I dropped eating eggs for thirty years because we were all lied to by the experts. But as a result it brings me sheer joy to eat eggs for breakfast every single day - at my doctors recommendation ;<).
What the experts should have warned us about was our sugar intake. I have reduced mine, it's not that difficult, and only wish I had known to do so decades ago.
You are probably talking about Woody Allen's "Sleeper".
an anthropoligst visits an alien planet and talks to a jellyfish about its cultures creation myth. indignant, the jellyfish recoil - they have no such myth, only a scientific account as rational creatures. obviously, agrees the researcher; did life first appear on land or sea? confused, the jellyfish ask what is meant. well, the researcher, says, was the first life here or over there (pointing past the shore inland). the jellyfish are more confused - there is nothing past the shoreline. that is the edge of the great bowl that holds the ocean.
https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/chorus/workshop5/17372...
it is a simple tale, but its simplicity is somehow lost on most of our population, both scientific and otherwise. the idea that we're at the pinnacle of knowledge for anything is very silly.
operate with assumptions, but dont pretend theyre not assumptions. we're still learning.
This is completely false. Oatmeal is one of the few grains where this is not true (unless you’re eating it in a highly processed form like flour). It is very slow to digest, does not cause an insulin spike, and actually removes cholesterol from the body. As far as grains go, it’s pretty much the best one out there. There’s a reason oatmeal is the primary carb used by gym rats.
The only time it’s a problem is if you’re eating it out of an instant packet, but that’s really about all the added sugar, not the oatmeal grain.
Where do these statements come from? What counts as "slow" or "fast" digestion? Oats, being rich in carbohydrates, definitely affect insulin. As one example, this 2019 paper clearly shows that overnight oats elicit glycemic and insulin responses, so it's patently false to claim that oatmeal "does not cause an insulin spike": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-018-0329-1#Fig2
> There’s a reason oatmeal is the primary carb used by gym rats.
Gym rats say and do a lot of things without scientific merit. That's why the term "broscience" exists.
> The only time it’s a problem is if you’re eating it out of an instant packet, but that’s really about all the added sugar, not the oatmeal grain.
It's not just the added sugar. Instant oats are more processed than steel-cut or rolled oats, and they do have a higher glycemic index.
From https://www.diabetes.ca/managing-my-diabetes/tools---resourc...:
> In general, the more highly processed a food is, or the quicker a food is digested, the higher the GI. For example, instant oats have a higher GI than steel cut oats.
From https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...:
Glycemic load (glucose = 100):
Porridge, rolled oats = 55 ± 2
Instant oat porridge 79 ± 3
I've had plain oats with non-sugar additives (eg pure cocoa powder, seeds) and it definitely causes a spike, and my heart rate goes through the roof. Incidentally this happened more when I forgot to add cinnamon, which explains [1]. This was even with the fancier (read: double price half volume) steel cut or rolled varieties.
Oats are good, but as with most things not necessarily for everyone.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151119133230.h...
Non saturated fats are newer to our diet as a species too. Just to keep that in mind.
No, there really isn't. What we have is bacon producers using a loophole to use 'natural' nitrates from things like celery for curing. They're the exact same molecule and perform the same function, but because they used processed celery juice instead of pure sodium nitrite, they get to claim they're nitrate free.
They aren't.
Ingredients: pork, water, sea salt, evaporated cane sugar
[0] https://products.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/365-everyday-v...
I recently read the label for a bag of popcorn which had sugar as the first ingredient, before corn. That popcorn had more sugar than corn. Boggles the mind.
[1] Meta analysis of tens of RCTs https://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/nutrientrequireme...
[2] There are plenty of Mendelian Randomization (MR) studies, studies on the effects of statins, etc.
I'm fully aware that statins work to prevent heart attacks by lowering the LDL in the blood, but that's because they treat a symptom rather than the root cause triggering the body to use lipids to repair arterial walls in the first place. Why does the body deposit lipids on arterial walls? Because when arterial walls get damaged in any way, the body uses lipids to repair them.
There is a specific sub-type of LDL that is not dietary in source, called VLDL.
Source: https://www.healthline.com/health/vldl-vs-ldl
VLDL is created by the liver in response to consumption of carbohydrates, fructose, etc. It is very important to note that VLDL is NOT created by the liver in response to consuming animal fats. The patty and cheese with no bun won't affect your VLDL amounts. The bun, the fries, and the soda? They will trigger your liver to produce VLDL.
VLDL is the chief culprit in damaging arterial walls, and causing general inflammation in the body, when at unnaturally high levels. If you consume juice or soda on any kind of regular basis, your VLDL levels will spike afterwards.
After VLDL damages those arterial walls, it, along with normal LDL, will be deposited on the walls and harden.
The above explanation is why when people talk about having "high cholesterol", it is often useless in predicting heart attacks. The most important marker on a blood test for predicting heart attacks is the ratio of triglycerides to HDL in the blood stream. Notice that LDL isn't in the ratio. Why? Because the higher the amount of triglycerides in the blood, the higher the ratio, and the more VLDL a person has in their blood relative to HDL.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2664115/
My point is that:
1) Observational regression studies are often useless, because it's impossible to remove so many factors such as the "doesn't listen to doctors" effect where a person who goes against prevailing medical wisdom and eats red meat will engage in other behaviors that doctors advise against, like smoking.
2) It's not the meat in the meat and potatoes diet that is the root cause of heart disease. No, it's a horrible combination of the two: The potatoes trigger the release of VLDL, which damages and inflames the arteries, and the meat contains normal LDL that typically wouldn't lodge in arterial walls, but is used in conjunction with VLDL by the body to repair the now damaged walls. Eat just the meet? No VLDL. The LDL you consume in the meat doesn't damage the arterial walls.
Just a note: In the past, I've been a vegan who consumed zero animal products. I didn't consume a single bite of animal products between 2002-2006. I'm not a blind defender of meat based diets, and I won't pretend that there aren't environmental implications of meat consumption. I just don't think it's useful to allow bad science to get people to eat less meat. I'm formally educated in statistics from studying Applied Economics, and I've worked professionally as a data scientist for 8 years now. I'm keenly aware of how bad these observational regression studies are. I'm not saying don't take them into account or use them, but they really need to be vetted when they conflict with longitudinal studies like Framingham.
Oats are among the lowest/slowest carb grains we have.
Egg on the and no one on this side of keto absolutism should argue that it’s nutritionally unbalanced.
The special carbohydrate diet would encourage bacon and an oil/fat based diet over any grains ever.
Drinking bone brothe soup instead of eating oatmeal in the morning would be healthier.
What they should have done instead is mandate the use of the term "lipids" instead of "fat" on nutrition labels. Vocabulary could do so much to solve our problems. We are a nation of fat people who think that eating fat makes you fat. Then we also think that eating cholesterol gives us high cholesterol.
We use a different word for a cow when it's on our dinner plate but we can't do the same for fat? I guess this idea doesn't give the graphic designer anything to do.
The study which had the strongest impact on my opinions with dietary fat consumption was the longitudinal Framingham Heart Study. It's far, far more rigorous (and expensive) than virtually any of the studies being crapped out by the publish or perish grant-chasers. The absolute vitriol and emotional, irrational responses to the contradictions raised by Framingham really taught me lessons about the fashion-driven, corrupt nature of certain communities in academia.
The only logical thing to do is to follow current scientific consensus the best we can. Adjust ourselves as those views adjust.
Anything else is just pure ego saying that you know better than experts. Random examples where you were "right" or the scientific consensus was "wrong" are irrelevant.
Edit: I'm just saying that the scientific method is the best tool we have for this kind of stuff, even with the bias and flaws of the studies. It's miles and miles better than Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon.
Let's do an experiment. Or better, let's do a Gedankenexperiment so we sound more like experts:
Look around your (virtual) workplace. See that well-spoken idiot who you know is wrong about everything, but who somehow gets the attention and the money to run whatever projects they want? That's the expert.
You are not the expert, even though you know more stuff, because nobody asks you. And when you insisted they were wrong, they got rid of you.
The same thing happens everywhere, in academia, science, government, medicine... everywhere. We are only human.
But not to worry! It's all right. Thanks to the scientific method science actually advances, even if it's one funeral at a time. Just be careful who you trust.
Be very careful about how you word stuff like this, even if at the end of the day it's just healthy skepticism. It's the same vibe that gives power to conspiracy theories.
Pop science articles you read online, written by journalists? At best just clickbait. (I read them too. Only human...)
Unfortunately there is no substitute to thinking for yourself. The best way to start is with the question "does it work?". If the question doesn't make sense no need to carry on, we're off science altogether.
Peter Norvig's essay on experiment design comes to mind:
The current alternative to scientific studies (with their varying degrees of bias and flaws) are Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon that apparently are so compelling that they get upvoted to the top of HN.
Your original point is a fair one, but you probably aren't aware of the fact that, on this specific topic, the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices, including destroying the career of a researcher at Harvard who was relegated to obscurity despite later being proven correct.
Dissent against Keys' lipid hypothesis of any form was career suicide in the human nutrition community. The viciousness of the attacks against dissenters was particularly remarkable, due to the fervent belief that undermining the "fat is bad" narrative would kill people.
They were wrong, and your point of view assumes that it's self-correcting over the long-term, so don't argue. In the case of the lipid hypothesis, it wasn't self-correcting at all. It's been a decades long fight to try to get a bunch of smug asshole academics to admit they fucked over the public for decades with their hubris.
The problem is now you're too aggressive in the other direction. You seem to have to dissent, regardless of the study design or funding.
I've found this depends on the person.
>I've found this depends on the person.
Good point. It is indeed gospel for some people :)
Infact in the new era of Covid, we now have common people parrot the opinion of medical 'experts' verbatim as though it were gospel
Until you figure out that most 'scientists' are morons, and are biased/ignorant/academic. An anecdote from an observant, meticulous, objective layman is far more dependable than the gobbledygook that characterizes most published research.
It's fine to critique studies and findings. It's not okay to say that you or your facebook friends know better and can substitute your own thoughts on a subject. That is how we get Covid deniers or vaccine conspiracy theories or the million other misinformation issues we have right now.
The problem is that there have been plenty of studies long before these more enlightened times we live in, which demonstrated that saturated animal fats, eggs, salt, and red meat are good for you, whereas high-grain and starch diets, seed oils, sugar, and hydrogenated fats are bad for you.
And what happened? These studies went against the FDA guidelines and the nutritional training of an entire generations of MDs, and thus were ignored and ridiculed. This resulted in a massive increase in type-2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
We like to think that the medical experts we rely upon follow the science. They don't. To this day, the majority of MDs in the US follow the 60 year old guidelines that killed so many people prematurely. Despite the resounding preponderance of the evidence.
And it doesn't end there. The same is true for related areas like the whole cholesterol debacle that ignores HDL/LDL ratios, and especially ignores blood calcium levels. Even when they know better, i.e., when the research shows that high cholesterol in a healthy ratio with low to non-existent blood calcium levels is perfectly healthy and does not need treatment, they will still prescribe statins, or tell such patients to cut out red meat and eggs. This is not following the science, even while acknowledging that the patient is already healthy.
The same story with carnivore diets and diabetes. Even when the tests show that the patient has a vastly improved blood glucose count on a carnivore diet, i.e., they are getting healthier, and the doctor sees it and admits it, and he is aware of research which found the same correlation, he will still insist that they need to go back to eating a predominantly grain-based diet, because his training, and the peer pressure from his colleagues are overriding the science.
Because of this, it is up to you to find doctors who actually follow the science. They are out there. You just have to look for them.
When you want two dozen eggs, but you can only bring a single egg, choose ostrich. If each of the two dozen boys would like 3 normal eggs, they can share 3 ostrich eggs. Since each boy can bring one egg, 8 such meals are possible. For a weekend trip, everybody could subsist purely on eggs.
I would propose s/awful/corrupt
Also sidenote: this is the picture regarding cardiovascular health, but with extremely high-fat foods and diets being the mode right now I'll bet we see a bit of an uptick on chronic pancreatitis cases in time. Moderation, as always, is the best course for most... "everything in moderation, especially moderation"
It wasn't just eggs. It was any dietary fats and alcohol. Eggs just happen to be something I ate most days for breakfast after the gym and suddenly could not keep down, along with most foods, and even water, at the time. Dehydration and kidney failure sucks, no matter what the cool kids tell you. Ended up losing about 50lbs of muscle and body fat in all of a couple of weeks.
They didn't want to risk surgery, partially due to the liquid compressing my lungs needed to subside, and since pancreatic necrotic debridement can be problematic in itself, and there had ended up being multiple deposits of necrotic material and other unidentified inflamed regions throughout my abdomen—so the least invasive option was put forward first: a modified diet and pain medication when I need it.
I might not feel pain immediately, and it's less the pain that I'm worried about—but until I have more imaging done and receive a diagnosis or the old "all-clear" I'm assumed to be at risk for developing chronic problems, or worse. (One does not simply keep on living without a pancreas)
So, I've been on a diet that puts me at below 30g of dietary fats a day total for about seven months now. Of particular concern is overloading the mechanism of pancreatic enzyme production, so that 30g has to be spread throughout the day evenly—can't have concentrated quantities that exists in some foods. It's the saddest diet. Most flavourful foods have a high fat content. Most non-fat options will just throw in some xanthum gum as a thickener and sugar and salt to flavour. It's not the same.
In short: it was the summary opinion of about 8 doctors including several surgeons at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, a hepatobiliary surgical oncologist in at St Joseph Hospital in Toronto, my GP, and several others. Eggs are little dietary fat bombs. I miss eggs, they're one of my favourite foods, and they're so healthy—it's where I used to get most of my B12 (I was already deficient). Egg whites are... fine.
When I was a kid, for a few years, I had a stepmom who was relatively high educated, and was very quick to pivot to the healthy diet of the 90s: grains for breakfast, pasta for dinner. When I would spend the night out, and come home and talk about how much I loved the breakfast at my friend's house (eggs and bacon) she would call them "ignorant rednecks" and talk about how "some people are just too dumb to listen to science or doctors."
My "redneck" friends has a much healthier diet than I did. We know this now. Yet people still blindly trust the US public health authorities. I'm not a moron, so I don't inherently mistrust their statements either. I just think a healthy skepticism is warranted with US public health messaging and the science that they fund. Entire careers in academia were flushed down the toilet because a brave few tried to point out how incredibly flawed the "dietary cholesterol causes heart disease" narrative.
Think about this: the leading scientists and the scientific community in the 1990s strongly believed that both eggs and avocados strongly increased the risk of heart disease. Avocados. Bad for your health.......... Looking at our collective love of avocados today, it should be a highly publicized rebuke of how awful the FDA's food pyramid campaign was.