Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Eating sardines regularly helps prevent type 2 diabetes

uoc.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 156 posts

Re: Eating sardines regularly helps prevent type 2 diabetes

#11

Post by vanderZwan »

Ecco wrote: post #5
vanderZwan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can follow that line of thinking, we also shouldn't immediately be dismissive of the conclusions of a professor/researcher at a faculty of health sciences. At least not without a good reason to believe that we have more expertise on the subject than them. On the other hand, there might also be a bit of Spanish cultural bias at work there (Spain is the second-largest consumer of fish after Japan). On the other…

I didn’t mean to dismiss their conclusions! It might be a pretty awesome discovery actually: eat delicious sardines and avoid getting diabetes? Count me in! I just meant that, as is often the case, great discoveries are often made before we really understand them. For example, isn’t this what happened with antibiotics?

Ah, like that! Fair enough, thank you for elaborating (please consider adding a bit of extra context next time, it will go a long way to prevent such misunderstandings)

Re: Eating sardines regularly helps prevent type 2 diabetes

#12

Post by woko »

Ecco wrote: post #2

“Sardines will therefore have a protective element because they are rich in the aforementioned nutrients, whereas nutrients taken in isolation in the form of supplements won’t work to the same extent” : to me this reads as “we found a correlation but we are clueless about the root cause”.

True. The "root cause" could be that one improves one's diet:

- if you take "sardine" supplement pills and go on eating burgers and fries, do not expect a miracle with respect to type 2 pre-diabetes,

- if you eat sardines as part of a meal, I suspect that you are likely to *replace* parts of your current diet with the (fatty) fish, rather than keep your usual diet and add fish on top of it.

For instance, a funny paragraph from section 4 (Discussion) hints that the SG (Sardine Group) must have added less olive oil to the rest of their meals:

> Another possible limitation of the study to bear in mind is the use of canned sardines in olive oil, which, despite easing distribution and consumption, present differences in MUFA content as compared to fresh sardines. Although this may have modified the pattern of lipids consumed, the SG group decreased their overall MUFA consumption. This could be due to the fact that the use of olive oil added to meals did not occur when they consumed the canned sardines and, therefore, there are no differences in its consumption with respect to CG.

NB: I don't want to dismiss any part of the article, I only want to insist that it is hard to isolate causes because of this effect of "communicating vases".

Re: Eating sardines regularly helps prevent type 2 diabetes

#13

Post by azalemeth »

Ecco wrote: post #2

“Sardines will therefore have a protective element because they are rich in the aforementioned nutrients, whereas nutrients taken in isolation in the form of supplements won’t work to the same extent” : to me this reads as “we found a correlation but we are clueless about the root cause”.

Edit - I managed to mis-read the press release and read through the wrong paper in detail! Disregard the below…

Quite. If you read the paper -- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59643-7.pdf -- the word 'sardine' doesn't appear once; 'fish' doesn't either.

The trouble with observational cohort studies is that causality is very hard, if not impossible, to identify. Their main result is based on multivariate logistic regression. I like logistic regression as a technique, and it is very powerful, but if, for example, there is an unmeasured cofounding or causal variable that manifests itself as a linear combination of a number of measured but perhaps more acausal variables, it _will_ confidently give you the wrong result.

Re: Eating sardines regularly helps prevent type 2 diabetes

#14

Post by Codesleuth »

benevol wrote: post #8

On the other hand, it significantly reduces the health of certain sardines.

This article seems to be akin to many others that promote carnivorous diets. "Drinking milk reduces X" or "eating [insert animal here] improves Y" might be true, but you don't need to consume the animal (and prolong the environmental impacts) to get them.

Re: Eating sardines regularly helps prevent type 2 diabetes

#16

Post by yawnxyz »

azalemeth wrote: post #13
Ecco wrote: post #2

“Sardines will therefore have a protective element because they are rich in the aforementioned nutrients, whereas nutrients taken in isolation in the form of supplements won’t work to the same extent” : to me this reads as “we found a correlation but we are clueless about the root cause”.

Edit - I managed to mis-read the press release and read through the wrong paper in detail! Disregard the below… Quite. If you read the paper -- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59643-7.pdf -- the word 'sardine' doesn't appear once; 'fish' doesn't either. The trouble with observational cohort studies is that causality is very hard, if not impossible, to identify. Their main result is based on multivariate lo…

Isn't this the paper...? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02615...

Re: Eating sardines regularly helps prevent type 2 diabetes

#19

Post by roland35 »

My uncle used to come over and visit my family. He would play chess on our laptop (wasn't tech savvy but was amazing at chess) with a stack of sardines and a gallon of water. He'd then comment "haha your dog loves me! I wonder why?" as he tosses our dog another sardine. He was a funny and strange guy, but he loved those sardines!

He did tell me back in the 90s that processed carbohydrates were really bad for you, so I think he was ahead of the curve!

Post reply on HN