Posted on 12/29/2015 5:36:10 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Nutrition science is bad for your health! Not really, of course, but if you worried about every single study that linked a certain food to a negative health outcome, you'd probably go insane.
Red meat? Cancer. Grapefruit? Cancer. Cheese? Cancer. Artificial sweeteners? Obesity. Sugar? Obesity. Milk? Bone fracture. The list could go on and on, but let's get to the meat of the article.
I'm fed up with nutrition science, and you should be, too.
It was not a single study that evoked my distaste, but a nauseating status quo that's become too much to bear.
The problems with nutrition science begin with how most of its research is conducted. The vast majority of nutrition studies are observational in nature -- scientists look at people who eat certain foods and examine how their health compares with the health of people who don't eat those foods or eat them at different frequencies. But as I reported earlier this year, these sorts of studies have a high chance of being wrong. Very wrong.
In 2011, statisticians S. Stanley Young and Alan Karr teamed up to analyze twelve randomized clinical trials that scrutinized the results of 52 observational studies. Most of the observational studies showed various vitamin supplements to produce positive health outcomes. However, the superior clinical trials disagreed.
"They all confirmed no claims in the direction of the observational claims," Young and Karr revealed in Significance Magazine. "We repeat that figure: 0 out of 52. To put it another way, 100% of the observational claims failed to replicate. In fact, five claims (9.6%) are statistically significant in the clinical trials in the opposite direction to the observational claim."
Observational studies are common in nutrition research because they are relatively cheap and easy to pull off. But you get what you pay for. These studies are often shoddy, primarily because they cannot effectively control for confounding variables. Most also suffer from another key drawback, one that may render them totally meaningless: self-reported data. Subjects report their food consumption by remembering what and how much they ate. Memory is not a recording; it is a reconstruction, making it prone to error. In fact, a 2013 study found that the majority of respondents in the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a survey program that provides data for a plethora of epidemiological studies, reported eating fewer calories than the bare minimum they would need to survive! Something is seriously flawed here.
Unfortunately, when nutrition scientists employ the gold standard of scientific research -- randomized, controlled trials -- the quality of evidence isn't always much better. As health researcher Aaron Carroll wrote for the New York Times:
A 2011 systematic review of studies looking at the effects of artificial sweeteners on clinical outcomes identified 53 randomized controlled trials... only 13 of them lasted for more than a week and involved at least 10 participants. Ten of those 13 trials had a Jadad score — which is a scale from 0 (minimum) to 5 (maximum) to rate the quality of randomized control trials — of 1. This means they were of rather low quality... The longest trial was 10 weeks in length.
The dearth of high quality evidence and bounty of low quality, conflicting research has left the door open for snake oil salesmen to peddle their ineffectual and potentially dangerous products, often under the guise of scientific validity. How is the public to tell what is correct when scientists can't even agree?
Muddying the waters further is the stream of cash pouring into nutrition science from corporate interests. Nestlé funds research, as does Dannon. Coca-Cola has recently been accused of funding scientists who focus on physical activity as the primary cause for obesity rather than the copious amounts of sugar found in their undeniably unhealthy soft drinks. Many of the members of the advisory committee for the federal government's dietary guidelines also have ties to industry.
The ultimate point of nutrition research is to apprise the public of what they should and should not eat. What really is healthy? What isn't? But this endeavor may have been doomed from the start. As was recently showcased in research published to the journal Cell, what's healthy for one person may not be healthy for someone else. Tina Hesman Saey summarized the study over at ScienceNews:
"The researchers made the discovery after fitting 800 people with blood glucose monitors for a week. The people ate standard breakfasts supplied by the researchers. Although the volunteers all ate the same food, their blood glucose levels after eating those foods varied dramatically. Traits and behaviors such as body mass index, sleep, exercise, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and the kinds of microbes living in people’s intestines are associated with blood glucose responses to food, the researchers conclude."
Between poorly conducted research, pervasive corporate influence, and the simple fact that everybody reacts to specific foods differently, nutrition science as a whole must be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.
I think “nutritional science” causes cancer. I’m not sure but if I had $5,000,000. of research money I could find out.
” nutrition science as a whole must be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.”
salts bad for you
It’s all about marketing.
Bookmark
.....Traits and behaviors such as body mass index, sleep, exercise, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and the kinds of microbes living in people’s intestines are associated with blood glucose responses to food, the researchers conclude.”...
Also muscle mass—muscle eats blood sugar!!!!
Recent studies say that any amount of wine is “unhealthy”—previous studies declared wine “healthy” in moderation. I’m expecting the current finding on wine—as well as red meat—to be reversed.
The wacko “global warming” crowd demonizes meat, and wants us to be “plant strong”. As an Orthodox Christian, who experiences “plant-based” fasting periods alternating with meat-containing feast seasons, I know that I get “plant weak” and even “plant sick” instead! Eating meat again heals me!!!!
Unless you have low blood sodium!!!!
It’s very hard to get b vitamins withou animal products. Your body, especially your brain, needs them. IMO, vegetarians are irrational and unreasonable due to a deficiency of b vitamins.
Many nutritional studies also suffer from funding bias in which the result reported conforms to the interest of whomever funded the study. In addition, studies based on randomized controlled clinical trials can be affected by their study population selection criteria, with participants commonly limited to those without other potentially confounding illnesses. Although this makes for cleaner study design and easier analysis, observational studies with a more natural participant population will tend to include people who may benefit from nutritional supplementation due to other ailments.
“†nutrition science as a whole must be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.â€
salts bad for you””
I see you didn’t sugar coat it.
I don’t trust any of those “studies “. They don’t control for all variables, and the conclusions are usually backwards, confusing cause and effect.
Try living without salt and see how far you go.
JERF - just eat real food. Something that grew or had a mother with a few minerals.
My nutritional philosophy, FWIW.
” Coca-Cola has recently been accused of funding scientists who focus on physical activity as the primary cause for obesity rather than the copious amounts of sugar found in their undeniably unhealthy soft drinks.”
After accusing other people of assertions based on no or shoddy evidence, the author produces this one.
I thought this was a pretty good article, but then the author let his bias show through with this about coke...”undeniably unhealthy soft drinks”.
If as he claims all the studies are bogus then by default his statment that Coke is unhealthy is indeed deniable. He has no proof to the contrary.
“salts bad for you”
Not if your consumption comes from “a gigantic grain of salt”...it’s the details that always get you!
If we paid attention to every idiot that got a grant to conduct a “study” we’d eat nothing but rocks and twigs.
People who don’t know the first thing about chemistry or biology are feeble minded idiots and believe whatever “study” allows them to conclude we shouldn’t eat something or should eat something.
“Eat alphacarotinilingtonas! They keep cancer from your colon! This study proves it!”
WRONG. The dearth of mainstream high quality research, they mean to say. Everyone has their own way of figuring it out, by small sample size: YOU. N=1. There are some excellent blogs out there where dietary fads and trends get discussed and put to the test.
What are the tests? You can do it all yourself. You can full bloodwork, all the panels, you can test your gut bacteria through doctors (though they only test for pathogens), or there are some you can order like ubiome that give you some idea of which bacteria are running your digestion and immune system. You can test your blood sugar every day after meals and fasting (early am). You can test your blood pressure. You can do all kinds of tests yourself. Even your scale is a test.
Read and read, study, and try. Focus on clean foods with very little preparation done for you, very little pesticides. Animals should be living as free and healthy lives as possible and your plant foods should come to you in a relatively straight line from farms with as natural soil as possible.
Read about what the macro nutrients do for you. (Fats and their importance to the brain; starchy carbs, and their importance to the gut bugs who save your as$ from disease, depression, and dyspepsia; protein and how it builds you and keeps you full and strong.)
Read about different superfoods and why they are called that. Read about foods or herbs that have helped others with an ailment you have, and try it. Maybe it will work for you or maybe it will not.
Keep reading and trying things. If everything is working fine and you are enjoying your food, live it.
Keep measuring your own stats. Your weight, your clothing fit, your blood pressure, your bloodwork, your poop, everything gives you info. Doctors know absolutely nothing about the biology of nutrition, and everyone is completely different, so what works for someone else won’t always work for you.
There is so much to learn. I am fascinated by it and how much you can change by your diet. Forget the mainstream screams of “X is bad!” “Y will save your life!” And do your own research online and with your own body.
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