Diet Research

Research studies in nutrition tend to make unwarranted causal conclusions from the association of two factors.

Spuds Blamed for High Blood Pressure — Really!

Mediterranean Style Diet

Mediterranean style diet might slow down aging, reduce bone loss

Skipping Breakfast And Weight Gain

"If the breakfast/weight claim were true, we’d have rigorous evidence of it by now; we don’t, so it likely isn’t."

This is a good example of poor research leading to an invalid conclusion.

Breakfast consumption was not consistently associated with differences in BMI or overweight/obesity prevalence.

Natural Is Meaningless

What (if anything) does “natural” mean?

Biohacking: Rebranding Of Self-Help Quackery

There is an endless sequence of such self-help brands. That people still fall for it is a testament to the overall scientific illiteracy in our society, and the triumph of marketing over reason.

More Unsettling News In Nutrition

"There is a lot of confirmation bias in nutrition and those end-oriented beliefs make it easy to unconsciously mold results to match the numbers to the goal, like doing surveys about food recall and subtly quantifying the results one way or the other. Then it’s off to publish a diet book or become an expert on the latest fad carcinogen."

Why are saturated fats healthy again? Why do the latest nutritional guidelines still have a very low cap on salt despite all the contradictory data?

Butter May Be Better, But - - -

Another example showing that nutrition and diet is a "soft" science.

Butter May Be Better Than Vegetable Oil, But Questions Remain

3 Reasons Not To Buy Organic Food

1. Informed confidence that we are safe buying “conventional” foods
2. Recognizing that some of the best farming practices from an environmental perspective are not always allowed or practical under the organic rules
3. An ethical problem with the tactics that some organic advocates and marketers employ which seriously misrepresents their “conventional” competition

Why I Don't Buy Organic, And Why You Might Not Want To Either

A Way Of Getting Around The Ethical Question Of Eating Animals?

"We are not close to creating a full steak, but we can already create the equivalent of ground meat, for hamburgers, meatballs, meatloaf, or whatever you would use ground meat for."

In Praise of Lab-Grown Meat

Preventing Food Allergy

"If feeding these foods is safe, what is the minimal amount needed for inducing tolerance to these foods? Will the regimen be as effective if we introduce these foods at a later age but early enough before sensitization may occur? How can we improve the preparation of foods to make them easier for parents to administer? These questions must be addressed before we can hope that an early-feeding strategy will be effective at a population level. In the meantime, evidence is building that early consumption rather than delayed introduction of foods is likely to be more beneficial as a strategy for the primary prevention of food allergy. So feed your children and hope that they will EAT."

Preventing Food Allergy in Infancy — Early Consumption or Avoidance?

Nutrition: It Is Not A "Hard" Science

"So the key question becomes how much meat should a cognitive-health-conscious person eat. Too little can delay development and cognition. But too much, particularly if it is low quality and mass produced, is associated with other health concerns, such as heart disease and cancer, along with memory problems later in life. A person's life stage matters: pregnant women need more iron, as do babies and children. Genetics also play a part, but we don't yet know all the particulars. All these caveats make for a murky takeaway."

Consumption of animals helped hominins to grow bigger brains. But in a world rich with food, how necessary is meat? 

Nutrition: The Science Behind It Needs Some Work

The U.S. Dietary Guidelines: A Scientific Fraud

A Healthy Diet: Not As Clear As We Think?

"Foods that make some of us put on weight can have little effect on others, according to research being carried out in Israel. It might be time to rethink the way we diet, writes Dr Saleyha Ashan"

Why do people put on differing amounts of weight?

The Clean Eating Delusion

"In practice 'clean eating' tends to be avoiding whatever food is the latest boogeyman in the pseudoscientific diet-advice industry. Today this often includes eating organic, avoiding GMOs, avoiding gluten, avoiding perceived 'chemicals,' eating 'natural' which can mean many things but often means avoiding processed foods and food additives, and sometimes eating raw foods."

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-clean-eating-delusion/

GMOs Are Safe - - - - Period

http://www.nature.com/news/italian-papers-on-genetically-modified-crops-under-investigation-1.19183

Diet's Effect On Health Is Not A Hard Science

This article points to the reality that diet's effect on health is still not settled science.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/31/the-surprising-thing-ancient-mummies-tell-us-about-what-to-eat/

Science-Based Nutrition Vs Pseudoscience

"Isn’t that something? The CEO of a respected medical research organization is talking about prevention, right there in the Times. Prevention through diet, no less. And saying it is an important area of cancer research! Doesn’t look like the stereotypical picture of medicine the pseudoscientific diet wizards try to sell.  Doesn’t appear that medicine is solely interested in treating the disease, not the “whole person,” as integrative medicine proponents would have us believe.  Frankly, it appears to be — dare I say it? — positively “holistic” to me."

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/guess-who-pioneered-chemoprevention-through-diet/

Health Science Has Really Not Given Us Much Recently

"Obviously we have learned a great deal in the last 60 years, but it is perhaps surprising how little basic nutritional advice has changed. By the 1950s we had already worked out the basics of nutrition, identified all the vitamins, their role in the body, and their source in common foods. The benefits of exercise were also already being recognized, as well as maintaining a lean body mass. Everything we have learned since then, in terms of its bottom line effect on health advice, has been a small tweak, not a fundamental change."

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/health-advice-from-the-1950s/

"Chemicals" Is Not A 4-letter Word

The "Naturalistic Fallacy" debunked.  Now that this information is readily available on Facebook, I am sure all pseudoscientists and promoters of alternatives to medicine will accept this information and change their opinions.  (ya, like the religious do when confronted with contradictory information)

Science: It's On A Spectrum of Certainty

Scientific disciplines are on a spectrum of certainty, with none being completely certain. This link is a good presentation of what science isn’t:

http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/11...

The most certain scientific disciplines are the so-called “Hard” sciences, such as chemistry, physics and biology. The least certain sciences are the so-called “Soft” sciences, such as the social sciences, which include such disciplines as sociology, psychology, economics and politics. Depending on its use of scientific methods, history can fall on different points somewhere between the “Hard” and “Soft” sciences. Where does nutrition and medical science fall?