

Science and Pseudoscience in Adult Nutrition Research and Practice - michael_dorfman
http://www.csicop.org/si/2009-03/spector.html

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jackchristopher
Thank you. It's great to have someone "within ranks" saying what many have
been saying for decades.

One of the problems in the field is summed here> _"Why are certain long-term
epidemiology/observation studies (EOS) continued in spite of the persistent
publication of pseudoscience from these studies?"_

Those type of studies are why they keep flipping on eggs. It's _oxidized_
cholesterol (and saturated fat) which helps along heart disease, not the
generic form. In fact, the body makes both if you don't eat enough. [1][2] Are
our bodies trying to kill us?

 _"there is no convincing comparative outcome evidence (as I defined above)
that common foodstuffs, e.g., saturated fats like butter, rapidly absorbed
carbohydrates like white rice and potatoes, or animal proteins, are especially
helpful or harmful."_

The body prefers saturated fat as a fuel source. Body fat is mostly saturated.
When you burn fat your running on "artery clogging" saturated fat. Secondly it
likes glucose. It converts all carbs sources to glucose then glycogen. But
when you overload calories (from say, rice), the body trans-saturates it to
palmitic acid, a saturated fat. [3]

Hi-GI foods, like rice and potatoes, turn to glycogen quicker. Supposedly
high-GI = bad. But I think the better theory is high-GI = bad, given
qualifiers x and y.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipogenesis>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid>

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gregwebs
I'm glad to see someone put some thought to what is obvious- that nutritional
research (or at least the recommendation that people create from it) are
broken.

What is one to do?

    
    
       "BMI between 20-25"
    

OK advice, but others have pointed out that BMI is a misleading number.

    
    
       "only follow nutritional advice if proven to be safe and effective."
    

Unfortunately the advice that meets that criteria is extremely limited.

    
    
       "Practice moderation in nutritional matters"
    

This statement is meaningless, as people will define moderation to fit what
they want to do.

    
    
       "ingest enough vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins B-12 and D"
    

Good, if vague advice.

Kudos for tearing down modern nutritional research. However, the author seems
to end up making the case that there is nothing we should do to improve our
diet- that we must sit and wait decades for things to be proven.

If you don't have good enough modern research one idea is to look to history,
to examine traditions and see if there is value in them. Here is one example
of someone doing that.
<http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/pricetoc.html>

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youngian
I'm happy to settle for Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food. Not too much.
Mostly plants." Although I admit I don't follow that as closely as a maybe
should. Sure, it would be nice to have some better science in this area. But I
think eating a wide variety of food in moderation is enough to keep us
generally healthy (the flaw being that Americans are absolutely terrible at
doing anything in moderation).

~~~
gregwebs
Again, I have to ask, what does moderation mean? In my experience, I have
found that almost everyone believes they eat in moderation. The sole exception
would be with respect to calories/weight gain. I can only conclude that it is
meaningless except in the context where it means eat the amount of calories
that you burn.

~~~
youngian
This is an incredibly tough question, both because it varies widely from
person to person and because it's very hard to quantify in numbers.

We are in love with numbers, and we think that we can just count the calories
that go into our bodies and that is the secret to becoming skinnier (replace
"calories" with "carbs" or any other measurement for the latest diet trend).
The BMI is another (albeit much saner) manifestation of this desire to have
magic numbers.

We're also enamoured with single-focus solutions: eat less tortillas and get
fit, eat a stalk of celery every two hours, chug a glass of water before a
meal, whatever the magazine rack at the grocery store tells us.

I am of the opinion that this is all badly misguided, especially because it
needn't be that complicated. Eat on a regular schedule, in portions that leave
you full but not satiated. Try to buy more raw food products and less highly-
processed stuff. Include different types of food in each meal. _Exercise
regularly_ (there really is no substitute for this). Set your goals with
yardsticks like cardiovascular endurance (for the layman, "can I jog up a
flight of stairs without gasping?") instead of trying to lose x number of
pounds in a week.

So no, I can't give you an exact answer. It will probably be centuries before
nutritional science can do so, if ever. But I firmly believe that we can make
ourselves a lot healthier by taking some simple steps to compensate for the
fact that our modern lives do not follow the patterns that our bodies evolved
to cope with.

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sharpn
A well-reasoned piece, although I understand that using BMI without
considering muscle mass can be misleading.

~~~
jwilliams
Indeed -- There is a article/discussion on BMI here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689349>

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billswift
I've recently started an(other) effort to lose my excess weight. Since this
time I am on the web I have been looking for more research. It appears there
is very little useful information available. The biggest problem, it appears
to me, is the lack of any financial incentive to run large controlled trials
of diets as there is in drug trials. What we really, really need for
nutritional science to advance much more, is for large-scale controlled
experiments, but without the millions of dollars drug companies put into
testing their products, in the hopes of making it back from sales on
successful drugs, it is not going to happen.

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div
Meaty, well-referenced, scientifically based article. A pleasure to read once
I ran it through Readability (<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>)

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jackchristopher
More detail by the author in this article:
<http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/nutrition/>

