The Most Important Study of the Mediterranean Diet Has Been Retracted (qz.com)

Zorro shares a report from Quartz: In 2013, the New England Journal of Medicine published a landmark study that found that people put on a Mediterranean diet had a 30% lower chance of heart attack, stroke, or death from cardiovascular disease than people on a low-fat diet. It received massive media and public attention when released, and since has been cited by 3,268 other scientific papers. The study had tremendous impact on the field of nutrition and health science. Yesterday (June 13), however, the journal retracted the study -- providing a new reason for skepticism about how effective the now-popular Mediterranean diet really is.

The reasons for the withdrawal are complicated, having to do with the methodology of the study. As Alison McCook of the Retraction Watch blog writes for NPR, this retraction is the result of the work of John Carlisle, a British anesthesiologist and self-taught statistician. Carlisle has spent recent years analyzing over 5,000 published randomized controlled trials (the gold standard of medical science research) to see how likely they were to have actually been properly randomized. In 2017, he reported his results: at least 2% of the studies were problematic. One was the 2013 NEJM article on the Mediterranean diet.

Comments

Re:Anything you eat will kill you

[DigiShaman]

There are many animals in this world in that if you give them an unlimited supply of food, they will keep on eating until they die; often in very short order.

We humans aren't much different, with the exception of it taking a munch longer timeline.

Eat healthy, and don't consume more calories than your body can burn. The math does catch up with you, and the results show themselves in the form of fat.

Re:That's not what the article says

[hey!]

And if you follow the link to the 2017 study, what becomes clear is that the poor and rich people were eating different versions of the "Mediterranean Diet". They all ate mainly foods from the list, but the proportions and variety varied between groups.

Re:Vegan

[blindseer]

It isn't flawed if your genome is accustomed to seafood.

Europeans ate plenty of seafood for a very long time throughout history. This was put on hold for about 1000 years when the Moors invaded and tended to kill or enslave those fishing in the Mediterranean Sea.

I'm sure many would think that on an evolutionary scale this 1000 years is not likely to affect the genetic makeup of Europeans. Access to protein is important for one's health and losing access to fishing will mean needing to seek it elsewhere. This means hunting for furry and feathered creatures, and/or domesticating goats, sheep, and cattle while often consuming their milk.

Lactose tolerance in adults is for the most part highly centered on Europe. Those that couldn't fish would need protein from milk. If they couldn't tolerate drinking milk for protein then they might kill their cow to eat the meat, but then they risk running out of protein pretty quick.

There was a trade of salted fish from northern waters but that meant a potential for rotten fish, high salt intake, and so on for moving fish so far in a time where things moved at the speed of a laden ox. Oh, and since I know someone is going to ask... I'm talking about European laden oxen, not African.

BTW, Africans did have domesticated cattle but they didn't always drink the milk. To get protein from the cattle and not kill it they'd draw blood and drink that, perhaps mixed with the milk.

Getting all the nutrients you need from a vegan diet is possible, but tricky. And as Zontar the Mindless mentions on this thread, we are omnivores. Look at the teeth in our mouths and our digestive tracts. We evolved to eat food from a variety of sources. And we are predators, built for the hunt, with eyes in the front of our heads, the better to spot prey with stereo vision.

We have evolved to eat cooked food as well. This is unique to humans. Comparisons of the human digestive system to other omnivores expose this difference.

What is a bit amazing to me is that there is a difference between what men and women have evolved to eat. Meat is a dangerous food. Not only does meat fight back until it's dead but even then it can kill you from being under cooked, or as mentioned above over salted. A man getting sick from meat means he's miserable for a while, assuming it doesn't kill him. A woman getting sick runs the risk of a miscarriage if pregnant, including same the risk of death as men. Miscarriages from eating meat over long evolutionary time spans will lead to differences in the genetics. This is why pregnant women are discouraged from eating certain foods and often feel ill when eating things they would otherwise tolerate when not pregnant. Women can better tolerate a vegetarian diet than men. That's not saying it's impossible for men to go on a vegan diet, only that men run greater health risks for doing so.