Wrong studies mean that everything you know about nutrition is wrong



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A healthy pizza, at least that is what I said when I was a child in kindergarten.

They are anyway, possessing all the staple food groups, which were cast at the time with a great breadbasket pyramid.

Myself and all the other 6-year-olds, we had this advice until puberty: being an adult means that you can have a pizza whenever you want.

Before ridiculing low-level food choices, you must realize that a poor reading of the nutrition planes in your head.

Do you buy skim and skim milk? You count calories and you engage in a cleaning regime (a diet based on fruit juice or vegetables only, a kind of cleaning regime).

Well, science has been telling lies all these years.

If the science on nutrition and diet seems confusing and scary, it is because it is also normal.

Well, think that someday, saturated fat was bad, so it became useless! Once the fat is bad, now, the sugar is too hot? Wine treats and prevents cancer?

In recent weeks, science has supported many of our ideas about what makes our health system accountable and completely blown away.

Nutritional research is fraught with weak methodologies, human errors and scientific prejudices: a large study has been canceled to see if alcohol consumption is beneficial, after accepting dozens of millions of dollars from alcohol companies;

Yes, articles on staged studies are part of the problem, but the problem is deeper when the conclusions of the studies themselves are contradictory.

The latest advice from the FDA is that eggs contain a lot of cholesterol and fat and are not considered healthy, yet government agencies still include them in healthy breakfasts.

Several studies look into whether there is a difference between good and bad calories, but they become controversial when researchers do not adopt a control group (those who do not have the ## EQU1 ## 39; actual experience) and the group tested that measures the specific results, According to the site "WIRED", and now we can not even say with confidence whether 10 calories of chocolate better or less than 10 calories of broccoli.

Earlier this month, according to the New York Times, a study of the "cornerstone", which linked the Mediterranean diet to a reduction in heart disease, was withdrawn even after the study, Diseases Cardiovascular and osteoporosis across the Mediterranean diet (PREDIMED) to correct after its first publication, its authors argue that they are still able to make the same health claims that they had previously made His critics are not convinced.

All this raises the question: Is it scientifically difficult to determine whether a particular health system or food is good for people? Have we finished with the chaos of those confusing experiences that once tell us that coffee is good for your health, but it causes cancer the other day?

If we are going to do this well, we need to think better about controlling all the small, occasional details that can get rid of all these nutrition studies. "Nutritional research is a difficult task," says Kelly Pritchett, nutritionist and trainer at Central Washington University and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrients and Dietetics: "Nutritional research is a difficult task , its data are cross-sectional variables that need to be controlled.It is important to control as many variables as possible, anything that can affect our diet, our sleep, our lifestyle, the time of year, the levels of activity and history. "

" I see this through the concept of "control of the possible", she said, "it is determined that researchers must consider or suppress variables in as many aspects of life as possible.

The New York Times said: "Doing better with these small and unpredictable changes that can eliminate the results, called the factors embedded in the university messages, can save the study of the Mediterranean diet.

participants should choose to study randomly for adherence to food, instead of 10% of respondents were not.

Apart from all this, individuals are all given from the same family or even from one village at a time to the same diet.These contradictory practices have not been reported in the final records of the study. "[19659007] But, as you know, random selection is difficult: do you really expect scientists to engage in real random selection, to make sure that all health outcomes are the same? result of the commitment of the partici pants to the Mediterranean diet?

What would happen if a neighbor complained of having fewer entries than his village peers? Can you expect researchers to order parents to prepare separate meals for children for better scientific results?

Yes, you can, because the head of this part of the study decided to take the easiest route and invite some people, who volunteered to share the experience and follow a controlled diet, by eating the same food;

All the results of the study, on which many people in the world are supposed to base their diet, are responsible, and all have withdrawn.

Quite simply because researchers claim that the Mediterranean diet is still linked to improving heart health after neglecting the data provided for, their research is just as wary and certainly does not mean that it is impossible to do better in the future.

Pritchett says, "I think we need to question the methodology and how the results are presented, not only in this study, but in all the articles we read."

In an ideal world, studies on food systems will be conducted in a sterile laboratory, where each calorie, for sports activities, to sleep for each participant is fully controlled by the scientists who conduct the experiment.

But, of course, this is not so simple, nutrition studies, like the study of the Mediterranean diet, require years to derive the health benefits or risks badociated with it. a particular food.

Whenever a control is imposed, it distances itself from its applicability in the real world.

Finally, people who applied the summary of the experiment would not live in a laboratory.

They will be in the outside world trying to balance their diet while they work, study, exercise, sleep and play.

Even providing food to participants rather than letting them plan for their own food imposes the burden of stress, which has been scientifically proven to be slowly badociated with metabolism and increase fat retention.

Researchers will need to find ways to match their experiences with these lifestyles to find meaningful data for people's lives.

But that does not mean that they can get rid of the best scientific practices, as some have done while studying the Mediterranean diet.

According to Connie Weaver, Purdue University Nutritionist and Director of the World Institute of Women's Health for Futurism, "Fortunately, there are efforts to formalize the functioning of nutrition studies. .

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently supported two research groups at the University of Indiana and Tufts to create a clinical guidance manual for random selection and nutritional studies controlled.

Weaver adds, "The guidelines are currently limited to drugs and device instructions, not nutrition studies, and I hope these efforts will result in advice and training that will improve the quality of nutritional studies.

It was also hypothesized that researchers could eventually start drawing conclusions to extract and purge the findings of studies that were distorted, so that the next generation of scientists would not start from scratch.

These guidelines are unclear, but they are likely to reflect best practices from other scientific fields and will emphasize a random and blind selection that meets the expectations and appreciation of the scientific community, at least any possible technical addition in this area.

But for now, scientists must act as observers, looking at false science and unintentional mistakes.

Weaver told Futurism that she participated in a recent meeting on the "PREDIMED" study when the speaker argued that public exams and corrections would help scientists stay loyal.

As long as scientists are ready to report errors in public, ordinary people will be kept informed of what counts as healthy foods and what is not.

Until the impact of these new guidelines emerges, most of the burden of healthy eating will go to the people themselves and their choices.

Pritchett says, "I think people are more inclined to focus on the summary of the study, so I will tell the audience what my students have said to me:" Look d & # 39; first the discussion and go back until the end. "

Make sure you look at the real repertoire before jumping on the board with spontaneous claims, for example, people who are browsing on Facebook and Twitter are now finding headlines that pasta does not cause weight gain. [19659002] But what's not easy to see, these articles have taken the time to remember that the study is funded by pasta companies, perhaps a good anticipation to take into account before decide to change dinner.

On the other hand, although there is no scientific way to say what is healthy and what is not, I will eat pizza every day and fill the bowl of corn kernel with bourbon.


  • Proofreading: Ahlam Murshid
  • Edition: Tasnim Al-Munajjid
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