The Hacker News Sacred Cow: The Unhealthy Lifestyle of The Average Geek

Re:The Hacker News Sacred Cow: The Unhealthy Lifestyle of Th... by spingsprong on Monday May 19, 2014 @06:33AM (#7766716)

Nope, not ironic.

But if your aim is to increase people's health, you're going to do a better job using accurate information.

The initial studies showing anti-oxidants have health benefits have struggled to be replicated, and new studies have shown anti-oxidants may be having negative health impact.

Edit: since a couple of people have asked, here's one fairly good source, there are others if you search. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22419320

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[deleted]

Re:The Hacker News Sacred Cow: The Unhealthy Lifestyle of Th... by arethuza on Monday May 19, 2014 @06:40AM (#7766739)

I can recommend Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" - I read this in book form, any time I see "anti-oxidant" in the context of nutrition I also start to engage full skepticism mode.

Here is an article from Bad Science pointing to a Cochrane Collaboration review of the effectiveness of anti-oxidants:

http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunni...

Michael Shermer, the author of Why People Believe Weird Things, also had an interesting direct experience with nutritional pseudo-science:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things

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