
Americans Don't Trust Scientists' Take on Food Issues - evo_9
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/12/02/504034298/americans-dont-trust-scientists-take-on-food-politicians-even-less
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JPKab
In the 90's, I watched my dad cut out as much meat as possible and replace it
with things like pastas and other low-fat foods because the scientists and the
FDA told us that it was healthy. I was stuck eating this high-carb diet
myself.

I'd go over to my friend's house, whose parents both viewed the government
recommendations with suspicion. They were a typical country family who fed us
eggs and bacon for breakfast. I loved staying there and I always felt much
better eating like that.

Now I know that all these changes my family made were based on bullshit
science, and were detrimental to our health. My dad got heart disease, several
of my siblings had weight problems.....

Fuck food science. The entire nutritional science community is rife with
terrible science and bad ethics. Studies that don't fit the narrative are
buried, and scientists that speak out are discredited. All the while, the
public health is bearing the brunt of these fools.

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devoply
That's because the science is not influenced by just scientists but pseudo-
science backed by industry selling stuff. Our science establishment sucks to a
degree and it's mostly because of money. Money for grants comes from
benefactors and often has strings attached. Scientists can't just do science
they must constantly publish, and publish even if they don't have good
findings. etc. etc. Science itself has become an industry beholden to
economics. With all the problems that go along with that.

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Neliquat
The fat vs sugar myth. The carb myth. The last 40 years have been generally
abysmal for food science, besides making more food cheaper. Dozens of non
profit professional orgs were, and are still, paid off by corporate interests.
Maybe the problem is more with the reporting of information than the studies,
both need to be examined critically.

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douche
Literally everything I have ever heard in scientific "news" about food and
nutrition has been contradicted by some other piece of "news". Now, the lion's
share of that blame falls on the absolutely deplorable state of popular
scientific journalism, but the net result is a strong suspicion that the so-
called experts are making shit up as they go along and haven't the foggiest
idea what they are talking about.

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h4nkoslo
Why should they? The "consensus scientific advice" on diet has changed so many
times over the past 100 years that scientists have quite appropriately lost
credibility on the issue.

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pc2g4d
I count myself among the skeptics. As others commenting here pointed out, the
track record of food science is terrible. And it's true that the incentives
guiding scientific publication _about_ food are not directly aligned with the
incentives of average Americans _eating_ food (though presumably the
scientists also eat....) Publish or perish. Overinterpreted associational
studies. Clear accounts of industry manipulating the scientific literature
over decades (tobacco, sugar). The endless substances assumed safe but later
proven to be damaging to health, sometimes horribly so.

So the recently proclamations of the safety of GMO food, at times made by
people with a deep interest in one particular outcome, are rightly received
with skepticism. As the election of Donald Trump recently reminded us, the
mainstream can be very, very wrong in spite of very smart people expounding
its views. It's so easy for systemic bias to become accepted as truth, and so
easy to become invested in _not_ seeing that.

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nkkollaw
It's working pretty well, isn't it.

