The key argument of the authors, it seemed to me, was that because there is only low quality evidence (e.g. correlative) for the benefits of reducing meat consumption. Thus, there isn't evidence to suggest that meat is bad. This doesn't mean that there won't be overhwelming, high quality evidence in the future. One of the authors, in an interview with The Economist, countered this point, however, saying that it is extremely difficult to do sound nutrition research at scale, so the best evidence that we'll ever have is that meat is not bad for you. This signalled a big red flag for me.
Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
41–50 of 67 posts
Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, I actually think it's a large negative impact today, but rather than just accepting that's the way it is, I wonder why. Why is the US food system geared toward mass-scale industrial feed lots? What could be changed? On a trip to Ireland I never saw a ruminant in a feed lot, only on pasture, and they were slaughtered 1-2 years after our cattle. Why? Tax policy? Are other countries just not as smart as we are?
Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Risk does need to be presented both ways - relative and absilute - for anyone to make any sense of it though. People see 50% increase in risk and don't have enough information to make an informed choice. If you tell them that we go from 2 people in a thousand suffering ill effects to 3 people in a thousand they can make their choice. See the work of Gerd Gigerenzer for plenty of examples of people caused harm because…
But in this case, the extra variable adds weird implications that are simply not true... For instance, if half of the population became vegetarians, the rate of colorectal cancer would go down, and red meat would become even more "safe."
People aren't saying that.
They're saying if you have a population of 1,000 people who don't eat red meat you'd expect to see 2 cases of DISEASE_X. If you take a similar population but who do eat red meat you'd expect to see 3 cases of DISEASE_X.
That's a 50% increase, but that 50% relative risk number isn't enough information for people to make any decision. Here we're talking about an extra 1 person in 1000 people. But if the numbers were 4 in 10 increasing to 6 in 10 that's still only a 50% increase.
We need the absolute risk numbers to get an understanding: 0.2% increases to 0.3%. Something that's unlikely to happen becomes marginally more likely to happen.
This is not some weird obscure trickery. It's an important thing for people receiving healthcare to understand. It's mainstream science.
https://bestpractice.bmj.com/info/toolkit/practise-ebm/under...
https://www.eufic.org/en/understanding-science/article/absol...
Have a look at the factbox and the icon array linked in this page: https://www.harding-center.mpg.de/en/fact-boxes/early-detect...
But also, we should avoid using percentages and we should use natural frequencies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310025/ Only about 1 in 4 people understand that 0.1% means 1 in 1000.
Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#44Earlier 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…
> I’ve had people try to make the argument to me that all the water falling on all the pasture land in the US needs to be ‘counted against’ meat.
Those people are legitimately insane and/or belong to a cult.
Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#45The key argument of the authors, it seemed to me, was that because there is only low quality evidence (e.g. correlative) for the benefits of reducing meat consumption. Thus, there isn't evidence to suggest that meat is bad. This doesn't mean that there won't be overhwelming, high quality evidence in the future. One of the authors, in an interview with The Economist, countered this point, however, saying that it is ex…
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Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#46> 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).
He didn't publish a replicable study, he just said the risk is acceptable.
Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#47> 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…
If the study were funded by vegan groups or environmental groups would it be more credible? Or course not.
Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#48If 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…
Chimps in the wild eat 12 kilogram of meat on average. So it is probably millions of years.
Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#49If 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…
Mutant animal meat raised in factory farms fed soy and corn and shot with antibiotics and hormones is not real food either, and that is 99% of the meat dairy and eggs out there. This is a straw man argument, because the perfect experiment will never be conducted. You would have to take 5000 people, put them in an island and feed them plant foods their whole life, collect blood and urine sample periodically to monitor…
> There are studies that show that certain populations are healthier than others, and we know what they eat.
Going by the top 5 countries: wealth, high-quality healthcare, healthcare focusing on preventative care, strong personal safety and sense of wellbeing, strong community, siesta, favour walking and biking, reduce stress and improve mental wellbeing.
If I recall the findings of one of the longest study ever done on human health, if you want to live long be born with few stressers, genes that is correlated to low stress, and have good access to stress management, regularly exercise the hearth and genuine enjoy it. Don't drink and don't smoke, through they could also be correlating to a lack of access to better strategy for stress management.
We could ask what the diets of Japan, Spain, Singapore, Switzerland, and South Korea has in common, as those are the top 5 countries with longest life expectancy, but it seems much more relevant to look at stress factors and stress management. Cancer rate and cancer recovery in particular is very interesting subject matter in this context.
Diabetes is an interesting side note, in particular to the finding from studies looking at children born around the dutch hunger winter. It doesn't say anything about meat but a lot about how diabetes in part occur when there is a mismatch between how easily it is to access nutrients in the environment and how easy body is expecting it to be. A simplified version is that in one extreme you starve and in the other extreme you get diabetes. A diet that tries to avoid diabetes would be one that tries to match what the individual body expects.
Re: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties
#50> Scientist Who Discredited _______ Didn’t Report Past _____ Industry Ties
Fill in the blanks for many industry studies.