
Ask HN: Where to get reliable information on nutrition/health? - _6cj7
Given amount of information on nutrition it is hard to wrap your head around it. On top of that, I constantly question the veracity of claims that are being made [0]<p>Which sources do you use to learn more about health &amp; nutrition (anything from podcasts to papers will do)?<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;13&#x2F;well&#x2F;eat&#x2F;how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html
======
notadoc
The author Michael Pollan summed it up fairly well with "Eat food, not too
much, mostly plants."

When in doubt, try to think what humans evolved to do and to process, and try
to mimic that.

For nutrition, did we evolve with enormous servings of fast food, donuts, and
spend millions of years eating highly refined highly concentrated packaged
garbage packed full of preservatives, chemicals, and mystery substances, all
consumed in absurd quantities? Or did we evolve to eat a diverse range of
plants with occasional proteins and meats?

For health and exercise, did we spend millions of years sitting around
watching TV and being screen sloths? Or did we spend millions of years walking
dozens of miles every day, with near constant physical activity in some form
or another?

As for studies and raw data, NIH pubmed
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/), NHS,
EU, all have interesting raw largely non-opinionated information to scan
through.

~~~
stevefeinstein
You could argue that evolution will adapt to processed white food as a dietary
staple.

I dare say the diabetes and heart disease epidemic is the start of natural
selection weeding out the genes less tolerant of high carb, high fat diets.

~~~
notadoc
Sure, give in a few million years and I am sure we will be optimized for
packaged donuts.

------
mstaoru
I'm a co-founder of a company doing science-based tailored meal plans for
people here in Shanghai, China, and over a few years of pre-study on this, we
developed a framework to sift through the body of nutritional knowledge.

As a part of it, we're also making something similar to SpamAssassin for
articles. "A friend of mine" is co-hosting SciHub mirror, so we parse and
index an extensive collection of papers.

We ban for any "toxins", "detox.+", "mycotoxin", juicing, for anything "leaky
gut"-related, any "meso-/ecto-/whatever-"-morph (somehow this stuff is popular
here in China), any trademark mention, all Bulletproof® Coffee™ and such; ban
most "doctors" mentioned on quackwatch.org + our own blacklist (Mercola,
Osprey, Taubes etc).

Generally, we don't trust anything from the Internet, double-check the books,
and re-check the scientific papers. Many papers study very small cohorts
(N=10-20) or miss important correlation issues (like the famous Blue Zones
study or China study).

Learn to recognize that ~30% of current proven knowledge will be disproven in
the future, like cholesterol.

Personally, I trust Dr. David Katz, examine.com, to less degree
consumerlab.com, healthnewsreview.org, sciencebasedmedicine.org,
nutritionfacts.org.

~~~
jmstfv
Thanks for the reply! What is your take on foundmyfitness.com and Dr. Rhonda
Patrick in general?

~~~
mstaoru
Happy if it helped. IMO Dr. Rhonda Patrick is good, even if she is a
biochemist. Her nutrition advice is mostly based on others' work and is well
researched and solid. I'm skeptical about the whole cryo thing, and we do not
support smoothie movement, so we mostly ignore that part. She's certainly
worth to listen/read.

------
letharion
[http://dietdoctor.com/](http://dietdoctor.com/) is my primary source of
information on both nutrition and health. zaptheimpaler makes a good point to
listen to your own body. Some years ago, I wasn't, and I felt like crap a lot
of the time, with something that sounds a lot like IBS.

I switched my diet over to something more closely to what diet doctor
advocates, and have gotten slighly more strict with every year, becauase I
_feel_ a little better. To me, the "proof" that the information is accurate is
that I feel good.

I have the impression, though this may be dated information, that a lot of
science on the topic has been primarily focused on measuring the number of
calories in/out, because that's easy to measure. When you try to measure
_quality_ of your calories, everything becomes magnitudes more complicated to
prove, so there's far less reliable science on the topic.

------
maga
As a long time DIY Soylent aficionado I use examine.com[0] as my go to source
on supplements and USDA Food Composition Databases[1] to look up nutrition
info on food. When and if I need community input on stuff, I usually go to the
DIY section of Soylent forum[2].

[0][https://examine.com/](https://examine.com/)

[1][https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/](https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/)

[2][https://discourse.soylent.com/c/diy](https://discourse.soylent.com/c/diy)

------
open-source-ux
If you want a reputable look at health stories in the press (admittedly with a
strong UK focus), the NHS website has an excellent section called 'Behind the
headlines'. It looks at health stories in the news and examines them in more
detail, debunking misleading claims. You can trust that the information is
reputable and there is no commercial conflict of interest.

The health articles are written for the layperson and go to the source of the
research - explaining the methodology and limitations of a particular study.

It's an excellent resource and one that deserves a wider audience in my view:

[http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx](http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx)

Here's how they reported on a recent story about bread: _Is white bread just
as healthy as brown?_

[http://www.nhs.uk/news/2017/06June/Pages/Is-white-bread-
just...](http://www.nhs.uk/news/2017/06June/Pages/Is-white-bread-just-as-
healthy-as-brown.aspx)

And here's one from 2015: _Sugar intake should be drastically reduced, says
report_

[http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/07July/Pages/Sugar-intake-
should...](http://www.nhs.uk/news/2015/07July/Pages/Sugar-intake-should-be-
drastically-reduced-says-report.aspx)

------
goncalogordo
I'm trying to solve this exact problem, since I had/have it too. Not just for
nutrition but for all habits.

I read directly from scientific articles. And I'm also trying to come up with
a methodology to select the best and most useful ones, that can provide
actionable guidance in terms of which lifestyle changes to adopt.

You can find more about my habits and the papers I've selected in one of my
answers on reddit [0] or you can also check a prototype I created to help me
find which lifestyle changes would most improve my health/longevity [1]

Let me know if I can help in any other way

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/5isp2r/what_thin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/5isp2r/what_things_are_you_doing_to_delay_aging_which/)

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.healthylab...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.healthylabs.android.healthyhabits)

~~~
jmstfv
Thanks for the links! Reading from a source and weeding out "low-quality
stuff" is a valuable skill to have. Not so long ago a study on telomere length
was lambasted by HN community for having low sample size [0]

How do you choose which papers to follow? Any rules of thumb/red flags for
assessing a paper?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575361)

~~~
goncalogordo
Yes, definitely!

First, I start with a clear goal/question in mind: e.g. which lifestyle
changes could help me live longer? Then there are several things I look for
when assessing a specific paper:

a) Sample size is key. Small samples are not very reliable as you can reach
almost any conclusion you want. I also prefer looking at meta-analysis (this
is when scientists look at all the studies that analysed a given topic). This
means more data (larger samples) and less risk of biases.

b) Low P-value (below 5% is what you're looking for). This is the probability
that the effect found was due to randomness. If this is too high, then you
cannot rely on your conclusions.

c) Adjusting for other variables that could explain the effect that was found
in the study. E.g. if you want to find if eating more vegetables is healthy,
you should adjust for exercise, so you can compare people that do the same
amount of exercise but eat different amounts of vegetables. Otherwise the
effect found could be explained by other variables not adjusted for.

d) No funding bias. Is this a study stating that eating X is good but funded
by the Association of X Producers? Avoid those :)

e) No publication bias (this only applies to meta-analysis). This is when
scientists don't publish their findings (e.g. because they did a small study,
or found an insignificant effect, or found an effect they or their funders
"didn't like"). Most good meta-analysis will comment on this (it's also called
Funnel test/analysis).

f) Human studies. I tend to ignore studies that aren't done with humans as the
probability the conclusions will hold in humans is actually very low (probably
less than 10%). It's also preferable to have intervention studies (when you
get two groups of people that receive two different interventions - e.g.
eating beets juice and placebo - and compare outcomes; they generally don't
know which intervention they're getting) vs. observational studies (when you
study a group of people and try to assess if differences in what they say they
do lead to different health outcomes). But in this field, most studies are
actually observational, hence the importance of all the other things I've
mentioned.

Hope this helps!

------
dreistdreist
[https://examine.com/](https://examine.com/)

~~~
aaxe
Hear hear.

------
thebrid
Harvard's Nutrition Source web site [0] is the best source I've found. It has
a wealth of evidence-based information. The accompanying book "Eat Drink and
Be Healthy" discusses what features make a study reliable or not. The web site
will be more up-to-date on specific dietary advice.

The Harvard School of Public Health are behind 2 of the biggest ongoing
studies on diet, the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study[1], which has
followed 50,000 men for over 30 years, and the Nurses' Health Study which has
included 275,000 people over 40 years.

[0]
[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/)

[1] [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hpfs/](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hpfs/)

[2] [http://www.nurseshealthstudy.org/](http://www.nurseshealthstudy.org/)

------
twistedanimator
I have been watching the videos on ﻿nutritionfacts.org for years. If you want
to see nutrition information backed up by scientific studies, that's the place
to go. In a nutshell, the website and the science espouses a whole foods plant
based diet.

I find the information they provide so valuable that I developed and currently
maintain their Daily Dozen Android app that helps you track that you're eating
the correct foods for good health. Check it out here:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nutritionf...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nutritionfacts.dailydozen)

------
dario_insane
Start with "Whole" from T.Colin Campbell.

Then there is Greger's work mentioned already somewhere above. And McDougall
and Fuhrmann are worth your time.

If you "supplement" this information with Graham (811rv is the keyword) you'll
get a pretty broad picture which includes discussion of all fashion diets like
Paleo etc.

Bottom line is that for over thirty years it's pretty clear that animal
protein is a problem fur the human body. Whole foods plant based it's the
answer. Or the alternative is Western diet plus drugs. Pretty much the "truth"
you can see all around you these days. If you dare to look objectively..

------
ParameterOne
I went to several nutritionists with a similar quest after watching a video
that explained all foods only have 7 things in them. It was money poorley
spent. None of them could answer my simple questions. And all of them wanted
to develop a meal plan for me. This was a classic _buy what I 'm selling not
what you're asking for_ situation. I was going to go to the local college
bookstore and get a book on it.

------
zaptheimpaler
I listen closely to my body, my parents and my doctor in roughly that order.

Old knowledge is better than new when it comes to health - statistically too
it has "survived" longer without being debunked.

Forget fads and realize there are always economic incentives at play to
promote information on health.

Excessive attention to health could be called stress, which itself is horribly
bad for health.

------
stevefeinstein
You can't. Every faction has their own truth. And since people vary so widely,
you might need to experiment to find your truth.

Your best bet is do do N=1 experiments on yourself. Find what works, and do
that.

------
jgalvez
Just go to [http://www.dannyroddy.com/](http://www.dannyroddy.com/) and start
from there.

------
aaxe
www.Examine.com, slam dunk.

The deeper analytical stuff by NYTimes and NHS is strong too.

