Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 10 October 2019
Prologue: This is part of an occasional series of essays that discusses ongoing scientific controversies, a specific type of which are often referred to in the science press and elsewhere as “Wars” – for instance, one essay covered the “Salt Wars1” and another the “Obesity War” — and one which appears most commonly here at this web site: “The Climate Wars”. The purpose of the series is to illuminate the similarities and differences involved in these ongoing controversies, as part of the social culture of science in our modern world.
This essay specifically covers the furor over a six-paper body of work that appeared recently in The Annals of Internal Medicine reviewing the evidence used to make public health recommendations for amounts of red and processed meat in the human diet.
In The Meat War, the headlines scream out:
Uproar after research claims red meat poses no health risk — The Guardian
Should you keep eating red meat? Controversial study says well-known health risks are just bad science — USA Today
Meat’s Bad for You! No, It’s Not! How Experts See Different Things in the Data — NY Times
New “guidelines” say continue red meat consumption habits, but recommendations contradict evidence — The Nutrition Source at Harvard
Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties — NY Times
Only one of these headlines is strictly true — the others are all distortions of what the published studies found and what they mean for public health guidelines. [ Ten Critical Thinking Skills points to the first reader to correctly identify the one that is true. ] This should not surprise you — headlines are written to grab your attention so that you will read the story underneath. Headlines can bias the reader before they see a single fact.
What is all this hub-bub about?
A group of nutritional scientists and doctors, associated in an organization called NutriRECS, spent three years looking at public health recommendations on meat consumption, the kind which most often appear as diet recommendations like those pictured below. Their efforts resulted in a suite of six papers, all published simultaneously in the 1 October 2019 edition of The Annals of Internal Medicine.
“NutriRECS is an independent group with clinical, nutritional and public health content expertise, skilled in the methodology of systematic reviews and practice guidelines who are unencumbered by institutional constraints and conflicts of interest, aiming to produce trustworthy nutritional guideline recommendations based on the values, attitudes and preferences of patients and community members.” — says the NutriRECS About page. They produce “Nutritional Recommendations and accessible Evidence summaries Composed of Systematic reviews” (thus NutiiRECS). — NutriRECS
Who exactly are they? A bunch of nutrition-skeptic troublemakers? No, they are well-respected doctors and scientists from many different countries and institutions:
[ Readers may skip this section, it is included to illustrate that these papers have been written by a large team of doctors and specialists. ]
LEADERSHIP TEAM:
Dr. Bradley Johnston — director and co-founder of NutriRECS, and is an Associate Professor with the Department of Community Health & Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
Dr. Pablo Alonso-Coello — co-founder of NutriRECS, the head of the Barcelona GRADE center, and is a health services researcher at the Biomedical Research Institute (Hospital Sant Pau) in Barcelona, Spain.
Dr. Malgorzata (Gosia) Bala — co-founder of NutriRECS, the head of the Cochrane Poland, and the chair of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the Jagiellonian University Medical College, Cracow, Poland.
Dr. Gordon Guyatt — coined the term “evidence-based medicine”, is a mentor, Clinician-Scientist and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.
Catherine Marshall — a Cochrane Consumer located in Wellington, New Zealand. https://consumers.cochrane.org/healthcare-users-cochrane
Dr. Patrick Stover — Vice Chancellor and Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the Texas A&M University System.
COLLABORATING TEAM
Dr. Per Vandvik — Associate Professor in the Department of Health Management and Health Economics, University of Oslo, Norway
Dr. George Kephart — Professor, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University. He is co-founder and former Director of Health Data Nova Scotia.
Dr. Regina El Dib — Assistant Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology, Estadual Paulista University, Brazil, and founder and director of the systematic review unit of the Botucatu Medical School.
Dr. Russell de Souza — registered dietitian and nutrition epidemiologist.
Dr. Celeste Naude — registered dietician at the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care at Stellenbosch University, South Africa; and Co-Director of Cochrane Nutrition.
Dr. Lehana Thabane — Professor of Biostatistics and Associate Chair of the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. He is also the Director of Biostatistics at St Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton.
Dr. Mi Ah Han — professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Chosun University, Republic of Korea. She is a visiting professor with Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact in Hamilton, Canada.
Their work, however, extends far beyond the bounds of nutritional recommendations.
What were their published findings about meat?
Conclusion: The magnitude of association between red and processed meat consumption and all-cause mortality and adverse cardiometabolic outcomes is very small, and the evidence is of low certainty.
Conclusion: The possible absolute effects of red and processed meat consumption on cancer mortality and incidence are very small, and the certainty of evidence is low to very low.
Conclusion: Low- or very-low-certainty evidence suggests that dietary patterns with less red and processed meat intake may result in very small reductions in adverse cardiometabolic and cancer outcomes.
Conclusion: Low- to very-low-certainty evidence suggests that diets restricted in red meat may have little or no effect on major cardiometabolic outcomes and cancer mortality and incidence.
Health-Related Values and Preferences Regarding Meat Consumption: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review
Conclusion: Low-certainty evidence suggests that omnivores are attached to meat and are unwilling to change this behavior when faced with potentially undesirable health effects.
Recommendations: The panel suggests that adults continue current unprocessed red meat consumption (weak recommendation, low-certainty evidence). Similarly, the panel suggests adults continue current processed meat consumption (weak recommendation, low-certainty evidence).
How have these results been received?
“The American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other groups have savaged the findings and the journal that published them.” — Gina Kolata in the NY Times
Kolata’s description of the reaction could not be more accurate — the attacks on the papers, the journal, and the authors have been just that: savage , as defined as “lacking the restraints normal to civilized human beings”. Kolata’s linked article in the NY Times is sensible, well-rounded, fair and among the most informative of the coverage in the mass media. Kudos to her.
[ Note that “the journal that published” the studies is Annals of Internal Medicine which is widely recognized as “one of the most widely cited and influential specialty medical journals in the world” and is published by the American College of Physicians (ACP) which is the largest medical-specialty organization and second-largest physician group in the United States, after the American Medical Association. It has 154,000 members. ]
Gina Kolata’s colleagues at the Health Desk of the NY Times, Tara Parker-Pope and Anahad O’Connor, were not so restrained: Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties. They repeat the attacks on one of the authors, Bradley C. Johnston, who has in the past received research funding from “a powerful industry trade group” [ILSI ]. The point is vaguely true, but is a niggle, as the Times’ report admits: : “Although the ILSI-funded study publication falls within the three-year window, he said the money from ILSI arrived in 2015, and he was not required to report it for the meat study disclosure. ‘That money was from 2015 so it was outside of the three year period for disclosing competing interests,’ said Dr. Johnston. ‘I have no [current] relationship with them whatsoever.’” Continuing, the Times reports that “Dr. Laine [editor in chief of the Annals of Internal Medicine] noted that people on both sides of the meat issue have conflicts of interest. ‘Many of the people who are criticizing these articles have lots of conflicts of interest they aren’t talking about,’ she said. ‘They do workshops on plant-based diets, do retreats on wellness and write books on plant-based diets. There are conflicts on both sides.’”
[ Note that the ILSI — International Life Sciences Institute — has been under attack recently on the Health pages of the NY Times and has responded in their own defence. ]
And in that, Dr. Laine is absolutely right.
“Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group advocating a plant-based diet, [ their web site states that their mission is “dedicated to saving and improving human and animal lives through plant-based diets and ethical and effective scientific research” — kh ] on Wednesday filed a petition against the journal with the Federal Trade Commission. Dr. Frank Sacks, past chair of the American Heart Association’s nutrition committee, called the research “fatally flawed.” “ — NY Times
[ The petition is a publicity stunt — the Federal Trade Commission has no authority over journals publishing scientific results — thank heavens! — the FTC can and does regulate advertising. ]
The most radical attacks come from Dr. Frank Hu, Chair of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The Chan School is a major proponent of plant-based diets and publicly advocates the inclusion of reductions (or elimination) of red meat consumption in public health dietary guidelines. Hu is one of the signatories of a letter issued by the True Health Initiative, an advocacy group pushing “lifestyle health solutions” and mostly-plant-based diets, to Annals of Internal Medicine, recommending that they preemptively retract publication of these papers on the basis of grave concerns about the potential for damage to public understanding, and public health.
In addition to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s own critique of the NutriRECS papers, Hu is quoted in nearly every media article attacking the studies:
Hu said. “But they misuse the data from the Woman’s Health Initiative to say that meat reduction has no effect on cardiovascular disease, cancer or mortality.”
[ This statement is false: the NutriRECs team did not say that at all. See the conclusions of the studies earlier in this essay. ]
“But Dr. Hu said Dr. Johnston’s methods were not very objective or rigorous and the tool he employed in his meat and sugar studies could be misused to discredit all sorts of well-established public health warnings, like the link between secondhand smoke and heart disease, air pollution and health problems, physical inactivity and chronic disease, and trans fats and heart disease.” “Some people may be wondering what his next target will be,” Dr. Hu said. “But I’m concerned about the damage that has already been done to public health recommendations.”– NY Times
[ The “tool” referred to above is the GRADE methodology for “Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation” and has been in development and use for over a decade. It is featured in a series of articles in BMJ (previously titled the British Medical Journal) here, here, here and here. It is specifically designed to grade recommendations — such as clinical and public health guidelines. ]
“Irresponsible and unethical,” said Dr. Hu, of Harvard, in a commentary published online with his colleagues. Studies of red meat as a health hazard may have been problematic, he said, but the consistency of the conclusions over years gives them credibility. Nutrition studies, he added, should not be held to the same rigid standards as studies of experimental drugs.” — NY Times
“Nothing new is coming out of the study,” said Dr. Frank Hu, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “There was no breakthrough. It just confirmed previous findings.” — USA Today
“Hu, of Harvard, acknowledged the limitations with observational studies – they don’t show causation because a variety of compounding factors like a person’s lifestyle or other dietary choices could be causing the adverse health effects. … However, when nutrition data is replicated across demographics, age and geography – as was the case with the more than 6 million participants from more than 100 large studies in the Annals’ analyses – it should be taken seriously, Hu said.” — USA Today
“The panel’s blanket recommendation that adults should continue their red meat consumption habits is highly irresponsible. We are facing a growing epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases and a climate change crisis, both of which are linked to high meat consumption,” Frank Hu, Chair of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard.” — True Health Initiative
“If the same procedure were used to validate secondhand smoking, for example, the evidence would be rated very low or low quality.” – Dr. Frank Hu, chair of the nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health — PBS
[ “Notably, secondhand smoke, the smoke inhaled from tobacco smoked by other people, creates about as much as risk for cancer and heart disease as red and processed meat — and the underlying studies around secondhand smoke carry just as much uncertainty.” — PBS ]
“That really doesn’t make any sense, right? The most important criteria in science is reproducibility and replication,” Hu said. — PBS
[ Hu is dissembling here — what he is saying is that there are a lot of studies that each find the same small-scale associations (correlations) and mis-identifies that as “reproducibility and replication”. But, these are cohort diet-recall studies, and thus, according to John Ioannidis: “These implausible estimates of benefits or risks associated with diet probably reflect almost exclusively the magnitude of the cumulative biases in this type of research, with extensive residual confounding and selective reporting.” ]
And from Hu’s Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s editorial on the studies [maybe written by Hu..]: “To improve both human health and environmental sustainability, it is important to adopt dietary patterns that are high in healthy plant-based foods and relatively low in red and processed meats.” …. “The panel declared ‘considerations of environmental impact’ out of the scope of their recommendations. This is a missed opportunity because climate change and environmental degradation have serious effects on human health, and thus is important to consider when making recommendations on diet, even if this is addressed separately from direct effects on individual health.” — source
Of course, Frank Hu is not the only major league doctor in the nutrition field to stage an attack. One of the oddest attacks comes from Christopher Gardner, a professor at the Stanford Prevention Research Center:
“The new studies also only consider the direct impact of eating meat on someone’s body, which is not the only way meat can affect health: Meat production, particularly beef production, is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Emissions and the changing climate are, in turn, major public health threats. So even if eating meat won’t directly cause heart disease in an individual, breathing in air polluted by meat production can. That’s critical to consider when making dietary recommendations, Gardner says.” — PopSci.com
[ Breathing air “polluted by meat production” can cause heart disease? That’s bit beyond…. I have emailed Dr. Gardner to ask if he has been quoted correctly, but his mail server auto-responds that he is on sabbatical for the rest of the year. — kh ]
UPDATE and Correction:
Dr. Christopher Gardner, Professor of Medicine, at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, has emailed a correction to the above “quote” in PopSci as follows:
“The last part of that quote in the second to last sentence doesn’t make sense. I can’t imagine I said that…if I did it was in error.”
Please consider the edit below.
“The new studies also only consider the direct impact of eating meat on someone’s body, which is not the only way meat can affect health: Meat production, particularly beef production, is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. Emissions and the changing climate are, in turn, major public health threats. So even if eating meat won’t directly cause heart disease in an individual,
breathing in air polluted by meat production canthe impacts on the environment will likely have adverse effects on human health in the long run (e.g., more fires and extremes in weather, challenges for agriculture). That’s critical to consider when making dietary recommendations, Gardner says.”This type of thing is quite common when journalists (especially advocate-journalists) quote sources — like all of us, they hear what they want to hear or expect to hear — and then attribute it to a “reliable source”. Responsible scientists, professors, doctors and researchers are usually very careful with what they say to journalists — but seldom demand to see the final work before publication. — kh
Why this savage response?
“ ‘Dr. Johnston said the real problem is that people don’t want to accept findings that contradict long-held views. “People have very strong opinions,” he said. “Scientists should have intellectual curiosity and be open to challenges to their data. Science is about debate, not about digging your heels in.’ “ — NY Times
Aaron Carroll, long-time science and medicine columnist for the NY Times , wrote an editorial that accompanied the NutriRECs studies in the Annuals of Intern Medicine, lays out the opposing sides in his column in the NY Times.
Expert Judgement and Evaluation
We see that this Science War, the Meat Wars, is typical and could be used as a exemplar for the general class. We have an “establishment” tribe — a group that has controlled the research and imbued the field with their own shared scientific point of view (which could just be the cumulative bias in the field). This establishment group (individuals, associations, university departments, etc) jealously guards the scientific field and their scientific viewpoint from other viewpoints that might threaten their position of prestige and power. This is perfectly normal for most endeavors.
These types of controversies only become Science Wars when at least one of the “tribal sides” shifts from simply defending their viewpoint (their ideas, their recommendations) with collegial rational discussion and good science to savage attacks on those that might have other opinions that challenge the status quo in the field — attacks on the science, on the persons, on the journals — extending even to efforts to prevent publication (as in the Meat Wars), calling for retraction (several Wars), even personal law suits.
We have seen this in Climate Science in spades. In the Salt Wars, two bodies of researchers publish opposing studies in the journals and establishment groups (like the American Heart Association) denigrate all contrary findings. In the War on Sugar we have a broad common bias against sugar in nearly all establishment groups in the field of nutrition who fight tooth-and-nail any science findings that do not condemn added sugars in the human diet. (One of the players in the Meat Wars, Brad Johnston, was a player in the War on Sugar, when he published a industry-funded study on sugar.)
Recently, John P. A. Ioannidis took Nutritional Epidemiology, the basis for recommendation on human diet, to task in a major journal article titled “The Challenge of Reforming Nutritional Epidemiologic Research” ( I wrote about it here). His elicited comment on the Meat Wars:
“I would not run any more observational studies,” said Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor who studies health research and policy. “We have had enough of them. It is extremely unlikely that we are missing a large signal,” referring to a large effect of any particular dietary change on health.” — NY Times
One last quote from another cool-head in the overheated debate:
“Dr. Meir Stampfer, also of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He believes that the data in favor of eating less meat, although imperfect, indicate there are likely to be health benefits. “ . . . . “Dr. Dennis Bier of Baylor said the studies of meat consumption are so flawed that it is naïve to assume these risk reductions are caused by eating less meat.” Or maybe, said Dr. Bier, policymakers should try something more straightforward: “When you don’t have the highest-quality evidence, the correct conclusion is ‘maybe.’” — NY Times (and here)
Bottom Lines and Take-aways:
-
- Honest, well-meaning serious scientists can look at the exact same body of evidence and come to different conclusions, in any field of study. It is this aspect of science that leads to advances when the scientists act professionally and attempt to use that difference of opinion to further better understanding in their field. On the other hand, when scientists dig in, take tribal positions and sling calumny and accusations over differences in scientific opinions, they prevent good science from advancing and damage the reputation and public perception of science.
- If evidence for a claim or recommendation is scientifically weak there will be more controversy — and there should be. Definitive claims and public policy should not be made on evidence which is acknowledged to be weak or only associational. We have to learn to be able to say “We don’t really know” and “There just isn’t enough solid evidence to say…”. We have to learn to accept “maybe” as the best answer science has to offer at this time.
- The problem in the Meat Wars, like many other Science Wars, is that public policy has been set based on weak, iffy, dodgy, associational, hypothetical and otherwise scientifically unreliable evidence. Those responsible for recommending those public policies react badly when this fact is pointed out. After all, they cannot rely on the strength of the evidence behind their recommendations to defend themselves.
- Human Nutritional Science has been captured by advocates of all sorts of unsupportable ideas based on the current practices of Nutritional Epidemiology, which Ioannidis has pointed out is “intrinsically unreliable”.
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Author’s Comment:
Most of my opinions about this topic are contained in my earlier essay on Nutritional Epidemiology.
In the spirit of Full Disclosure: my family and I adhere to a religious health code that calls for eating meat sparingly.
It is my opinion that far too many public policies are based not on solid oak timbers of evidence but on matchstick thin evidence — a fact which is causing a great many problems in society at large.
The very existence of these Science Wars offends me deeply — as they damage the reputation of Science and prevent Science — our knowledge base about the physical world around us — from advancing and expanding.
Begin your comments with “Kip..” if speaking to me personally. If speaking to some other specific commenter, begin with their name/handle, it helps to keep the conversations clear.
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Good read Kip
Skepticism is at the heart of democratic government. Attempts to quash skepticism are at the heart of totalitarian government. The good people of Hong Kong are skeptical of China’s Communist government. Who can blame them.
Those savaging the study’s authors are squealing in panic because their science lacks Kung Fu grip and they do not want that fact publicized. Pride and greed. Pretty certain that those traits have been around for some time.
troe ==> Thank you. There is nothing new here — just the same behaviors seen in other Science Wars and for the same reasons.
Frank Hu admits over and over to the press that the evidence for dietary meat reduction is weak, but insists on supporting it anyway. Wants his science to be held to a lesser standard . . . . like Climate Science.
Who would trust a cow to turn grass into protein when it could be done by minimum wage workers in giant concrete, steel, and glass factories utilizing the ingredients that go into dog food, and based on some secret proprietary recipe that’s locked away in a safe?
Nick ==> BK’s “Impossible Burger”?
Kip,
One of the largest confounding factors in all of this is, of course, genetics. One of my grandfathers did all the “wrong” things. Lots of red meat, fat, butter, sugar, wine, whiskey, cigars (never saw him without one) and these things, along with working in a very polluted factory environment, killed him. He was 100 at the time. And actually they killed him in the hospital doing surgery on a 100 yr old man for flabitis! Like one of my uncles said, the kind of guy you couldn’t kill with a gun! But then, had he lived a “clean” life he might have made it to 120?
JimG1 ==> Genetics is another thing we know precious little about….but lots of claims are made as if we had adequate knowledge….
I see Hu from Harvard writes popular diet books. That is a strong conflict of interest.
Mike Mc ==> Yes, the editor of Annals of Internal Medicine points this out as well.
“Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn’t Report Past Food Industry Ties — NY Times”
True ?
Mark ==> Only sorta true, and in any case, irrelevant as there are 14 scientists involved in the NutriRECS team.
News among the Great Plains farmers is that this weekends Hard freeze is halting the ripening of the late planted soy. Which begs the questions: 1.how do we establish a paradigm that depends on the weather when relying on plants for all of our protein. 2. This is the earliest Hard Freeze that I recall, and I am well over 70 years old, so how is global warming myth causing this Hard freeze.
A global warming myth of less than ~1 degree F? Computer controlled process control systems have trouble maintain temperature within +/- 0.5 degrees over a period of a week. History shows that even the Earth can not maintain the “Global” temperature within +/- 1 degree F over the last 5,000 years.
Usurbrain ==> I hope that there aren’t too many farmers hurt by the early freeze! That happens occasionally. Maps for First Freeze for the US show “early October” as the average date for everything north of Colorado.
Kip, Nutrition is indeed the heart of crackpot country.
If you haven’t tried it, try a Google search on “is nutrition a science” Assuming that you get the same results I did (not always the case with Google I believe), there seems to be lots of interesting stuff there.
For example this paper https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2018.00105/full “The Failure to Measure Dietary Intake Engendered a Fictional Discourse on Diet-Disease Relations” The paper seems to cover much the same ground that you have addressed.
Or this paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5998735/ which has some interesting speculation about the future of nutrition science.
DonK ==> Thanks for the links….I’ll read them up.
The utter intractableness demonstrated by the anti-meat “scientist/researches” reminds me of an old legal saying (a bit modified)…”If your data is weak, pound on the theory. If your theory is weak, pound on the data. If your data and theory are weak, pound on the table.”
Mandobob ==> The anti-meat advocates turn to environmentalism and CliSci for support because the nutritional science is so very weak. The even pull the “eating animals is cruel” card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=pO1TTcETyuU
Andrew Neil takes on Extinction Rebellion spokesman Zion Light
“all flying would have to come to an end; all cars would have to be confiscated; meat would have to be rationed by the state; and all gas boilers and cookers would have to be removed from every home; Lights did not deny it”
Kip – your various essays have been very enlightening and helpful.
Have you thought of combining them all as chapters in a book?
A single compendium of your several critical analyses would be a very useful reference.
Pat ==> An interesting idea…..flattered by the suggestion.
If you do it, Kip, and I hope you do, please include an index. 🙂
My initial goal was to go to grad school in nutrition. However I was offered a job in a neuroscience lab and went to grad school on the Old Boy plan (It works for women just like for men despite what you may hear). Sometime in my first year, my supervisor noticed that I did not have the right prerecquisites. All that occurred was a bit of tut-tutting. The attitude was ‘If you are capable of a PhD, you can pick up what you need to’. I have kept an eye on Nutrition and am very glad I fell into experimefrntal science.
Kip People are intensely emotional about the food they choose to eat – just consider the response on this site to Lord Moncton’s piece about the low carb diet he was trying. Researchers in the area are also emotionally involved because they have to eat. Thus, human nutritional research is a bit like introspecting for the answer to how you see colour.
Fran ==> Thanks for your professional perspective. One of the six papers from NutriRECS was about how consumers feel about their meat diets — they don’t want to change even if it is “bad” for them.
@Kip:
Terrific article and along with the others in your series are spot on. There is a straight-line connection between the science wars, as you suggest, linked by dodgy statistics and an overreaching Establishment defending grants/status/political bias. In the future, your articles will be required reading – thank you for taking the time to research and write them.
In appreciation, I will be eating bratwurst (boiled first in beer followed on the grill to get some carcinogen-rich roasted flavor) on a brown bread roll (heavier than a traditional hotdog bun), topped with coarse Dijon mustard and onions sauteed to softness in bacon fat. Washed down with a pint of Octoberfest.
nvw ==> Sounds like a real meal. I’m for the brats, but not the beer (tee-totalling it).
My psychiatrist strongly recommended 2 Sierra Nevada Pale Ales daily (the fluoride in the water is filtered out, it comes only in glass, and it doesn’t taste as sweet as so many beers now do; many brewers seem to have changed their recipes to suit the tastes of their many sugar addicted customers), “…just to keep your wings level.”. I’m following his advice, with wonderful results, if I must say so myself, and even if some might not agree, but he foolishly went vegan and soon expired.
Hu cares what some hazrd from Harvard thinks?
Johnston the leading epidemiologist in the meat-is-safe meta-study was absolutely correct to base his conclusions primarily on the stronger cohort studies with randomised equivalent experimental groups, rather than the weaker ecological type studies. In many fields such as radiation carcinogenesis the “ecological study” that just looks crossectionally at a large group and looks at statistics of subgroups, is often fatally compromised by confounding factors that are almost impossible to exclude from such scatter-gun studies.
Johnston’s is a masterclass in epidemiology even though – or especially because – the results are politically unpalatable to the ecofascist hard left elite. They’re just going to have to suck it up and like it.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190930215122.htm
Phil ==> ScienceDaily was “forced” to add this caveat to their coverage of the McMasters University press release:
“Editor’s Note: In response to these reviews, a number of experts have weighed in on the issues raised in the research. The following is a link from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s The Nutrition Source:
New “guidelines” say continue red meat consumption habits, but recommendations contradict evidence (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2019/09/30/flawed-guidelines-red-processed-meat/)”
Hu (probably, he’s the most vocal one there) at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health made them link to their own attack article
Thanks Kip.
Since Hu is heavily invested in diet politics and has his own book(s) on the subject, this goes beyond conflict of interest into racketeering.
Hu is a common phenomenon in western academia, an unelected kommissar with completely unchallenged power. Essentially a warlord.
Phil ==> In this (and several other diet related Science Wars) he is just that.
I am a sort of living nutrition experiment.
Thirty years or so ago, I was eating tofu, salmon, brown rice, … avoiding butter (eating olive oil or margarine instead), lots of vegetables, … avoiding sugar, … avoiding red meat like a disease, … zero eggs too, … taking nutritional supplements, never eating anything like potato chips or French fires or burgers or hot dogs or sausage or even pork.
Today, I still eat lots of vegetables and fruits, … still eat the salmon, … swore off the brown rice and eat white, instead, … now eat red meat multiple times weekly (including burgers and dogs with everything), … occasionally some potato chips, without any remorse whatsoever. I also bake and eat cakes regularly (not a whole one at once, mind you, but pretty much a slice a day, when they are around). I no longer have my former fear of salt, sugar, butter, eggs — I eat a fair amount of butter daily, in fact (unsalted, by the way). My supplement practice shrank drastically to maybe a multi-vit every other day. I swore off tofu completely — I now consider IT poison. What can I say? — I became a food rebel of my former food self, and I have seen no ill effects due to this particular course of choices.
In effect, I pretty much said “to heck with any one school of nutritional recommendations”, and I just used common sense with a feel for balance, proportion, moderation. Of course, I used to be an ardent believer in human-caused global warming too, and you see what happened to that.
Some people, if they live long enough, wise up. Others unfortunately never do. Rational thinking is an inborn talent. You’ve either got game or you don’t, it seems.
Hu’s on first.
Bruce ==> Best literary reference today!
Excellent. :LOL:
Vegan with artificial supplement. That said, the incredible, edible egg, and a diet of red, green, and blue in moderation.
n.n ==> Gotta admit — you got me wondering with the “blue” — I would know if you said “orange”….
From a blog I write — There are a lot more recommendations that don’t stand scrutiny, ideal weight, sodium intake etc. etc The post does deal with what ideal BMI over 50 actually is
Here’s a link — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2019/10/06/eat-meat-without-worry-but-you-can-feel-guilty-if-you-want/
Here’s the post —
Eat meat without worry (but you can feel guilty if you want)
From an article in the New York Times 1 October 2019 “In a statement, scientists at Harvard warned that the conclusions “harm the credibility of nutrition science and erode public trust in scientific research” “.
Strong stuff indeed. Are they talking about Trump and the post-truth era?
Not at all. They are talking about a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine saying that the evidence that meat is bad for you is lousy, and not to be relied on.
To which I say, Amen.
— Here’s a link to the actual article — https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2752326/effect-lower-versus-higher-red-meat-intake-cardiometabolic-cancer-outcomes — which the journal claims is freely available.
The authors looked at large numbers articles on the health effects of meat consumption to see if the conclusions that meat was harmful were warranted by a statistical analysis of the study. In most cases they weren’t, or if they were, the evidence was weak.
Naturally there has been a counterattack, saying that one of the authors accepted money from the meat industry. So what. The studies are out there in print. Statistical analysis is statistical analysis, and critics are welcome to perform their own statistical analyses of the papers.
This is far from the only example of dietary advice based more on hope and ideology than anything else. A copy of two old posts (11/18 and 3/15) on the subject appears after the **
“erode public trust in scientific research”
This is exactly what I used to worry about when hysteria about common things causing cancer was at its height. Joe sixpack’s logical conclusion to such things was — what the Hell, if everything causes cancer I might as well smoke.
Here are four things which medicine knows which are very likely to be true 50 years from now
l. Don’t smoke
2. Don’t drink too much (over 2 drinks a day), or too little (no drinks). Study after study has shown that mortality is lowest with 1 – 2 drinks/day
3. Don’t get fat — by this I mean fat (Body Mass Index over 30) not overweight (Body Mass Index over 25). The mortality curve for BMI in this range is pretty flat. So eat whatever you want, it’s the quantities you must control.
4. Get some exercise — walking a few miles a week is incredibly much better than no exercise at all — it’s probably half as good as intense workouts — compared to doing nothing.
Not very sexy but likely to still be true in 50 years.
There is tremendous resistance of researchers to having their conclusions disputed. Another brouhaha concerns how much you should weigh. Over 50 the lowest mortality rates occur with body mass indices (BMIs) between 25 and 30 (which currently is called overweight). A post on the subject appears after the ****BMI
**
Published 11/18
Eat what you want, no one really knows what a healthy diet is.
All dietary recommendations are based on sand so eat what you want and enjoy your Thanksgiving meal. How can I say this? Just in time for Thanksgiving, the august pages of Science contain the following article entitled “Dietary Fat: From Foe to Friend ?” [ Science vol. 362 pp. 764 – 770 ’18 ]. Think I’m kidding? Here is a verbatim list of NINE current controversies (translation — not settled science) from the article.
1. Do diets with various carbohydrate-to-fat proportions affect body composition (ratio of fat to lean tissue) independently of energy intake? Do they affect energy expenditure independently of body weight?
2. Do ketogenic diets provide metabolic benefits beyond those of moderate carbohydrate restriction? Can they help with prevention or treatment of cardiometabolic disease?
3. What are the optimal amounts of specific fatty acids (saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated) in the context of a very-low-carbohydrate diet?
4. What is the relative importance for cardiovascular disease of the amounts of LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides in the blood, or of lipoprotein particle size, for persons on diets with distinct fat-to-carbohydrate ratios? Are other biomarkers of equivalent or greater importance?
5. What are the effects of dietary fat amount and quality across the lifespan on risk of neurodegenerative, pulmonary, and other diseases that have not been well studied?
6. What are the long-term efficacies of diets with different carbohydrate-to-fat proportions in chronic disease prevention and treatment under optimal intervention conditions (designed to maximize dietary compliance)?
7. What behavioral and environmental interventions can maximize long-term dietary compliance?
8. What individual genetic and phenotypic factors predict long-term beneficial outcomes on diets with various fat-to-carbohydrate compositions? Can this knowledge inform personalized nutrition, with translation to prevention and treatment?
9. How does variation in the carbohydrate-to-fat ratio and in sources of dietary fat affect the affordability andenvironmental sustainability of diets?
Then totally ignoring the above controversies — they say they agree on such bromides as
l. With a focus on nutrient quality, good health and low chronic disease risk can be achieved for many people on diets with a broad range of carbohydrate-to-fat ratios.
2. Replacement of saturated fat with naturally occurring unsaturated fats provides health benefits for the general population. Industrially produced trans fats are harmful and should be eliminated. The metabolism of saturated fat may differ on carbohydrate-restricted diets, an issue that requires study.
Basically I think you can eat what you want. Perhaps some day the research needed to base dietary recommendations on solid data will have been done, but that day is not here.
Here is an older post (March 2015) written when the dietary guidelines were changed yet again.
The dietary guidelines have been changed — what are the faithful to believe now ?
While we were in China dietary guidelines shifted. Cholesterol is no longer bad. Shades of Woody Allen and “Sleeper”. It’s life imitating art.
Sleeper is one of the great Woody Allen movies from the 70s. Woody plays Miles Monroe, the owner of (what else?) a health food store who through some medical mishap is frozen in nitrogen and is awakened 200 years later. He finds that scientific research has shown that cigarettes and fats are good for you. A McDonald’s restaurant is shown with a sign “Over 795 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 Served”
Seriously then, should you believe any dietary guidelines? In my opinion you shouldn’t. In particular I’d forget the guidelines for salt intake (unless you actually have high blood pressure in which case you should definitely limit your salt). People have been fighting over salt guidelines for decades, studies have been done and the results have been claimed to support both sides.
So what’s a body to do? Well here are 4 things which are pretty solid (which few docs would disagree with, myself included)
l. Don’t smoke
2. Don’t drink too much (over 2 drinks a day), or too little (no drinks). Study after study has shown that mortality is lowest with 1 – 2 drinks/day
3. Don’t get fat — by this I mean fat (Body Mass Index over 30) not overweight (Body Mass Index over 25 and under 30). The mortality curve for BMI in this range is pretty flat. So eat whatever you want, it’s the quantities you must control.
4. Get some exercise — walking a few miles a week is incredibly much better than no exercise at all — it’s probably half as good as intense workouts — compared to doing nothing.
Not very sexy, but you’re very unlikely to find anyone telling you the opposite 50years from now.
Typical of the crap foisted on the public (vitamin D and fish oil prevents cancer, heart disease and all sorts of horrible things) is it’s refutation once a decent study has been done
A large-scale trial has found no evidence that two popular supplements reduce the risk of cancer or the combined risk for a trio of cardiovascular problems.
JoAnn Manson at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and her colleagues recruited more than 25,000 healthy men and women in their fifties or older for a trial examining the effects of fish oil and vitamin D supplements. Some participants took both, others took only one type and the remaining participants took two placebos.
After an average of 5.3 years in the trial, participants who had taken fish oil had essentially the same likelihood of cancer as people who hadn’t. Compared with the placebo group, the fish-oil group had a lower rate of heart attack but the same rate of total cardiovascular events, a category that included heart attacks, strokes and death from cardiovascular disease.
Vitamin D supplements conferred no clear health benefits against cardiovascular disease or cancer, compared with a placebo.
N. Engl. J. Med. (2018) N. Engl. J. Med. (2018)
***BMI
Published 3/19
If you are over 50 it’s healthier to be overweight than not
Seriously folks, the lowest mortality rates over 50 occur in people currently defined as overweight. This is not theory, but data based on millions of people (see later).
So how does medicine define who is overweight? By the Body Mass Index (BMI) being over 25 and under 30. Obesity is defined as a BMI over 30.
Saying that someone over 50 with a BMI between 25 and 30 is overweight is true by medical definition, but that doesn’t make being overweight unhealthy (which is of course the implication of the term).
Well medically, you can define words any way you want, but Abraham Lincoln had it right
” How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?
Four.
Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
If you’re itching to find out what your BMI is, the following site works for meters and kilograms or pounds, feet and inches — https://bmicalculator.mes.fm/?gclid=CM66rIG2tc0CFYQ2gQodOdINEg.
Here is where you can read the paper summarizing data on nearly 3 million people– https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1555137?__rtqa=f4c5e818aba04f769cfc65207b2199b9
It’s better to read the following article in Nature. It actually includes the mortality curves at different ages which you can inspect at your leisure —
http://www.nature.com/news/the-big-fat-truth-1.13039
The only thing I don’t like about the BMI vs. mortality diagram, is that it is rather compressed, with data from BMI’s ranging from 15 to 45. So the overweight range (25 – 30) doesn’t take up much space. But look carefully at the overweight range — the curve is pretty flat here regardless of age showing that it really doesn’t matter how overweight you are (as long as you’re not obese, or superskinny).
Naturally this did not sit well people who’d staked their research careers on telling people to lose weight. One study by a Harvard guy removed 900,000 people from the JAMA study. Robert Eckel, an endocrinologist at University of Colorado in Denver made the great comment that “It’s hard to argue with data. We’re scientists. We pay attention to data, we don’t try to un-explain them.”
Now here is an explanation which I’ve not seen elsewhere so it might be original.
The BMI is far from perfect, but to calculate it all you need are two simple measurements that anyone can make — height and weight. It doesn’t rely on what people remember (how much they usually eat, what they weighed in the past. However the calculation of BMI is not a simple ratio of weight divided by height but weight divided by height squared.
People lose height as they age, so the BMI is quite sensitive to it (remember the denominator has height squared). As a high school basketball player my height was 6′ 1”+, (at age 75) it was 6’0″ (God knows what it is now). So even with constant weight my BMI goes up.
It is now time to do the calculation to see what a fairly common shrinkage from 73.5 inches to 72 would to to the BMI (at a constant weight). Surprisingly it is not trivial — (72/73.5) * (72/73.5) = .9596. So the divisor is 4% less meaning the BMI is 4% more, which is almost exactly what the low point on the curve does with each passing decade after 50 ! ! !
luysii ==> Thanks for weighing in [but it might have better as just a link to your post….]
“So how does medicine define who is overweight? By the Body Mass Index (BMI) being over 25 and under 30. Obesity is defined as a BMI over 30”
Here is the difficulty. Someone has decided that statistically, there is an optimum BMI. But, people today have a better range of foods than ever before, so why should be BMI stay constant? While a slim figure and a tint waist were de rigeur in the 1920s, maybe a plump, overweight body is the norm for the 2020s and indices like BMI need to be modernised. Geoff S
I too, at age 69, have lost an inch; I’m now 5’8. But I’ve been dissatisfied with BMI in just that respect. What happens as we age is that cartilage dries out a bit, in ankles, knees, hips, and in the spine, so it shrinks. But, our bones, organs, and muscles (assuming that we work out a bit) don’t change much. Also, our fat% doesn’t necessarily have to rise; fi, I’ve lost 66 lbs, or slightly over 1/3 of my former max weight of 193. So, I’ve felt that maybe we should continue using, for BMI calculation, our youthful heights, although I haven’t found any authoritive comment on this. If anyone has, please post it.
Also, and since I read so much on health and nutrition that I can’t tell you where I read it, I read that walking is the only exercise proven to increase longevity, and I think most exercise types have been studied, by now. I walk 2.5 mi daily, but I also do a few isometrics, and some leg stretching/deep fingers and thumbs leg massage. The latter 2 both help keep the muscle fascia from sticking together, as they tend to do, with age. Also, to actually unstick them. I’ve only been doing the stretch/massage for a month, and am amazed at how much more limber my legs feel. I’m now about 8″ from touching nose to knee; a month ago it was 1.5 ft, limited by the tight thigh muscles. I do them standing, with one leg stretched out atop a stool. Always remember to massage upward, in accordance with lymph flow, and so you don’t force veinous blood backward, against the the vein check valves. I suppose it helps that I’m now lean enough to really get in there and feel, grip, move, and manipulate, each muscle/muscle group, but I still feel that this will help anyone. Really…I have a more relaxed, rolling gait now, rather than feeling that with each forward step, I’m having to pull against those tight thigh muscles, which I hadn’t even realized I was doing. My intermittant claudication is much less, and less frequent, too; I can walk farther before it kicks in at all, and I can then recover, with brief rest, faster. Lol…maybe this blog should be renamed, “What’s up with your legs, Dude?” I’ll add that I’m enjoying the conversation hugely.
James ==> The most consistent advice on exercise is “20-30 minutes of moderate exercise most days (4 of 7)” and can be whatever you do — chasing grandkids around the park, walking the dog, vacuuming the carpets in the house, or, my favorite, a purposeful walk (walking like you’re a little late for an appointment).
The claim is one gets 95% of the health gain available from exercise with that regime.
Kip, I do agree that any exercise is better than just sitting around. I do walk purposefully (limited only by whatever my legs will stand on that particular day) for about half of my walking, and do the other half as a ramble with my 14 yo dog. Since I don’t do much strenuous, intense exercise, I’m quite comfortable with walking every day, as I have no need for recovery from intense exercise. I really do enjoy walking, and it probably helps that I don’t drive. 🙂
I also don’t wear my minus lenses while walking, although I do carry them in my pocket. Doing so has improved my vision over the last 10 yrs, from -3.50 to about -2.00 (I’m about 20/25 with -1.75 lenses). I think that if if I’d known what I now know about how vision works, when I first was prescribed glasses (age 12), I probably wouldn’t even need glasses now.
It’s all about not not using more power than one really needs. Zenni Optical has been the best thing that has happened to me in that regard; their glasses start at $9.95. I have 6 pair, all with different prescriptions, although I do use optimum power for precise or dangerous tasks. One pair is full powered, though (-2.25), for perfect distance vision when I really need it. It often doesn’t really need to be perfect; just a bit underpowered will usually serve.
The eye muscles contract for close vision, and relax for distant. Kids who are prescribed glasses for distance should be instructed to not wear them for reading, where they’re not needed. Wearing them for reading will strain the eye muscles unnecessarily (to overcome the unnecessary lens power, which the young eye/brain system won’t even realize that it’s having to do), and progressively worsen vision, as happens to most who are diagnosed as nearsighted. If the child won’t do that, get the child variable lenses with the prescription on top, for distance, and no power on the bottom, for reading, which will achieve the same benefit. Lol…eye muscles shouldn’t be habitually, and usually, unconsciously, abused, either.
I usually read (which I do a LOT of; I haven’t owned a TV in 15 yrs) at a distance which causes just a LITTLE blur, so as to relax my eye muscles; for perfect focus, all I have to do is move my head forward an inch or 2, or slide the computer closer, or slip on a pair of -.50 or -.75, kept ready to hand. Be kind to your children and grandchildren by explaining all of this to them; they might not thank you, but you’ll be doing them a great service; glasses sucketh mightily.
Epidemiology is hard. Statistics are not too hard to gather but the confounding factors and potential sources of error are legion. Thus it is quite easy to use bad – or even just sub-OK – epidemiology to prove anything you want.
A true epidemiologist like Johnston uses the only effective method – the well population matched cohort study with equivalence of age, socioeconomic status etc, and then the method can yield true answers.
But true answers can get you in hot water in today’s toxic environment of the ecofascist hard left inquisition that dominates a servile academia and the pathetic media.
Epidemiology works if it’s focused on ONE easily controllable factor, like smoking and the results are so spectacular that one can infer a probable causality.
It’s the wrong tool and a waste of money applied to a human lifetime with hundreds of thousands of variable exposure, some of them dietary, many that are not, combined with infinite genetic expressions besides.
All these people are doing is burning money and electricity churning masses of data for garbage relative “risk” factors within the margin of error, producing junk-“science” headlines for BS media.
Exactly like “climate science,” now what a coincidence . . . !
Keep the population ignorant and frightened is the common denominator.
^Latest red meat study uses best science, not best guesses,” by Nina Techolz, LA Times, 10/9/19, at https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-10-09/red-meat-diet-nutrition-guidelines
Roger ==> Thanks for the link to the LA Times piece….
Republished from Climate Etc.
“We’re closer to saying: we really don’t know,” while past guidelines have generally suggested we fully understand meat’s health effects.”
The issue is whether science is involved in nutrition policy determinations or are advocates for some social well-being belief system are influencing public policy.
The red meat issue is burdened with other social policy issues including climate change.
Ever since the Korean War autopsy findings of “fatty streaks” on soldiers arteries who died of their wounds made the rounds in academic circles. The cholesterol urban myth perpetuated by academics and anti-vivisectionists made its way into changing our way of dietary messaging. Amongst those stories was that cholesterol from animal fats was bad and the US and the world in general should follow the diets of the high altitude vegetarians. It turns out that these pristine people had the same coronary artery disease as anybody else and the researchers were examining only those who survived their heart attacks.
Other data on cholesterol and animal based diets was suppressed for multiple decades until just recently. A large number of heart research medical centers invested heavily in the cholesterol and animal fat is bad meme.
Now, it is hard to imagine but eating meat, red meat is OK, but it is.
In the Annals of Internal Medicine: 1 October 2019 the clinical guidelines is based upon evidence based medicine and is…Continue doing what you have been doing. What a message. The clinics, doctors, and the whole health food industry have been told…never mind.
They are not going down without a fight .
RiHo08 ==> I don;t recall seeing this at Climate Etc. Can you supply a link?
Kip Hansen
I hope I have not mislead you. This was my post from:
Is eating beef healthy? [link]
Kip Hansen
I hope I have not mislead you. My comment there.
Week in Review October 5, 2019
Is eating beef healthy? [link]
Common sense alone tells one that we evolved over the past 2 million years, including all the glaciations, with large fauna the primary source of food. Yeah, we’d dig up some nasty tuber or try to eat leaves if it had been a really. lousy. hunting day, but our primary source of calories was the fattiest meat we could kill. This is how we left the herbivorous apes behind, moved out into the steppes and evolved the highest brain/gut ratio of any species we know. That could only occur if evolution chose for us high-energy-density food like meat.
In the glaciations, nothing else would have been available. We also know the Inuit, Masai, Plains Indians etc. ate this diet and thrived on it before the starchy and sugary “foods of civilization” got there. That missionary food brought them the diseases of civilization too, which in those populations previously was not present! This has happened many times, all over the world. (Ref: Weston A. Price, “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.”)
What was conspicuously missing: Modern-bred large, fructose-heavy fruit; any kind of grains; modern-bred crucifer and nightshade vegetables; ANY kind of vegetable oils; ANY kind of flour or processed sugar; high-fructose corn syrup, and thousands of chemical additives we use in processed food for textures, emulsifiers, preservatives, fillers and extenders, etc. Don’t even start on the chemicals we smear on our bodies . . . after having stripped away our naturally protective oils and biome first.
Any ancient food cannot POSSIBLY be the culprit in causing problems that were rare in the population prior to 1920. But maladaptation and intolerance SURELY CAN cause them, and the results are before our eyes.
But very large vested interests depend on most of society never getting “red-pilled” about our evolutionary imperative, and the Agenda 30 gnomes WANT us fat, sick, stupid, crazy, infertile and easily herded.
“Vegetarian” is an American Indian word, meaning, “lousey hunter”.
” Nutrition studies, he added, should not be held to the same rigid standards as studies of experimental drugs.”
Hmm, where have we heard something like that before?
Jeff ==> CliSci?
Hi Kip – Thanks for this. A saw the headlines, but didn’t read any further, assuming it was another nutritional whipsaw. Good to see that the headlines seem to be based on good analyses. You and Jim Steele always have well researched and well written articles on WUWT and I always enjoy them even if I don’t agree completely.
I always wondered why ‘red meat’ was so evil, but I guess that came from fat-phobia. The lean, chewier lamb and beef steaks in my local grocery are labelled ‘heart smart’. I still buy them when on sale because a piece of papaya can make all the difference or they can go into a curry if too chewy.
The former US Senator/Vice President and now Democrat presidential candidate, Joe Biden, is known for many things (braggadocio, plagiarism, racial stereotyping, flip-flopping, political opportunism, etc.) but I was struck by one of his recent alleged gaffes: “We choose truth over facts!” He said this so convincingly (like the eat babies woman at the AOC rally), that I suspect this wasn’t a gaffe – it is what he believes. So, while I do agree with you that two scientists can look at the same body of facts and come to different conclusions, I think there are many people claiming to be scientists who choose truth over facts.
DaveW ==> Hey, do you have a link to where Biden said that? There’s a whole philosophy-of-science essay in that idea.
Hey – Kip, kev below posted a link. I’ll just note that this quote seems to be Biden plagiarising again. I think Frank Lloyd Wright gets credit for the original: “The truth is more important than the facts.”
One could argue that truth vs facts is part of the empiricist vs rationalist war. The Ray Society, which produced some wonderful natural history books in the 1800s, had a motto along the lines of ‘We want facts, not theory’. Or that is my memory (and possibly not a fact): The Ray Society is still around, but I couldn’t find their motto.
I did find Dorothy Sayers take on it though: “Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.”
Dave ==> Well, a lot of people think FLW said it . . . . without context, it is odd.
The philosophical issue is the question of the relationship between Truth and Facts.
Thank goodness that’s sorted Meat is so not the reason western hospitals have filled up since the late sixtys. Having watched it happen with bewilderment.The exploding need for cardiologists,psychiatrists,endocrinologists and the rest.Where did autism spectrum come from? Our microbiome is a clue. And what causes its demise,in a word chlorine.The effects from drinking it put greenhouse gases in the shade as a threat to humans.
John, a better guess might be the use of oral antibiotics. They sweep through the microbiome and wreck the bacterial population. Whatever grows back has skewed bacterial demographics.
I have no knowledge of the consequences, but given the emerging understanding of the importance of that population, the possibility seems well worth investigating.
Chlorine won’t do anything. It turns into chloride in the reducing environment of the stomach and is rendered harmless.
Pat ==> My microbiome has been developed by traveling to places quite a bit — and eating street food, wild picked fruit, etc. even when knocked down by antibiotics, it seems to grow back in all its glory.
It is known that different locales have different general human microbiomes . . . accompanying different diets, different soil, different endemic e colis, etc.
Studying mircobiomes is getting to be quite a fad — but I am uncertain about how important it is from a Minimal Clinically Important Difference viewpoint. Other than truly pathological microbiomes, I have a feeling that it is being blown out of proportion.
Time will tell.
Kip, what do you think of these? I can send you the papers, if you like.
Lewis, et al., (2015) Inflammation, Antibiotics, and Diet as Environmental Stressors of the Gut Microbiome in Pediatric Crohn’s Disease Cell Host & Microbe 18(4) 14, 489-500 here
•Inflammation, antibiotics, and diet independently affect microbiota in Crohn’s disease
•Antibiotics are associated with bacterial dysbiosis and increased fungi
•Dysbiosis decreases with reduction in intestinal inflammation
•Diet has an independent and rapid effect on gut microbiota composition
Abnormal composition of intestinal bacteria—“dysbiosis”—is characteristic of Crohn’s disease.
and
Suskind, et al. (2015) Fecal Microbial Transplant Effect on Clinical Outcomes and Fecal Microbiome in Active Crohn’s Disease Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 21(3), 556–563, here.
Crohn’s disease (CD) is a chronic idiopathic inflammatory intestinal disorder associated with fecal dysbiosis. Fecal microbial transplant (FMT) is a potential therapeutic option for individuals with CD based on the hypothesis that changing the fecal dysbiosis could promote less intestinal inflammation.
…
Nine patients, aged 12 to 19 years, with mild-to-moderate symptoms defined by Pediatric Crohn’s Disease Activity (PCDA) [were enrolled].
…
Based on PCDAI, 7 of 9 patients were in remission at 2 weeks and 5 of 9 patients who did not receive additional medical therapy were in remission at 6 and 12 weeks. No or modest improvement was seen in patients who did not engraft or whose microbiome was most similar to their donor.
…
This is the first study to demonstrate that FMT for CD may be a possible therapeutic option for CD. Further prospective studies are required to fully assess the safety and efficacy of the FMT in patients with CD.
Pat ==> Dysbiosis — pathological microbiome states in the gut can be a problem for anyone — and many temporary upsets are thus caused.
Restoring a normal microbiome in place of a pathological population has been normally done in the past simply by nuking the exisiting bad population woith antibiotics and letting the good guys grow back, sometime supplemented with “pro-biotics”.
It is difficult to draw general conclusions from small studies of already ill people with known pathologies.
Generally, I say, eat more dirt….I brought my kids up eating fresh from the garden, usually unwashed, sometimes dirt-and-all. All have strong stomachs and apparently strong sturdy microbiomes.
True, but don’t forget Fluoride, which is a neurotoxin and an endocrine disrupter. I use a 4 cartridge filter, including a reverse osmosis cartridge, which removes 85-95% of Fluoride, bringing my local water down to ~ .07 PPM. Reverse Osmosis Revolution is the manufacturer; they’re online. They can be replaced individually; the R.O. cartridge is good for 1-1.5 yrs, iirc, the other 3 are good for 2-3 yrs. My sinktop unit was ~ $100. The brackets, hoses, and fixtures will last longer, and a complete set of replacement filters is less than $100; $53, iirc. They can be bought individually, too, starting with the R.O.; last I knew, that was $33.