Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#31

Post by vfc1 » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

sbooher wrote: post #26

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Fallacious arguments abound for the carnivore group all the way over to the militant vegans who would want to tax or outlaw meat eating altogether, while telling us to shut up and eat our processed patty of canola oil and isolated pea protein. For now, I’ll keep eating like my grandparents ate - you know, real food.” It sounds to me like just more bullshit food nostalgia nonsense and you’re just perpetuating your…

Hmmmm… The danger in the constant back and forth of poor nutrition science being hyped up in the media, reversing last week’s headline, is that eventually the general population just gives up, and stops listening/acting on ANYTHING coming from this expert group. Those who want to drive food guidelines by other factors than actual health, should be honest about their motivations, whatever they are, rather than claimin…

> The danger in the constant back and forth of poor nutrition science being hyped up in the media, reversing last week’s headline, is that eventually the general population just gives up, and stops listening/acting on ANYTHING coming from this expert group.

That is exactly the goal here. To confuse the public, discredit scientists so that people just throw their hands in the air and just eat whatever they want and are used to.

For example, the tobacco industry had this famous memo that said "Doubt is our business". For 40 years, they never had to prove that smoking caused cancer. No, all they had to do was to create doubt due to contradictory studies, and the public would be confused and just keep smoking.

That is the goal with these studies and headlines, it's to confuse the public. The study they made actually said that there is a link between eating meat and a series of diseases.

It was the incredibly unscientific conclusion that its not worth to stop eating meat to avoid disease since people like it so much that caused the headlines, not the actual science of the studies.

Climate change, human health and animal welfare are all 3 huge reasons to not eat so much meat, the science is clear.

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#32

Post by parineum » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

elif wrote: post #9

brokenkebab wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such logic can make anybody say "wordplay" about any study which contains verbal interpretation of statistics, including the original metastudy.

If a seatbelt makes you 50% safer in the event of a potentially fatal crash, you wouldn't say "it's really a 4% difference because 8% of the population is involved in a potentially fatal accident" That is purposefully obfuscating the relevant data.

It depends on the audience.

Personally, if something will make a low occurence event marginally safer, I might not care. That's what this paper is saying.

Perhaps a scientific paper isn't the place for that (an article about the paper probably is) but that translated data is still relevant to a certain perspective.

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#33

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

sbooher wrote: post #20

If there is any information domain were it’s harder to figure out the real truth than current US politics, it’s “nutrition science”. As someone who actually tries to invest the time to check on sources and methods beyond the clickbait headlines, it’s really a mess. Poor scientific methods (observational studies), cherry-picking data to match a bias (Ancel Keys), conflicts of interest all over the place, etc. At a ver…

It's more like 2.5-3 million years for meat eating: https://www.livescience.com/31974-earliest-human-hunters-fou...

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#34

Post by Sawamara » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

A coworker linked the original study to me, and was quite glib about how this new study is quite reliable and so on. I checked it out, immediately got suspicious by the article (that was even more nonsensical, since it was not written by a scientist), then went into the study's summary instead, which was already way more nuanced .

What mostly stood out to me: the study did not even try to discredit the hard and overwhelming evidence that consuming red meat regularly does give you a single-digit percent incrase of various types of cancers. They then proceeded to give a summary that says that there is no point in worrying over such small percentage likelihood increases, basically (I am obviously paraphrasing here, so)

After that, we concluded with the coworker that yeah, this was not a holy grail counter to "mainstream science", just one slightly fishy one.

But this does not diminish my trust in the scientific method. This just adds one more example to the book 'why you should always try to at least verify/clarify claims before blindly believing them'.

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#35

Post by Sawamara » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

L0stRegulator wrote: post #5

brodouevencode wrote: post #4

This smells like a non-story. There’s just not enough there.

Agreed. Seems like an ad-hominem. There is often a huge lag between funding, submission for publication and final publication. His interpretation of the rules would be widely agreed upon as reasonable.

It is not. Please read the summary of the study,and tell me that that the conclusions drawn there are reasonable.

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#36

Post by Sawamara » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

parineum wrote: post #32

elif wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a seatbelt makes you 50% safer in the event of a potentially fatal crash, you wouldn't say "it's really a 4% difference because 8% of the population is involved in a potentially fatal accident" That is purposefully obfuscating the relevant data.

It depends on the audience. Personally, if something will make a low occurence event marginally safer, I might not care. That's what this paper is saying. Perhaps a scientific paper isn't the place for that (an article about the paper probably is) but that translated data is still relevant to a certain perspective.

But this is exactly the point of studies like this. They are written in a way that allows misinterpretation, and then the media can pick it up and run with it (like they did with this one).

There is a large body of writing about P-hacking, bias in studies, this is just one more in that long, long list.

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#37

Post by bobthepanda » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #29

bobthepanda wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cultures with higher fat (French) and higher sodium (e.g. Japanese). So at least they can’t wholly explain the difference in health. While sugar consumption is markedly higher in the US, I do believe that a good portion of the health outcomes can be explained by the total unwalkability of most of the US. If walking is part of the regular routine, you don’t need an app to hit 10,000 steps per day. But m…

I would like to get a mobility scooter so I can avoid even having to walk that distance ;) /s One day we will have fully automated cars that will just drop us off right at the door

This is basically the world as imagined in Wall-E, just minus the spaceship and a few extra steps.

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#38

Post by PerfectElement » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

sbooher wrote: post #26

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Fallacious arguments abound for the carnivore group all the way over to the militant vegans who would want to tax or outlaw meat eating altogether, while telling us to shut up and eat our processed patty of canola oil and isolated pea protein. For now, I’ll keep eating like my grandparents ate - you know, real food.” It sounds to me like just more bullshit food nostalgia nonsense and you’re just perpetuating your…

Hmmmm… The danger in the constant back and forth of poor nutrition science being hyped up in the media, reversing last week’s headline, is that eventually the general population just gives up, and stops listening/acting on ANYTHING coming from this expert group. Those who want to drive food guidelines by other factors than actual health, should be honest about their motivations, whatever they are, rather than claimin…

>For every warning statement on animal CO2 use, I can find a seemingly well done study on positive CO2 capture by regenerative farms (i.e. traditional farms before feed lots).

It looks like you are actively looking for data that makes you feel good about your habits and suspending critical thinking. The amount of evidence for the negative impact of the animal industry on the environment is staggering.

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#39

Post by ssijak » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #21

PunchTornado wrote: post #11

> as recently as December 2016 he was the senior author on a similar study that tried to discredit international health guidelines advising people to eat less sugar. That study, which also appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was paid for by the International Life Sciences Institute, or ILSI, an industry trade group largely supported by agribusiness, food and pharmaceutical companies and whose members have in…

So, even if he published a replicable study that was convincing, you'd toss it merely because of his affiliations? That seems like... a poor way to do science. Personally (I'm a PhD scientist in biology) I think a lot of the claims about sugar aren't actually supported by the evidence and are in fact just driven by super-egotist scientists who want peoeple to believe what they believe (lookin' at you, Lustig).

Sugar is missused word in the diet world. Some groups of people (mostly keto and carnivore group, but others too) use sugar for every type of carbohydrate, lumping simple sugars, fibers and starches together. Lusting from what I remember does make distinction from the different types of carbs. And yes, not all carbs are the same. Some ARE bad, like simple sugars and processed fructose (unless eaten rarely and very moderately) but some are not, like starches from whole foods and fiber!

Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties

#40

Post by briandear » Sat, Oct 05, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #24

sbooher wrote: post #20

If there is any information domain were it’s harder to figure out the real truth than current US politics, it’s “nutrition science”. As someone who actually tries to invest the time to check on sources and methods beyond the clickbait headlines, it’s really a mess. Poor scientific methods (observational studies), cherry-picking data to match a bias (Ancel Keys), conflicts of interest all over the place, etc. At a ver…

> “Fallacious arguments abound for the carnivore group all the way over to the militant vegans who would want to tax or outlaw meat eating altogether, while telling us to shut up and eat our processed patty of canola oil and isolated pea protein. For now, I’ll keep eating like my grandparents ate - you know, real food.” It sounds to me like just more bullshit food nostalgia nonsense and you’re just perpetuating your…

> The tone of your last paragraph also makes it sound like you would not give credence to ideas of choosing food options that reduce water depletion or CO2 emissions

I am not the writer of that comment, but yes I don’t give credence to choosing food choices based on water consumption. Water is a renewable resources water “shortages” aren’t a problem with actual water supply, but distribution of water. The Pacific Northwest is really wet, the Mojave is really dry. One could claim a dire shortage of water in the Mojave, which would be true, but that isn’t indicative of actually running out of water.

As far as fearing CO2 output from food; that’s just religious jibber-jabber for the doomsday cult du jour. The world isn’t ending.