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posted by janrinok on Wednesday February 04 2015, @03:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'll-never-close-my-eyes-again dept.

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame writes on his blog that science's biggest fail of all time is 'everything about diet and fitness':

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 it has a credibility issue that it earned. "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?"

 
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  • (Score: 5, Disagree) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 04 2015, @05:51PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday February 04 2015, @05:51PM (#141222) Journal
    This is diet science that hasn't changed in 30 years:

    Calories In < Calories Used = Weight Loss

    All the pop science that turns out to be wrong are attempts to shortcut this very simple ratio.
    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @09:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @09:02PM (#141311)

    Of course, that's not true at all, since there's no way to measure how much energy can actually be extracted by the body/gut microbiome. Also proven that it changes depending on time of day.

    Science!

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 06 2015, @03:19AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 06 2015, @03:19AM (#141707) Journal

      Of course, that's not true at all, since there's no way to measure how much energy can actually be extracted by the body/gut microbiome.

      And of course, that's totally irrelevant for the truth value of his inequality. The inequality is correct no matter if you manage or not to measure how much your body transforms in energy and how much is lost to your gut bugs.
      If you do "calories out" larger than "calories in" you'll be guaranteed to lose weight (even if you are just a bunch of atoms undergoing nuclear fusion or fission)

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by PapayaSF on Thursday February 05 2015, @03:44AM

    by PapayaSF (1183) on Thursday February 05 2015, @03:44AM (#141415)

    Except there's good evidence that this is not true. All calories are not equal: fat, protein and carbs are different. Your body is not a furnace that burns things for their raw energy content. (Which is how calories are measured: according to a calorimeter, coal has lots of calories, but your body would not agree.)

    One example is alcohol. There's evidence that the calories in wine and liquor do not cause the weight gain that the equivalent amount of calories of beer will do, and there's some evidence that alcohol consumption can cause weight loss in women. The "diet science" you are quoting is just the sort of thing Adams is talking about.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @08:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 05 2015, @08:41AM (#141441)

    You and the people who agree with you slam so hard into your own ignorance it makes me winch, it really isn't pretty. Glad I'm not you.