Re:Anti-Salt Narrative Needs a Shakeup
by tim333 on Sunday June 17, 2018 @07:18AM
(#17331885)
>You'd think that science would make things here a little more conclusive by now...
One of the troubles is human bodies are quite complex and able to thrive on a wide variety of diets so any simple looking at the correlation of factor A and result B is likely to be shaky due to all the other stuff that happens. One example I found amusing is the correlation between alcohol intake and health. My recollection is the UK government did some study to do health recommendations on how much to drink but found the healthiest drank something like 4 pints a day so thought we can't say that and recommended max 2 pints or some such but the thing is cause and effect are basically the wrong way around - people drink till they feel ill and the healthy can drink more. There's a lot like that.
My rule of thumb is to ignore the 'science' stuff unless they can quantify how many years the bad habit takes off your life. Salt was never like that. The big ones are smoking - 10 years or so, obesity - of the order of 10, air pollution - of the order of 2 years.
One of the troubles is human bodies are quite complex and able to thrive on a wide variety of diets so any simple looking at the correlation of factor A and result B is likely to be shaky due to all the other stuff that happens. One example I found amusing is the correlation between alcohol intake and health. My recollection is the UK government did some study to do health recommendations on how much to drink but found the healthiest drank something like 4 pints a day so thought we can't say that and recommended max 2 pints or some such but the thing is cause and effect are basically the wrong way around - people drink till they feel ill and the healthy can drink more. There's a lot like that.
My rule of thumb is to ignore the 'science' stuff unless they can quantify how many years the bad habit takes off your life. Salt was never like that. The big ones are smoking - 10 years or so, obesity - of the order of 10, air pollution - of the order of 2 years.