat diet that's high in fiber and consists of lots of fruits and vegetables is healthy and can contribute to losing excess weight. We've recently learned that some people find it easier to lose weight with a low-carb diet, but that doesn't mean that the establishment view is wrong. I think this debate over which is better is harmful because some people get the idea that science doesn't know what's healthy and what's not, so they say to themselves "why bother listening to anything they say?". This becomes especially problematic when people conflate the statements "high carb diets are unhealthy" with "any diet not high in carbohydrates is healthy", or similarly "high fat diets are unhealthy" with "any diet not high in fat is healthy".
pkaye 11y ago
The public advocacy groups should apologize to the public for pushing wrong advice that may have killed people.
- hackuser 11y ago
  Which groups? I'd be interested in someone substantiating these accusations. EDIT: I appreciate the responses, but does anyone have a credible source? Amid criticism that what people have read has turned out untrue, let's be careful not to perpetuate the problem with more rumors.
  - pkaye 11y ago
    CSPI is one example as others have mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Public_Interest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Publ... They demonized saturated fat and pushed a switch to partially hydrogenated vegetable oils which had trans-fat. Now we say trans fat is so unhealthy that it should be banned. So a significant number of people got exposed to trans-fat due to their policy demands.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      I'm not sure I understand: * I don't put much faith in Wikipedia, but the linked article says CSPI has been consistent for 20 years: From the mid-1990s onward, however, CSPI identified trans fats as the greater public health danger. ... In response, three trade groups - the National Restaurant Association, the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers and the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils - "said the evidence [on trans fat] was contradictory and inconclusive, and accused [CSPI] of jumping to a premature conclusion" * Saturated fat is bad for you, as far as I know.
  - Zancarius 11y ago
    Check out the comment by WorldWideWayne above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9726875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9726875 The article linked to is very interesting and names CSPI (as pkaye linked to) as well as the National Heart Savers Association (NHSA).

jerf 11y ago

The book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" has been read by virtually nobody. You can tell this, because it is widely believed the book is about a low-carb diet, or how bad carbs are. It's a misunderstanding that's understandable between the cover and the name, and heck, even the publisher-provided blurbs on Amazon, but what the book is actually about, by bulk of words, is the story of how the standard nutritional consensus got to be such garbage in the first place. It is primarily a history book, rather than a science work. There is a very good case to be made that the science never supported what we were told, and that it was sourced in naked political power plays. When, of course, the consensus was still the Standard Consensus, that was not an argument that the body politic could hear, but as it becomes increasingly clear that the Standard Consensus was in fact wrong [1], it becomes an increasingly important book. Nutrition is hard, and we'll be studying it for decades more. But it is not so hard that it was simply expect that we should be this fundamentally wrong, and more importantly, this wrong for this long. This took effort, and if we refuse to study what happened, we'll learn nothing from it. If indeed it the standard consensus is wrong, the signal telling us it was wrong was STAGGERINGLY ENORMOUS. We call it the "obesity epidemic". The only comparably sized epidemiological signal that comes to mind is the one that said "Lead is bad to put in the air." Those who ignored it are the ones who owe us apologies. If you're even beginning to suspect that the standard consensus is wrong, I highly recommend getting yourself a copy and reading it. The science is a bit outdated now... the history, as is the nature of history, is not. [1]: I phrase it that way because I'm still hedged a bit on my bets, though "The standard consensus was very wrong" is getting pretty high on my Bayes-O-Meter, even as I'm not really bought in to any of its replacements yet. I suppose it's worth pointing out that in previous HN discussions on these sorts of topics I've always been a bit more circumspect; my Bayes-O-Meter was merely in the "highly suspicious" range. But with the announcement from the government that they are actively reversing something previously issues forth as "truth", I've finally tipped over in outright ideologue on the topic. For the record, this is actually a considered decision, not brute emotionality or fad-following. It is also, for what it's worth, the exact reaction that I'm accusing these people of trying to avoid. They are trying to avoid exactly the anger I'm expressing here from becoming widespread, but if I'm correct, the anger would be fully justified, and the only honorable thing for them to do is to go ahead and incur the anger instead of holding us back. As you can see, I'm still hedging a bit with conditional phrases, but at this point I'm having an increasingly difficult time imagining that we're suddenly going to get a spate of (honest) studies re-confirming the standard consensus. And to be clear... I'm not asking for them to be right. That would be an unfairly large request. I'm asking for them to stop being so aggressively wrong.

CreRecombinase 11y ago
I used to work in molecular epidemiology for a few years and while that never included nutrition, I did become close friends with some of the best minds on the topic. The scientific establishment was not wrong about the danger of high fat diets. This has been demonstrated over and over. What the establishment got wrong was that they didn't predict the extent to which people would replace fats with sugars in their diets. Another point I think it's really important to make is that a lot of the argument about low fat or low carb is academic and I think harmful. We've known for years that a low calorie, low fat diet that's high in fiber and consists of lots of fruits and vegetables is healthy and can contribute to losing excess weight. We've recently learned that some people find it easier to lose weight with a low-carb diet, but that doesn't mean that the establishment view is wrong. I think this debate over which is better is harmful because some people get the idea that science doesn't know what's healthy and what's not, so they say to themselves "why bother listening to anything they say?". This becomes especially problematic when people conflate the statements "high carb diets are unhealthy" with "any diet not high in carbohydrates is healthy", or similarly "high fat diets are unhealthy" with "any diet not high in fat is healthy".

pkaye 11y ago

The public advocacy groups should apologize to the public for pushing wrong advice that may have killed people.

hackuser 11y ago
Which groups? I'd be interested in someone substantiating these accusations. EDIT: I appreciate the responses, but does anyone have a credible source? Amid criticism that what people have read has turned out untrue, let's be careful not to perpetuate the problem with more rumors.
- pkaye 11y ago
  CSPI is one example as others have mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Public_Interest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Publ... They demonized saturated fat and pushed a switch to partially hydrogenated vegetable oils which had trans-fat. Now we say trans fat is so unhealthy that it should be banned. So a significant number of people got exposed to trans-fat due to their policy demands.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    I'm not sure I understand: * I don't put much faith in Wikipedia, but the linked article says CSPI has been consistent for 20 years: From the mid-1990s onward, however, CSPI identified trans fats as the greater public health danger. ... In response, three trade groups - the National Restaurant Association, the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers and the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils - "said the evidence [on trans fat] was contradictory and inconclusive, and accused [CSPI] of jumping to a premature conclusion" * Saturated fat is bad for you, as far as I know.
- Zancarius 11y ago
  Check out the comment by WorldWideWayne above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9726875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9726875 The article linked to is very interesting and names CSPI (as pkaye linked to) as well as the National Heart Savers Association (NHSA).