At what point do we come full circle and just realize "consuming too much of anything is bad for you"?
I'm not trying to be flippant, but it feels like there is a study to support that just about anything can give you cancer. When do we just say "cancer happens no matter what"? Will we ever say that? Is that even the direction we're heading? It feels like the more we understand these diseases, the closer we come to the conclusion that they simply aren't preventable and no matter what you do you're always at risk. Obviously there are unhealthy lifestyles that increase your risk, but I feel like a study comes out every week linking something new to cancer.
I understand the desire to abstract everything to simple, general, easy to follow rules, but it's better to have a better understanding of nutrition. These beliefs can change over time and that's a good thing, even if it's hard to keep up with.
The problem is that the industry creates and feeds off these "belief systems", constantly cycling through the latest food anxiety to sell more shit. We need less belief and more fact.
Nutrition is like Audiophilia. Lots of bullshit with little pockets of truth.
Why is it that when someone tells me about how I should eat - especially “nutritionists”, mental guards go up in my mind until I see a research paper or some evidence. I don’t, absolutely don’t believe anything I read or hear about nutrition. Just like the audiophile industry.
It’s infested with the pseudoscience, marketing assholes and fitness folks who clearly have no desire to learn about the truth, evidence or scientific data.
I once searched for which vegetables have the highest concentration of nutrition on Google. After pages and pages of blog spam, men’s magazines and Rachel Ray type nonsense, I stumbled upon a paper from Johns Hopkins about Top 100 healthiest vegetables. They disclosed the exact formula of how the score is calculated. Number 1 was water-crest, Spinach was 7th or 8th and Kale was way back in 50+ rank. I will edit my comment with the link to the paper if I can find it.
I have zero trust in nutrition information on the internet or any popular media. And nutritionists.
That ranking of vegetables matches about what I’d expect if they had rough dollar/nutrition parity. I love water cress but its massively more expensive than kale by weight. In this sense ranking “healthiest” as if it were a choice between infinite amounts of each doesn’t make sense when fresh vegetables are actually pretty expensive.
This would be much more convincing if I didn’t remember salt and dietary cholesterol going from definitely bad to mostly irrelevant or that we were told margarine was healthier than butter. The new health scare is sugar and that’s less than ten years old. Nutritional science in humans is important but it’s also impossible. Leave nutritionists to try and do their research and in your own life ignore everything they say.
You can’t do long term randomised control trials, you can barely do short term ones because people do not follow diets. And observational studies are very, very confounded.
Salt and dietary cholesterol never went from definitely bad to mostly irrelevant. It's still definitely bad. I'm guessing what you had read are magazine articles and 'nutritionists' coming up with their own theories.
If you look at actual recommendations from real organizations from real registered dietitians, the advice has largely not changed:
- Don't eat processed crap
- Eat mostly plants
- Eat lean meats and try to eat more beans and legumes as a protein source
- Keep your overall fat intake low
- Calcium from low-fat dairy, a milk substitute like almond milk, or plant sources of calcium
- Reduce added salt as much as possible
- Avoid saturated fat
- Avoid dietary cholesterol
- Avoid refined carbs
- Avoid added sugars and oils
And this advice is consistent across health organizations and across different countries. It's scary how much people get all their information from shitty sources and then spread the misinformation everywhere..
Intake of saturated and trans unsaturated fatty acids and risk of all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies
"does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats."
The Lancet: Sodium reduction programmes may only be appropriate for communities with very high salt intake
A new study shows that for the vast majority of communities, sodium consumption is not associated with an increase in health risks except for those whose average consumption exceeds 5g/day (equivalent to 12.5g of salt, or 2½ teaspoons). Communities with high average levels of sodium intake (above 5g/day) were mostly seen in China, with only about 15% of communities outside China exceeding this level of consumption.
WHO guidelines recommend a global approach to reducing sodium intake in all populations to below 2g/day, but this has not been achieved in any country. The authors say that sodium reduction strategies should instead target communities with high average levels of sodium consumption (above 5g/day).
You can't rely on single studies to come up with conclusions, if you want to play that game you can literally prove or disprove anything you want to.
The whole picture can and does look very different than any single study. Studies vary a lot in quality, and there are tricks that are done to fudge with the conclusions. See:
He very clearly points out exactly how people screw with the data on a large number of studies. That's why I listed all those sources from credible organizations from conclusions drawn by actual dietitians, not me or you or joe 'nutritionist' randomly trying to come up with our own conclusions.
Also, any reasonably intelligent random person can attack any studies pretty easily and make it look credible. Example: The first one is a meta-analysis of observational studies, one of the weakest forms of evidence, and other meta-analyses came up with the exact opposite conclusion. The second one's conclusion is obviously flawed, since salt without a shadow of a doubt increases blood pressure, so salt intake definitely does matter for older populations which almost always have a compromised cardiovascular system, so it definitely matters to them. The third isn't really saying anything except that they aren't successful at reducing salt consumption.
I'd rather trust experts to do their work, but you can do what you want it's your health. I bought all this crap for a few years until I suffered health problems from eating tons of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat with theoretical benefits. I could literally see my intake of saturated fat and cholesterol turning my blood cholesterol (total and LDL) and triglycerides on and off like a light switch. I did this several times. It was SO cut and dry. I kept all other variables the same. And I've always eaten tons of really health foods, a ton of plants, I just bought into the hype that butter and eggs are suddenly 'healthy', according to magazines and 'nutritionists'. Even blood work doesn't stop some people -- I remember reading a HN post of someone who started eating tons of eggs and had absurdly high levels of blood cholesterol, but his conclusion was that it's 'not a concern' and he 'feels fine' -- The doubt that was introduced already got to him and he just doesn't care anymore.
Cigarette companies played this exact same game for years btw, introducing doubt as to whether cigarettes caused cancer and lung disease. All you have to do is introduce doubt. It doesn't even have to be a strong argument towards experts, as in experts don't think there is any doubt. It's targeted towards just the lay person who doesn't understand the science
Of course you’re always at risk. If there were a way to eliminate the risk entirely, you’d be immortal!
And yes, cancer does happen no matter what. I believe this has been acknowledged for quite some time. For example, prostate cancer in older men is basically guaranteed, and the only question is whether something else will kill you first, because it’s often very slow growing. But it’s still extremely useful to distinguish between this sort of inevitability, and risk factors that could cause you to die from cancer years or decades earlier.
Our DNA is the mother of all spaghetti code and it’s no surprise that there are a lot of different things that can make it go wrong.
If you don't know what "too much" is for the thing you're eating or drinking, your advice is totally useless. This is why we do studies. No one ever worries if they're drinking too much water. On the other hand, we know we should worry about eating too much refined sugar, thanks to people who study nutrition. We also know the consequences of consuming too much sugar, which has been shown repeatedly through studies so we just don't have to rely on the word of nutritionists and doctors. I really don't see how any of this is bad. If you're sick of seeing headlines about nutrition news, stop reading it.
Leaving all the content of your comment in links isn't very informative to most people, I'd guess, who don't bother clicking. Especially when you forget to say why they should. I clicked - but you did exactly the same thing on the linked-to page! No thanks. Don't waste my time. If you have something to say, say it.
A significant percentage of people are living comfortably up to an age of 70 or more even in the poor nations. I think this focus on marginal effects is not going to cut it any longer.
How about focusing on air pollution, which is the likely emerging leading carcinogen in developing countries?
>How about focusing on air pollution, which is the likely emerging leading carcinogen in developing countries?
You are right, air pollution is a huge problem. But there is no reason to think we can't work on both at the same time. And I may be wrong, but my guess is that you are perfectly well aware of that.
It is a good practice to be aware of though - often constructive conversations can be derailed by well-intentioned but unintentional “but-what-about-X” arguments being introduced when no such arguments existed to begin with. It is a hard habit to break when it comes to important topics. Generally, as in this case, the two things are in no way mutually exclusive.
Diesel emissions are especially hazardous but aren't regulated as tightly in most jurisdictions as gasoline vehicles (at least in the US) because of corporate influence (corruption).
"Like almost any refined food made with wheat flour, it is fortified with iron"
This makes it sound like everything we eat has this absurd level of iron. Typical refined food made with wheat flour has a much lower level of iron than cheerios (which incidentally are not made with wheat) do. Cheerios are weird that way. Kix are the only other thing I've found that has that level of high iron fortification (I'm personally at risk for low iron and read a lot of labels). Even Luna bars back when they were marketed as having nutrients for women had less.
To complicate matters, not all iron should be considered equal per units mass, some forms of iron are considerably more bio-available, and in general the forms provided as supplement on cereals in are on the low end of bio-availability.
This. I remember my biochemistry professor in college grinding up a bowl of cereal into a fine powder and then using a magnet to yank all the iron out. Fine iron powder like the kind present in cereals is nowhere near as bioavailable as iron complexed with proteins (e.g. from red meat). You basically just poop most of it out. Ask anyone who has had an iron deficiency. It is ferociously difficult to take enough supplements and change your diet enough to correct a severe form of it.
A lot of skeptical remarks here. The commenters seem certain, without any evidence, that it is simply impossible that problems with iron are even one tenth as bad as the article says the might be.
I think it is quite possible there are some real problems here, and so there should be a big research push to find out.
You know, it occurs to me that if an article raising danger signs about iron fortification is published, the iron fortification industry would have a strong financial interest in attacking it.
I've heard calcium in milk blocks iron absorption so only a tiny part of iron contained in cereals is actually absorbed in your body if you eat it with milk. Can anybody tell how true or false this is?
Yep. It's unfortunate how little people know about nutrition and think it's all BS. A bunch of quacks hijacked the entire industry and everyone somehow believed them
This article made me look at the iron content of various foods that I eat often. Surprisingly, dark chocolate has a lot of iron -- a 100g bar has 100% of DV.
Hereditary Hemochromatosis is a genetic disorder with which some one million people in the US (and more in other, especially northern European countries) are priviledged to suffer. Hereditary Hemochromatosis is a disorder of iron metabolism. The body stores inordinate amounts of iron obtained from fortified and unfortified foods. The iron damages liver, pancreas, brain, joints, causes diabetes, causes impotence, extreme fatigue. Etc etc etc. We don't need extra iron. Give us the choice. Phlebotomy is not fun.
35 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 85.1 ms ] threadGluten is the new sugar
Sugar is the new fat
Fat is the new salt
X is the new Y
At what point do we come full circle and just realize "consuming too much of anything is bad for you"?
I'm not trying to be flippant, but it feels like there is a study to support that just about anything can give you cancer. When do we just say "cancer happens no matter what"? Will we ever say that? Is that even the direction we're heading? It feels like the more we understand these diseases, the closer we come to the conclusion that they simply aren't preventable and no matter what you do you're always at risk. Obviously there are unhealthy lifestyles that increase your risk, but I feel like a study comes out every week linking something new to cancer.
Why is it that when someone tells me about how I should eat - especially “nutritionists”, mental guards go up in my mind until I see a research paper or some evidence. I don’t, absolutely don’t believe anything I read or hear about nutrition. Just like the audiophile industry.
It’s infested with the pseudoscience, marketing assholes and fitness folks who clearly have no desire to learn about the truth, evidence or scientific data.
I once searched for which vegetables have the highest concentration of nutrition on Google. After pages and pages of blog spam, men’s magazines and Rachel Ray type nonsense, I stumbled upon a paper from Johns Hopkins about Top 100 healthiest vegetables. They disclosed the exact formula of how the score is calculated. Number 1 was water-crest, Spinach was 7th or 8th and Kale was way back in 50+ rank. I will edit my comment with the link to the paper if I can find it.
I have zero trust in nutrition information on the internet or any popular media. And nutritionists.
You can’t do long term randomised control trials, you can barely do short term ones because people do not follow diets. And observational studies are very, very confounded.
If you look at actual recommendations from real organizations from real registered dietitians, the advice has largely not changed:
- Don't eat processed crap
- Eat mostly plants
- Eat lean meats and try to eat more beans and legumes as a protein source
- Keep your overall fat intake low
- Calcium from low-fat dairy, a milk substitute like almond milk, or plant sources of calcium
- Reduce added salt as much as possible
- Avoid saturated fat
- Avoid dietary cholesterol
- Avoid refined carbs
- Avoid added sugars and oils
And this advice is consistent across health organizations and across different countries. It's scary how much people get all their information from shitty sources and then spread the misinformation everywhere..
Sources:
https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-...
https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/executi...
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutriti...
https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...
http://www.mangerbouger.fr/pro/sante/alimentation-19/determi...
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_national_nutrition_s...
http://www.fao.org/3/a-as686o.pdf
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
http://www.fao.org/nutrition/education/food-dietary-guidelin...
http://www.fao.org/docrep/pdf/010/ai800e/ai800e00.pdf
http://apps.searo.who.int/PDS_DOCS/B4818.pdf
Intake of saturated and trans unsaturated fatty acids and risk of all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes: systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532752/
"does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats."
Salt
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/tl-tls080818...
The Lancet: Sodium reduction programmes may only be appropriate for communities with very high salt intake
A new study shows that for the vast majority of communities, sodium consumption is not associated with an increase in health risks except for those whose average consumption exceeds 5g/day (equivalent to 12.5g of salt, or 2½ teaspoons). Communities with high average levels of sodium intake (above 5g/day) were mostly seen in China, with only about 15% of communities outside China exceeding this level of consumption.
WHO guidelines recommend a global approach to reducing sodium intake in all populations to below 2g/day, but this has not been achieved in any country. The authors say that sodium reduction strategies should instead target communities with high average levels of sodium consumption (above 5g/day).
https://secure.jbs.elsevierhealth.com/action/getSharedSiteSe...
The whole picture can and does look very different than any single study. Studies vary a lot in quality, and there are tricks that are done to fudge with the conclusions. See:
https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg
He very clearly points out exactly how people screw with the data on a large number of studies. That's why I listed all those sources from credible organizations from conclusions drawn by actual dietitians, not me or you or joe 'nutritionist' randomly trying to come up with our own conclusions.
Also, any reasonably intelligent random person can attack any studies pretty easily and make it look credible. Example: The first one is a meta-analysis of observational studies, one of the weakest forms of evidence, and other meta-analyses came up with the exact opposite conclusion. The second one's conclusion is obviously flawed, since salt without a shadow of a doubt increases blood pressure, so salt intake definitely does matter for older populations which almost always have a compromised cardiovascular system, so it definitely matters to them. The third isn't really saying anything except that they aren't successful at reducing salt consumption.
I'd rather trust experts to do their work, but you can do what you want it's your health. I bought all this crap for a few years until I suffered health problems from eating tons of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat with theoretical benefits. I could literally see my intake of saturated fat and cholesterol turning my blood cholesterol (total and LDL) and triglycerides on and off like a light switch. I did this several times. It was SO cut and dry. I kept all other variables the same. And I've always eaten tons of really health foods, a ton of plants, I just bought into the hype that butter and eggs are suddenly 'healthy', according to magazines and 'nutritionists'. Even blood work doesn't stop some people -- I remember reading a HN post of someone who started eating tons of eggs and had absurdly high levels of blood cholesterol, but his conclusion was that it's 'not a concern' and he 'feels fine' -- The doubt that was introduced already got to him and he just doesn't care anymore.
Cigarette companies played this exact same game for years btw, introducing doubt as to whether cigarettes caused cancer and lung disease. All you have to do is introduce doubt. It doesn't even have to be a strong argument towards experts, as in experts don't think there is any doubt. It's targeted towards just the lay person who doesn't understand the science
And yes, cancer does happen no matter what. I believe this has been acknowledged for quite some time. For example, prostate cancer in older men is basically guaranteed, and the only question is whether something else will kill you first, because it’s often very slow growing. But it’s still extremely useful to distinguish between this sort of inevitability, and risk factors that could cause you to die from cancer years or decades earlier.
Our DNA is the mother of all spaghetti code and it’s no surprise that there are a lot of different things that can make it go wrong.
There's a reason enrichment of foods is illegal in most of Europe.
Great! Marketers get two food fads: low iron today, iron rich when its reversed!
How about focusing on air pollution, which is the likely emerging leading carcinogen in developing countries?
You are right, air pollution is a huge problem. But there is no reason to think we can't work on both at the same time. And I may be wrong, but my guess is that you are perfectly well aware of that.
Besides, even if every course of action is not mutually exclusive, there is a opportunity cost and a need to prioritize them.
"Like almost any refined food made with wheat flour, it is fortified with iron"
This makes it sound like everything we eat has this absurd level of iron. Typical refined food made with wheat flour has a much lower level of iron than cheerios (which incidentally are not made with wheat) do. Cheerios are weird that way. Kix are the only other thing I've found that has that level of high iron fortification (I'm personally at risk for low iron and read a lot of labels). Even Luna bars back when they were marketed as having nutrients for women had less.
I think it is quite possible there are some real problems here, and so there should be a big research push to find out.
You know, it occurs to me that if an article raising danger signs about iron fortification is published, the iron fortification industry would have a strong financial interest in attacking it.
- Don't eat processed foods
- Take men's multivitamins, even if female, as they omit iron
A much better idea is to simply stop eating processed crap.