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The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

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Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#111

My experience with this is that you have to take a n=1 approach to nutrition. You need to figure out what works for you by experimenting.

Even if N=1 is fine, accurate measuring is hard. There are many variables and placebo works very well. Is there any good way?

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very simple. If you suffer from high blood pressure (above 140/90mm Hg) and your sodium intake is considerable, your blood pressure rises even more. You can easily set up a study with a control group and test it repeatedly, the results will be the same. However, the mitigating factor is potassium. If you consume an adequate amount of foods rich in potassium, the negative effect of sodium on your blood pressure…

You don’t even have to have high blood pressure for above ‘normal’ (~2000mg/day) salt intake to create the effect. It’s observable in people with normal blood pressure as well, and pronounced in a subset of the population with a gene that appears to worsen the effect. The potassium factor is why many doctors often recommend sea/himalayan salt — these salts usually have a bunch of other minerals, including potassium.…

> doctors often recommend sea/himalayan salt

Himalayan salt is 99% sodium chloride and doesn't contain significant potassium to make a difference. Someone recommending it as a healthier alternative should not be taken seriously.

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#113
post #16

Eggs could easily be replaced with salt. Consuming too much salt (more than 2g a day) is heavily discouraged by some because it is said to increase the risks of cardiovascular diseases as well as increase blood pressure to a dangerous level, but others repudiate these claims and assert they are untrue, and that salt has positive health benefits above this limit. Even if we take a group of people, put them in a closed…

I think the issue with salt and eggs is that we talk of humans in the aggregate. For eggs, there is some small percentage of the population that passes the cholesterol into actual high levels of serum LDL. For salt, there is some small percentage of the population that reacts to high sodium levels with hypertension. And these subsets of population studies skew the results to a degree that adversely affects the conclu…

This is very true, a few years ago that I started eating around 4-6 eggs a day because it seemed a good source of nutrients and I had seen various articles saying the cholesterol thing was a myth etc. After about 3 weeks of that many eggs per day, I ended up at the doctor feeling lightheaded and not quite right and turned out my blood pressure was insanely high and after a blood test my cholesterol was through the roof.

I cut out the eggs but otherwise kept my diet fairly similar and about a month later my bloodwork showed I was back to normal cholesterol.

Definitely there are some people who when they eat eggs it will spike their blood cholesterol significantly, but I have also seen other people who can eat lots of eggs and it doesn't seem to change their cholesterol in bloodwork at all.

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#114
post #26
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also this "Other nutrition research critics, such as John Ioannidis of Stanford University" There is a good appeal to authority for you.

John Ioannidis is a critic of bad clinical research in general, not just nutrition. This is his most widely cited paper on the topic. Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

Ioannidis has zero credibility at this point.

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#115

My experience with this is that you have to take a n=1 approach to nutrition. You need to figure out what works for you by experimenting.

Getting regular assays of all relevant biomarkers to make informed choices in your diet seems like a lot of work that I would like to outsource to some team of scientists...

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#116
post #43

Ya know, technically,... " Nutrition research tends to be unreliable because nearly all of it is based on observational studies, which are imprecise, have no controls, and don’t follow an experimental method. " You could say the same things about astronomy.

Predicting the movement of the stars is a vastly simpler problem that predicting the health effects of food.

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#117
post #61

Industrial egg production is bad for the chickens, especially male chicks. I consume egg alternatives such as Just Egg and use alternatives (e.g. tapioca starch) for baking and no one notices.

> Industrial egg production is bad for the chickens Most successful bird in the planet. Almost 26 billions of chicken lives in this planet because egg production. But yeah, farming is bad. Dodos are fortunate to live such wild and happy lives currently.

Now imagine being the most successful bird on the planet but not living a short life of suffering before being killed. Eggs can be produced without torturing the birds. It just costs more.

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be wishing for the fate of the dodo if you were trapped inside a cage 1.5x your volume for your entire life, your only consolation being there's another 100 billion of you. "How successful of me," you'd be saying to yourself?

> You'd be wishing for the fate of the dodo if jailed Not, I wouldn't. To be alive and bored is better than to be dead and rotten. Rethink your priorities. Chicken are equal to humans only in totalitarian dreams And by the way only idiots and cowards choose suicide when life is not so good as the expected

There are many scenarios worse than death.

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#119
We were told for decades that saturated fat was really bad for us.

Now it turns out (as some pointed out even back when it started) that saturated fat is absolutely fine. All the people dropping dead from heart disease were being poisoned by trans fats, which were being added to everything (as e.g. Crisco, and margerine).

There is something wrong in (American) beef, but it's not the saturated fat. We lost decades, blaming the fat, and still don't know what it is.

Now we are being poisoned by the fructose in sugar that is added to everything. It is really hard to buy things made in the US without a phenomenal amount of sugar dumped in. Bread, pickles, salad dressing, soy milk, you name it.

The US massively subsidizes production of corn, to the point there is so much more than the market wants that they have to turn it into sugar and pump that into everything. That's not enough, so they also have to feed cows, pigs, and chicken on it, which makes them sick. That's not enough, so they have to make it into ethanol and add it to gasoline.

What is ironic is that actual corn sugar, glucose, is fine.

But they catalyze corn into fructose because it is sweeter when cold. And, incidentally, toxic. Your liver can neutralize a strictly limited amount of almost any toxin, including fructose, but most Americans take in much more than that.

So, before you eat/drink sugar, think: how much sugar do I expect to need to neutralize today?

For more actionable information, consult Robert Lustig lectures on Youtube.

Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, IDK is a great answer if it’s true

In theory, sure. In practice, skepticism can be impractical. The guys printing the food pyramid postor needs science's guidelines. The hospital director wants to provide guidelines for the catering contract. Etc. IDK is fine, but they'll just ask the next guy until they get an answer. What do you mean science doesn't know what we should eat? Oh FredPret, you're such a contrarian. Don't be difficult.

The "food pyramid" people were emphatically not even slightly interested in "science's guidelines". They were marketers making propaganda to force on helpless kids.
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