I think it's fair to say that the field of nutrition has a surplus of charlatans, cranks, and snake-oil salesmen. Weightloss (when you get it right) really isn't difficult, but a multi-billion dollar industry relies on making people think that it is.
If you don't have a degree in biochemistry, how do you know when you're being lied to, or when a professional is giving you well-meaning but poorly-informed advice?
Although we supposedly live in the Age of Enlightenment, my own personal feeling is that the public understanding of science (that is, the scientific process) is at an all-time low. Science is often presented by the media as something like a court of law, whereby wrinkly experts hold debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and experimenters look for "evidence" that something-or-other is true.
This is NOT science, although far too many people purporting to be scientists genuinely think that it is.
Science hinges on a profound philosophical insight: it is not logically possible to prove definitively that something is true, but it is possible to show that something is false.
I have yet to come across a better explanation of how science works than Richard Feynman's. As well as being one of the greatest physicists of his time, he was renowned for being a great teacher: he could explain complicated things in a very straightforward manner. Watch the video - it really is just 60 seconds. And remember: "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment [real-world experience], it's wrong."
It is ironic that the chaff, being low in calories and high in fibre, is better for you - that is a reversal in thinking!
I don't have a degree in biochemistry, but I did study it (and nutrition) at Agricultural College. Do you know how a brown cow can eat green grass and produce white milk? I forget the details, but the answer is several pages of biochemical reactions!
The public confidence in "science" (that is, the scientific process) is at an all-time low - because the "research" is biased according to who funded it.
"You have an idea, or work out what you want to prove (or accept funding for a "research" project) and then find or create "Information" to prove it."
In mathematics, many theories can be proved with logical reasoning, but that is rarely the case in biochemistry... Carbohydrates raise blood sugar, which raises insulin, which eventually fails to keep the blood sugar low. Diabetes is defined and measured in terms of blood sugar, so carbohydrates (tend to eventually) cause diabetes. ¿QED?
Insulin channels the excess blood sugar into fat so carbohydrates are the main cause of obesity.
How long ago was that ... and how far have we come? Praps don't bother answering latter question.... OH has just been told to eat no fat because he has a slightly fatty liver (phew- only slightly - that was at least good news) .... SIGH SIGH SIGH.....
This is entirely true when science can give a black and white answer. However in the world of both drugs & nutrition we are rarely in that situation.
As you say there are extremely powerful vested interests that get right to the heart of nearly all governments, media outlets and indeed health & research establishments. And they have been there for decades and more...
Much of the science has been done on animals such as rats with outcomes not necessarily reflected in humans. And then the research on humans has rarely been done according to best scientific practice. For example it is considered unethical to force feed a human being a potentially bad diet or bad drugs to see if they get worse. Even doing the opposite, can lead to similar ethical questions, given nutritional research is often attempting to determine what is good and what is bad.
This can lead on to questions about relative merits of different forms of research. Even what some may consider the pinnacle of research, the meta-analysis might uses grading systems that can give prominence to some research and downgrade others. I think this grading dilema can often be the cause of heated debate between low-carb and high-carb advocates.
We need to trust our own bodies and when we are looking at short term results this can be helpful. However for longer term lifetime outcomes our bodies may not yield sufficient information. Cancer typically takes 10 years minumum to manifest using the best medical tests, but which time we are in panic mode. Our biggest killer heart-related attacks occur with no notice in what often otherwise seem the healthiest of people.
To finish if I can throw two more spanners in the works, that of other lifestyle aspects such as exercise, stress, relationships, mental health. Human beings are incredibly complex beasts. To find answers to questions we need to accept that complexity into our answers.
The other spanner is that of reductionism. We know, for example that vitamins are important for human health. But that is definitely not the same as saying if we take vitamin supplements we will become healthier, in fact research shows the exact opposite is often true. Again I see this as a matter of complexity. Identifying a particular vitamin, and refining that and providing that vitamin in isolation in high concentrations misses the starting point. The starting point being a healthy person gets that vitamin as part of eating good whole foods and a good lifestyle. Sadly much of modern research and society looks for reductionist outcomes, "if only my doctor would prescribe THAT pill then all will be well..."
Some good points there andy. But the video I posted presents the cornerstone of the scientific method, which is disproof. I would say 80%+ of the researchers in the field of nutrition do not understand this, and 99% of the general public don't either.
Proving that something is false cuts through all the complexity. Let's say you have the following hypothesis:
- A calorie is a calorie.
- Gaining fat is caused by eating too many calories.
Well, as per the video, you can derive some predictions from this.
- Eating less should cause you to lose bodyfat.
- Eating a lot less should cause you to lose bodyfat faster.
- Substituting carbohydrates for fat should make it easier to eat fewer calories, because fat is calorie-dense. Conversely, eating more fat and fewer carbs should result in rapid weight gain.
You can then test your predictions in the real world. Well, it turns out that none of those predictions are true, as many of the members here can attest. The hypothesis is therefore wrong; no ifs or buts.
Note that our "experiment" (observing what happens when you eat less) only tells you that your original hypothesis is false. It cannot tell you anything about what is true. This means that finding the truth is a painstaking process of trial-and-error, and I believe most career scientists just can't cope with this. They don't want to be proved wrong. They want to be right, and they want to be right in interesting ways, and they want to be right with the minimum of effort. They want people to listen to them at conferences. So they start looking for "proofs" instead, which is more fun, but it inevitably leads to cherrypicking. You start looking for things that confirm your hypothesis. This is not science. I don't know what it is, but it's not science.
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