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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?"
Because what is the alternative? Alchemy? Voodoo? Religion?
Alex, I'll take "Flawed Science" for $1,000.
Sent from my ENIAC
I think he means the credibility of scientists.
If Scott Adams thought that, it's because he didn't do the necessary research to act as an informed consumer, and instead just took articles at face value when the referenced miscellaneous "scientists" and "researchers".
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.
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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.
I think some of the issues are that:
-The necessary biochemistry needed to really analyze the effects of nutrition is still in development.
-Food processing in general is a recent adaptation (less than a lifetime), and the effects of it are just now being understood.
-The number of degrees of freedom (food types, component chemicals, varied responses to each chemical, factorial responses to multiple combinations, genetics) combined with the inability of really knowing what test subjects eat over a long time make rigorous experimentation impossible.
-The fact that the human body can metabolize so many chemicals effectively with such delayed responses...it takes years for someone who was thin to get fat sometimes. Many of the food companies know that Twinkies are delicious, and they were not shy about pushing that crap down easily impressionable young kid's throats.
It's getting more informed now, but if you look back the food pyramid wasn't necessarily bad, even today it's okay to have proteins, vegetables, breads, and dairy, it's the proportions and processing that are under scrutiny.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
better headline, fixed that for you.
You CANNOT go by what some article says about what "science" has now "found" about X.
The idiots writing the articles are idiots AND they're writing the articles for maximum sensationalism.
Dude! Use your BRAIN!
As someone who has been in deep dietary ketosis for over 12 months and eating close to 200g of fat a day (and losing body fat), this news comes as no surprise. I love when people throw their bunky diet theories at me in the lunch room 'you must have a fast metabolism' while they crunch down on their low fat 'diet' snacks packed with sugar.
Hi
Evantually people will accept that the food pyramid is complete and utter sham and Ancel Keys' 7 Countries Study is a massive black mark on the credibility of nutritional science.
Apparently, we should blame science for not always proving our hypotheses correct. At least, that's what Scott Adam's argument essentially amounts to.
"How do you make people trust a system that is designed to get wrong answers more often than right answers?"
You give them a real science education and hope they understand that even the "wrong" answers are the right answers. The other half is to stop the media from making every new incremental discovery a "potential cure for cancer", or suggesting that every slightly contradictory piece of research on nutrition overturns everything we know and held dear about [cholesterol, fat, sugar, etc.].
Nope he's got it correct.
The FDA has been faking the science on diet ALL ALONG.
They NEVER TESTED their diet advice, not for heart disease, not for much of anything. There was an excuse that it would cost too much and take too long and might never be conclusive ... which is no excuse for promoting bullshit, but promote bullshit they did.
And the world ate it up, and everyone pretended that mere guesses were settled science.
The FDA is set up to test drugs that companies will make money on. But you can't patent nutrition information so it can't fund nutrition research.
Athletes and bodybuilders have managed to have their diet and fitness nailed for decades, it's only the common joe that seems to be confused.
This issue is less the fault of science and more the fault of marketing. Marketers will latch on to any scientific study, however tenuous, to push a product and the news will happily inflate their claims for headlines, e.g. the thoroughly debunked '1 glass of red wine is the same as an hour of exercise' study released recently. It's not scientists making these claims, its marketers and news reporters.
Corporations that lobby politicians to to sell more of their products also aren't helping. The US food pyramid isn't the fault of scientists, its the fault of farmers wanting to sell more grain. Michelle Obama's attempts to revamp America's food issues are being thwarted by huge corporations with deep pockets and news reporters siding with the opposition doing their utmost to paint any attempts for nutritional revamp in a bad light. None of those guys are scientists.
If you want to learn about nutrition and exercise get away from the marketing and the news and start looking at what athletes and bodybuilders are doing. They've been doing it for a long time and if you look closely a lot of what they do is backed up by science. Eating grilled chicken/steak/fish with brown rice and steamed vegetables and doing weight lifting/high intensity interval training doesn't grab headlines though and takes effort.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
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...
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.
Everyone I know equates a good diet with being healthy. A more important aspect is the activity level and physical exercise. When I was a state champion level gymnast my health was amazing. I had six pack abs at the age of eleven because I worked out and trained 20 hours a week. During that time I ate mcdonalds every day. I ate fries at school. Milkshakes, candy bars. Any source of calories I could get. And my health was phenomenal. Everyone (but women especially for some reason) seems to think that a 'healthy' diet is the answer when what they really need is to work more. I'm not saying healthy eating is bad. But if you don't use your body it will never truly be your tool and always be something your working against rather than working for you. Use your body or it will atrophy in every way.
The Blade Itself
Whilst technically correct, the amount of people eating a diet that provides all the vitamins they need is minimal in this fast food world we live in. Whilst you can survive and live quite happily with a minimal intake of things like omega fats, supplementing with them, and many other vitamins, can be advantageous.
To simply say we as a society don't need vitamin supplements because we all eat varied diets is as much a fallacy as a marketer saying we are all deficient in all vitamins.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
It's really a failure of politics too thou. Back in the 60s a major 8 country study was done that showed fatter diets caused heart problems, except later we found out he had data from 20 countries but only used the data that fit his model. Heart problems it seemed were actually caused by consistent inflammation which was more a sign of lack of exercise. protip: margarine is much worse for you then real butter, in several ways
So the government tried to get fat out of foods, which they thought would mean people would eat more veggies, but snacks just changed from high fat to high sugar "hey look! this food is low fat" except the sugar spikes your insulin, causing most of the calories to be stored as fat. I still hear myths like a a calorie is just a calorie, or low calorie diets are good for you. protip:exercise requires calories. I mean just look at all the people buying lowfat milk, which is mostly milk suger with all the healthy fat taken out.
another example is the whole wheat sensitivity wave, when really it is mostly the additives that make the bread shelve stable for 2 weeks that are bad for you.
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
-- Redd Foxx
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
There's definitely a problem that we've been fed a lot of misinformation, but those problems are generally facilitated by lack of scientific data. I think the case of multivitamins is a good example. The creation of multivitamins was spurred by the realization that there are different types of compounds that we must consume in certain amounts in order to maintain health. Then someone saw an opportunity to pack all that stuff into one little pill and sell it at a huge mark-up. There hasn't historically been a lot of evidence supporting multivitamins as a maintainer of good health. Instead there's been a lot of evidence that we need the stuff that is in multivitamins. Just because a multivitamin contains what you need doesn't mean your body can access those resources. Now that there's finally research coming out about the effects of multivitamins, the studies are proving that in many cases multivitamins at best have no effect on health.
There's still a lot more to be researched on this issue, but that's the point, the scientific community never knew a lot of this stuff in the first place. It's been both the media trying to sell newspapers and companies trying to create new products without actually researching what those products do.
Another great example of this is the inclusion of vitamin A in topical products like moisturizers and sunscreens. Companies started putting vitamin A in these products because vitamin A is important for healthy skin, so they assuming that slathering it on your body would benefit your skin. Now that research has finally been done on these products, it is now believed that using this product can increase risk of sunburn for as much as a week afterwards!!!!
We should stop blaming science and start blaming those who either manipulate scientific studies for profit or rush products to market without actually using scientific methods to test that the product is safe and does what it is intended to do.
Try eating 1kg of cashews a day at your desk job and see how thin you get.
I think what you mean to say was "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
There's a basic misunderstanding of what science is in that Scott Adams post.
>"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 term 'science' is used very loosely. It's not clear what he's referring to -- 'popular science', I deduce. Popular science is not reliable, so, with that definition, I can't disagree that Scott Adams has been "kicked in the balls for 20-years" by it and that he should have learned a long time ago not to close his eyes and trust it.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Eat a good meal. Enjoy it. Stop stressing over the details. Stress is worse for you than a few extra pounds.
No matter what you do, you're going to end up dead at the end of the game. It's just a matter of when.
Personally I'd rather enjoy my life and my food now than live a few extra years gumming gruel in the nursing home.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Firstly, I don't think that science's position on diet has changed a great deal. Plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, regular exercise, don't overdo the booze - I mean it's not all that hard. Omega-this, and poly-unsaturated that, and free-radicals the other - this sort of nonsense is the fault of lazy and sensationalist reporting, not of science.
Science does not make any attempt to defend itself against this - and arguably this isn't science's job anyway. It needs to be some-one's job, but it isn't at the moment. I don't even know how one would go about setting up a dis-interested and objective organisation who's task was purely to disseminate scientific knowledge in an easy to understand form. Perhaps it's not even possible.
But really, if you don't know how to eat properly, then you really haven't been paying even basic attention to basic science. Scott Adams is right in the sense that people are confused (Paleo diet? Seriously?), but science itself isn't confused. And nor should you be.
Yeah, some skeptics have an interesting take on this colossal screw-up and have pointed out the parallels with the climate debate. (Example: http://judithcurry.com/2014/08... )
Many people seem to think that groups of scientists can not possibly make genuine, colossal, "obvious after the fact" screw-ups. If anyone suggests that they have made big mistakes, they are harangued with insults like "conspiracy theorist" or "denier". Yet these same (supposedly rational) people claim "big oil" is funding skeptics (a conspiracy theory) and "big food" must have been behind this spectacular failure (another conspiracy theory). Apparently they have never heard of systemic bias, group-think, or the madness of crowds.
Or cognitive dissonance.
For some reason they can imagine millions of people being wrong about religion but they can't imagine a small group of elite "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" scientists being wrong about science.
They can imagine their own bosses being complete ignorant ass-holes, but they can't imaging leading scientists being egotistical, arrogant fucktards who have no qualms bullshitting people.
They can imagine a "group-think", ass-kissing, brown-nosing, yes-men corporate culture, but can't imagine the same in academic circles.
They can imagine a CEO who would drive his own billion dollar company into the ground just because his ego is too big to listen to anybody else, but can't imagine a scientist being anything other than a perfect little angel. Apparently scientists don't have egos and are immune to the many psychological issues that normal human beings face.
Government could NEVER bias a scientist, because governments are completely disinterested entities that are only concerned about the long-term health and economic interests of their citizen. (Except when governments take bribes. That's the only time the above is not true.)
Unfortunately a few scientists have been known to take bribes from evil corporations. But that's really, really easy to explain: it's a simple and direct benefit that anybody can understand without thinking too hard. And that's the only thing capable of biasing a scientist: a simple and direct benefit that's really, really easy for people to understand.
But those are not real scientists.
Real scientists are completely immune to human nature. Except for the few bad apples (who are not real scientists), scientists are better human beings than the rest of us.
Either that or many people are romantic idealists whose eyes glaze over in a state of credulity whenever they indulge their childish fantasies about "scientists".
Or I could just call you a liar:
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/smallpox/9241561106_chp4.pdf
Shall I quote for you?
As has been described in Chapter 1, an attack of smallpox in persons who had been vaccinated was usually less severe than
in the unvaccinated. Much more important, from the point of view of the ultimate eradication of smallpox, was the fact that vaccination
within the previous 5 years usually com- pletely prevented disease. Some vaccinated persons experienced subclinical infections, as
judged by their serological responses (Heiner et al., 1971a). These subjects did not transmit the disease to others, although
the subclinical infection substantially increased their level of immunity. Even if their immunity had not been boosted by
subclinical infection or revaccination, many vaccinated individuals were protected against clinical smallpox for a much longer period than 5 years.
Or perhaps here:
http://www.who.int/biologicals/areas/vaccines/smallpox/en/
The Recommendations (formerly Requirements) for Production and Control of Smallpox Vaccines were last revised in 1965. Since that time an intensified global eradication programme implemented from 1967 to 1980, and led by WHO, has resulted in the global eradication of smallpox. This was achieved by the globally coordinated use in national immunization programmes of effective vaccines that met the quality specifications in the 1965 Requirements. The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was reported in 1977. In addition to the availability of effective vaccines, an efficient infrastructure was established worldwide embracing the production, supply and administration of smallpox vaccine. Good surveillance, diagnosis of disease, training and public health information were additional important elements in successfully combating smallpox.
Provide some actual links to back up your claims or shut the hell up.
If all that matters is "Energy Balance" how is it you can feed some people 10,000 calories per day and only get an increase in body weight of 18%? Why are you ignoring the reality that some people simply can eat anything and stay skinny?
The body is a complex system and just to think of energy in and consumed is ignoring the ways the body metabolizes and processes different forms of food coming in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, nutritional science is the stupid butt end of science. It has got everything wrong for decades and the vast majority of nutritional studies are horribly statistically flawed.
But you are at liberty to experiment on yourself. Sign up to a cost effective lab testing service (I use walkinlab.com), get you blood tested regularly (I get it done every 6 weeks) with an NMR test so you get LDL particle size and number (the part that matters) then try a diet that emphasis one of the macronutrients and see what happens over a few months.
The paper linked in my sig is of the results of two people eating an all meat diet for an extended period. Only good things happened. Nutritional orthodoxy would suggest this would kill you. With the occasional exception, I eat an all meat diet. I has fixed my cholesterol and dropped my weight to the leptin limit.
If you struggle with a standard western metabolic disorder, you owe it to yourself to escape nutritional orthodoxy and do some science on yourself to find what works. You are probably carb sensitive and need to eat none of it. But maybe not, that's why you need to test yourself, because unless you have a very enlightened doctor, no one else is going to do it for you.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The old pyramid was one serving each of meat, vegetables, dairy, and bread. Now recommendations skew towards 50% protein, 35% vegetables, and small amounts of dairy and carbohydrates.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Am I the only having trouble figuring out if this post is satire?
I stole this Sig
Everyone I know equates a good diet with being healthy.
A more important aspect is the activity level and physical exercise.
When I was a state champion level gymnast my health was amazing. I had six pack abs at the age of eleven because I worked out and trained 20 hours a week.
During that time I ate mcdonalds every day. I ate fries at school. Milkshakes, candy bars. Any source of calories I could get.
And my health was phenomenal.
Everyone (but women especially for some reason) seems to think that a 'healthy' diet is the answer when what they really need is to work more. I'm not saying healthy eating is bad. But if you don't use your body it will never truly be your tool and always be something your working against rather than working for you.
Use your body or it will atrophy in every way.
You have it backwards.
Exercise is best for fitness, but when it comes to being thin diet is far more important than exercise.
Of course genetics and a youthful metabolism trump all, assuming your recollection is accurate I'm guessing that was the real source of your 6-pack. An older person with less fortunate genes might find themselves diabetic following your advice.
That's not to speak against exercise, it's absolutely awesome, but it doesn't have a lot to do with keeping you thin.
I stole this Sig
Water would be far more "alkalizing" than lemon juice.
I think you don't understand the difference between "alkaline" and "alkalizing". If your body is to maintain a constant pH, how can it do that if you eat something with a lower pH?
Probably because the homogeneous liquid called "lemon juice" doesn't actually end up in your blood. Instead it ends up being broken down into its components, the divided sum of which doesn't have the same ph that it had when it came in. The same is true of any substance with a varying ph.
Your kidneys, lungs, and liver all play a vital role in determining the ph of your blood, and don't allow it to exceed a certain range (the blood itself is a buffered solution, which resists changes to ph anyways.)
Any diet book, website, or tv show you've seen that tells you to try to make your blood more alkaline should NOT be trusted. Your blood is kept slightly alkaline, and pushing it further in that direction can be deadly. Fortunately nobody dies from that because diet rarely impacts the ph level of your blood.
But it's still possible to adjust your blood's ph anyways. A common way of artificially doing that when somebody's organs aren't properly controlling CO2 levels (which affect the acidity) is to take sodium bicarbonate pills, because the sodium bicarb binds with the CO2 in the blood near the intestines, effectively sapping it from your blood, raising its ph.
The way science works is that someone has an idea, publishes a paper, and then a flurry of papers follow which attack or support that idea, and eventually the idea perishes, survives, or mutates according to the evidence uncovered. That process is like a safety net which protects science from bad ideas, although it doesn't protect a scientist's *reputation*.
So if you get a committee of scientists together and demand guidance on a topic what they're trained to do is give you a hopelessly equivocal answer. If the committee is put under enough pressure and there are politicians involved, what you'll get is half-baked advice.
What this takes is an engineer's perspective. The first thing an engineer is trained to do is understand what a client is asking for; an experienced engineer knows that clients often don't understand what it is they're asking for, and that a successful project starts with clarifying that.
So here goes: what people want from dietary advice is eternal youth. The truth is if any of us live long enough, we'll get old, sick and then die. Paleolithic people lived about 35 years on average, enough to raise a shiny new replacement generation to independence. You can stay healthy on practically any kind of diet for 35 years, particularly if you walk (as paleolithic people did on average) 20 kilometers a day over rough ground.
I think what people would be satisfied with is advice that allows them to live to 70 years with the same level of health a 35 year-old typically enjoys. The extremity of that challenge should be apparent. For some people who have a genetic propensity toward certain disease clearly it's an impossible demand. What's more if you look at the rate of change of nutritional science over the past thirty years it's clear that the scientific evidence is in flux. Take fat: it turns out not all fats are the same, that became clear decades ago. Just in the last fifteen years we found out that not all unsaturated fats are the same -- some are trans. And I think evidence is emerging that not all saturated fats are the same, and not all trans fats are the same.
So what to do if you want to be a 70 year-old that's as healthy as a 35 year-old? "Have good genes" is not useful advice. It seems to me the best way to maximize your chances is to eat a wide variety of mainly unprocessed foods in modest quantities, and get a wide variety of moderate exercise every day. Any advice beyond that would be speculation at this point.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Science has been inconsistent on diet. However, it's hard to blame science for fat people because science has basically said that you have to: (1) count calories; (2) eat fruits and vegetables; and (3) exercise. On the margins, science might be wrong on moderate alcohol consumption, healthy fats, etc. But the average America is fat because they're not exercising, and eating ridiculous amounts of unhealthy foods that scientists have always said was dangerous as fuck.
Don't forget that scientists discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
If you're overwhelmed by the number of responses to this article, here is the summary:
We all agree that there's a severe lack of science, and to prove it, here's some more.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
You, if you're the same AC as before, used the word, "minerals" to describe the supposed special chemical makeup of lemons. It's not my problem that minerals happen to be minerals. It's yours.