
Unexpected Honey Study Shows Woes of Nutrition Research - OrwellianChild
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/upshot/surprising-honey-study-shows-woes-of-nutrition-research.html
======
vinceguidry
We need to figure out a way to categorize research topics, fields of science,
and conclusions by how firm we consider the results to be.

I listen to absolutely nothing of what comes out of the field of nutrition
science. I am aware that this may make me some number of shades less healthy,
but the savings in time is well-worth it.

I consider all nutrition studies to not be science, in the same way that I
consider a kid pulling ants apart with tweezers to be not science. The
information gleaned is of no practical value. What little there is that is of
worth ends up getting baked into laws and regulation, so again, I don't have
to worry about it. (e.g. mercury is bad for you.)

I may be interested in somebody's self-experimentation results. Tim Ferriss
wrote about the slow-carb diet, I gave it a shot, and lost weight with it. I
similarly lost weight with the intermittent fasting diet. Do I care about the
relative health effects vs. the so-called Standard American Diet? No. All I
can see, all I care about is whether it makes me lose my excess fat.

The human body is too complex for any nutrition study to approach a causative
standard of rigor. It's impossible to control for all the variables.

~~~
tertius
> What little there is that is of worth ends up getting baked into laws and
> regulation, so again, I don't have to worry about it. (e.g. mercury is bad
> for you.)

I largely agree that "nutrition science" does not have rigorous standards. One
of the reasons for this is that it's very hard to test hypotheses, legally, on
people. And there's an over reliance on self reporting.

Now, I personally find your tolerance for what would be considered unsafe way
too low. High doses of mercury will kill you very quickly. Low doses of many
things, legal things, will kill you slowly.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Most really harmful stuff is either banned / controlled already, or the
dangers are a part of common knowledge. You don't get research articles that
"touching live wires contribute to sudden unexpected heart attacks".

As for "kill you slowly" things, there's slowly and there's "so slow that you
may as well ignore it". Cigarettes and asbestos belong to the former group and
guess what, they're controlled and people know about the dangers. Dietary
stuff sits squarely in the latter - most of the "causes cancer" stuff won't
have _any_ noticeable effect on you in few decades, and if you eventually die
of cancer it _still_ won't be clearly connected to a particular lifestyle
choice.

It's basically paranoia coupled with inability to multiply probabilities (or
knowing one should do so).

~~~
tertius
And a very strong underpinning for your stance is that the origin of cancer,
for instance, is yet to be found.

And for the lay person I agree.

The problem is that it isn't black (poison, electric shock) and white
(broccoli).

For the sake of the gray argument let's ignore e-coli and smoking. A good
example here is consumption of sugar. It's not regulated because it's not
poison in the short term.

So saying that it's okay to eat as much as you like because the CDC does not
consider it poison is probably not the right way to go.

Now picking between a Paleo or a Vegan diet. I think we can agree...

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _So saying that it 's okay to eat as much as you like because the CDC does
> not consider it poison is probably not the right way to go._

I didn't mean that. That would be going to absurdity in the other direction.
We know that "sugar is bad for you in the semi-long run" as well as "breaks
teeth in the short run", so there's a reason to limit it. As you say, this
isn't black and white.

> _And a very strong underpinning for your stance is that the origin of
> cancer, for instance, is yet to be found._

I don't think origin of cancer will be in any way directly related to the food
we eat; it would be like saying that the reason a tyre is flat is because of a
nail factory in China. The underpinning of my stance is basically pure
pragmatism - if something commonly used would _actually_ give you cancer, it
would be already controlled or banned altogether. The effects most of those
overblown "X contributes to cancer" papers talk about are so small that you
can absolutely ignore it, because the probability of getting cancer from
described X is smaller than getting hit by a car driven by the researcher who
wrote the paper, who was distracted by the news about a lottery he just won.

People need to learn to ignore stuff that's so unlikely that it's
insignificant. It's funny, because the definition of "insignificant danger" is
pretty much "so unlikely that you can ignore it".

------
lars
There's a huge difference between a) not finding an effect, and b) finding
that there is no effect. The former is the default result, and is what you get
when your test lacks statistical power (from having a too low sample size). It
sucks that the former often gets reported as the latter in the press.

~~~
Gibbon1
On the other hand, honey is mostly glucose + fructose in about the same ratio
as table sugar and HFCS.

Seriously. If two things are chemically the same despite being from different
provenance, chemistry teaches to expect identical behavior for the most part.
Sometimes trace elements change things significantly. Why anyone would expect
that of honey though, wishful thinking?

~~~
LanceH
But it's all natural...

It's bad enough when they're talking about one sugar being healthier than
another, but it really gets strange when they start comparing table salt.

------
neppo
this reminds me of this study that shows how easy it is to fudge the results
if you use flawed methods:

[http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-
hel...](http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-
weight-1707251800)

------
arnie001
I think the short lived research timelines is like the rest of the world is
heading towards. There's immense pressure in both industry and the world of
investments to yield quick results which suit the perception the funding
entity is looking for. From the researchers perspective, they'd need long term
funding for their research so that the results of various sweeteners could be
studied over time. I'm not sure who would fund this.

~~~
OrwellianChild
There is an entire section of the popular research establishment devoted to
"meta-studies" that find, consolidate, and review past research of a topic,
judging each for rigor, reproducibility, elimination of bias, etc. Since these
studies are separately funded, there is less risk of bias or exaggeration of
results. If experimental results hold up to this scrutiny, broader, more
dramatic conclusions can be made. The nuances of this (and potential
complications) were discussed in Carroll's Healthcare Triage video about the
worms and replication [1]. These are easier to trust (and safer to report on),
since the heavy lifting is done by the meta-researchers rather than the time-
pressured, under-paid pop-sci writer who is trying to fill a word-count quota.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SCFlYlNlLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SCFlYlNlLQ)

------
DougN7
Already posted at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453401)

~~~
OrwellianChild
HN asked me to re-post since the original didn't get much attention before it
fell off the front page.

------
insensible
There's a huge problem with honey labeling—often the packaged product labeled
as honey is indeed mostly a cheaper sweetener.

~~~
HillRat
Just to add a little more context, the international honey market is
incredibly fraught; lead, antibiotics (including chloramphenicol, which can
cause fatal reactions in humans) and artificial sweeteners are all commonly
found in Chinese-sourced honey, much of which is transshipped through India
and East Asian nations. The upshot: buy from local honey producers with known
quality.

