[ExI] Old Nutrition Studies

[Jason Resch]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 10:04 AM, Brian Manning Delaney <
listsb at infinitefaculty.org> wrote:

>
> El 2015-08-27 a las 10:50, Jason Resch escribió:
>
>> On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 12:22 AM, Brian Manning Delaney
>> <listsb at infinitefaculty.org <mailto:listsb at infinitefaculty.org>> wrote:
>>
>
>     I'm not saying dietary SFA is evil; rather: we don't know. If I had
>>     to guess I'd say one would be better off with complex carbs and lots
>>     of MUFA and some PUFA.
>>
>> Based on what evidence?
>>
>
> Well, the "we don't know" part is based, of course, on a LACK of evidence.
> If you're wondering about my guess, that's based on epidemiological studies
> (those of long-lived peoples, and those conduct on people around the
> Mediterranean -- very weak evidence in both cases, thus "guess").


That study was terribly flawed. Their survey about what corsican's ate was
taken during lent when they weren't eating meat. They also ignored the fact
that Corsicans ate extremely low levels of grains in their diet.  There
were also very large biases between countries in the diagnosis of cause of
death. This study took place between the 1950s and 1960s. Many hospitals at
that time lacked the ability to diagnose heart disease as the cause of
death.

Correlational studies are never evidence, at best they can only be used as
a justification for funds for to run a controlled experiment. Here is my
theory:

Ancel Keys's study looked at correlation between consumption of animal
protein (as an aggregate in the country) and heart disease deaths. However
consumption of animal protein is most correlated with wealth/levels of
industrialization of the country. Had Key's choose to look at the
correlation between ownership rates of cars, and heart disease, he would
have seen a strong correlation. That would not have meant, however, that
owning cars causes heart disease. Since wealth of a country is correlated
with so many other things: consumption of fast food, stress, sedentary
lifestyles, sugar consumption, meat consumption, smoking, etc., what is to
blame? There's a hundred different possible causes, and no epidemiological
study can pick out which.

This page elaborates on the issues with Ancel Key's study:
http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/12/22/the-truth-about-ancel-keys-weve-all-got-it-wrong/


>
>
>     (It's also likely that SFA is a problem only above a certain chain
>>     length.)
>>
>> Why do you think so?
>>
>
> Take a look at some of the work here:
>
>
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=dietary+saturated+fat+chain+length+cholesterol
>
> (use "Review" and "Human" filters).
>

I see 14 articles using the review filter and those search terms. But none
stood out as indicating long chain saturated fats were harmful. What was
the particular study?


>
> Although BELOW a certain chain length there could also be probs! --
>
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23616516
>
> (Telemore length per se might not be as important as people think, though.)
>
>
Interesting. The other confounding factor is that any calorie taken from
some source, means some other calorie not taken from another source. Since
protein calories, on a percentage basis, represent a small fraction of
total calories in the diet, it means that typically an extra calorie from a
fat source means one less calorie from a carbohydrate source and vice-versa.

Jason
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