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There is no breakdown by region and there is no way to discern, what exactly is the reason of the longevity/lack thereof. Is it all healthcare? Or climate? Or traditional diet? Or various life-style choices and wealth — and resulting availability of personal cars? Or misguided dieting advice?

Worse, different countries use different standards and rules for counting they very number we are comparing. Some, for example, count all humans, while others discard the still-born babies — thus improving their averages. Even more — some countries would not count babies born live but underweight.

Finally, consider two European countries: Moldova and Lithuania. The former is very poor and corrupt, the former — an EU and NATO member doing reasonably well for an ex-Soviet republic. Both provide "free" healthcare to citizens and long-term residents. Life expectancy in Moldova is 81.4, in Lithuania — 73.9. Why?

Some examples of scientific disinformation:

The world health organization claiming that drinking pure water is dangerous.

Doctors and scientists insisting that vaccines do more harm than good.

Nutritionists claiming that vegan diets create malnutrition

Scientists rejecting the evolution model

Pick any agenda, and you will find respected authorities rejecting it, regardless of the crazy amounts of evidence in support of it.

It's not as simple as CICO. Your body is much more complex than that.

Simply eating less or exercising more (one or the other) is not enough to trigger a response. What is required is a long-term change in behavior AND diet. If you simply cut your diet down, your body goes into starvation where it attempts to burn stored fats... then your body starts eating away at itself (glycogen stores in the liver and such). That's why those crash dieters say they lose 15-20 pounds in the first month, it's all from their liver. As soon as they eat again, all the weight comes back. Additionally those calories you do eat while starving are stored as fats to combat this self-imposed famine. Similarly, just changing your exercise level will cause a similar response.

You need to provide some 'shock' to your body by changing both at the same time. It takes months to form a healthy routine, which is why many try to go for the quick fix of a crash diet... or Dr. Oz's latest "miracle pill". If you want to lose weight, eat healthier foods, leave a little bit on your plate, and go for a walk a few times a week.

Normally I'd be on board with what you're saying, but I'm starting to have a huge problem with conclusions that are based upon studies and surveys. If all you have is a "link" from cause A to effect B without knowing the exact nature of the relationship, then you really haven't proven anything, and you could very well be wrong, and in fact a lot of recent "dietary wisdom" that was just based on studies showing correlation has been shown to be VERY wrong lately.

For example, for the period between the 70s and 2010s, the FDA firmly believed that saturated fats, dietary cholesterol, and red meat causes your blood cholesterol to rise. They based this on studies that found a link between the them. The problem is they never established an actual cause and effect relationship. In recent times, these studies have been debunked heavily, namely because they failed to do an "all other things being equal" control. In fact, most of these studies have no control at all, and just show correlation.

As I mentioned earlier how low carbing got rid of my cholesterol problems, I actually have a cause and effect analysis I can describe briefly: When you consume sugars, your liver first doles them out to whatever tissues (cells) need them. After your body has what it needs, then your liver has to do something with the rest. The liver of all mammals treats calories as precious, and never simply discards them. So what does your liver do? It does three things with them:

1) Converts them into triglycerides (a form of fat stored in your blood that your body uses for energy later)
2) Converts them into cholesterol
3) Converts them into fats that your liver itself retains (too much of this leads to fatty liver, and possibly NASH.)

Likewise, lowering your carb intake lowers your cholesterol. It's also now known that dietary cholesterol (cholesterol found in food prior to you eating it) doesn't end up in your blood stream. Your digestive system breaks that apart and uses it for other substances.

See that? Nice cause and effect relationship, no guessing based on correlation. If however you are hard up about studies and links, then read this:

http://authoritynutrition.com/...

At any rate, back to what you were saying about sweeteners: Both of the claims you have made come down to a link. Go ahead and investigate them, you'll find that there's no actual cause and effect behind either. Now, this isn't to say studies are pointless in doing. There's a very good reason to do studies: They help scientists investigate and narrow down the root cause and effect. However they shouldn't be used as dogma.

Say for example your argument about sweeteners stimulating your appetite. Why does it do this? Please provide a detailed cause and effect, along with all of the body chemicals involved (since you're talking about appetite, let's hear how it impacts say leptin for example, or any other hormone that governs hunger.) And how do we know that something else isn't coming into play here?

I can say, at least anecdotally, that it does not raise my appetite, and I've been losing about a pound a week. For what it's worth, my BMI was once 40, and now I'm at 29.5.

Oh and by the way, in addition to what I said above, here's a detailed analysis of 23 studies that did a proper control and randomization:

http://authoritynutrition.com/...

They all have found low carb diets are significantly better.

Meanwhile the most commonly cited studies that favor your camp, like the Harvard Study, the Princeton Study, and the China Study, have all been debunked because none of those included proper controls. They were hardly a study either, they were mostly just a survey that asked people what they ate and included a wellness check. Most people tend to inaccurately record what they eat, so a study is much better if they're given a meal plan, cooking lessons to meet the properly diet, and counseling first.

Also it's worth pointing out that your camp is based on 80's and 90's FDA opinions that the FDA no longer holds, as well as commentary by groups like PETA who are being subjective based on a moral agenda, rather than using objective science.

Affecting a nerve to help people regulate their hunger and help them loose weight? There is already a way of doing that and it's called Leptin. Leptin is the hormone that regulates hunger by stimulating receptors in the hypothalamus. When someone suffers from leptin resistance, he will eat all day. The fix? bye bye sugars, bye bye inflammatory foods, bye bye foods with anti-nutrients.

I lost 100lb resetting my leptin cycle, I stopped eating all day and simply wasn't hungry anymore. No will power, no pills, nothing... the anxiety for food just went away.

Here is a nice article with 29 scientific references that explains exactly the importance of Leptin Cycle
And here is a nice video from Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D. explaining it too

Affecting a whole big nerve instead of changing eating habits is a really really bad idea

"Hampton Creek is a food technology company that makes food healthier by utilizing a specially made egg substitute in food products."

Why would an egg be unhealthy? Leaving anecdotical and not-so-anecdotical data aside, that little shell arguably contains every nutrient needed to turn a single cell into a full blown and healthy chick.

"Hampton Creek's latest product is called, Just Cookies, which is an eggless chocolate chip cookie dough"

Sounds like something sugary... That would be healthy?

[mercola.com]

According to recent information and studies there seems to something to the Low Carb High Fat diet, not just for weight loss, but for much better serum cholesterol numbers and lower inflammation markers. But citing Joe Mercola probably isn't convincing anybody of the credibility of what you're saying.

Your link is nothing but stuff the FDA complained about Mercola doing. Frankly, in my book, anyone that the big-pharma paid and Monsanto-protecting corporate-controlled bully that the FDA is today wants to discredit must be someone who is doing something right.

[mercola.com]

According to recent information and studies there seems to something to the Low Carb High Fat diet, not just for weight loss, but for much better serum cholesterol numbers and lower inflammation markers. But citing Joe Mercola probably isn't convincing anybody of the credibility of what you're saying.

Were is the science that backs your theory?

The whole situation is a little complex, but we might start out with what we evolved to deal with. This seems to work with wild animals. It is obvious in the case of frank carnivores, and frank herbivores. Horses seldom seek out a juicy steak, and Cheetas don't often beg for loaves of bread.

With omnivores like humans, it is a little more complex. We're designed to eat a lot of different things.

So what has happened? Why do people have so much trouble maintaining a healthy weight?

Ever since I can remember, we have been bombarded by th e concept that there is a scale of healthy eating, and that elimination of as much fat as possible is desirable, and the ne plus ultra of healthy living is veganism, followed by vegatarianism, then low fat/high carb, then the unwashed masses of high protein, and the soulles spawn of Satan - the Atkinists.

So here's one citation from the NIH:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... Less central obesity in men consuming a high milk fat diet. It's a narrow study, but interesting.

Here's one from Harvard. An opinion piece, but well done:

http://www.foodandnutritionres...

Here's a nice link with references.

http://authoritynutrition.com/...

I tried a low fat vegetarian diet for a time in the very late 80's, specifically, I ate eggs for protein, otherwise, all "healthy" veggies and starches.

Aside from being hungry all the time, losing only 2 pounds, and having my GI tract all bitched up for months, it was awesome. After 6 months, I gave up and ate a nice juicy medium rare steak. In around a week, I was back to feeling normal,

Interestingly enough, my parents ate probably 4 times the fat I did. And had absolutely no weight problem at all.

Where did we go wrong? Just an educated guess on my part:

Bread and pasta. That stuff is awesome and versatile. It's also a great way to fill a person up with not much more than empty calories.

Sugar. Likewise great tasting stuff. But seriously, just how fucked up is it that we as a nation are debating how Mexican Pepsi is healthier than US Pepsi? It's sugar asswipes.

Now the latest and weirdest one. Soybeans. Seen how many American men have tits now? Even ones who aren't obese?

Our friend the phytoestrogen, brought to you by soybeans and peas. And we are consuming a whole lot more of that stuff than we should. And I'm not certain that the rise of testosterone supplements isn't a backwards way of trying to treat men with bitched up hormone levels.

Well, by that logic pretty much anything should be outlawed that you can do to your body. Including trans fats and crunch chicken skin. Both are very dangerous, especially in large quantity.

The problem with that logic, is you are falling for the lies that have been propagated for the last few decades. Your example of trans fats and chicken skin are particularly insightful as the scientist that came up with the fat is bad for you studies threw out half of the data so he could get a curve fit that he wanted to see. one link on this subject. It is well know that studies have shown the fake sugar stuff makes people and rats fatter, not thinner. Margarine also does tricks that end up being less healthy than just eating butter. And using vegetable oil is much worse for you than using coconut oil or even just plain old bacon fat. (My family now uses bacon fat to cook and our health and weight has improved.)

So letting some group decide what is healthy and un-healthy just leaves you open to being manipulated and controlled by those with power over the laws. I don't want anyone telling me I have to eat some crap than causes anal leakage or turns your eyes brown permanently just because they have stock in the company and will make a ton of profit if they can make the laws say you are required to eat their crap because it has been deemed to be the healthy thing to do.

http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf and http://authoritynutrition.com/... are both very good.