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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?"
"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?"
The problem isn't science. The problem is science reporting. A study making come claim makes for a catchy headline. Problem is, it's just one study, usually calling for more studies with guidance at the end. That's the bit that's usually left out.
A few years ago a European health organization did a huge study of cell phone safety. Thousands of trials across dozens of countries over the course of a decade. Of the thousands of trials - ONE showed a *possible* correlation between one form of cancer and cell phone usage. What was the headline? Study shows that cell phones cause cancer! What was the official conclusion of the study? Cell phones probably don't cause cancer, but the one trial should probably be re-run just to make sure.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The problem is that much of this diet stuff has been agenda-driven, rather than driven by actual studies and data. There hasn't been much actual "science" performed.
For instance, the original Food Pyramid said that grains should make up the bulk of your diet. This was agenda-driven, not science driven. The point was that we were subsidizing farmers to grow grains, and so had quite a lot of grain, and quite a lot to sell.
In the 80's, consumption of fats and cholesterol were big "issues," but we now know that fat and cholesterol doesn't just go into your bloodstream as fat and cholesterol. Your body metabolizes and transforms them into other chemicals, which then may or may not affect the fat and cholesterol in your body. No study on metabolism had been done prior to this. No study of the affect of consuming these things had been done prior to this. The whole thing was very hand-wavy and inaccurate.
In the 80's you also had another lobby (discussed in "Fat Head" but I'm too young to remember the name). These people represented themselves as scientists, but actually were pushing a vegan agenda. While veggies *are* good for you, there was no science behind what they were selling, either. They just wanted you to stop eating meat. Their materials spread like wildfire, and are part of why McDonald's stopped using beef tallow to fry its fries. Instead, they switched to rapeseed oil. Frying in beef tallow is much healthier, as consuming foods fried in rapeseed oil will increase your blood cholesterol.
If you're taking this "flawed science," you're only taking it because the people who are presenting it dressed themselves up in lab coats. These folks weren't performing any studies to back their inaccurate claims.
Yeah exactly, his cynicism is off the charts (and misplaced)
Science did not tell us to avoid natural fats in our diet, it was the: USDA, FDA, AMA, etc. etc. It was government and industry associations, sensational journalists who won't or can't deal with basic stats, not scientists. On the contrary, there is a body of scientific works that are basically saying 'told you so.'
The jump to connecting this to climate change had zero supporting evidence in this article. If there was a pattern of provable deceit by a majority of scientists, then show it...
You are ignoring economies of scale and the benefits of longer shelf-life.
No time to cook and yet the average American watches almost 5 hours of TV per day. (The number of hours watched per day actually climbs steadily as you get older, from around 2 to 7 hours per day.) You can even watch TV while you cook!
I also don't believe for a moment that "unprocessed" foods are more expensive. Rice, beans (dried or canned), frozen vegetables, canned tomatoes or paste, basic spices, and even most fresh produce costs less than highly processed foods like chips or microwave meals. Meats and dairy may seem more expensive to buy straight out, but those highly processed foods are not bargains loaded with lots of good meat and quality cheese; they have just enough to get you to buy the thing and lots and lots of salt.
I think the problem is education. I suspect there is a growing population of people who really don't know how to take basic ingredients and turn them into a meal. It does change the equation a bit when you have to take care of kids. That's one of the things that my parents and grandparents did: cooking was family time.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
One might be forgiven for having thought that the USDA, FDA, and AMA might have some legitimate science behind their recommendations. Over time, we've learned that this was not a safe assumption, but there was an era when it must have seemed reasonable to people.
OK. Explain the doctors - both GPs and cardiologists - who have been demanding people switch to high carb low fat diets for 40 years plus. They are unscientific? The layperson who visits one should make independent judgements about the diet advice offered by a supposed expert?
This is "blame the victim" mentality at its best.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
It was absolutely the best science that the 1970s had to offer. The fact that it turned out to be wrong was due to a large number of factors, but not that it wasn't "science". One good article of many is: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486, which references a lot of large controlled scientific studies that, yes, had issues, but were still the best of the time. There were ALSO studies that came to other conclusions, but remember that there are real studies by real scientists (by any useful definition) that come to all sorts of wrong conclusions. There will always be someone to say "told you so", no matter how ludicrous their position seemed by the majority at the time -- even if the majority includes most of the scientists; if those scientists are later wrong.
People equate science with truth, and that's simply wrong. Science is a process, a mechanism to expand our knowledge, but it's fallible, and rarely results in absolute truths. As the linked Scott Adams article says, Science is about nudging us towards improvement, and I agree. The public face of science is, unfortunately at times, journalism, government and other, equally human equally (if not more) fallible entities -- but those people did listen to scientists; they didn't just make stuff up (most of the time).
Science has an image problem, though, and it IS self-inflicted. We're coming across as arrogant to the scientifically illiterate, rather than nurturing, and it's turning people away. We label people "deniers" when they're genuinely curious, and they get defensive, and it's all downhill. We get combative and then pretend that it was someone else's misunderstanding when our consensus is wrong. Science is the right approach, but when it loses a popularity contest, particularly in a democracy, it's can get pretty bleak for a while. There's no reason that needs to happen, but denying the problem isn't the answer. We should embrace the dialogue that Adams is a part of here.
No, but reducing dieting to just the laws of thermodynamics makes a mockery out of the whole thing. It's like the Seahawks coach explaining that the secret to beating the Patriots is to score more points than them. While technically true, it doesn't help anybody.
Almost. It's not the calories that you eat that matter, however. It's the calories that you ABSORB vs the calories that you burn.
Science actually figured it out about 100 years ago: it doesn't matter much what you eat because unless you embark on a weird diet you will get all the nutrients you need; and the way to maintain weight is to eat the right _amount_ of food. People worry about third order effects and ignore the first order principles. It's not "science's" fault that people don't want to bother learning what's already known about how things work.
The problem is that eating has one major other function besides nutricion: stress release. And then another power kicks in: positive reinforcement. Eating makes us feel less bad (less stress) and thus makes us feel good or at least better. There are some very tricky mechanisms that work to keep us in this trap. Once you start to eat more to feel better, it will be very difficult to undo that habit. And it's all about habits. If you start running daily, and you feel good about it, it's positive reinforcement once again, and it may compensate. Changing your daily habits is the way to go.
Well, that wasn't a problem with PTFE being non toxic, it was a problem with PTFE decomposition products being toxic. Wooden spoons are non toxic too, but if you set fire to a bunch of them and breathe in the results, hilarity will ensue. Likewise with stainless steel: if you manage to oxidise it heavily enough I think you will find that the higher oxidation states of chromium won't do you a lot of good either.
Stickiness is rarely a problem if you lubricate properly before cooking and deglaze afterward.
It's not a huge problem: I'm perfectly capable of cooking without non-stick, but it often makes my life easier, so I use it where appropriate.
SJW n. One who posts facts.