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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?"
In the case of nutrition, diet, and exercise, the primary problem isn't science reporting, it is government programs based on questionable science, from bad nutritional recommendations and bad labeling requirements to idiotic agricultural subsidies, public school curricula and lunch programs, and more.
The most damaging event in modern nutritional science has been the false correlation between fat consumption and heart disease. In 2014 the WSJ published a fascinating article about how that happened:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...
They are actually more open about it than you think.
Some "scientists" want the food pyramid to be reconsidered in light of climate change and the carbon costs of the food.
No matter what you think about climate change, it has shit to do with what food is healthy and what is not and what is the best mix for people to follow.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The first time I had to make real decisions for myself was when I started living on my own in my early twenties.
I was aware that there studies on diet and health, and that there were dietary recommendations based on those studies.
I also knew that those recommendations had change over time.
So I decided that I wasn't going to turn my life upside-down over this stuff until the recommendations stopped changing for at least--I picked a number--five years.
Even at the time, I knew that this was mostly a self-serving rationalization for me to just keep eating the foods I liked.
As the years went by, I watched with growing astonishment as the fads (in science!) came and went; diets swirling around them like groupies, or celebrities.
Nothing has ever stayed settled for more than five years in a row.
I've never been called on my original committment/rationalization.
It's been over 30 years now.
Daniel 1:12-26
Just sayin...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Simple, traditional diet that worked for your grandparents and their parents
Just be sure that your ancestors didn't come from an area with high incidence of nutritional deficiency diseases. You don't even need to go all that far back. Pellagra stacked up an impressive body count in the American south in the first half of the 20th century, and beri-beri had similar effects in more rice-heavy areas. Scurvy and cretinism were a bit more niche; but also pretty much sucked. In any of those cases, some modest supplemental modifications to simple traditional diet are strongly recommended.
I also don't believe for a moment that "unprocessed" foods are more expensive.
You shouldn't, because they aren't. Basic food like oatmeal, carrots, eggs, etc. are not more expensive than TV dinners. It is also not true that low income people "don't have time" to cook. Households in the bottom quintile have an average of 0.4 people with a job (for the top quintile, the figure is 2.1). Besides, you can prepare oatmeal, carrots, or an omelet in the same time it takes to microwave the TV dinner. There is also an inexpensive and healthy drink that is significantly cheaper than soda: tap water.
My wife an I both work full time, yet we find time to cook from scratch every evening. It is a great time to talk, spend time with the kids, and pass recipes and skills to the next generation. We get most of our produce from the backyard (mostly root vegetables and citrus this time of year), and keep a small flock of chickens for eggs. How do we find the time? We don't have a cable TV subscription.
It's not just reporting.
The FDA and medical community has told us with all seriousness for decades that there is a link between cholesterol and heart disease - there really isn't.
"Scientists" told us in the 60s that nursing babies was stupid; animals and poor people nursed. Smart, civilized people used "scientifically formulated" synthetic formulas!
Scientists said "DDT is killing baby birds, stop using it!" when in fact it was poorly designed experiments that left birds calcium deficient and thus - yes - laying fragile eggs.
Scientists have said things like "stop using baby talk to speak to children, it hinders their development", while others cheerfully opined (using their "sciency" wisdom) on the geopolitics of the Cold War (Union of Concerned Scientists) - something for which they were no more qualified to comment than Kissenger would have been qualified to design a moon rocket.
I agree with Adams, I've been saying it for years: science is critical to the success of our society, but the moment (around the early 1950s) that scientists started opening their yaps on political subjects, they were trading their credibility for politics. Now they've spent that currency, they can't understand why people question their motivations (as if they were like "normal" people motivated by power, ego, money, etc. - right?).
Eisenhower famously warned us about the military-industrial complex, he was absolutely right.
Of course, the NEXT BIT of that same speech is less-often quoted:
-Styopa
It's true that some people burn more energy than others, and that those people can (in fact, must!) eat more to maintain a steady weight. That's what "energy balance" means: energy consumed minus energy used! Maybe you naturally burn 10,000 calories a day. If so, you need to eat less than 10,000 calories to lose weight, and more than 10,000 calories to gain weight. More likely, you burn 2000 calories a day, same as the rest of us, and so you should eat less than 2000 calories a day if you want to lose weight.
No matter how much you talk about the different ways the body metabolizes food, or all the different ways different peoples' bodies work, you can't change the fact that to lose weight you personally must eat fewer calories than you personally burn. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. It's a fact.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Your body's 'hoarding mechanism' is only triggered if you lose more than (roughly) 5% of your body weight over a month or so. If you stay safely within this limit and you're okay.
Once, in college, I left a Teflon-coated pan on the burner for too long.
This is 2015. Nobody should be buying or using Teflon pans anymore. Get some pots and pans with modern non-stick ceramic coatings. They are completely non-toxic, don't degrade, and clean up even easier than Teflon.
The body has no 'hoarding mechanism' that is triggered by 'dieting'.
The body always tries to 'hoard' or safe or store surplus. Depending on the food composition it can do that, or can't do it.
Sure there is. Read up on visceral fat vs. subcutaneous fat. It's really quite fascinating.
The visceral fat cells grow in your gut to store starches for slow release during winter hibernation. Once your body is convinced that it needs to bulk up on visceral storage, those cells get first dibs on any energy absorption from food in your intestines and then they grow as much as they can. Of course, if you never go into hibernation or suffer through winter food shortages, they become a problem. They don't die when you diet, they just get slightly smaller and start to complain. They might even be evil enough to withhold nutrition from the rest of your body, persuading you to eat more when you don't really need it.
Subcutaneous fat is stored all around your body. Those cells aren't as vicious and greedy as the visceral fat cells, since they compete for energy along with the rest of the cells in your body. And they also tend to be located near your muscles for quick release when you need it.
There are also differences between brown fat vs. white fat, where brown fat has a higher metabolic rate to help keep you warm in cold climates.
The body does a lot of interesting things to stay alive, and my point is that lifestyle can be a much more important influence than diet. And I kind of feel sad for people who are frustrated by trying to hack their diet alone.