Science's Biggest Failure: Everything About Diet and Fitness

HughPickens.com writes: Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) writes on his blog that science's biggest failure of all time is "everything about diet and fitness." He says,

"I used to think fatty food made you fat. Now it seems the opposite is true. Eating lots of peanuts, avocados, and cheese, for example, probably decreases your appetite and keeps you thin. I used to think vitamins had been thoroughly studied for their health trade-offs. They haven't. The reason you take one multivitamin pill a day is marketing, not science. I used to think the U.S. food pyramid was good science. In the past it was not, and I assume it is not now. I used to think drinking one glass of alcohol a day is good for health, but now I think that idea is probably just a correlation found in studies."

According to Adams, the direct problem of science is that it has been collectively steering an entire generation toward obesity, diabetes, and coronary problems. But the indirect problem might be worse: It is hard to trust science because people have become accustomed to learning that they've been steered wrong. "I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?"

Comments

Vitamin Testing

[ChrisMaple]

There have been more studies on the effects of vitamins than most people could read in a decade, maybe a lifetime. There are many things to test them for, and to expect that every possible dosage has been tested against every possible disease, interaction, and side effect is unreasonable.

Re:The credibility of science?

[iggymanz]

Not even that, Scott Adams doesn't know a scientist from a self-proclaimed and popular expert. Most our "health advice" would cause real scientists to look for all the peer reviewed experiments and compare findings. For example, a long held "truth": "too much salt is bad and gives you high blood pressure", has been found to be false for normal healthy people, and the proper controlled study for that only done recently.

Re:The credibility of science?

[Harlequin80]

Nutritionist is a meaningless title. It has no standing, no required qualifications, certifications or training. If however you had said Dietician then those people are worth listening to. Because they actually know something and have qualifications.

Nutritionists are in the same category as Homoeopaths and Chiropractors.

Re:Science... Yah!

[siddesu]

Utter bullshit. The easiest way to control weight is to exactly follow the scientific advice. I lost a lot of weight (about 25 kg over 6 months) by a simple system:
(Change in Weight (kg))/7700 = Calories I ate - Calories I used

The calculation is really simple and entirely based on nutrition science. For "Calories I ate", I used the free USDA nutrition database from, I think, Dept. of Agriculture (yep, here. http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/). For "Calories I used", I used the standard age-adjusted formulas you can find at the back of any nutrition text. For detection activity I used the android phone, Tasker and a small timesheet app.

Just for the kicks I kept a graph of the loss weight, and the fit to the "theoretical" weight loss has an R-squared upwards of 0.87 over more than a year. The body response is so precise, that even the occasional heavy meal registered the next day. No magic, no voodoo, just sticking to the 'scientific rules'.

7700 is the kCal in a kg body weight, if you're curious.

As for the nutrition, I stick to the good ole food pyramid. My (slightly high) cholesterol went to norm in the first year, and no problems whatsoever in 5 consecutive yearly checkups since I started the routine.

Within the chosen margin of error of measurement, it works, bitches.

Re:Science... Yah!

[Firethorn]

Magic, pills, voodoo, fad diets, resonant crystals, homeopathy... ANYTHING but having to exercise self-restraint.

Okay, I'll try to keep this simple. The idea behind most diets is that different foods, of the same calories, 'satiate' better - more hunger suppression for longer, than others. Ergo, if you eat more of those foods, you're less likely to cheat on your diet. It's all a mental game.

Trick is, carbohydrates, unless you stick to the really complex ones, tend to result in a blood sugar spike that leaves you feeling hungry again in a relatively short period of time. Fats, proteins, and the most complex carbs tend to stick around longer, don't spike your blood sugar, and therefore satiate you for longer - you're less likely to get a hankering for a snack a short period later.

Think of it like the difference between quitting smoking with the patch and dead turkey.

Re:Science... Yah!

[drinkypoo]

The worst you can drink is "juice" a lot of shit with sugar, lots of empty calories (1L packet can easily be 5000 calories, the individual ones can be 800) and is actually the fastest way to get fat without noticing.

The worst you can drink is pasteurized juice, which contains no enzymes which help break it down. Of course, just try to find unpasteurized juice.

Also, most juice drinks aren't juice. They're juice from concentrate, with added sugar. It's pretty hard to actually pick out the drinks which are just actual juice.