[HN Gopher] Saturated fat: the making and unmaking of a scientif...
___________________________________________________________________
Saturated fat: the making and unmaking of a scientific consensus
(2022)
Author : mgh2
Score : 138 points
Date : 2024-10-26 20:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.lww.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.lww.com)
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from
| https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/american-heart-association...,
| which points to this.
|
| (Submitted title was "AHA Was Paid By P&G To Say Heart Disease
| Caused By Saturated Fat, Not Seed Oils")
| SeanLuke wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evie_Magazine
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I think that story was actually better than this paper, which
| appears to have been authored by a controversial figure.
| dang wrote:
| I'm open to changing it back but that would be just as
| controversial, no? because it's about the same work.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I'm not sure how we can prevent organizations from being 'bribed'
| like this, but something has to be done. Misinformation like this
| has no doubt contributed to the obesity epidemic
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not sure how we can prevent organizations from being
| 'bribed' like this_
|
| Statute that makes it fraud for a doctor (or anyone with
| medical certification) to make unsubstantiated health claims or
| strong claims based on weak science.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| The view of SFA consumption as a risk factor for CVD is not the
| result of bribes, it's the result of the body of research on
| the subject pointing in that direction.
|
| It's rich of Nina to accuse Keys of cherry picking while
| claiming that there's no RCT data supporting the diet-heart
| hypothesis because of the dodgy Hamley meta analysis, while
| ignoring Hooper 2020, which was far more rigorous and showed a
| 21% reduction in CVD events when PUFA was substituted for SFA:
| https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The reduction in that study is 17%, not 21%. And it is 17% of
| an 8% risk: so, if the study is correct, your risk of CVDs
| should go from ~9.6% to ~8%. However, this is _not_
| associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality. So even
| if the effect is real, it seems to be quite small.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| No, it's 17% for reduction in SFA. It's 21% for replacement
| of SFA with PUFA.
|
| Yes, it's not significantly associated with a lower risk of
| ACM, but that doesn't mean they don't increase ACM risk. It
| just means that in these relatively short RCTs, a
| significant finding on a very insensitive endpoint like ACM
| was not found. That's not surprising, you wouldn't
| necessarily expect to see such a finding. For that you'd
| want longer or larger RCTs (unlikely due to cost) or
| prospective cohort studies (which do show a significant
| effect on ACM).
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Saturated fat: the making and unmaking of a scientific
| consensus_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33942840 - Dec
| 2022 (6 comments)
| ericyd wrote:
| The only trendy food advice I'll ever follow is Michael Pollan's:
| eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
| thefz wrote:
| I remind this motto as bell but he should have put emphasis on
| "food you made"
| jvanderbot wrote:
| His definition of food is narrower than just edible things. I
| recall the book discussed processed vs more "raw" foods.
| frereubu wrote:
| The definition I've heard of his for "food" in this
| sentence was "things your grandparents would recognise",
| although by this point it might be "your great-
| grandparents".
| slothtrop wrote:
| He does, the above was a misquote: what he says is "eat real
| food". Making it yourself helps ensure that.
| ericyd wrote:
| It's not a misquote unless he misquoted himself
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.
| t...
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| This advice has always come off as paternalistic to me, like
| the emphasis is on people just not being able to control
| themselves or something.
|
| The first part is obvious.
|
| The second part smuggles in a fundamentally incorrect take on
| the "eating too much"/obesity problem, namely that it has
| something to do with willpower: including "not too much" in the
| advice implies that we need to be told not to eat too much, but
| that a diet that naturally induces overeating is otherwise OK.
|
| The third part is arbitrary and unfounded, and if you ignore it
| you can ignore the second part as well: get some good fatty
| meat on your plate and you can safely eat to satiety.
| ericyd wrote:
| I don't think of the second part being about self control and
| obesity, to me it's just a reinforcement of the idea that
| each person has different caloric requirements and you should
| respect your own needs. Of course it's vague so open to
| interpretation.
|
| The third part feels as arbitrary and unfounded as any other
| dietary advice I read, so I'm inclined to take the simplest
| advice available.
| pton_xd wrote:
| > The first part is obvious.
|
| Is it, though? It seems like many struggle with the first
| part.
|
| Does snacking on a vending machine Duchess Honey Bun or a
| sleeve of Oreos qualify as "eat food?" How about popping open
| a cup of instant ramen or microwaving some frozen taquitos?
| I'd call all of that eating junk, but I think that's the root
| of the issue.
| gushogg-blake wrote:
| No I guess there must be some people for whom it isn't
| obvious. I was kind of assuming the intended audience for
| the advice was people who are interested enough in diet to
| look at a book on nutrition, for example, not people who
| just eat junk without thinking about it.
|
| But yes for those people I do think the "eat food" thing
| should be emphasised and laid out in more detail, maybe.
| Hard for me to have an opinion there as I just can't put
| myself in the shoes of someone who eats that kind of stuff.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Per this spiffy quote, it's a better idea to eat a bag of
| potato chips fried in palm oil than to eat a stake. I think it
| can safely be ignored.
| cthalupa wrote:
| To be fair, Pollan would specifically not consider a bag of
| potato chips food. It's not included here but he specifically
| is talking about "real" food and not ultra processed snacks,
| etc.
|
| I think it's still an oversimplification - people with large
| amounts of muscle mass, low body fat, and high levels of
| daily physical activity just don't get a lot of the same
| metabolic diseases even if they eat huge amounts of animal
| protein, outside of really poor genetic luck (or
| complications related to steroid use, etc.) - but it's a
| pretty good starting point vs. the modern diet.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If he has his own special meaning of the common word
| "food", then it's no longer a spiffy quote. And now you
| need to get into all the nitty gritty of this
| recommendation to actually take any advice from it.
|
| Even this term "ultra-processed" is highly suspect when you
| start investigating it more deeply. Plenty of traditional
| foods are quite processed - bread being one of the oldest.
| Is it better to eat 200g of bread (artisanal, wood fired,
| using traditionally-milled non-GMO pesticide free grains),
| or a steak?
| cthalupa wrote:
| Sure. I don't think the quote is super useful - just
| pointing out that if you were to ask him, he'd say that
| the potato chips aren't food.
|
| > Is it better to eat 200g of bread (artisanal, wood
| fired, using traditionally-milled non-GMO pesticide free
| grains), or a steak?
|
| I don't think there's a real answer here in a vacuum. It
| depends on what else you eat, your current health, your
| level of physical activity, etc.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Before anyone gets too excited, best to remember that Nina is
| regarded as something of a joke in nutrition science circles, and
| tends to take poetic license with the truth.
|
| If you'd like to take a look at a critical review of her other
| work on this topic, I'd highly recommend this damning analysis of
| her "Big Fat Surprise" book:
| https://thescienceofnutrition.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/the-b...
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Are there any similar problems with this essay? I am pretty
| sure I've heard much of this before ...
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| It's large and I'm about to go to sleep and only on my phone,
| so not easy to go through the whole thing, but in short, yes.
|
| Much like in her book, Nina is grossly misrepresenting the
| evidence, and I'd say just flat-out lies or at the very least
| misleads the author. See my comment here for an example:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41958014
| nograpes wrote:
| Thank you for providing this very helpful and needed context. I
| was indeed getting very excited.
| valval wrote:
| The essay you linked to reads an awful lot more like a joke
| than the article in the OP.
|
| To me it's no secret that the mainstream nutrition science is a
| joke. The latest Nordic nutrition guidelines I've heard of
| recommend the same amount of sugar and red meat per week -- 350
| grams.
|
| If that's not enough to tell you everything these organisations
| do is based on false premises, I have a bridge to sell you.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| > The essay you linked to reads an awful lot more like a joke
| than the article in the OP.
|
| Why?
| valval wrote:
| The tone is snarky and condescending, which already means
| it can't be taken seriously. Your initial comment struggles
| with the same issue to a lesser extent.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| If you dismiss valid points addressing the substance of
| the claim under discussion because of the tone it's
| conveyed in, and that's the epistemic framework you use
| to understand whether scientific claims are valid or not,
| then best of luck to you.
|
| Personally, I think that's hilarious. Enjoy your bacon
| and butter.
| mistermann wrote:
| Your framing of "the" reasoning is rather impressive
| itself.
| norswap wrote:
| I shouldn't enter into consideration, but it's a
| shockingly good heuristic to evaluate the credibility of
| people.
|
| I repeatedly found that people who are thoughtful and not
| snarky -- and often, nuanced -- when discussing a topic I
| have no deep expertise on were much more correct on
| topics that I did have expertise on and could properly
| evaluate.
|
| We're all on a time budget at the end of the day. And I
| do share the sentiment: the scientific literature in
| nutrition is known not to be very good. You don't have to
| be an expert, it suffices to notice that there are a lot
| of people coming to contradictory conclusions, and that
| the consensus seems to have changed drastically over the
| past decades, not being particularly driven by any
| groundbreaking changes in available scientific methods.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Ok, I don't share that heuristic personally. That said,
| if that's yours, then I encourage you to compare
| Teicholz's output with, say, Walter Willett's (who would
| take the position that SFA is a risk factor for CVD).
|
| Teicholz is considerably snarkier than Willett so, even
| by that metric, you should lean in favour of Willett's
| position that SFA is unhealthy, I guess?
| lemmsjid wrote:
| I partially agree with you but have some counter
| thoughts.
|
| Tone is something that can be adopted intentionally or
| unintentionally. If you hear a pilot on a radio dryly say
| something in a calm and detached tone, it could be in the
| context of an emergency. Pilots are enculturated to adopt
| that tone (for various reasons). Meanwhile particular
| cultures have different levels of acceptability when it
| comes to tone: some cultures perceive other cultures as
| more angry, or detached, because of the norms of
| communication within those cultures.
|
| In short, I think the tone of "calm, scientific
| detachment" is often weaponized to lend undeserved
| credibility to an argument, because people tend to
| believe people more when they adopt that tone.
|
| Furthermore, tone does have a purpose if used alongside a
| well done argument. For example, in the article the OP
| linked to, there is a rather exhaustive refutation of the
| book in question. The tone of the author previews that
| their entire opinion on the book is negative, given all
| the arguments they put forth in their review. If the
| author of the review had adopted a calm and thoughtful
| tone, perhaps it would indeed have been more effective
| because the reader would decide. On the other hand, most
| people won't read the entire review, so the tone of the
| author makes it clear what their opinion is.
|
| That said I am not wholly disagreeing with you: would be
| interesting to do a study using some varying markers to
| identify tone, and identify, I don't know, argumentative
| complexity, and see if snarkiness is associated with a
| lack of complexity. Assuming you can find markers with
| predictive power.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| It distracts from the points, whether they're valid or
| not. It suggests that the person is driven by something
| other than getting to the truth. They're more interested
| in demonstrating superiority and punishing the enemy.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| That just seems like an attempt at mind reading to me.
| Maybe that's just their writing style? Maybe they're just
| fed up with having to deal with the same anti scientific
| nonsense all the time?
|
| Seems a waste of effort trying to attribute motive to
| such things. Just read what they have to say, verify what
| they say against their references and then make an
| inference based on that. Don't see why tone has to come
| into it at all.
| branz wrote:
| Although I understand the frustration that comes with
| feeling like misinformation is being spread, it is also
| much easier to have a meaningful discussion without such
| a tone/writing style. Everybody is human, and reading
| something like that can be quite inflammatory and
| distract from the conversation. Anyways, that's just my
| personal opinion, and despite writing this, strong
| emotions getting involved in public forums with topics
| like these is kind of inevitable.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Tone matters.
|
| I'm much more likely to listen to a person who has a
| calm, neutral or positive tone than someone who is
| screaming the same words at me.
|
| Words are only a part of human communication, and
| arguably not the most important part.
|
| "Can I help you?" Has a vastly different meaning
| depending on the tone and body language of the speaker.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| That's a different point.
|
| I claimed that Teicholz was a joke because she makes
| misleading and often false claims about nutrition science
| evidence. The response was that the critique I linked to
| was _more_ of a joke, not because of its content but
| because of its tone.
|
| So sure, tone matters in certain contexts. If it matters
| more to someone than the content of what is being said to
| someone in the context of assessing scientific research,
| then I think that person has a _wild_ way of interpreting
| evidence.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Tone matters.
|
| Very true. This fact has been deeply exploited by con men
| across social media in the past decade. When someone
| knows they're coming from an unfounded, misleading, or
| deliberately wrong position they make up for it by
| heaping on friendly tone. They present in a warm,
| welcoming, and empathetic tone that appears inviting and
| friendly, unlike the cold academic discussions where
| facts reign supreme and tone is an afterthought.
|
| It's a real problem right now. There are countless
| influencers and podcasters pushing bad science who get a
| free pass because they are all smiles, super nice, and
| present themselves as helping you (while pitching you
| products and trying to get you to buy their book)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| There's two kinds of it. One is "This is BS, here's why
| it's BS, here's more detail on why it's BS, don't fall
| for this BS." It's heavier on evidence than it is on
| snark. It uses snark to liven up what could be dull, but
| all the data is there, and is carefully explained.
|
| The other kind is heavier on snark than it is on
| evidence. It uses the snark to persuade, _rather than the
| evidence_. That 's "I can't be bothered to actually make
| a real case here (whether or not the data is actually on
| my side), so I'm just going to make the other side look
| stupid, and hope that you decide to agree with me so that
| you don't feel stupid too".
|
| The first kind can be persuasive. (In fact, it can be
| more persuasive than the dry kind of refutation.) The
| second kind is a _huge_ red flag - if they 're right,
| it's only by accident, because they can't be bothered to
| really deal with the evidence.
|
| I suspect that, when different people are reacting to
| snark in such an article, they're reacting to different
| versions of it.
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| > The latest Nordic nutrition guidelines I've heard of
| recommend the same amount of sugar and red meat per week --
| 350 grams
|
| Please provide a source. The Danish health authorities
| absolutely do NOT recommend sugar consumption. Instead, they
| recommend eating 600g of fruits and vegetables, 100g of
| legumes, 30g of nuts, and 90g of whole grains DAILY, as well
| as 350g of fish and no more than 350g of meat WEEKLY. Source:
| https://foedevarestyrelsen.dk/Media/638651862095615836/AOK-a.
| ..
| cmsefton wrote:
| Thank you for this link, very informative.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| How on earth was this person allowed to publish in this
| journal? Is it a pay for play?
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Some journals are. Others like to carry these kind of
| articles because heterodox controversial views like this can
| generate publicity, traffic and citations. Some journals will
| just publish any old rot.
| lumb63 wrote:
| I cannot comment on Nina specifically, since I'm not familiar
| with her work. I'd only like to suggest that being "a joke in
| nutrition science circles" in the recent past is probably
| something of a compliment. Mainstream nutrition science led to
| advice such as putting energy-dense grains at the bottom of the
| food pyramid, and villainizing fat with respect to CVD, leading
| to "reduced fat" alternatives which instead use sugar (which is
| highly addictive). Now, debates center around how much added
| sugar should be the recommended daily amount (hint: it should
| be 0). Lawmakers are considering funding overpriced Ozempic via
| Medicare to fight our rampant obesity, while nutrition science
| has abdicated its role in helping people maintain healthful,
| satiating diets.
|
| At least in the United States, the nutrition science of the
| last 100 years has overseen the most incredible deterioration
| of metabolic health in human history. There are some folks
| doing good work out there, as there always have been, but
| listening to mainstream nutrition science as if their word is
| law is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of
| the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this
| objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in
| the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.
|
| Reduced fat is an interesting one. If you actually look at
| what Keys was investigating all the way back in the mid 20th
| century, the hypothesis was always that _saturated_ fat
| increased CVD risk. The translation of that into policy and
| marketing aimed at _total_ fat cannot be placed entirely at
| the feet of mainstream nutrition science.
|
| As to the claims that sugar is addictive, this is unsupported
| - sugar does not meet the DSM-V criteria for addictive
| substances based on current evidence (https://link.springer.c
| om/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-8077-9_...)
|
| As for added sugar - again, you're labelling policy decisions
| as nutrition science. The DGs that I'm aware of recommend as
| little added sugar as possible, but when you're making policy
| you have to strike a balance between strict enough to make a
| difference, but not so restrictive that no one listens.
| That's different from what mainstream nutrition science would
| claim (which is indeed that there are no benefits to added
| sugar and several risks).
|
| The same point applies to your claim that nutrition science
| has a role in getting people to adhere to satiating diets.
| No, nutrition science is to help us understand what those
| diets might look like. It is not responsible for getting
| populations to adhere to them.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that nutrition studies (whose
| results influence health and economic policy) are
| frequently funded by dominant players of the food industry,
| creating a huge conflict of interest. This has to end.
| rendang wrote:
| >put whole grains specifically
|
| This is false, in the 90s when I grew up there was no such
| criterion, and the posters of the pyramid prominently
| depicted sliced white bread.
|
| The worst part of the food pyramid was the indication to
| use all fats and oils sparingly. There's never been any
| point in which the evidence suggested that olive oil or
| other monounsaturated fats should be avoided
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Agree that the wholesale demonisation of fats was a
| massive failure of policy. Doubly frustrating because
| this was known - Ancel Keys' hypothesis was always about
| saturated fat specifically, and the Keys equation he
| devised showed the beneficial effects of PUFA. So
| mainstream nutrition science was on the money, but policy
| makers and companies less so.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the
| base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this
| objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points
| in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.
|
| Citation please or I'm calling extreme bullshit. Everything
| I've ever read has argued for putting more nutrient dense
| fruits and vegetables as the basis for a healthy diet.
|
| More importantly, I think the nutrition community was
| woefully naive to the point of being negligent when they
| tried to defend the food pyramid. One quote I heard was
| "When we were recommending lower far intake, we never
| imagined Snackwells." Well, why TF not??? It should have
| been blatantly obvious that by demonizing fat and making
| people feel like carbs were "free" that companies would
| react appropriately and come up with fat-free, sugar-
| stuffed replacements that had a huge amount of calories,
| left you feeling unsatiated, and tasted like sweet
| cardboard. Probably even worse was frankenfood like
| Olestra.
|
| I agree with the original point - while I think the field
| of nutrition science has improved a lot over the past
| decade, they have a ton to answer for and never did an
| appropriate "mea culpa" for all the great harm they caused.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Citation please or I'm calling extreme bullshit.
| Everything I've ever read has argued for putting more
| nutrient dense fruits and vegetables as the basis for a
| healthy diet.
|
| pic from wikipedia named USDA pyramid 1995-2005: https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/medi...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Wut? Was your comment a joke or satire? This entire
| thread is about how the food pyramid of that era was an
| unscientific disaster, so linking to a picture of it is
| not evidence.
| riku_iki wrote:
| you asked for citation of pyramid putting grains in
| foundation, you got it, not sure what you are complaining
| about now.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Sorry, I realized now, I quoted that section just to give
| context. I was really referring to "Not sure why you
| consider this objectionable, the body of evidence
| overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for
| wholegrain consumption."
|
| Even with that first sentence though, the base of that
| shitty food pyramid really just doesn't talk about "whole
| grains" - it calls it the "bread, cereal, rice and pasta"
| group, with a graphic that includes spaghetti, crackers,
| a baguette, a bowl of cereal, etc. And having lived
| through that time when the food pyramid was taught in
| school, they certainly weren't delineating between highly
| refined flours and things like oatmeal, brown rice,
| quinoa, etc.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Sorry, I realized now, I quoted that section just to
| give context. I was really referring to
|
| looks like I agree with you on this part:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41964513
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| What do you want a citation for? Which claim?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Your claims that (1) the food pyramid put _whole_ grains
| at the base, and (2) that there is any consensus at all
| that a healthy diet should include more whole grains than
| fruit and vegetables (which is what "being at the base
| of the pyramid" means).
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Sure, here's a USDA article referring to the "1984 Food
| Guide Pyramid" where it states cereals should be whole
| grain (see p38: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publicat
| ions/42215/5831_aib...)
|
| As for whole grains vs fruit vs vegetables, here's a SR
| and MA of studies looking at different food groups and
| the RR of all cause mortality: https://www.sciencedirect.
| com/science/article/pii/S000291652...
|
| Three servings of whole grains per day: 0.79 (21%
| reduction in ACM) Three servings of vegetables per day:
| 0.89 (11% reduction in ACM) Three servings of fruit per
| day: 0.90 (10% reduction in ACM)
|
| So the evidence seems to support the suggestion that
| consumers should focus on whole grain consumption as a
| base for their diet.
| hollerith wrote:
| >The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base
| of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this
| objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points
| in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.
|
| Many, many people disagree with that. Most days I eat no
| grains at all and the rest of the time, I strictly limit my
| grain intake. For example, I just finished a meal where I
| used one tablespoonful (uncooked volume) of rice (boiled
| with some peas). (The meal also included meat and butter,
| the source of most of my calories.) White rice is the only
| grain I eat anymore, and I would never eat brown rice,
| which is loaded with oxalate and other phytotoxins. I added
| to this just-finished meal B vitamins in the form of pure
| refined powder (which I liberated from capsules).
|
| It is very obvious from how it makes me feel that brown
| rice is bad for me.
|
| The cultures that have eaten rice for thousands of years
| eat almost exclusively white rice. Brown rice was not even
| possible to make before the spread of tech for precision
| machining (which reached East Asia in the 1900s). You have
| to remove the hull from the rice before you can eat it, and
| before precision machining, removing the hull
| (traditionally done by pounding the rice with a log) also
| removed most of the bran and germ. Yes, some bran and some
| germ remained stuck to the rice -- so it was mostly-white
| rice, as opposed the polished, completely-white rice we
| have today with no bran and no germ at all. Still it had
| only a small fraction of the amount of bran and germ that
| modern brown rice has.
| Spagbol wrote:
| I've read the opposite; that brown rice is just white
| rice with the bran still attached, and that white rice
| was only eaten by the elite because of the additional
| work required to seperate it (like white bread only being
| for the wealthy during the middle ages), and that
| beriberi was a noticed more in times specifically because
| of industrialization increasing the availability of white
| rice: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine_deficiency
| Apperently a lot of white rice is now enriched with
| thiamine for this reason
| hollerith wrote:
| >I've read the opposite; that brown rice is just white
| rice with the bran still attached, and that white rice
| was only eaten by the elite because of the additional
| work required to seperate it (like white bread only being
| for the wealthy during the middle ages)
|
| I've read that, too, many times, and I stopped believing
| it after I watched videos (on Youtube) of people
| preparing rice the traditional way. Particularly, I paid
| close attention to the _color_ of the rice after the
| processing steps: it was white with bits of brown stuck
| to it.
|
| I searched for bookmarks for those videos, but cannot
| find them.
|
| (I don't know about wheat: I only investigated rice.)
| hollerith wrote:
| I found the bookmark. Anyone who has ever seen modern
| brown rice will immediately be able to tell that although
| there might be bits of bran still stuck to it, this rice
| has no more than 3 or 4% of the bran of modern brown
| rice:
|
| https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=WWnY3OLALTBREVMs&t=525
|
| I bookmarked another video, but it has been made private
| since I watched it.
|
| Here is a very illuminating moment: the rice has already
| been pounded, then winnowed (the separated hulls
| removed), but there are still many kernels that need to
| be hulled (roughly one kernel in every 150 or 200
| kernels), so the rice is put back in the mortar for
| another round of pounding. In other words, although there
| is more pounding to do to make the rice edible, already
| most of the bran is off the rice (and thrown away along
| with the hulls). (When only a few unhulled kernels
| remain, she removes them one by one with her fingers.)
| This supports my assertion that it is impossible with
| traditional methods to get the hulls off while leaving on
| most or even a significant fraction of the bran. Again: I
| think you need precision machines that only became
| available in Europe in the 1800s and in East Asia in the
| 1900s to get the hulls off (which I think you really need
| to do if you eat rice every day and want to keep your
| teeth) while leaving most of the bran on the kernel.
| I.e., people in traditional rice cultures did not have
| the ability to consume anywhere close to as much rice
| bran as is possible by eating modern brown rice.
|
| https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=QWYryq16PBHzK8ed&t=436
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| I don't find n=1s to be a good form of evidence. Many
| people may disagree, but that doesn't mean they're right.
|
| Look at the dose response curve for wholegrain
| consumption in this bad boy (and yes, it's looking at
| whole cereal grains, not including fruits and
| vegetables). Greater consumption associated with better
| outcomes: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/p
| ii/S000291652...
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Let's get real here: the _benefits_ in the USDA Food
| Pyramid are _benefits_ for _agribusiness_ and the big
| subsidized food producers. The benefits that the USDA
| pushes have nothing to do with good nutrition for the
| average citizen. This is 100% "regulatory capture" as we
| call it around here. The Food Pyramid is a scam and a hoax,
| and the more it can be ignored, the better.
|
| When I joined a Christian Health Sharing ministry, they
| determined that I needed remedial help, due to hypertension
| and dyslipidemia. They assigned me to monthly virtual
| meetings with a dietician. The dietician's advice
| _horrified me_ , because it would've made me sicker, and
| exacerbated my conditions. I approached the ministry's
| administrators, requested a replacement dietician, and they
| replaced her alright. The new dietician had basically the
| same credentials and the same letters after her name, but
| she was way more flexible, listened to my reasoning, and
| supported my choices with encouragement.
|
| My parents followed every "diet fad" in the 1970s-1980s,
| from 2% milk, to margarine, to yolk-less-egg-whites, to
| reducing red meat, to low-sodium everythings, to bottled
| fluoridated water. It was sheer torture and disgusting. My
| mother didn't know the first thing about flavor or pleasure
| in cooking, and never used the spices in her rack. Our food
| was always bland. For breakfast she'd slap down a jug of
| milk, a box of Chex, a bowl and a spoon, and abandon me to
| go do housework. I would sit there and read the mendacious
| lies known as "Nutrition Panel" on the side, and simply
| stewed in my resentment for the whole thing. It's a
| travesty.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Tbh I know it's not what you're going for, but your
| parents' dietary decisions generally sound based AF
| (apart from bottled fluoridated water - depending on the
| fluoride levels in your drinking water that may or may
| not be beneficial).
|
| Chex, I suppose it depends on whether it was wholegrain
| or not. Wholegrain cereal is associated with pretty good
| health benefits, refined not so much.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Replacing butter with Margarine is "based AF" now?
| literalAardvark wrote:
| Given the knowledge available to them in the 70s, yes. A
| mistake, but done for good reasons (lowering satfat).
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Problem in the 70s was trans fats. Now they're no longer
| a risk, replacing butter with margarine is a solid
| evidence-based decision for one's health (though not so
| much for one's enjoyment!).
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Yes. Not so much at the time when some margarines had
| trans fats in, but now? Yes, absolutely. The evidence
| suggests that doing so significantly reduces one's risk
| of CVD.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I don't think there is much reason to continue taking you
| seriously if this is supposed to be the sound scientific
| advice.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Why would we believe otherwise? The evidence suggests
| that replacing butter with margarine reduces LDL-c (see
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9771853/), and we have an
| enormous body of evidence showing that LDL-c is a causal
| agent in atherosclerosis (https://academic.oup.com/eurhea
| rtj/article/38/32/2459/374510...).
|
| So why wouldn't replacing butter with margarine be a
| positive step for one's cardiovascular risk profile?
| wathef wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is one of the
| best takes here. It sits squarely in the realm of evidence
| where the majority of these comments are anecdotal and they
| don't translate to population level studies.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the
| base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this
| objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points
| in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.
|
| my humble research found that diffs in nutrition between
| whole grains and refined grains carbs is very small
| compared to say whole grain to some complex carbs from leaf
| veggies. The same goes to glycemic index, satiety index,
| etc.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The food pyramid makes economic sense.
|
| Grains are cheap and energy dense, if your goal is to feed
| a large population it makes a lot of sense to put them at
| the base of the pyramid, that's what will keep you alive,
| as in, not starving. Higher up are fruits and vegetables,
| also cheap, they will provide with nutrients that you need
| to stay healthy on top of the calories that will keep you
| alive. Higher up are animal products, expensive but rich in
| proteins and a few other nutrients that are a bit lacking
| in the base layers, they help you get stronger and more
| performant in addition to healthy and alive. On top are
| pleasure foods, not really necessary for your body, but
| enjoyable.
|
| I take it like a mirror of the "hierarchy of needs" pyramid
| rather than nutritional advice for people with effectively
| unlimited resources.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is the story as old as time. Much of science is good
| faith, fairly accurate, and nuanced.
|
| Policy and advocacy is deceptive, dishonest, and lacks
| nuance.
| bjoli wrote:
| Adherence to guidelines is laughably low in the developed
| world.
|
| The recommendations regarding fat hasn't changed in 30 years
| in most countries. FDA recommended limiting saturated fat
| already in 1980 (didn't bother looking further) and has
| recommended not exceeding an energy intake from fat over 30%
| since at least 1990. 30%e from fat is not a low fat diet.
|
| The guidelines from 1980 explicitly mentions reducing
| saturated fat and sugar.
|
| I think the problem is that we haven't been listening.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Exactly. And we can't blame nutrition science for that.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I'd only like to suggest that being "a joke in nutrition
| science circles" in the recent past is probably something of
| a compliment.
|
| This is the fallacy that makes pseudoscience thrive right
| now: The idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
|
| Wannabe influencers position themselves as the anti-
| establishment position. People who are frustrated with
| institutions blindly fall in line behind them.
|
| The fallacy doesn't stand up to even the simplest critical
| thinking, yet it triggers something subconsciously that leads
| far too many people to see a contrarian statement and assume
| it must be true.
|
| Meanwhile, these people are grifting away, selling books and
| pitching Athletic Greens (or the latest sponsor of the day).
| This person is no exception.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| It's a shame that our institutions have burned so much good
| will and credibility that they've created an environment
| for this to thrive.
|
| All metrics I see show faith in these institutions going to
| zero. Most good science I see is making (and has been
| making for decades) a really strong case that this loss of
| faith is deserved.
|
| Credentialism is collapsing under the weight of its own
| corruption.
| ithkuil wrote:
| The solution is better institutions, not less
| institutions.
|
| Good institutions have mechanisms in place to correct
| themselves.
|
| And most of the past failures of our institutions were
| discovered and corrected by ... the institutions
| (sometimes the very same institution or other
| institutions whose role was to counterweight the
| institution at fault)
|
| Unfortunately the trap we all fell into is that we
| interpret this success at catching and fixing failures as
| proof that the institutions have failed and thus that
| they will never be trustworthy ever again.
|
| We need to train ourselves that the trust we put in the
| institutions does not mean we trust everything that comes
| out of them, but we trust that the mistakes will be
| eventually corrected as they happen.
|
| But that's not what's happening now. The society has
| equated the point-in-time failure of an institution with
| the failure of the entire process and also extended that
| feeling across the board towards areas of our society
| that haven't failed us much.
|
| Nothing good will come out of that. For one, it will
| remove any incentive from future institutions to try to
| be objective and self-correct. If self-correction becomes
| a "capital sin" for institutions, they will be selected
| to favour absolute unquestionable truths which cannot
| possibly ever need a correction.
|
| But also. it completely ignores the fact that most
| institutions are useful, even while they suffer from
| failures/corruption and that destroying them altogether
| is going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I haven't seen much self correction out of major
| institutions, but what I am really looking for is
| honesty.
|
| I want them to share their uncertainty, nuance, and
| reasoning. Anything less I view as well intended lies.
|
| Institutions as a concept are critical. Some institutions
| are net negative. Blindly following and support all
| institutions because some or even most are useful is a
| fallacy of its own.
|
| I think the nutritional institution credibility is
| bankrupt at the moment. given the importance, I am
| willing to take the risk and put in the work to find my
| own way in the Forrest.
|
| Furthermore, most institutions can only provide heuristic
| advice, which even when true, is t always true, or true
| for everyone. It should never be treated as dogma
| lumb63 wrote:
| It's not necessarily that fallacy. I just don't nutrition
| science is a great place to appeal to authority. I see it
| as similar to arguing for the status quo when the church
| held that the earth was flat. What we are doing is not
| working, and we should at least consider listening to
| dissenting voices.
|
| It might turn out that they're arguing the earth is round,
| or maybe they're arguing that the earth is a doughnut
| shape. The validity of what anyone says has to stand on its
| own merit. But shutting it down because someone is "a joke"
| (amongst a science that is largely, itself, a joke), is not
| conducive toward improving our understanding.
| ambientenv wrote:
| Personally, I don't think the capitalist-driven agenda
| anywhere in the world gives a flying fricative about the
| health of anyone, only the health of the profit motive and
| it's benefits to shareholders. Food and healthcare is but one
| more example. Love or hate the JRE, I think this episode [1]
| provides much food (pun intended) for thought. The common
| person simply does not matter other than as a(n) (addicted)
| consumer.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/G0lTyhvOeJs?feature=shared
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Sure. The government isn't your mommy, and neither are
| corporations. People have to take responsibility and look
| out for their own health. Nobody else is going to do it for
| you.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > they have a unique feedback mechanism that suppresses
| endogenous cholesterol synthesis that most of us don't have.
|
| What unique feedback mechanism is this and how can i find out
| if i have this too ? circular reasoning "what makes them
| different is that they are shown to be different"
|
| > they manage to escape heart attacks because their vessels are
| larger than average. Wow. I don't know what to make of the
| Masai, except that they are indeed a unique people.
|
| Maybe they are not "unique people" and there are other non-
| genetic reasons their blood vessels are larger.
|
| I call BS on this so called review because author didn't bother
| to explain his points.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| > What unique feedback mechanism is this and how can i find
| out if i have this too
|
| Get a blood lipids panel and see what your ApoB is like!
|
| > Maybe they are not "unique people" and there are other non-
| genetic reasons their blood vessels are larger.
|
| I don't think this effect has been observed in post mortem of
| other populations, so that would make them fairly unique, no?
| apwell23 wrote:
| > Get a blood lipids panel and see what your ApoB is like!
|
| not sure how this tell me if i have 'unique feedback
| mechanism' . wtf does that phrase even mean.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| If you have a cholesterol synthesis feedback mechanism
| then as you increased your consumption of foods that are
| known to increase LDL-c (butter, lard, tallow) then your
| LDL-c would not rise or would only rise by a smaller
| amount than would be predicted by the Keys equation.
|
| So you could get your LDL-c checked, up your butter
| consumption and then get a retest and compare the results
| to the expected value.
| bjoli wrote:
| Yup. I had a nutritionist friend (that I would trust with my
| life) look through one of her books and she groaned already on
| the 4th page.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Get her "Deep Nutrition" by Catherine Shanahan for Halloween.
| I dare you.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Thanks for that. I read into the intro then scrolled up
| expecting to see a listing of authorities, only to see a single
| person publishing this work.
| pk-protect-ai wrote:
| "nutrition science circles" are the joke on their own.
| sparrc wrote:
| Nina Teicholz is a bit of a controversial figure in the nutrition
| world so I'd advise people to take this with a grain of salt...
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| This is a serious problem. How can we trust institutions that are
| suppose to provide evidence based advice to the general public?
| To me this is a crime so large that those involved should be held
| accountable for a percentage of all heart attacks. Furthermore it
| erodes trust in government, experts, and science. Right now it
| seems like the American public is actively feed extremely harmful
| food and lied to about the health consequences.
|
| Is it possible to create a Reddit style voting system where votes
| are weighed more depending on a level of trust/expertise to
| review scientific papers. The voting could be on multiple
| factors, such as on the different types of validity, the overall
| impact, how transparent they are with methods and data, how well
| it fits with other literature, etc. The end result could be a
| paper titled "A survey of saturated fat's impact on
| cardiovascular health" where experts very publicly discuss the
| papers merits and common people interested in their health can
| review and understand where the science is. Decentralized
| informational authority.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| It's nonsense. SFA consumption is a risk factor for
| cardiovascular disease. Nina is misreading the evidence to come
| to poor quality conclusions. The most rigorous analysis of RCTs
| on the subject shows this very clearly:
|
| https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
| greentxt wrote:
| "We found little or no effect of reducing saturated fat on
| all-cause mortality (RR 0.96; 95% CI 0.90 to 1.03; 11 trials,
| 55,858 participants) or cardiovascular mortality (RR 0.95;
| 95% CI 0.80 to 1.12, 10 trials, 53,421 participants), both
| with GRADE moderate-quality evidence.
|
| There was little or no effect of reducing saturated fats on
| non-fatal myocardial infarction (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.87 to
| 1.07) or CHD mortality (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.82 to 1.16, both
| low-quality evidence), but effects on total (fatal or non-
| fatal) myocardial infarction, stroke and CHD events (fatal or
| non-fatal) were all unclear as the evidence was of very low
| quality. There was little or no effect on cancer mortality,
| cancer diagnoses, diabetes diagnosis, HDL cholesterol, serum
| triglycerides or blood pressure, and small reductions in
| weight, serum total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and BMI."
|
| This is your citation for saturated fat is evil?
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| I don't believe saturated fat is evil. I believe that
| consuming more than 10%E from SFA increases risk of CVD,
| and replacing SFA with PUFA reduces risk of CVD.
|
| And yes, that is my citation in support of that claim.
| Quote: "There was a 17% reduction in cardiovascular events
| in people who had reduced SFA compared with those on higher
| SFA"
|
| and
|
| "When we subgrouped according to replacement for SFA, the
| PUFA replacement group suggested a 21% reduction in
| cardiovascular events"
|
| I explain why the null findings on insensitive endpoints
| aren't the gotcha some people think they are here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41960046
| riku_iki wrote:
| > There was a 17% reduction in cardiovascular events in
| people who had reduced SFA compared with those on higher
| SFA
|
| they have table with breakdown of events by type, and in
| both rows with significant reduction it says that quality
| of evidence is "very low".
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Don't know where you're seeing that. Combined
| cardiovascular events has an RR of 0.83 and the GRADE
| quality is moderate, not very low.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Yes, and I am talking about subtypes of events in the
| "summary of findings" table. Those subtypes with
| "moderate" quality has very insignificant diff in # of
| events. Those with significant diff in # of events have
| "very low" quality of evidence.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| How would that affect the inference being made here? That
| is, the claim being made is with regard to combined
| cardiovascular events. This effect is significant and the
| GRADE quality is moderate.
|
| One of the main purposes of meta-analyses is to summate
| multiple studies that may have insufficient statistical
| power in isolation to find a significant effect, but when
| summated they do.
|
| I _think_ you're trying to suggest that the insignificant
| individual event types aren't contributing to the
| significant findings on the combined event endpoint, so
| we should ignore the GRADE quality of those (correct me
| if I'm wrong). But that's not how meta analysis functions
| - those events are also contributing to the significant
| finding on that endpoint (which is also why the GRADE
| quality of the combined endpoint is moderate). They just
| aren't significant _in isolation_.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > How would that affect the inference being made here?
|
| to me, it looks like several rows clearly don't add up in
| key findings table(they derive "moderate quality"
| conclusions from "very low quality" observations), which
| makes whole publication as data astrology quality.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Right, but that's because you're misreading the table.
| They are deriving moderate quality conclusions from
| moderate quality data, as I've explained.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Looks like we are in disagreement about who is misreading
| the table.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > This is a serious problem. How can we trust institutions that
| are suppose to provide evidence based advice to the general
| public?
|
| The only serious problem here is that some people immediately
| trust a random article from someone who denies mainstream
| science simply because it's a contrarian take.
|
| I don't understand the people who will question everything that
| comes from professionals and institutions, but within minutes
| of reading an article that is contrarian they think "Yep this
| all checks out and I have no further questions". To see it
| happening in real time in this thread is wild.
| mistermann wrote:
| You did the same thing but in the opposite direction. That's
| how easy it is to make an unforced error.
| exe34 wrote:
| one is based on an entire industry of people working in so
| many conflicting fields that it would boggle the mind if
| they could all be bought, and the other is based on one
| person who built their fame on being contrarian without a
| lot of evidence.
|
| I think the question still makes sense, why people are
| willing to ignore a ton of evidence from a lot of different
| unaffiliated people and focus on one article by one person
| that really doesn't add up to much of an argument - I think
| the answer is just that this is what they want to hear, so
| it must be right.
| fwip wrote:
| The claim isn't that everyone in nutrition etc is bought
| off. You simply don't need to do that.
|
| If you're in the sugar industry, you give funding to
| people investigating how saturated fat causes heart
| disease. You support organizations that back up your
| preferred theory. These orgs run media campaigns, slap a
| "heart-healthy" label on food products, and sometimes
| fund research. Forming popular consensus on "fats = bad"
| leads to additional funding from government or other
| charitable causes.
|
| Increased funding leads to an increased density of
| scientists working on the problem, which in turn
| increases the legitimacy of the field, especially among
| people just getting into their careers. If it's common
| wisdom in the cardio field that saturated fats are the
| worst cause of heart disease, that's where they're going
| to focus their efforts.
|
| It's one of those things where you simply don't need to
| buy anyone off. You just put your thumb on the scale
| early enough, and consistently push popular opinion
| toward a direction that's beneficial for you.
| exe34 wrote:
| if somebody can find an even worse cause and they publish
| it, they stand to found an entirely new field - the
| incentives are to prove the entire existing field wrong.
| nobody would hesitate.
| pierrebai wrote:
| Well, we read the article, which cites many studies. Maybe
| she is doing a super selective review of the field, but she
| does not merely quote one study, but several, all of which
| indicate that there is no correlation between saturated fat
| and cardiovascular problems.
|
| IOW, we did not merely "read and trusted one random article"
| but assessed the presented evidence. You OTOH, merely
| provided ad-hominem attack on both the author and anyone who
| dared believe the presented evidence, which smacks of trying
| to shame people in not voicing their opinion.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Did you actually follow up and read the studies she cited
| in detail, though? Much of what she claims is
| misrepresentation, such as the insinuation that the
| Cochrane review found no evidence of SFA consumption being
| associated with risk.
| keybored wrote:
| > Furthermore it erodes trust in government, experts, and
| science.
|
| Does trust in X erode when X is wrong? Yes.
| Kurtz79 wrote:
| That is true but also probably misguided.
|
| Scientific knowledge evolves as new discoveries are made,
| immutable and unequivocal "truth" is the realm of religion,
| not science (which makes the former much more appealing to
| many than the latter).
|
| Trust really should not erode if X acted in good faith based
| on the consensus knowledge at the time.
| keybored wrote:
| If. What was proclaimed as nutritional facts decades ago
| turned out to be tainted by industry/lobbying interests.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If the consensus is evolving, sure. If the consensus is
| going back and forth for decades, and each time it is
| presented with the authority of medical or physical
| science, then it is normal and correct to stop listening at
| some point.
|
| When scientists have weak theories that they're not sure
| of, they're not supposed to share those breathlessly with
| the public, and certainly not try to shape public laws
| based on the theories they know are weak.
|
| And nutrition science has been guilty of this for over a
| century. You can find people in the field making confident
| recommendations and setting dietary standards from the time
| when they didn't know vitamins were a thing. If you
| followed the science on nutrition and adjusted your diet
| accordingly around 150-100 years ago, you could literally
| get scurvy or other vitamin deficiencies. The field has
| evolved a little bit, but it's still extremely weak as
| scientific fields go.
| tonymet wrote:
| I agree that this reflects poorly on trust. But voting to give
| more authority to the federal government would make it even
| worse. Look at how poorly voting works.
|
| Just get rid of the agency altogether.
| elawler24 wrote:
| High cholesterol and heart attacks are common in my family. This
| year, after my dad had intensive open heart surgery, my doctor
| recommended trying a strict plant-based diet for 90 days with a
| blood test before and after. She had been studying medical
| journals on the topic primarily from Canada (she said it's easier
| to find medical research not funded by corporations there).
|
| Before the doing the plant-based diet, I had such high
| cholesterol that I would have needed to start taking statins
| before age 35. After the 90 day diet experiment, my cholesterol
| dropped by 130 mg/dL. I no longer need to be put on medication,
| and am within a healthy range.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| A family member went on the ornish-like diet + atorvastatin for
| 7 years* after open heart surgery for block in the left main.
|
| Hen tested (via ultra fast CT scan) the blood flow after the
| experiment -- there was no change.
|
| It may sound depressing, but it's actually very good for what
| is normally a progressive disease.
|
| The experimenter is currently now doing another 7 year
| experiment, eating a somewhat healthier than normal diet +
| statins.
|
| After getting off the ornish diet, there was hardly any change
| in total cholesterol.
|
| *The diet was ornish-like because it was hard to get anything
| to eat when going out. The experimentar ate salmon if there was
| nothing better.
| hyuuu wrote:
| i didnt realize that the diet im doing right now has a name,
| ornish! Just to clarify, so this diet actually works in
| preventing further damage?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The relative was also taking statins, so it is hard to say.
|
| following the normal course of events leads to subsequent
| surgical interventions based on the people I've seen...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Hen tested (via ultra fast CT scan) the blood flow after
| the experiment -- there was no change. > It may sound
| depressing
|
| I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose
| of enforcing low cholesterol.
|
| The goal would be to prevent further damage and restriction.
| By all accounts that test is a positive result.
|
| Atherosclerosis is correlated with lifetime exposure to high
| cholesterol. Once you reach the point of having open heart
| surgery for severe problems, the goal is to slow further
| progression as much as possible.
|
| Hoping to reverse a lifetime of accumulated exposure to high
| cholesterol with 7 years of slightly below average
| cholesterol just isn't going to happen. Stopping further
| progression is great though!
| emptiestplace wrote:
| Did you stop reading at the end of the part you quoted?
| Their very next words literally say this.
| christophilus wrote:
| I had a similar experience, except with blood pressure. After
| switching to a plant based diet, it's the lowest it's been in
| my adult life.
| drewg123 wrote:
| For me it was both.. I had pretty bad BP and high enough
| cholesterol to that my doctor wanted me on a statin. Now my
| BP is normal, and my cholesterol is in the "low risk" range.
| My doctor said she'd never seen such an improvement before.
|
| In my case it was not the suggestion of a doctor, but rather
| dating and now marrying a vegan. I converted to a plant based
| diet starting with eating plant based just with her, and then
| I became fully vegan for health reasons.
| apwell23 wrote:
| were the results from cutting out carbs in plant based diet.
| could you have achieved same thing with animal based low carb
| diet?
| christophilus wrote:
| In my case, I didn't cut carbs. Quite the opposite. The
| diet could be described as high carb.
| apwell23 wrote:
| thats really interesting. did your a1c numbers go down
| too?
| 542458 wrote:
| For what it's worth, the linked article does not dispute that
| diet can affect blood cholesterol, but does argue that it
| doesn't necessarily equal long term health.
|
| > In other words, although diet could successfully lower blood
| cholesterol, this reduction did not appear to translate into
| long-term cardiovascular gains.
|
| That said, as other commenters here have highlighted the author
| of the study has a spotty track record so, uh, big grain of
| salt.
| tomp wrote:
| what did you eliminate, i.e. what were you eating before? eggs,
| milk, cheese/yogurt (fermented diary), meat, processed meat?
| el_benhameen wrote:
| Not OP, but I recently discovered that I have moderately high
| lipoprotein-a levels and decided to try to reduce my LDL as a
| result. I cut most eggs, all butter, all full-fat milk,
| almost all cheese, and switched from whole to skim yogurt. My
| LDL dropped about 20% between the beginning of August and the
| middle of October.
| elawler24 wrote:
| Before, I ate low sugar / carb and high on cheese, meat,
| whole milk, yogurt, and veggies (close to keto). Now I eat a
| lot of rice, beans, while grains, and veggies. I'm trying to
| figure out how to get enough protein though, that's the trade
| off.
| geoka9 wrote:
| Maybe try whey isolate?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| We have the lowest average cholesterol ever and cardiovascular
| diseases are on the rise, so does it really make a difference?
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Life expectancy has increased, so maybe it does make a
| difference?
|
| Truth is, it's complicated and neither your observation, nor
| mine, is enough to conclude anything.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I got a high LDL reading of about 200 (this is like top 3%
| percentile, if I remember correctly). I panicked and switched
| to an extremely low fat vegan diet, and I couldn't handle
| waiting so I paid to have my LDL tested again. My LDL had
| dropped to 130 after one week on that diet.
|
| For me, at least, saturated fat is the most important nutrient
| I can monitor and avoid. Low saturated fat, high fiber is the
| diet for me.
|
| I wasn't able to keep the vegan diet, but it was worth trying
| for a time because I learned some new recipes and new habits.
| EasyMark wrote:
| This past year I switched to a whole foods diet. I eat eggs,
| whole milk & cheese, veggies, fruit, white meat, saturated &
| unsaturated natural oils (nothing manufactured like margarine
| or anything hydrogenated), root veggies (potatoes, sweet
| potatoes, turnips), beans/lentils (I'm not afraid of soy
| based things) grain based breads including whole wheat, whole
| wheat pasta. I tend to avoid red meat (pork and beef). I quit
| fast food and anything I suspected of a manufactured element.
| I was bordering on high cholesterol and pre diabetes. Since
| then I've dropped 35 lbs and everything is back in the normal
| range. I don't think you have to go vegan, just get away from
| all the over salted, over manufactured, sugar "enhanced"
| garbage. We're omnivores, I think we have the machinery to
| process normal foods. I admit this worked for me and may not
| work for everyone. The only "vice" I allow myself is a couple
| of diet cokes a day, but most days it's just coffee. I only
| will have a drink or two socially on the weekend and tend to
| stick to wine or clear spirits and lime/lemon.
| apwell23 wrote:
| curious. Was there a change in your a1c after your experiment?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Although the author of the article appears to be controversial, I
| am concerned that none of the responses citing her controversial
| nature are actually rebutting anything in the paper.
|
| I believe most of what was written here appears to be factual.
| What am I missing?
|
| (Someone attacking the currently held beliefs taught by science
| is by nature controversial. More important question is whether
| they are pointing out flaws in those beliefs. )
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| I'm happy to discuss the paper. All her takes on the Seven
| Countries Studies are just poor. France wasn't excluded by
| design, for example. All this is covered by a white paper here:
| https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
|
| As for the claims about RCTs, she straight-up lies, quote:
| "including by the prestigious Cochrane group, most recently in
| 2020. Altogether, >20 review papers, including umbrella
| reviews, have been published, with the vast majority concluding
| that the data from randomized, controlled trials do not provide
| consistent or adequate evidence for continued recommendations
| limiting the intake of saturated fat"
|
| So what did the 2020 Cochrane paper _actually_ say? Let's look:
| " There was a 17% reduction in cardiovascular events in people
| who had reduced SFA compared with those on higher SFA" "When we
| subgrouped according to replacement for SFA, the PUFA
| replacement group suggested a 21% reduction in cardiovascular
| events"
|
| So she invokes the respectability of Cochrane yet claims their
| findings are incorrect, and tries to pass it off as a Cochrane
| reviewing showing that saturated fat is unrelated to heart
| disease? This alone should tell you everything you need to know
| about Teicholz. She relies on her audience not knowing the
| papers she references, because she misrepresents them to fit
| her agenda. She's completely dishonest.
|
| Ref to Cochrane:
| https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| You picked out the one result in five or six from the summary
| of result that supports the reducing saturated fats and
| ignored the rest that said it disnt matter (and of those
| result all cause and cardiovascular mortality were in there
| in the saturated fat doesnt affect category). There are
| straight up lies here but they are in your response.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| A null finding in a study does not mean it "doesn't
| matter". Let's take an extreme example: we want to know if
| exercise reduces mortality, so we randomise one arm of a
| cohort of 20 people to an exercise regime, while the other
| arm does nothing. After four weeks, we compare the death
| rate in each group. There's no significant difference.
|
| Does this mean exercise "doesn't matter" for mortality, or
| it's in the "doesn't affect category"? No, of course not -
| the finding was null because the timescale was too short
| and even then, the statistical power from a cohort of 20 is
| going to be very low.
|
| Likewise, if you look at the study characteristics, most of
| the studies were too short to find a significant outcome on
| an insensitive endpoint like CVD mortality or ACM. FWIW,
| Dayton 1967 had a followup of 8 years and _did_ find
| significant increases in mortality endpoints in the SFA
| group, but those results are pulled towards null in the
| meta summation by the other, shorter studies.
|
| CVD events are more sensitive because they don't require
| the participants to die of a heart attack in order to
| register as a data point.
|
| So no, there's no lying or cherry picking going on here. In
| order for that to be the case, you'd have to argue that
| angina and non-fatal heart attacks are not negative health
| outcomes. If they are, then it's demonstrably the case that
| SFA consumption is associated with negative health
| outcomes, and Nina is telling porkies.
|
| As for your accusation that I'm lying - what false claim
| did I make? Be specific.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Ok, lets nitpick further:
|
| for cvd risk mortality if you exclude the largest single
| study that also had a long duration (WHI 2006) it made
| CVD risk mortality significant, so one of those long
| duration studies is dragging the results the opposite
| way.
|
| We need to remember we are talking about relative risk so
| what does a 17% increase correspond to? 15 more incidents
| per 1000 participants with a ci of 24 to 2 incidents per
| 1000 participants among studies that were mostly moderate
| to high risk individuals. It's a rounding error on a low
| risk event that is probably an even lower risk event for
| most of the population. If you look at something that
| actually exists and is relevant you will see 100% plus
| changes to relative risk. All cause mortality relative
| risk is 2.29 in this study on the effect of smoking on
| women, for example:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6219821/
|
| Figure six explores saturated fat cut offs and all but 2
| of the events trend down for the last observation which
| is only at 13% energy from saturated fat, probably need
| to look at higher saturated fat levels to make sure the
| chart isn't an upside down U and we aren't stuck in the
| most deadly part of the curve arguing about whether we
| should cut more when we could increase consumption more
| to solve the issue.
|
| I'm sure there's more but I am out of time.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| > for cvd risk mortality if you exclude the largest
| single study that also had a long duration (WHI 2006) it
| made CVD risk mortality significant, so one of those long
| duration studies is dragging the results the opposite
| way.
|
| Right, and the proposed pathway by which SFA increases
| CVD risk is via increases in ApoB/LDL-c. What LDL-c
| differences did they achieve in WHI 2006?
|
| Additionally, the substitution is important. DGs
| recommend replacing SFA with PUFA, whereas in WHI the
| intervention group largely replaced SFA with CHO.
| Interestingly, the control group had higher levels of
| PUFA and MUFA, which may also explain the paltry change
| in serum cholesterol.
|
| If you want to claim that 15 more incidents per 1000 of a
| disease that is one of the top killers in the western
| world is a rounding error, then go for it. I don't think
| that's a reasonable position, personally.
|
| As for the speculation about higher levels being healthy
| - speculate away, but I don't see why anyone should
| believe it's the case when a) it runs contrary to the
| body of evidence on the subject b) there's no actual
| evidence backing up that speculation.
| pierrebai wrote:
| But your example is not reflective of the study. Are you
| saying that the 17% reduction is for some reason
| significant but the other ones, all of which would
| inconveniently disagree with the result you want, are
| not, even though they are in the same study?
|
| IOW, you're saying that among the study results, all that
| agree with your POV are valid, all that don't are
| invalid. That's quite some bias there.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| The answer to your question is literally answered by my
| comment that you're replying to. Frequentist statistics
| cannot be used to affirm the null. That is, you cannot
| say "cardiovascular deaths was not significantly
| associated, therefore SFA does not cause CVD mortality".
|
| So I'm not disagreeing with or omitting anything in the
| study. The study said no significant association with CVD
| mortality. Ok, no problem. That doesn't mean SFA doesn't
| cause CVD mortality.
|
| However, the study _does_ show that SFA is associated
| with CVD events. So there's a significant finding. It's
| not cherry picking, this is just how frequentist
| statistics works.
| derbOac wrote:
| FWIW I think contrarian scientific viewpoints are important if
| they're rigorous, and Teicholz makes a reasonable case for the
| viewpoint that saturated fat reductions are unrelated to
| mortality.
|
| However, I don't think Teicholz herself is really being
| entirely "factual", bringing purported conflicts of interest
| into her discourse when it goes on on both sides. People have
| pointed out that her organization has its own history with this
| problem: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-
| blog/healthcare/257353-co....
|
| That isn't addressing your question but I guess I disagree that
| Teicholz is just dispassionately presenting a rigorous
| argument, even if I find it compelling myself. Some of what she
| writes is sort of misleading (as that linked piece points out)
| even if I think her most cogent arguments are reasonable.
|
| A lot of her arguments hinge on how you see things like the
| Cochrane meta-analysis. Her sensitivity analysis with
| colleagues is compelling in dismissing the CVE result in that
| meta-analysis, but at the same time you can whittle away any
| effect if there's not a big enough N (in a sort of inverse form
| of p-hacking), so I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced either.
|
| Also as that piece points out, Teicholz seems dismissive of
| anything that's not mortality as an outcome, which I'm not sure
| I agree with.
|
| I'm sympathetic to Teicholz's arguments, I guess I just feel
| like she doesn't make them any more convincingly to me than
| those she criticizes.
|
| At this point for me personally my reading of the literature is
| that a lot of things are related to individual physiology, and
| I'm skeptical of a lot of blanket recommendations regarding
| nutrition. Reducing saturated fats has been good for me
| personally so I stick with that.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| I think dietary matrix is also important, so dietary patterns
| can be more useful than focusing on individual nutrients.
| Hard cheeses seem to be associated with positive health
| outcomes despite their SFA content, yet for butter the
| inverse is true.
|
| I think what I find frustrating about Nina is the number of
| fairly basic misreadings of the evidence she makes, despite
| having been corrected on it (and admitting the error)
| multiple times. She also grossly mischaracterises the results
| of studies repeatedly, so misleads laypeople into thinking
| the evidence base is more heterogenous than it really is.
|
| Additionally, she frequently makes contradictory statements
| regarding her own epistemology. For example, she states that
| observational studies can "only show association" and
| therefore cannot be used for causal inference, yet her
| twitter account is full of examples of her using
| observational data to draw causal inferences.
|
| You mention a sensitivity analysis of Hooper that she
| conducted. Do you have a link to that?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| The book Outlive has a great discussion about CVD and diet. There
| is a link, and food types matter, but reducing foods to their
| saturated fat content is of course ridiculous as we now know.
| hyuuu wrote:
| how is it ridiculous? so far, reducing saturated fat intake has
| a direct correlation with lowering LDL that is a marker for
| cardio risk no?
| aeries wrote:
| More than simply a marker, it's a causal risk factor for
| ASCVD.
| profsummergig wrote:
| Anyone else have alternative takes on cholesterol based on
| personal experience?
|
| Some alternative theories I've come across:
|
| - There's a theory that cholesterol is good for you. It's
| necessary for brain functioning. Low levels of "bad" cholesterol
| have been linked to depression.
|
| - There's a theory that the high levels of cholesterol in blood
| clots found around ripped arteries may be due to the body trying
| to heal a rupture with cholesterol.
|
| - There's a theory that seed oils and table sugar, which have
| only been mass consumed for the last 100 years or so, are what
| cause heart disease.
|
| Personally, I have a very high level of both good and bad
| cholesterol. They shot up after I started eating a lot of non-veg
| food. And after they shot up, I stopped having depressive
| episodes.
| elawler24 wrote:
| I do have a fear that staying vegan will have other negative
| effects, unrelated to cholesterol - esp brain and bone density
| related. For me that means cutting out cheese, milk, and butter
| as much as possible. But having fish and lean meats 1-2 times
| per week.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I tried going vegan for ~10 years after reading the
| scientific research, then started getting stomach ulcers and
| constant diarrhea.
|
| Tried with paleo (meat and veggies) as I thought the carbs
| were the culprit and I decreased the frequence of the
| accidents.
|
| Finally I went carnivore and within a week I had zero
| symptoms. I was strict carnivore for 8 weeks (lost 8kgs) then
| I tried reintroducing other food but without great success.
|
| These days I eat mainly butter, eggs and steak and I've been
| good for 2.5 years now (I was eating organs too at first but
| I don't really feel any difference if I don't eat them).
| Eating the occasional sweet from a bakery makes me feel a bit
| bloated. Eating some fruit For 1.5 years eating vegetables
| would cause the diarrhea to reappear, after 1.5 years I can
| eat vegetables occasionally without problems. It's like a
| "limit" got reset or something.
| nradov wrote:
| If you're concerned about bone density then why are you
| cutting out dairy products? Those are one of the best sources
| for the calcium we need (although it is possible to get
| enough from other foods or supplements).
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/belindabeck/
| poincaredisk wrote:
| Personally (not the parent) I'm vegan for moral reasons, so
| I'm being vegan despite (not for) it's health effects. As
| every extreme diet, it requires monitoring nutrition intake
| and occasional supplementation in order to avoid micro- and
| macroelement deficiencies and health problems.
| nradov wrote:
| Cholesterol by itself isn't harmful. For most people with
| typical genetics, cholesterol only becomes a problem when
| arterial plaques form as a reaction to vascular damage.
| Limiting cholesterol is one fairly effective approach to
| preventing those plaques, but a better approach is to avoid the
| damage in the first place. In other words, it doesn't matter if
| a little extra cholesterol is floating around in your
| bloodstream as long as it doesn't stick to the walls.
| profsummergig wrote:
| What are some no-brainer strategies to avoid the damage
| please? Thanks.
| nradov wrote:
| Don't smoke, keep your blood pressure under control, and
| don't become insulin resistant.
| amy-petrik-214 wrote:
| This is all true. And of course let us remember
| cholesterol is essential. Many hormones are made from it
| (cortisol, vitaminD, testosterone, estrogen). Being
| essential (not intending the meaning of "essential
| vitamin" which means the body cannot synthsize - as a
| vitamin it would be non-essential) - but being essential
| for physiology rather than diet, the body can synthesize
| cholesterol. So there is this axis of people who have low
| cholesterol super healthy diets.. and their body just
| makes lots of cholesterol anyway, so now they have high
| cholesterol and are taking statin drugs for it, because
| biology and population variation.
|
| The other thing cholesterol is used to make, also quite
| nice to have, is bile. Used for fat digestion and such. A
| lot of bile. From a lot of cholesterol. Seems like a
| waste though, to excrete all that finely synthesized
| bodily chemical. BUt aha, the body realizes this and so
| resorbs it. THus there is a cycle and recycle of
| cholesterol and bile. Aha! What if we can trick the body
| to not resorb it and just release it. Such a drug has
| been developed. Well, hard to call it a drug. There is no
| fanciness, no elegant molecular binding to an esoteric
| receptor, no, nothing of the sort. It's called metamucil,
| and as the name tells us, it mostly works by being a big
| chonky mucinous blob of very impressively thick goop. The
| "magic" of how it works is literally the bile gets
| trapped in the thick goop and excreted. And thus we've
| bled off some bile from the cholesterol recycling loop,
| and thus, cholesterol. And that's why this weird blobby
| old person fiber supplement is cholesterol magic.
| jkolio wrote:
| Kind of sucks for your guts, though, don't it? Bile is
| corrosive, that's why reflux is an issue and digestive
| tablets that contain ox bile shouldn't be taken on an
| empty stomach. Not fun when it reaches your bowels,
| either.
| profsummergig wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Certain famous men in the past smoked pipe all day and
| lived very long lives. E.g. Winston Churchill and
| Bertrand Russell. Do you have any theories on why smoking
| didn't harm them as much. Do you think back then there
| might not have been some interaction factor that's
| prevalent today, etc.?
| kelipso wrote:
| Generally speaking, decreasing inflammation in your body.
| Can google how to reduce inflammation.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| What's the evidence for the claim "cholesterol by itself
| isn't harmful?"
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| How do you feel about starting with the opening paragraph
| on Wikipedia?
|
| _Cholesterol is the principal sterol of all higher
| animals, distributed in body tissues, especially the brain
| and spinal cord, and in animal fats and oils._ --
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| How does that paragraph interact with the claim that high
| serum cholesterol is not harmful?
| jerf wrote:
| If you're going to nail people on specific questions, you
| need to _stick_ to those specific questions, not read a
| reaction to your very specific "cholesterol by itself
| isn't harmful?" as anything other than an answer to your
| question.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Do you think the original person making the claim was
| referring to high serum cholesterol, or shadow boxing
| against an imaginary interlocutor who claims even a
| single individual cholesterol molecule is harmful?
|
| I thought it was obvious, hence the original broad quote,
| but the bizarre Wikipedia response made me think that
| perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Hence the clarification
| with my follow up.
| meiraleal wrote:
| you asked: What's the evidence for the
| claim "cholesterol by itself isn't harmful?"
|
| And got a response that is more than just an evidence. A
| smart person would not just change the goalpost but one
| with nefarious intentions, maybe.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Do you think the original person making the claim was
| referring to high serum cholesterol, or shadow boxing
| against an imaginary interlocutor who claims even a
| single individual cholesterol molecule is harmful?
|
| I thought it was obvious, hence the original broad quote,
| but the bizarre Wikipedia response made me think that
| perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Hence the clarification
| with my follow up.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Is the world often bizarre to you?
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Not interested in the meta-talk, let's stick to the
| subject.
|
| So for clarification on your view - do you think that
| high levels of LDL-C (proxying for ApoB) increase risk of
| CVD?
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Not interested in the conversation partner with the track
| record displayed here.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| More meta talk, zero reference to the issue actually
| under discussion. Disappointing.
| meiraleal wrote:
| > Do you think the original person making the claim was
| referring to high serum cholesterol
|
| What I think is that your behavior is quite strange, to
| create a fake profile just to post a link "debunking" the
| author. Do you have something personal against her?
|
| And then when you got corrected, in place of recognizing
| you said something wrong, you double-down your irrational
| behavior: "shadow boxing against an imaginary
| interlocutor". Yeah because the original interlocutor
| makes stupid questions.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| I have issues with people pushing anti-science that can
| lead to harms. I have issues with Teicholz for this
| reason in the same way I have issues with Andrew
| Wakefield.
|
| By "imaginary interlocutor" I was referring to a
| misreading of the parent reply, not mine. This was the
| person who said: "Anyone else have alternative takes on
| cholesterol based on personal experience?"
|
| The question is then whether when that person said
| "alternative takes on cholesterol" they meant
| "alternative takes on the function of an individual
| molecule of cholesterol" and not "alternative takes on
| the significance of high serum cholesterol". Considering
| their next two bullet points refer to high and low levels
| of serum cholesterol, I thought it was fairly obvious.
|
| Apparently it wasn't for some people, and those same
| people are then claiming that making this clear is some
| sort of dodge/goalpost shift/deceptive behaviour. But it
| clearly isn't. If you read the above, where someone was
| _obviously_ referring to high serum cholesterol, and in
| response someone says "cholesterol by itself isn't
| harmful", is it reasonable to quote that claim and ask
| for evidence, by which you mean "I want evidence that
| high serum cholesterol isn't harmful"? If it _is_
| reasonable, which I believe it is, then no deception,
| goalpost shifting or correcting has actually taken place
| here.
| nradov wrote:
| That's a broad question. Let's turn that around. What harm
| do you think serum cholesterol could be causing? Like which
| specific mechanism of action are you concerned about here?
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Sure, that's fair. I believe that ApoB-tagged
| lipoproteins are a causal agent in atherosclerosis via
| the mechanism laid out in the 2019 EAS consensus (that
| is, the response to retention hypothesis).
|
| The full pathway and supporting evidence can be found
| here: https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/41/24/23
| 13/573522...
| nradov wrote:
| Sure, no argument with that but let's go another step
| back in the casual chain. What's causing the arterial
| wall injury (or loss of ability to repair damage) in the
| first place to even allow that mechanism to come into
| play?
|
| If a patient is already accumulating arterial wall damage
| then it might be necessary to limit serum cholesterol
| through dietary changes or statins or something. But I
| would claim that those interventions usually come too
| late, and that most of the damage can be prevented
| through other interventions thus making serum cholesterol
| levels less relevant.
|
| It's like if you have a truck driving around full of
| toxic waste. Maybe that's cause for concern, but if you
| can take other measures to ensure it won't crash and
| spill the cargo then maybe it's fine.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| What's the evidence that this only takes place in
| individuals with arterial wall injury or without the
| ability to repair damage?
|
| These factors may increase the effect of high LDL-c on
| CVD, but I'm not sure on what basis we should assume that
| those without them aren't at risk from high LDL-c.
| profsummergig wrote:
| I just remembered something:
|
| Pregnant women have extremely high cholesterol (ridiculously
| high).
|
| - There's a theory that if evolution designed pregnant women to
| have high cholesterol, then cholesterol cannot be the poison
| it's made out to be.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Pregnant women have extremely high cholesterol
| (ridiculously high).
|
| Cholesterol levels rise during second and third trimesters,
| but it's not true at all to say that all pregnant women have
| "ridiculously high" cholesterol. Around 24% of women who have
| normal range cholesterol will go over the normal range for a
| few months, but it's not accurate at all to say they all have
| "ridiculously high" cholesterol
|
| Here is a good overview:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4989641/
|
| Cholesterol metabolism is related to hormones that change
| during pregnancy, so downstream fluctuations in cholesterol
| aren't surprising. Do not mistake this for intentional
| evolutionary pressure to increase cholesterol.
|
| > if evolution designed pregnant women to have high
| cholesterol, then cholesterol cannot be the poison it's made
| out to be.
|
| This is an incredibly pseudoscientific way of thinking.
| Pregnancy puts many pressures on the body, not all of which
| are good.
|
| Did you know that blood coagulability also rises during
| pregnancy, which is clearly linked to cardiac events. There
| is an increased risk of cardiac events during pregnancy.
|
| Saying "X happens during pregnancy therefore X must be good"
| is an extremely unscientific and uninformed take. I'm not
| surprised it's being leveraged by the cholesterol truthers,
| but it's wrong. This is the level of reasoning that seems to
| appeal to people on TikTok and Twitter who consume feel-good
| science in 15 second clips, but it makes anyone who has read
| any actual research on the subject depressed at how
| susceptible people have become to bad science that is
| dangerous to their health.
| exe34 wrote:
| do you know how many women died during pregnancy before
| modern times?
| EasyMark wrote:
| pregnancy tends to be a limited time thing to me and the body
| quickly goes back to "normal levels" after it's over. Few
| women are constantly pregnant.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I do not know how much truth exists in the theory that an
| excess of saturated fats is harmful, but I have acted based on
| this theory and it was very beneficial for me.
|
| A few years ago, I have been diagnosed with incipient
| atherosclerosis. This was an unpleasant surprise for me, so I
| have immediately made serious changes in the food that I eat.
|
| At that time, I was eating very high quantities of dairy, which
| has a high proportion of saturated fat.
|
| Because I could not see any other factor that could cause the
| atherosclerosis, I have eliminated dairy from my food and I
| have changed completely the composition of the fats contained
| in my food.
|
| I eat only food that I cook myself, so I know exactly which is
| the composition of the fat contained in it. Nowadays, at least
| 90% of my daily intake of fat comes from a combination of oils
| that I use when cooking food (typically 60 mL of extra virgin
| olive oil + 20 mL of cold-pressed sunflower oil + 10 mL of cod
| liver oil + 1 drop of an oil containing D3 and K2 vitamins).
|
| Instead of any other kinds of dairy, now I use only a cheese
| substitute that looks and tastes like melted cheese, but it is
| made from whey protein concentrate (which has almost no fat)
| mixed with some vegetable oil and a few other ingredients for
| better flavor.
|
| After changing completely the fatty acid profile of my fat
| consumption, after a year the symptoms of atherosclerosis have
| disappeared and there have been also other very noticeable
| signs of improved cardiovascular health. For instance,
| previously, I had cold feet and when sleeping I had to take
| care to keep them warm. Some months after changing the diet,
| they had become warm (presumably due to improved blood flow)
| and I have no longer needed any protection against lower
| temperatures.
|
| So my diet change has very certainly improved a lot my health
| in a relatively short time of no more than a year, and that has
| persisted for the last three years. I cannot know if this is
| really caused by the change in the fatty acid profile, but I
| cannot see any other significant difference, except if the
| abundant dairy that I was eating before contained some other
| harmful substance or if the significant increase in the amount
| of eaten EV olive oil and cold-pressed sunflower oil has
| provided some benefits beyond the better fatty acid profile.
|
| Logically, it is plausible that a reasonable amount of
| saturated fat, which is correlated with the amount of physical
| work, should not have any harmful effect.
|
| As long as you burn enough calories daily to use all the fat
| intake for energy, it should not matter if that fat is
| saturated fat. However, when the fat is not completely used and
| some of it is deposited, then it is plausible that it is
| preferable if oleic acid (mono-unsaturated fatty acid) is the
| most abundant in food, because in normal conditions this is the
| most abundant fatty acid in the human reserve fat. When other
| fatty acids are much more abundant than oleic acid, they must
| be processed and converted before storage and the capacity for
| the conversion may be overwhelmed.
|
| The negative connotations for "seed oils" are not applicable to
| all seed oils, but they refer only to the seed oils where
| linoleic acid is the most abundant acid.
|
| Linoleic acid is an essential nutrient, but the need for it can
| be satisfied with 15 to 20 mL per day of a suitable seed oil,
| like sunflower oil. A greater daily intake than that can cause
| problems, because the excess linoleic acid must be converted
| into other fatty acids and also because some of its derivatives
| have physiological roles for which an excess quantity is not
| desirable.
|
| Given these, it seems plausible that some fat composition is
| preferable to others. Like I said, I have acted on this
| assumption and it has worked very well for me, even if the real
| mechanism cannot be known, at least not yet.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Glad to hear you've improved your condition. The evidence
| suggests that crossing the 10% total energy as SFA threshold
| increases CVD incidence. There is no evidence (that I've
| seen) than "using up" this energy changes this risk factor.
|
| Obviously the resulting obesity from consuming excess
| calories is a risk factor for CVD in itself, but the body of
| evidence would suggest that someone consuming >10% E from
| SFA, even if they're in caloric equilibrium, will be at
| greater CVD risk than someone consuming less, all else held
| equal.
|
| The main mechanism by which SFA is thought to increase CVD
| risk is by downregulation of LDL receptors, which occurs
| during the digestion/absorption of SFA, and is not a result
| of excess SFA hanging around in the body in some way. If you
| consume SFA, this pathway will be in play, regardless of how
| much is burned vs stored.
|
| There's no good evidence that seed oils/linoleic acid,
| refined or not, pose a risk for humans. There's a lot of talk
| on the subject about on social media, but it's almost
| entirely speculation based on animal studies.
|
| I once bought the anti seed oil line, but on closer
| investigation of the evidence I changed my view and have
| replaced most of my SFA intake with MUFA/PUFA, mostly in the
| form of canola and olive oil.
| fmajid wrote:
| There's almost no correlation between cholesterol ingested as
| food and your own blood serum cholesterol. It's almost as if we
| have a digestive system to break down nutrients into their
| constituents rather than release them unmodified into the
| bloodstream.
| reissbaker wrote:
| Yup, ingesting cholesterol doesn't lead to higher blood serum
| cholesterol. Although in this case the article was about
| ingesting saturated fat leading to higher blood serum
| cholesterol (in my personal experience this is true, and
| switching to a low saturated fat diet dropped my LDL
| cholesterol and triglycerides).
|
| In general it matters what you replace the saturated fat
| with, though: you should replace it with unsaturated fat.
| Replacing it with carbs/simple sugars can apparently elevate
| LDL cholesterol and triglycerides:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2943062/
|
| Olive oil is good, candy is bad. (News at 11.)
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Technically speaking it does, but only if you're starting
| from a point of very low dietary cholesterol intake or
| you're genetically predisposed to have high sterol
| absorption.
|
| So if you're, say, a vegan with very little cholesterol
| intake then adding some would result in significantly
| higher serum cholesterol. However, for most people in
| western populations, they're already above the point where
| the effect tails off, which is why dietary guidelines
| generally don't focus on dietary cholesterol anymore.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Some alternative theories I've come across: > - There's a
| theory that cholesterol is good for you. It's necessary for
| brain functioning. Low levels of "bad" cholesterol have been
| linked to depression.
|
| These aren't alternative theories, they're just reductive takes
| that try to ignore the big picture.
|
| Reductive takes are really seductive for people who want to
| reduce everything into "good" or "bad" categories, but the body
| doesn't work like that.
|
| The part that confuses people is that the message has been
| simplified to "cholesterol bad" for so long that people are
| confused to discover that cholesterol is actually used by the
| body. Upon discovering these facts, reductive logic switches
| from "cholesterol bad" to "cholesterol good", which is just as
| reductive.
|
| The truth is that cholesterol is useful within the body, but
| that doesn't mean that more of it is better. Despite all of the
| proponents of alternative theories trying to spin a different
| story, the bottom line is that cumulative lifetime LDL exposure
| is still correlated with heart disease.
|
| That is the only thing you need to know about the debate if you
| want to reduce it to something simple. More LDL over time means
| more heart disease. A lot of people will try to "well
| actually..." various things around this, but it's true.
|
| Even the comments below are trying to tell you your own
| observation is impossible (that diet can't affect cholesterol
| levels) when that's clearly not true.
|
| Cholesterol has become a hotbed of alternative medicine that
| doesn't follow the science but sells well on social media.
| Don't put too much confidence behind "alternative theories"
| when we have decades of evidence that excessively high
| cholesterol levels over a lifetime are correlated with heart
| disease.
| KempyKolibri wrote:
| Just want to say you have solid takes. You're getting all my
| upvotes. Thanks for fighting the good fight against this kind
| of nonsense.
| exe34 wrote:
| > They shot up after I started eating a lot of non-veg food.
| And after they shot up, I stopped having depressive episodes.
|
| do you know the parable of the drunk gentleman looking for his
| keys under a streetlamp at night? a policeman asked him where
| did he drop his keys, he pointed at a dark alleyway further
| away, so the policeman asked why he didn't look there instead,
| he replied "well there's no bloody light over there".
|
| is it possible that you were deficient in some other nutrient,
| possibly even a trace one like some metal ion or maybe just
| some amino acid, and that's what caused the improvement in
| symptoms when you started eating flesh again? is it possible
| that you simply enjoyed the taste and then felt better about
| yourself? or any number of other changes in your life at the
| same time - taking more time cooking your meals, learning new
| recipes, trying new spices with it, etc?
| hereme888 wrote:
| Cholesterol is a necessary part of every cell in our body. It
| allows flexibility of cell membranes despite variations in
| temperature, and also converts into steroid hormones.
|
| LDL doesn't mean much, but rather the ratio of HDL:LDL. Low
| cholesterol is bad for the brain. Of course these are
| oversimplified statements.
|
| There are known cases of older men with low testosterone level
| and high LDL, who after testosterone replacement therapy
| experienced a significant decrease in LDL. It's thought that
| the liver kept churning cholesterol in attempts to synthetize
| enough testosterone to no avail.
|
| I believe that depression and cognitive dysfunction is a side-
| effect of too low cholesterol when people take statins,
| especially older folks, but excessive LDL also accumulates in
| arteries and lead to hypertension and/or diminished blood flow
| to organs, which itself leads to dementia, heart attacks, etc.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Unless research has changed since I las tread, about 75% of
| your cholesterol is manufactured in the human body and not
| ingested, so ingested cholesterol is of limited in fluence. I
| suspect the overall health of the body affects it more than
| eating saturated fats.
| ano-ther wrote:
| Nutrition science is hard. The effects are long-term and easily
| confounded by all the other things one eats. Randomized
| controlled trials are not easy to pull off. It's only loosely
| regulated and and a big market. And everyone eats, so everyone
| has an opinion.
|
| Perhaps that's why there is a lot of sketchy results, hyperbole
| in communication, and a cycle of debunking (of the debunking)
| around.
| lazyeye wrote:
| And also why it is so easily compromised by commercial
| interests.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Looking at the hype cycle, I am beginning to think that what
| you eat doesn't really matter, with a few caveats.
|
| And it makes sense. We are omnivores, the entire point of being
| omnivores is to be able to fuel our body with whatever food is
| available, and it probably played an important role in the
| development of the human species. It means our body is very
| tolerant regarding what we eat, and while some types of food
| may be healthier than others, the effect will be small compared
| to other factors like generics, lifestyle, exposure to harm,
| etc...
|
| What I think is important though is that we should have a diet
| as varied as possible. It is not necessary, but the less varied
| your diet is (it includes veganism), the more you need to pay
| attention. With a varied diet, you are very unlikely to miss
| something, and if you eat too much of the same thing, you may
| exceed the ability for your body to deal with a particular
| substance, making it toxic. Another problem is the
| psychological aspect. Essentially, the abundance of food that
| we have now messes with our brain, causing addictive behavior.
| And I think this is the focus of most serious nutrition science
| today, and that's also what Ozempic is all about.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| I believe you're mostly correct.
|
| I've also found that particle sizes are also important:
| keeping things in their natural sizes and chewing them
| yourself does a couple of important things such as mixing
| them with enzymes, sending signalling about what's coming
| into the digestive tract, and making food the right size,
| instead of ultra fine, which provides a different mix of
| nutrients to the lower parts of the gi tract (and lowers
| absorbed calories from nuts).
| valval wrote:
| What? Your diet is by far the most important part of your
| health. You can be sedentary and still remain healthy if you
| eat the right things.
|
| We're good survivors for sure, but try eating only deep fried
| donuts for a year and let me know how omnivorous you feel.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > Your diet is by far the most important part of your
| health.
|
| If it was the case, we wouldn't have an article like this.
| We would have very obvious results, and we don't. Some
| claim we do, but if you look closer, it is not obvious at
| all.
|
| Note that by "it doesn't matter", I don't mean that
| anything goes. Only eating deep fried donuts is not good,
| for the same reason eating only apples is not good, you
| won't get everything you need from a single food source. If
| you do that, you will get what are now very obvious and
| easily identified diseases, like scurvy, anemia, etc...
| Also, eating too little or too many calories is also not
| good, especially too little, but the effect (starving to
| death) is even more obvious.
|
| What I meant by "it doesn't matter" is that with a varied
| diet and the right number of calories, the details don't
| matter. And I am convinced that a base diet of fried donuts
| to the appropriate amount of calories, with supplementation
| (vitamins, ...) to compensate for deficiencies is fine, or
| at least, not terrible.
|
| And I also believe that "the appropriate number of
| calories" is the tricky part. Hunger mechanisms are
| supposed to regulate this, but they are not adapted to
| modern society, where rich food is plentiful. Hence the
| psychological aspect, which Ozempic targets.
| mgh2 wrote:
| *Original article submitted to HN:
| https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/american-heart-association...
| dang wrote:
| Yes, when we change the URL I almost always post the original
| link in the thread - I did that at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41957788 but of course
| these things can get lost in the shuffle
| gurjeet wrote:
| TL;DR from the fine article:
|
| Summary
|
| The idea that saturated fats cause heart disease, called the
| diet-heart hypothesis, was introduced in the 1950s, based on
| weak, associational evidence. Subsequent clinical trials
| attempting to substantiate this hypothesis could never establish
| a causal link. However, these clinical-trial data were largely
| ignored for decades, until journalists brought them to light
| about a decade ago. Subsequent reexaminations of this evidence by
| nutrition experts have now been published in >20 review papers,
| which have largely concluded that saturated fats have no effect
| on cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular mortality or total
| mortality. The current challenge is for this new consensus on
| saturated fats to be recognized by policy makers, who, in the
| United States, have shown marked resistance to the introduction
| of the new evidence. In the case of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines,
| experts have been found even to deny their own evidence. The
| global re-evaluation of saturated fats that has occurred over the
| past decade implies that caps on these fats are not warranted and
| should no longer be part of national dietary guidelines.
| Conflicts of interest and longstanding biases stand in the way of
| updating dietary policy to reflect the current evidence.
| loeg wrote:
| Can't tldr this article without including the author's name and
| reputation, and that many of the representations made are
| false. In particular, this statement is false:
|
| > [nutrition experts] have largely concluded that saturated
| fats have no effect on cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular
| mortality or total mortality
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Doctors who prescribe medication to reduce your cholesterol is
| like Geek Squad disabling your AV because you've got too many
| viruses
| butterlettuce wrote:
| I've read that saturated fats from red meat get processed by our
| gut creating a metabolite called "trimethlylamine N-Oxide"
| (TMAOs) and that this is what increases one's risk for CVD.
| reissbaker wrote:
| For me personally there's a very clear link between saturated fat
| and blood serum LDL and triglycerides: I had very high levels of
| both despite exercising regularly, switched to a low saturated
| fat diet with minimal other changes, and my LDL and triglycerides
| dropped enormously and are now in the "good" range. I don't know
| enough to know whether cholesterol actually increases heart
| disease risk, but for me personally there's a clear diet link
| between saturated fat and LDL cholesterol + triglycerides. YMMV!
| I suppose something else in the high saturated fat diet could
| have been causing the problem, but it certainly seems like a good
| proxy metric for me at least.
| naveen99 wrote:
| There is a u shape to ldl levels and longevity just like with
| bmi: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4908872/
|
| By the guidelines nunbers, Low is worse than normal, "normal" is
| low, a little high is protective when you have other
| morbidities...
| jqgatsby wrote:
| I'm surprised there's no discussion here about the inflammatory
| role of vegetable oils (aka seed oils). I think it's likely that
| these oils are actually causing inflammatory diseases generally,
| through a mechanism that isn't understood.
|
| Anecdotally (fwiw), in my household my daughter had been
| struggling with severe rashes that appeared to be triggered by
| food. An elimination diet caused us to conclude that she is
| highly reactive to vegetable oils (canola (rapeseed) oil,
| sunflower seed oil and soybean oil have all been introduced as
| food challenges and all produce a reaction within 3-6 hours)
|
| We currently cook only with tallow and her symptoms have improved
| considerably (we tried olive oil and avocado oil for awhile but
| it was unclear on her)
|
| As a challenge to anyone objecting to this comment, I ask you to
| look up the history of canola oil and say whether such a
| substance would be accepted into the food supply today.
|
| And my question to everyone is, what is the mechanism by which
| seed/vegetable oils could lead to rashes? The only theory I've
| heard has been around omega-3/6 balance, but I am looking for
| alternative theories. I conjecture it has something to do with
| heating, as she isn't affected by ice cream containing these
| oils.
| mind-blight wrote:
| My understanding is that just vegetable oils are generally bad
| for cooking because of how they retain heat. Even if they have
| a high smoke point, it's easier for them to get to it.
|
| Have you doing that she has the same issue with coconut oil?
| Specifically, the saturated ones that come in a jar?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > As a challenge to anyone objecting to this comment,
|
| You are free to comment whatever you want, but I don't see any
| evidence to support your hypothesis on a population wide basis.
|
| >I ask you to look up the history of canola oil and say whether
| such a substance would be accepted into the food supply today.
|
| If you are referring to genetically modified rapeseed plants to
| be herbicide resistant, then it would most definitely be
| accepted into the food supply today. Genetically modifying
| plants still happens all over the world.
| mvellandi wrote:
| I don't know about rashes and reactions. But in health circles,
| seed oils are generally considered safe and retain higher
| nutritional value if cold pressed. This makes them suitable at
| least for salads, but not frying.
| hollerith wrote:
| Paul Saladino advocates a theory that humans cannot handle a
| lot of linoleic acid in the diet: it decreases the performance
| of membranes, particularly of mitochondria (which in turn
| causes insulin resistance, obesity and other problems cause by
| chronic lack of ATP).
|
| Saladino says that it would have been impossible for an
| ancestral human (particularly in Northern Eurasia where meat
| from grass-eating animals constituted the majority of calories)
| to get more than about 3% of calories as linoleic acid whereas
| the US average is now about 11%. Sunflower seed oil for example
| is 67% linoleic. corn oil, 53%, soybean oil, 52%. (Most of the
| omega-6 fatty acid in the human diet is linoleic acid.)
|
| Here is Paul Saladino explaining it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j75kc5qamXs
| aeries wrote:
| Paul Saladino isn't a credible source of information or
| theories. He's a non-practicing psychiatrist and social media
| influencer who's gotten rich making contrarian videos and
| selling supplements.
| hollerith wrote:
| I've learned a lot from people who make Youtube videos for
| a living.
| daveguy wrote:
| To be fair, there's a difference between "people who make
| YouTube videos for a living" and people who make videos
| to spout contrarian "theories" so they can sell snake
| oil.
| alfiopuglisi wrote:
| Well, at least they don't sell seed oil :)
| aeries wrote:
| Watching Youtube videos can make us _believe_ we
| understand a topic better, but that 's not necessarily
| the case. And without a good understanding of that topic
| to begin with, it's hard to know why we're wrong.
|
| Imagine watching a super compelling Youtube video
| explaining why dinosaurs never existed, and so you now
| think that's a credible hypothesis. You would probably
| know more facts about dinosaurs and paleontology than the
| average person, but I'd argue that your understanding of
| dinosaurs has actually gone down.
|
| I see a similar thing happening here. You and Paul are
| able to cite lots of facts about Linoleic Acid. But
| there's a whole body of experimental human research
| showing that, if anything, LA-rich oils probably slightly
| _improve_ insulin sensitivity, inflammation, lipids etc.
| But Paul either isn 't aware of this or chooses not to
| show you because it contradicts his claims. So you're
| left with the wrong impression about LA and seed oils,
| despite thinking that your understanding has gone up.
| aeries wrote:
| Except the human studies we have suggest that seed oils are
| probably not inflammatory. A few examples are listed in this
| video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xTaAHSFHUU
| meiraleal wrote:
| It is important to remember that the title of this post is
| "Saturated fat: the making and unmaking of a scientific
| consensus".
| cthalupa wrote:
| And the author of the article has a long history of
| misrepresenting science and has direct financial incentive
| to push her specific view.
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-
| 6...
|
| The BMJ got in trouble for believing her and had to issue
| retractions because of it:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/26/9616122/bmj-nina-
| teichol...
|
| There is no evidence that Nina Teicholz should be given the
| benefit of the doubt when it comes to her arguments and
| plenty of evidence that she should be treated with
| skepticism.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Behaving like bullies trying to prevent people that agree
| with the author to discuss isn't in the spirit of this
| forum.
| exe34 wrote:
| > Except the human studies we have suggest that seed oils
| are probably not inflammatory. A few examples are listed
| in this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xTaAHSFHUU
|
| which part of that do you consider bullying? is it any
| opinion that goes against the underdog?
| cthalupa wrote:
| > I'm surprised there's no discussion here about the
| inflammatory role of vegetable oils (aka seed oils).
|
| Because there's very little scientific evidence to be concerned
| about seed oils themselves and a lot to show that they're fine
| to good for you.
|
| If you want to talk specifically about inflammation, there's
| not really any evidence that inflammatory markers in humans are
| increased by seed oils themselves, e.g.
| https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/01.ATV.0000163185.28...
|
| The idea that seed oils cause inflammation is largely based on
| mechanistic studies that don't seem to bear out when the larger
| and more complex ecosystem of our biology is introduced.
|
| > And my question to everyone is, what is the mechanism by
| which seed/vegetable oils could lead to rashes? The only theory
| I've heard has been around omega-3/6 balance, but I am looking
| for alternative theories.
|
| Canola oil has high levels of omega-3s. If it was the omega-3/6
| balance theory then it would be one of the best options for oil
| use.
|
| Individuals can have bad reactions for a variety of reasons, of
| course. And there is a very high correlation between seed oils
| and food that is just generally shitty for you, so if you cut
| them out of your diet you are also cutting a lot of garbage
| out, which will likely have an impact independent of the oils
| themselves, and this is likely what drives a good portion of
| anecdotal positive experiences.
| profmarshmellow wrote:
| There are countless peer reviewed studies and articles on
| both sides of the argument sure - but the sheer volume of
| anecdotal evidence and the overwhelming consensus across 100K
| and even 1M+ subreddits against seed oils is unique. You
| don't see this level of unified backlash against most other
| everyday substances.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Could it be some other chemical to blame that you are exposed
| to day-to-day? With so many additives, preservatives,
| colorants, detergents, cleaning products, cosmetics, perfumes,
| paints, disinfectants, plastic packaging, synthetic clothing,
| herbicides, pesticides, glues in furniture, car exhaust, rubber
| dust, and other chemicals around us, canola oil would not be my
| first guess of something causing rashes or allergies.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > there's no discussion here about the inflammatory role of
| vegetable oils (aka seed oils)
|
| that's because it's literally a 4chan /pol/ schizo theory
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| Your daughter might simply be allergic to a substance in one of
| these oils and may not be reflective of the experience of the
| population at large.
| phkahler wrote:
| My understanding is that the culprit is partially hydrogenated
| oils (PHOs). Which are chemically the same thing (it seems?) as
| polyunsaturated fats.
|
| We need our carbon chains to be consistenty hydrogenated one
| way or the other, but not with both types in one molecule.
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| I don't know if you're familiar with Ray Pete, but he writes
| about seed oils and the affect they have on our health.
|
| https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml
|
| You said that you suspect it is the heating of the oils, but
| even the oil found in ice creme has been heated somewhere in
| the process unless it is cold pressed. Can she eat sun flower
| seeds, olives or avocado without a reaction? Have you tried
| coconut oil as an alternative?
| scellus wrote:
| Although not probable in this case as far as I know: if
| vegetable oils seem to cause problems for you, you should be
| aware of sitosterolemia (phytosterolemia), caused by rare
| mutations in genes ABCG5 and ABCG8. It needs to be homozygous
| for symptoms.
|
| (I have it, discovered by a full-genome sequencing by myself,
| accidentally around the age of 50.)
| cmiller1 wrote:
| Sort of meta-question: why do nutrition takes from grifters and
| quacks like this spread so well particularly among the Hacker
| News community while I see few articles about normal science-
| based nutrition?
| loeg wrote:
| There is some contrarianism bias. Going against the grain feels
| more interesting and intellectually stimulating.
| tpush wrote:
| Engineers disease. All nutrition threads on HN are complete
| train wrecks of nonsense. I wish dang would ban them all
| outright.
| cthalupa wrote:
| I'm someone who was once taken in by a lot of this nonsense.
| They're good at finding a handful of studies they can present
| in a way that seems convincing, and couple that with the
| general mistrust people have for the modern diet, and you've
| set the stage quite well. Further prevent people from realizing
| that no nutritional scientist anywhere is suggesting that the
| shit we shovel into our mouths daily is the right course of
| action. Next, present them with diets that necessarily result
| in caloric restriction, along with cutting out one or two of
| the half dozen awful things we eat, and have people see
| personal success in their weight going down, lipid markers
| improving, etc., from where they were prior when they were
| eating the absolute worst sort of diet they could.
|
| Now they seem like people who are renegades fighting against
| the establishment for the good of personal health.
|
| It all unravels once you start really digging in to things, but
| if you don't have the time or inclination for it, them
| appearing as a guest on a podcast and presenting you with this
| snazzy package specifically designed to lead you astray is
| really coupled with some testimonials from people touting it's
| efficacy makes a compelling case.
| addicted wrote:
| Why are all these articles by Nina Teicholz.
|
| There's nothing "unmade" in the scientific opinion. It's her
| opinion because she insists that saturated fat is good, but
| provides no scientific evidence. Almost all scientific studies
| and scientists (including the authors of the few studies she
| might quote, because she often distorts them including completely
| presenting the opposite of what they demonstrate) disagree with
| her saying.
|
| And yeah, she's not a scientist, does no scientific research
| herself, and has no particular training in this area.
| xchip wrote:
| She is not saying it is good, she is saying we can't conclude
| it is bad.
| tuukkah wrote:
| An alternative mechanism for how some foods deteriorate
| cardiovascular and brain health depends on how foods are cooked:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-product
|
| "Dietary advanced glycation products intake is associated with
| dementia" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41209509
|
| "A database for dietary AGEs and associated exposure assessment"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41962796
| ta988 wrote:
| AGEs could also simply be markers of poor lifestyle.
| tuukkah wrote:
| Sure, and especially if seared steaks and other high-dAGE
| foods are considered as a marker of poor lifestyle.
|
| But if you are saying it's just correlation you're wrong,
| because the research has also described the mechanism.
| Wikipedia has a nice list of the effects:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_end-
| product...
|
| > _" In the context of cardiovascular disease, AGEs can
| induce crosslinking of collagen, which can cause vascular
| stiffening and entrapment of low-density lipoprotein
| particles (LDL) in the artery walls. AGEs can also cause
| glycation of LDL which can promote its oxidation. Oxidized
| LDL is one of the major factors in the development of
| atherosclerosis."_
|
| > _" AGEs have been implicated in Alzheimer's
| Disease,cardiovascular disease, and stroke. The mechanism by
| which AGEs induce damage is through a process called cross-
| linking that causes intracellular damage and apoptosis."_
|
| (AGE is a bad search term but the term glycotoxin is used as
| well.)
| krona wrote:
| No mention of the French paradox:
|
| > _the paradoxical epidemiological observation that French people
| have a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD),
| while having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats,[1] in
| apparent contradiction to the widely held belief that the high
| consumption of such fats is a risk factor for CHD._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox
| chasebank wrote:
| This is true for salt too.
|
| "Intersalt, a large study published in 1988, compared sodium
| intake with blood pressure in subjects from 52 international
| research centers and found no relationship between sodium
| intake and the prevalence of hypertension. In fact, the
| population that ate the most salt, about 14 grams a day, had a
| lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the
| least, about 7.2 grams a day. In 2004 the Cochrane
| Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit
| health care research organization funded in part by the U.S.
| Department of Health and Human Services, published a review of
| 11 salt-reduction trials. Over the long-term, low-salt diets,
| compared to normal diets, decreased systolic blood pressure
| (the top number in the blood pressure ratio) in healthy people
| by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood
| pressure (the bottom number) by 0.6 mmHg. That is like going
| from 120/80 to 119/79."
|
| [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-
| end-t...
| alfiopuglisi wrote:
| 7.2 grams a day is still a lot. Low-sodium diets aim for less
| than 3 grams a day, and it is not that difficult to go even
| lower. Whether a near-zero sodium intake is good or not, it's
| another can of worms, but a study looking at a huge-salt diet
| vs. a high-salt diet does not look very useful.
| tonymet wrote:
| Before refrigeration sodium consumption was 10x
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think it's a combination of low-stress lifestyle and
| demographics. Or differences of reporting. I am skeptical that
| there is a genotypical protection to heart disease unique to
| the French.
| fwip wrote:
| The claim is not that French people are resistant to heart
| disease. It is a datapoint that reality may not fit the "fat
| -> heart disease" model.
| tonymet wrote:
| "The French paradox" is preposterous. Rather than re-assessing
| the "low fat" model, the approach was to call French nutrition
| a "paradox". Resolving the paradox itself should have been done
| before presenting the low fat model as a fact.
| tonymet wrote:
| It's probably better off if we don't give a handful of biased
| people control over the diets of millions. Maybe it is better to
| make decisions locally from personal connections. Maybe the
| transmission of knowledge through local groups had the positive
| effect of a sort of charcoal filter for knowledge. A bit of
| humility could be good for us. We spent all this time building
| and abusing a global authoritarian control network without ever
| considering the side effects.
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