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)
#2Imagine how rigorous nutritional science can be when state-of-the-art double-blind scientific tests are pretty much impossible or extremely expensive to do, and when there is a lot of $$$ interest and lobbying in presenting one outcome or the other.
Nutrition is not rocket science, we are all expert in eating and especially in how our body reacts to certain food types, yet we take studies of abysmal quality for granted and preach them to our fellow human as if they were the ultimate truth.
I can say I'm going to run a marathon naked in Antarctica and everyone would cheer me, but if I mention I'm going vegan, carnivore or adding some butter or tofu to my cheeseburger, everyone, from both camps, is ready to point out why I am killing myself and on the way to premature death. Yet they are not speaking from experience, but mostly from hearsay from their favourite echo chamber.
I've stopped caring what common wisdom around nutrition is, and since I've started listening to how my body reacts I feel much better, healthier, and I roll my eyes every time I read the latest "nutrition" article or comment thread posted on here or anywhere else.
We're still in the middle ages of nutritional sciences.
Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
#3Eggs 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 place and strictly control what they eat, it is extremely difficult to say if a certain food has had a particular impact on X or not. There are some many elements which are unrelated to nutrition at play that X could decrease or increase for any reason other than what one ate: stress, tiredness, physical activity, mood...
Now, I reckon the wisest thing to do is to follow what the author concludes with: eat moderately and have a balanced nutrition. I doubt we'll ever get concrete and truthful research on nutrition soon enough. We first need to learn more about the extremely complex system that is the human body.
Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
#4I'm having deja vu. We had a top story on HN recently where either the article or the consensus of the comments was "you pretty much cannot believe any studies about food or nutrition."
Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
#5Most “science” that denies the reality of studying complex systems is broken. The concept of studying strength of correlations, even applied in the context of randomized controlled trials is only really effective in low dimensional spaces and linear dependences (I’m being very loose here, for brevity). But complex systems break all those assumptions.
To steal a quote, researchers use data/statistics like a drunkard uses a lamp post — for support, rather than illumination.
This applies to nutrition, medicine, ecology, economics, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if their experimental arms run largely on confirmation bias.
Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
#6Industrial 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.
Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
#7The concept of sticking to one particular form of eating has always bothered me. It's always felt like an attempt to find a panacea that doesn't require much analysis by the person of what they input to their bodies. Realistic eating is a lifelong responsibility of paying attention to what you're eating and the effects it has on your body. Perhaps what we need is a faster feedback loop of what the current state of your body is so you can make an adjustment.
There are definitely some foods that are better than others, but choosing a diet because it'll solve all your problems is the wrong way to address health.
Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
#8"Dr. Mehmet Oz even touted it on his television show." Yeah, no.
Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
#9“the study tracked participants’ health outcomes over periods ranging from 13 to more than 30 years, and participants were queried about their diet only once, at the beginning of the study. Can we assume that the participants gave a reliable depiction of their diet at the outset, and then that they maintained that same diet for the years — in many cases, decades — that followed?”
That seems like an awful way to design an experiment.
Re: The humble egg is an example of what’s wrong with nutrition studies (2019)
#10I eat 3 eggs a day - I hadn't heard of that study that more than 2 would kill me!
In general I aim for lots of protein, a good bit of fat and less carbs.. with a specific aim to avoid carbs from bread, fries, cakes, chips/crisps