The worst part is that for 20 years (until about 10-15 years ago), anyone stating that maybe saturated fat wasn't so bad was demonized and called anti-science. There seemed to be very little opportunity for reasoned discussion or actual comparison of results in the wild. Demonization of the opposing viewpoint, instead of reasoned discussion and further inquiry, IS the definition of anti-science.
40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
91–100 of 116 posts
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect there is a certain amount of "meat solidarity", but meat itself is not really a monolithic thing. Pork is roughly twice as efficient as beef to produce, and poultry three times as efficient. Replacing beef in your diet with other meats is already a substantial improvement without the hassle of going full-vegan.
It's not a question of 'is meat bad for the planet'. It's that the internet seems to be full of people who fancy themselves sharp-minded critical-thinking skeptics running around accusing Big-Ag of motivated reasoning with regards to carbohydrates while ignoring that meat production is part of Big-Ag and has just as much cause for motivated reasoning.
Yeah, fair enough. Honestly any single study is also just goddamn meaningless -- it's really impossible to draw any conclusions from most any study without the context of the rest of the field to judge the quality and implications of a particular paper. Pushing a single study is usually either disingenuous (on the part of anyone with financial interest) or irresponsible (on the part of media/blogger sensationalists).
I personally find it more amusing that the internet is so friendly towards "big organic". :-)
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#93In line with this submission, two posts linking to an article on The Guardin about sugar hit the front page of HN lately:
The Sugar Conspiracy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941
The sugar conspiracy: sugar—not fat—is the greatest danger to our health: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11471806
It revolves around a lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig (UCSF) that was also posted on HN six years ago. I found it amazing:
Sugar: The Bitter Truth (UCSF lecture): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006980
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#94The context of the early 70s was that "The Limits To Growth" and "The Population Bomb" had just been published and there was a real concern in the air that the world was going to run out of food quickly unless something drastic was done. I think this created a strong confirmation bias that favored any scientific validation of vegetarianism as good news. Saturated fat being the main component of meats that is not in v…
Vegetarian diet isn't really connected to low-fat. Meat generally decreases your food's average fat content, since most meat is lean. Vegetarians make up lack of lean meat with more fatty dairy and cholesterol raising eggs.
Except a ton of vegetarians don't consume dairy or eggs because they're made from animals.
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#95The worst part is that for 20 years (until about 10-15 years ago), anyone stating that maybe saturated fat wasn't so bad was demonized and called anti-science. There seemed to be very little opportunity for reasoned discussion or actual comparison of results in the wild. Demonization of the opposing viewpoint, instead of reasoned discussion and further inquiry, IS the definition of anti-science.
It's still happening to this day: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-agriculture/2016/0...
But I suppose more as a rearguard action, you're correct that it's not as bad as it once was.
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course on the other hand: wouldn't it be amazingly convenient for the meat industry if just as a massive drought was bringing forth a renewed wave of criticism against the wastefulness of alfalfa for feed; with factory farms being heavily criticized as horrifying cruel; antibiotics in animal feed being blamed for bringing about the MRSApocalypse; hormones being blamed for... well just about anything; along with sh…
I suspect there is a certain amount of "meat solidarity", but meat itself is not really a monolithic thing. Pork is roughly twice as efficient as beef to produce, and poultry three times as efficient. Replacing beef in your diet with other meats is already a substantial improvement without the hassle of going full-vegan.
"Pork is roughly twice as efficient as beef to produce"
Citation needed.
Beef can live on range-lands that aren't good for much else and requires very low inputs. If we didn't have a taste for grain fed finished animals it would almost certainly be many times as efficient as pork.
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#97Dr Mark Hyman, an MD who practises functional medicine, recently launched abook titled 'Eat Fat Get Thin'. Today I received an email from him titled 'The results are in...' :
Dear Marcus,
Before I launch any program, I test it. Not just on my patients, which I have done for decades (in fact on over 20,000 patients), but on people all over the country following the program at home. We had over 1,000 people do the Eat Fat, Get Thin beta program and the results and stories were amazing. Here are the average results from the first group to go through the program:
Weight Loss: 7.1 pounds (some lost up to 46 pounds)
Waist Reduction: 1.9 inches (some lost up to 13 inches)
Hip Reduction: 1.7 inches (some lost up to 16 inches)
Blood Pressure Reduction: systolic (top number) 9 points, diastolic (bottom number) 4.5 points
Blood Sugar Reduction: 23 points
I am following the work of Dr Hyman for a long time and already knew that a diet with good fats is healthy, but the result of 69% drop of symtoms of all diseases is astonishing and makes you think: the bad foods make you sick and the good foods make you healthy.
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#98Mental patients didn't have a say on their diet 40 years ago. This experiment says a lot about the level of care for the wellbeing of those who are locked up and are not given a choice (supposedly for their own benefit). I wonder if these kinds of experiments are still being done at mental institutions and elsewhere people are treated like Guinea pigs.
This was my first thought as well. You couldn't possibly do a study like this today, or at least I hope not, because the issues around informed consent are too thorny when it comes to mental patients.
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#99Is it this difficult to know what to eat Americans? Just don't eat processed food and don't abuse with only one type of food ffs.
Gosh, those silly, stupid Americans. What will they get themselves into next?
> Just don't eat processed food
So...
Don't eat canned food. Don't eat frozen food. Don't eat packaged food, often labeled "natural" or "organic." [1]
[1] http://www.foodinsight.org/sites/default/files/what-is-a-pro...
ffs, maybe if Americans just ate like Europeans, everything would be fine.
Oh wait a second...
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/c...
Hmm...
Re: 40 year old study could have reshaped American diet, was never fully published
#100The article stops short of highlighting the most explosive detail. The study’s investigators suppressed these data just as one of them, Ancel Keys, was consolidating political power and unifying opinion around his cholesterol hypothesis. And when, twenty years later, the contradictory results were published, they lied about the conclusions. There has always been suspicion of knowing cherry-picking. But the evidence o…
Yup, ironically Ancel Keyes is probably responsible for a huge number of deaths, the road to hell is paved with good intentions as they say.