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Here’s how public thinking on food gets shaped: Every year, researchers publish hundreds of academic studies about the health effects of various foods - chocolate, kale, red wine, anything. Those studies, in turn, become fodder for newspaper articles, books and blog posts.
But how much of this torrent of information is worth the trouble? Surprising little, according to a number of key researchers.In recent years, these skeptics have caused a stir by poking big holes in the nutritional science behind popular diet advice. Even the findings published in distinguished health journals have come under fire.
Collectively, their work suggests that we know far less than we think we do about what to eat.
[Also Covered By]: http://firstwefeast.com/eat/are-nutrition-studies-complete-bogus/
[Related]: http://firstwefeast.com/eat/new-dietary-guidelines-say-red-meat-and-butter-are-not-the-devil/
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 13 2015, @03:51PM
It's complete bullshit, of course.
The big 3: fats, carbs, and protein, they still occupy the same role they did since before I was born. Moderate the first 2 because of calories, eat the third proportional to intended muscle gain. A 2000 calorie diet is still reasonable.
Target amounts of vitamins and minerals have shifted very little. You still need iron. You still need riboflavin. Salt fucks with your blood pressure.
None of that shit has changed. All this article is doing is quibbling over tertiary nutrients, like anti-oxidants.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 13 2015, @04:54PM
We all know what makes for a reasonably healthy diet:
1. Eat things that you can reasonably follow the steps from living creature to food. Avoid complex and and secret processing that happens before you ever see the item.
2. Eat more plants than meat.
3. Don't eat too much.
Follow those 3 rules, and you're probably no less healthy than those running around GNC looking for the best BS supplements. In other words, something other than your food will kill you first.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:06PM
eat fermented foods, since many naturally occurring gut microbes are removed from our foods due to preservatives, etc.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DECbot on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:16PM
Are you possibly suggesting an all beer diet? It'll be a big sacrifice, but I'm willing to give a try.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Funny) by Translation Error on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:49PM
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 13 2015, @07:04PM
Well, if we're going to include food groups, then obviously adding some wine to get the servings of fruit would be in order.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:33PM
Well it seemed to work for German monks during lent [wikipedia.org]. And now I think I need to be a German monk.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @07:32PM
Unfortunately there isn't a whole lot of evidence for your first two points. They just seem reasonable, but then again, that is sort of the whole topic of the article.
(Score: 5, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:26PM
Salt fucks with your blood pressure.
No, that's actually incorrect. What is known is that people with high blood pressure should limit salt intake. But for healthy folks, your own instincts for how salty you want your food is fine.
A study from 1991 indicates that people need about one and one-half teaspoons of salt per day. Anything less triggers a cascade of hormones to recuperate sodium from the waste stream, hormones that make people vulnerable to heart disease and kidney problems. Furthermore, research in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that the less sodium excreted in the urine (a marker of salt consumption), the greater the risk of dying from heart diseasev. The study followed 3,681 middle-aged healthy Europeans for eight years. The participants were divided into three groups: low salt, moderate salt, and high salt consumption. Researchers tracked mortality rates for the three groups, with the following results:
The risk for heart disease was 56 percent higher for the low-salt group than for the group who ate the most salt! Some studies have shown a modest benefit to salt restriction among some people with high blood pressure, but the evidence does not extend to the rest of the population.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 13 2015, @05:40PM
"Fucks with your blood pressure"!=deadly.
It definitely fucks with your blood pressure, by altering the viscousness of your blood. That happens whether you're at risk for heart disease or not. It's just that it's not a serious concern if your heart and circulatory system are healthy.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @07:41PM
No. In healthy people their blood pressure does not change with higher salt intake.
Or, in your parlance: Fucking wrong. Only a fucking idiot doesn't know how science works. It is obvious that you don't know a goddamn thing. This has been tested and blood pressure does not change with salt intake for healthy people. Fucking moron.
I hope I have communicated in a way in which you have become accustomed.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 13 2015, @07:47PM
You self-assured dumbass [bloodpressureuk.org].
It affects one of the most basic functions of biology: osmosis. Your cells take on more water, and though your kidneys and cellular Na-K pumps eventually balance the situation, the short term effects are trivially documented.
You fucking goddamn smug idiot.
(Score: 4, Touché) by sjames on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:41PM
Given the motivation, I could probably find you a web page talking about the epidemic of aliens abducting bigfoot so he can play poker with Elvis, but that doesn't make it a fact.
In fact, salt reduction is helpful to about 10% of people with high blood pressure. Nobody else sees a significant effect either way.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday May 14 2015, @01:17PM
Oh you can find a webpage. Good fucking job refuting the basic fucking science involved.
God damn morons are so fucking smug about their own misunderstandings.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:44PM
So do the hormonal effects you note for low salt intake also occur in people with high blood pressure on low-salt diets? If so, which is worse, those effects or high blood pressure?
Turns out eating a low-cholesterol diet has similar effects, to the point that one very large long-term study was terminated early (for ethical reasons) since the people eating the low-cholesterol diet were dying of heart disease at an accelerated rate.
As to TFA, there's nothing wrong with the biochemistry of nutrition, which is itself fairly well-established. But there's assloads wrong with how it's popularly applied, be that fad diets or the "food pyramid" or "everything looks like a nail" nutritionists who don't actually grok biochemistry.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Thursday May 14 2015, @12:39AM
So do the hormonal effects you note for low salt intake also occur in people with high blood pressure on low-salt diets? If so, which is worse, those effects or high blood pressure?
I can't find it now, but I do remember that the article I got that from mentioned that the hormonal effects were well-established. It was clearly negative (especially long term) for most folks. While I was looking again, I found a couple of studies that indicated the reduction in blood pressure came to about 3.5%. I'm not a doctor or anything, but that I'm not sure that's much of a trade-off.
As to TFA, there's nothing wrong with the biochemistry of nutrition, which is itself fairly well-established. But there's assloads wrong with how it's popularly applied, be that fad diets or the "food pyramid" or "everything looks like a nail" nutritionists who don't actually grok biochemistry.
That's true, as far as it goes. But nutrition has a lot to do with gut chemistry, which is not so well understood. It's a very complicated mix of bacteria and enzymes in a healthy gut, and even the most prevalent bacteriophage living in human digestive tracts have just recently been discovered [newscientist.com]. Combine that with the many issues in people with specific food intolerance due to a lack of certain enzymes, other causes of malabsorbtion, "leaky gut", etc., and there are still a lot of unknowns.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aichon on Wednesday May 13 2015, @06:19PM
[...] Salt fucks with your blood pressure.
None of that shit has changed.
That bit about salt has.
More recent research is indicating that the link you're describing is tenuous at best. After controlling for other factors, no statistically significant correlation could be found. The earlier research appears to have been based primarily on data that wasn't controlled for other factors.
But hey, I definitely subscribe to the "everything in moderation" school of thinking, so I do agree with your broad strokes, even if I might quibble over some of the details.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:44PM
Moderation is good as long as you don't overdo it.