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The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

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Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#41

Post by sampo »

TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #14
ams6110 wrote: post #6

Wait a minute... I thought the notion that saturated fat caused heart disease was settled science. That we had a consensus. Now we realize we're wrong? That scientists cherry-picked data, had inadequate controls? That "too much institutional energy and research money had already been spent ... A bias in its favor had grown so strong that the idea just started to seem like common sense." The tragedy is that after gene…

This is the same problem I have with the extreme push towards global warming mitigation. Half a century ago we were worried sick about global cooling . Sure, we know more now than we did then. But that is not a valid response: in any decade we know more than in decades before that. Most of the measures for global warming mitigation either directly cause massive economic costs (large taxes, etc, etc, which all end up…

> "banning of CFCs"

CFCs were banned because they were destroying the ozone layer, and the ozone layer protects us from excessive UV-radiation (which causes skin cancer). This was not related to global warming.

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#42

Post by newaccountfool »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #40
bikamonki wrote: post #34

Have we become stupid to the point that we need the Internet to tell us what to eat? What were we eating for millenia before we invented nutrition experts? Is this article of relevance/interest to HN?

Diet matters. There are good scientifically informed choices that can reduce your risk of horrible diseases like cancer and alzheimers. Even in the context of traditional diets there are good ones and bad ones. Do you want to look like this guy: http://www.kimmacquarrie.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Mash... Or this guy: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rTRD-USWhSk/UTIwrhmGFcI/AAAAAAAAAT... They both eat traditional diets,…

Your making the assumption that because one guy is skinny he is healthier than the other. The 2nd picture (Darker Skinned) is a Maasai Warrior and the other are Mascho Piro. They will probably have different diets and do differencing amounts of exercise daily, but just because one is thin and one is not as thin, doesn't say anything about health.

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#43

Post by bikamonki »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #40
bikamonki wrote: post #34

Have we become stupid to the point that we need the Internet to tell us what to eat? What were we eating for millenia before we invented nutrition experts? Is this article of relevance/interest to HN?

Diet matters. There are good scientifically informed choices that can reduce your risk of horrible diseases like cancer and alzheimers. Even in the context of traditional diets there are good ones and bad ones. Do you want to look like this guy: http://www.kimmacquarrie.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Mash... Or this guy: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rTRD-USWhSk/UTIwrhmGFcI/AAAAAAAAAT... They both eat traditional diets,…

Both look healthy to me ;) The problem is that since we do not have the means to conduct the scientific experiments ourselves we rely on experts and public agencies. Hard to tell if either is working unbiased. So, in lack of certainty and trust, I rather just eat as my grandparents did. So far so good!

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#44

Post by sampo »

ams6110 wrote: post #6

Wait a minute... I thought the notion that saturated fat caused heart disease was settled science. That we had a consensus. Now we realize we're wrong? That scientists cherry-picked data, had inadequate controls? That "too much institutional energy and research money had already been spent ... A bias in its favor had grown so strong that the idea just started to seem like common sense." The tragedy is that after gene…

> "That scientists cherry-picked data, had inadequate controls?"

The type of people who end up (or even aim for) in government regulatory bodies, are usually not the cream of the cream of scientists.

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#45

Post by jlehman »

newaccountfool wrote: post #36
jlehman wrote: post #33

I've followed the Paleo diet for over two years now and the health benefits have been great for me (an incidental part of eating tons of meat is getting a good amount of animal-based saturated fat). After many discussions with many people about what is or is not healthy and a lot of reading, I've come to believe two things: 1. We (scientific and non-scientific community) have no clue what is or is not healthy, and it…

Can I ask what you have in your Paleo diet? Because I once witnessed some one mention 'Paleo Cookies' which is completely ridiculous which led me to believe it was a fad die that went along with Crossfit.

Sure -- assuming you mean personally:

Any meat, any vegetables, decent amount of fruit, any kind of potatoes, butter, some nuts. It's a bit of a deviation from the by-the-book version (whatever that actually is -- it varies depending on who you talk to) because of potatoes and butter.

People will make "Paleo Cookies" and other baked goods usually with a combination of nut-flours, potato starch/flour and honey for sweetener (among other things). They tend to look ugly and taste pretty bad. Not to mention contain lots of sugar (which, even if it's honey, ends up defeating the purpose proportional to how cookie-like you want it to taste). I have made things like that though -- cookie cravings happen.

If you mean in Fitsme:

We have something fairly close to what's probably mentioned by Crossfit -- but it's 100% configurable, so it can have whatever you want it to.

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#46

Post by jackalope »

bikamonki wrote: post #34

Have we become stupid to the point that we need the Internet to tell us what to eat? What were we eating for millenia before we invented nutrition experts? Is this article of relevance/interest to HN?

I find it fascinating that:

The very cornerstone of dietary advice for generations..."

...is being challenged because:

Critics have pointed out that Dr. Keys violated several basic scientific norms in his study.

It's a cautionary tale worth telling no matter the discipline. Studies are often accepted without much challenge because we assume that rigorous controls were in place. But the adage of "Garbage in, garbage out" remains a fundamental truth. I think that is what is relevant and interesting to HN readers.

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#47

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

sampo wrote: post #41
TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same problem I have with the extreme push towards global warming mitigation. Half a century ago we were worried sick about global cooling . Sure, we know more now than we did then. But that is not a valid response: in any decade we know more than in decades before that. Most of the measures for global warming mitigation either directly cause massive economic costs (large taxes, etc, etc, which all end up…

> "banning of CFCs" CFCs were banned because they were destroying the ozone layer, and the ozone layer protects us from excessive UV-radiation (which causes skin cancer). This was not related to global warming.

Correct, sorry. I had forgotten that, although they are potent greenhouse gasses, that was not the reason they were originally banned.

Still a valid point in the "don't be rash" sense", but not in the "don't be rash regarding global warming" sense.

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#48

Post by anigbrowl »

TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #14
ams6110 wrote: post #6

Wait a minute... I thought the notion that saturated fat caused heart disease was settled science. That we had a consensus. Now we realize we're wrong? That scientists cherry-picked data, had inadequate controls? That "too much institutional energy and research money had already been spent ... A bias in its favor had grown so strong that the idea just started to seem like common sense." The tragedy is that after gene…

This is the same problem I have with the extreme push towards global warming mitigation. Half a century ago we were worried sick about global cooling . Sure, we know more now than we did then. But that is not a valid response: in any decade we know more than in decades before that. Most of the measures for global warming mitigation either directly cause massive economic costs (large taxes, etc, etc, which all end up…

This is a canard. There was certainly some thought given to the idea of global cooling but there was never anything even close to the modern consensus about climate change (a term which recognizes the non-uniform effects of warming). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

I get where you're coming from, but I do think you're being a touch disingenuous with questions like 'has anyone crunched the numbers?' Of course people have considered that higher CO2 concentrations could come with benefits as well as costs. Here's an optimistic crunching of the numbers, finding a $3.5 trillion benefit over the last 50 years, although I thinkt he methodology is severely flawed: http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/co2benefits/Mone...

And here are some explanations for why the relationship between CO2 availability and agricultural productivity is non-linear: https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm

I have to say that if you are as concerned about your descendants' future as you say, then I think it's time you did more of your own homework.

As for CFCs, the main problem I've been aware of resulting from the ban that might have resulted in deaths was due to the increased cost of asthma medication. Do you have any data to quanity how many deaths this has supposedly caused? Would you say that this is more or less than the lives that would otherwise be lost to skin cancer?

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#49

Post by jlehman »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #35
jlehman wrote: post #33

I've followed the Paleo diet for over two years now and the health benefits have been great for me (an incidental part of eating tons of meat is getting a good amount of animal-based saturated fat). After many discussions with many people about what is or is not healthy and a lot of reading, I've come to believe two things: 1. We (scientific and non-scientific community) have no clue what is or is not healthy, and it…

Going by how you feel in response to diet changes doesn't necessarily work all that great. Eating loads of meat and under consuming sugar and starch, for example, will send catecholamine levels way up. This will have the short term affect of making you feel better. Inflammation will go down and you'll have more energy. This is the same effect that causes people to say they feel good on a fast. But once you clock up a…

It's been two years. Health is great, stress is largely non-existent. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Re: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

#50

Post by jjoonathan »

TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #14
ams6110 wrote: post #6

Wait a minute... I thought the notion that saturated fat caused heart disease was settled science. That we had a consensus. Now we realize we're wrong? That scientists cherry-picked data, had inadequate controls? That "too much institutional energy and research money had already been spent ... A bias in its favor had grown so strong that the idea just started to seem like common sense." The tragedy is that after gene…

This is the same problem I have with the extreme push towards global warming mitigation. Half a century ago we were worried sick about global cooling . Sure, we know more now than we did then. But that is not a valid response: in any decade we know more than in decades before that. Most of the measures for global warming mitigation either directly cause massive economic costs (large taxes, etc, etc, which all end up…

> But that is not a valid response: in any decade we know more than in decades before that.

Why does the inevitable increase in accumulated knowledge imply that it doesn't make sense to base decisions on the current state of that knowledge? It sounds like you haven't thought this argument through.

Repeated, rapid fluctuations in the scientific opinion or lack of broad consensus would be warning signs, but neither of those are present.

> So: has anyone crunched the numbers?

Yes! That's what scientists do for a living. They publish detailed records of their data-->conclusion inference process, high-level scientific summaries of those individual results (reviews), and higher-level nonscientific summaries of their cause/impact/mitigation conclusions (IPCC reports). Thousands of them sign statements saying that their individual contributions weren't misrepresented in the high level reports, and then individual members of the community go forth and represent that consensus to the media and to politicians.

And then people like you notice that their soundbytes don't constitute a formal inference process and use this fact to argue that the scientists don't know what they're talking about. Of course, you're too damn lazy to dig through their painstakingly constructed pyramid of results and see for yourself, so you have to keep your feet firmly planted in "my ignorance is as good as your knowledge" territory to keep up the argument. This should tell you something.

> Plants grow better in higher CO2 concentrations.

Do you really think this escaped the notice of thousands of specialists with millenia of accumulated experience?

Answer: it didn't. Here's the latest report I've seen addressing this issue. There have been plenty of other reports answering permutations of this question, but they weren't published last week in Science, so I'd have to use google scholar to find them.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6183/508.abstract

> I'd like to make rather sure that we know what we're doing.

"Doing nothing" is doing something -- something that the only people in a position to make credible predictions regarding the effects of what we're doing are awfully worried about.

> dropping a nuke to trigger a volcano would lower global temperatures. We know this.

You seem far more confident in your ability to predict the climactic effects of a nuke in a volcano than in the scientific community's ability to predict what happens when we dump an insane amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. Why?

A child could tell you why the volcano would be a bad idea. I'm quite certain you've not given this nearly as much honest thought as you think you have.

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