Another stupid, stupid study

[Subtle_badger]

I was very concerned about this study

nutrition.bmj.com/content/4...

It appears to show health care workers who follow low carb eating were 48% more likely to become seriously ill with coronavirus compared to normies and more than 300% more likely than vegans or vegetarians or pescatarians

I perused the paper, and got lost in the maths. But then I looked at the supplemental material, and almost bust a gut. One table (attached) shows the diet of the low carbers vs non-low carbers.

The low carbers ate more potatoes, legumes and sugar-sweetened drinks, and at less red meat and butter. They ate refined grains nearly every day, and had a dessert or sweet 5 times a week. They ate more fish (which the study claims is healthier). They had nearly the same amount of fruit, juices, pizza etc etc.

I don't understand how this stuff passes peer review. It's a very reputable journal.

[MikePollard]

You do have to wonder how our spear chucking ancestors managed to find the time to harvest their grains during the ice age.

[Hidden in reply to MikePollard]

They were only able to do this due to all the energy gained from eating pizza and bananas.

[Subtle_badger in reply to MikePollard]

Well, yes but...

This is a sort of "stands to reason" argument that is getting us into so much trouble. It stands to reason that eating fat will make you fat and it stands to reason that saturated fat would clog your arteries. "Stands to reason" is important for forming hypotheses, but eventually you want well designed studies to confirm or disprove those hypotheses.

Sadly, this is not a well designed study.

[Hidden in reply to MikePollard]

Probably the same time they managed to make those low-carb staples cheese and yoghurt.

[Professor-Yaffle]

I know this is a "bad" research paper and potentially harmful but I find things like this amusing.....

A paper that makes a certain point but with a tiny little hidden link to a "data supplement". The link's buried away at the bottom and if you bother to click on it, the revealed content completely reverses the meaning of the study 😂. Almost like they didn't want you to find it!

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

[Professor-Yaffle in reply to Professor-Yaffle]

bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

[Cosmo501 in reply to Professor-Yaffle]

🤣🤣🤣

[Subtle_badger in reply to Professor-Yaffle]

I love that. Did you see they have published a correction? So nerdy!! 🤓

[Cosmo501]

What???? 😱 how in hell is that anything close to resembling low carb??

[Subtle_badger in reply to Cosmo501]

It's insane. Apparently those people self describe their diet as either low carb or high protein. 🤪

[Subtle_badger]

Another problem with asking people to say how they eat, rather than what they eat: lots of people eat low carb without having a name for it.

I went on a lovely walk with my friend a while ago, and she remarked on my weightloss. I told her what I ate, and she told me her diet was very similar. Since she had retired, she had stopped buying ready meals, and wasn't bothering much with grains and bread. "That's why I lost 5kg!"she exclaimed. So if we both participated in this study, we'd have been in different categories despite having near identical diets.

Oh, yeah, and my friend is a retired NHS nephrologist who missed the memo about filling 1/3 of your plate with beige carbs. Which makes me happy, because I knew she was giving weightloss advice to dialysis patients, and I was worried she was telling them to eat more pasta. I dare say the nutritionist on her team was, but what can you do?

[penny]

A while ago I heard an interview with a professor of nutrition (not UK), I think, on R4 of all places, saying that he was sacked for promoting LCHF; this was contrary to the ‘official’ line. It didn’t make much of a splash at the time and I was surprised that the BBC did the interview. The MSM do not question ‘official’ policy on anything.

[MTCee]

It’s quite easy to find a definition of LCHF online, so it’s worrying that the researchers were unable to find it and use it to help them design their study. I got very confused when looking down the columns of the the above graph. Quite ridiculous.

[Subtle_badger in reply to MTCee]

My understanding (or at least my guess) is they asked all participants what diet they were on (the report lists the options as whole foods, plant-based diet; keto diet; vegetarian diet; Mediterranean diet; pescatarian diet; Palaeolithic diet; low fat diet; low carbohydrate diet; high protein diet; other; none of the above), and then gave the food frequency questionnaire only to those who caught coronavirus. I assume that a FFQ is a lot more labour intensive, so doing it for t he entire cohort would be impractical or prohibitively expensive.

When they compared to actual foods listed as eaten with the self-descriptions, they might have realised that the whole study was nonsense, but what are you going to do, throw it away? That's crazy talk 🤨

[MTCee in reply to Subtle_badger]

Sadly, there must be a lot of people out there who are very confused about what exactly a LCHF diet is as well.

[MTCee]

And I try to avoid having milk in my coffee because of the small amount of lactose it contains……

[MTCee]

It’s really not a problem 😄 I’m just sticking to a keto way of eating for a while to lose some weight. I like milk but I’m avoiding it at the moment. I just find it perplexing that there are clearly people out there who claim to be low carb or keto and eat bread and potatoes and have sugary drinks.