I'm trying to come to grips with this as an educated lay person. I'm used to seeing good hypothesis move to theory through the incremental increase in experimental data, a good theory being improved as decimal places of precision are added, interesting corner cases being discovered and elaborated but everybody knowing that these are the edges not the big fat middle.... This is science!
After reading the article and reading the responses I'm more confused with the state of affairs than ever the only facts I can glean from all this are :
* If people followed worlds best dietary advice they would have reduced morbidity and mortality from heart disease and some cancers.
* Almost nobody in the west can or will follow worlds best dietary advice.
* Eating any manufacturers pre-prepared food will mean you are not following best dietary advice.
* The original studies were flawed and legislators were pushed into before a benefit could be clearly shown.
* Some of the original recommendations for replacements of animal fats were later shown to be far worse than animal fats.
* The concept of disproving the null hypothesis is lost on both sides of the argument and everybody is cherry picking data to support there position.
* The signal to noise ratio may be too low to with regard to animal fats and heart disease to call, if a link is made it will be in the small percentages not a doubling (or for smoking a 9 to 1 increase in lung cancer : ~20db = really clear signal)
* Large food manufactures, acting in their own best interests, made things worse (trans fats?)
So the big question to the community :
* When choosing what form of excess calories I should have in my tasty treat, which is least bad, simple carbs (aka sugar) or animal fats? The article suggests animal fats now appear to be less bad than sugar. Is this correct, currently unknown, or a bald faced lie that is currently fashionable in our science hating anti-vaxer world.
Rapid Response:
I'm trying to come to grips with this as an educated lay person. I'm used to seeing good hypothesis move to theory through the incremental increase in experimental data, a good theory being improved as decimal places of precision are added, interesting corner cases being discovered and elaborated but everybody knowing that these are the edges not the big fat middle.... This is science!
After reading the article and reading the responses I'm more confused with the state of affairs than ever the only facts I can glean from all this are :
* If people followed worlds best dietary advice they would have reduced morbidity and mortality from heart disease and some cancers.
* Almost nobody in the west can or will follow worlds best dietary advice.
* Eating any manufacturers pre-prepared food will mean you are not following best dietary advice.
* The original studies were flawed and legislators were pushed into before a benefit could be clearly shown.
* Some of the original recommendations for replacements of animal fats were later shown to be far worse than animal fats.
* The concept of disproving the null hypothesis is lost on both sides of the argument and everybody is cherry picking data to support there position.
* The signal to noise ratio may be too low to with regard to animal fats and heart disease to call, if a link is made it will be in the small percentages not a doubling (or for smoking a 9 to 1 increase in lung cancer : ~20db = really clear signal)
* Large food manufactures, acting in their own best interests, made things worse (trans fats?)
So the big question to the community :
* When choosing what form of excess calories I should have in my tasty treat, which is least bad, simple carbs (aka sugar) or animal fats? The article suggests animal fats now appear to be less bad than sugar. Is this correct, currently unknown, or a bald faced lie that is currently fashionable in our science hating anti-vaxer world.
Competing interests: No competing interests