Bad Food Science and the Media

[BunnyKillBot]

How anyone can be expected to come upon the right, helpful information with relation to diet and healthy eating is quite beyond me. In this day and age, we should be basing our dietary choices on good science but so often the good science gets buried beneath bad science and marketing blurb. Bad science includes observational studies that make outrageous claims and bad marketing abuses sciency-sounding words to suggest 'healthy' where there may be none.

Then add on top of this already murky base the media, and you have the blind leading the blind leading the blind; sensationalist headlines that spin an abstract/conclusion to spell doom and gloom. How many people that glance at a foodscience headline based on actual science, actually go on to check out the paper it was based off for fuller information and critical review?

Take this article being pushed by the BBC today, how much bad science can you
find?

Processed meat 'early death' link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21682779

Ill start off here:

The researchers, writing in the journal BMC Medicine, said salt and chemicals used to preserve the meat may damage health.

The British Heart Foundation suggested opting for leaner cuts of meat.

So the paper points the finger at 'salt and chemicals', however note the 'may'. They are guessing a cause to fit their data.

But in the very next sentence, the good old BHF, OBSESSED with fat/lipids suggests 'leaner meats'. Nothing todo with the articles conclusion whatsoever.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

Salts such as sodium nitrate have been linked statistically to cancer. This isn't proof hence they say may.

The emphasis is more on the BHF's response. The researches made a cause suggestion, and the BHF clings on to the lipid hypothesis.

With regards thought, I honestly don't care for stats. Show me a human trial, or a rat trial, some controlled variable clinical study, then we can talk

 

[BunnyKillBot]

Ok, so there hasn't been a huge uptake of interest in this thread, but I would love to see more discussion on science based diets around here. If anybody feels up to the challenge of creating the ***science based diet thread*** I would be very happy, but I don't 'know' enough to do it myself. I want to know, from a scientific perspective, what foods to avoid, with reference to clinical trials demonstrating their harmful effects, what is snake oil (supplementation industry, I'm looking at you) and what foods to actively seek, again with supporting evidence.

---------

On an unrelated note, before I started taking an interest in diet and food science, I generally went by the colour food wheel all the supermarkets are using these days. More and more I am realising how utterly useless it is. Generally, it lists calories, sugar and fats, with no mention of protein (for such a major food group, why doesn't it make the chart???). You end up with absurd situations where healthy natural foods get a big, Warning Stay Clear red mark because they are high in essential fats (seeds and nuts), or a green lit sugar mark on a processed item that in reality is high in simple carbs (white flour!?!?) quickly converted to glucose and far more damaging to your health than sugar.

What a mess!!

 

[BunnyKillBot]

The only real answer is everything in moderation, eat a mixture of different things and don't eat ridiculous quantities and you will be fine.

It sounds good, it's probably right, but what's it based on, good wisdom and verbatim? If its true it should be scientifically testable. How do I know there isn't something I should be eating in excess, for the sake of my health.

Does anybody know what astronaughts eat? I would have thought NASA put some science into keeping their spacemen alive and healthy.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

So we now have Oxbridge scientists as well as Harvard ones claiming that red and processed meat is bad for you.
No doubt though we will have meat lovers trying to discredit/poo poo these experts from 3 of the most respected university's on the planet

Peer review is part of the scientific method, and you dont have to be a 'meat lover' to evaluate the methodolgy used in a given piece of food science research.

Take the harvard red meat study for example.

'mortality for a 1-serving-per-day increase was 1.13'
'We also estimated that 9.3% of deaths in men and 7.6% in women in these cohorts could be prevented at the end of follow-up if all the individuals consumed fewer than 0.5 servings per day (approximately 42 g/d) of red meat.'

PROBLEM?

Participants were given 'an extra one pertion of red meat per day'

Now I don't know about you, but i eat red meat, but I do not eat it every day. In fact, it enters in to my cycle less than once a week. I would suggest that even amongst 'meat lovers' as you put it, having red meat every single day is unusual. Also, according to Harvard, I could have 42g/d of red meat and be relatively safe.

Suddenly, your quote:

Harvard ones claiming that red and processed meat is bad for you.

Suddenly falls apart. Not surprising when you base your assumptions off bad science and sensationalist media reporting.