Posted by aldarion 3 days ago
Sugar may also contribute some to CVD but most cardiologists still think fats are the main driver of CVD.
That's like asking "what's the issue if somebody salts the soup with cyanide, most of the meal will still be soup". Yeah, but the cyanide will still kill you, even if it is the small percentage.
the people eating "lean steaks" are fooling themselves. There's no such thing as "clean beef" it all has high amounts of bad fats. Are some worse than others? of course but let's not kid ourselves.
I'm not trying to say that red meat is good for you. I'm just saying we have no real idea, and you really shouldn't trust a doctor about any of this stuff any more than you should trust the latest health influencer crackpot. Try things out, see if you can eat similarly to people you know who are in good health, and get blood work done regularly to see if you're ok. Probably avoid highly synthesized foods.
You are essentially hand waving away 80+ years of scientific studies and data because...you said so?
> you really shouldn't trust a doctor about any of this stuff any more than you should trust the latest health influencer crackpot.
This is an insane take and thoroughly discredits anything you have to say. Science has some basis in reality, even if it is somewhat flawed. The idea that we should throw out all science food guidelines because it's not perfect is completely crackpot.
I have no idea why nutrition brings out the crazy left field engineer types but it's a common pattern.
The reason for this is fairly simple to see: the methods of science that work so well in other areas of biology are completely impractical in nutrition because of
1. The difficulty of ascertaining and maintaining compliance with a specific diet for a long term study
2. The very long-term effect of some food choices
3. The unknown degree of inter-personal variance in food consumption
4. The expected low effect size of dietary recommendations
5. The huge variety of possible dietary effects
6. The huge amount of possible confounding factors in any population-level study
As you'd expect from this combination, the only effects we really have good science about are those that are relatively fast acting (e.g. salt intake increases BP in less than a day) or have very strong effect sizes (e.g. lack of vitamins or certain amino-acids produces severe diseases). For things like life-long effects, or even effects over multiple years, especially where the correlation is slight, you're left with very unclear science where the unknown possible confounding factors dominate any conclusion.
Edit to add: even today, there is a clear disconnect in nutrition science between people who advocate mostly for relatively simple guidelines and the avoidance of processed foods, usually recommending a preference for vegetables over animal-based products; and the older style of guidelines that you suggest, that say a grilled steak is much worse for you than, say, a stevia-sweetened granola bar you'd buy in a super market.
All that to say, the science isn't wrong, but the practicalities influence the advice.
However, some individuals suffer from a bad regulation of this homeostasis, and for them dietary cholesterol does lead to persistent high levels of blood cholesterol as well. So the guidelines should apply for them, but not for everyone else.
The measurement, control, confounds, and even basic concepts are atrocious here, this is possibly the only field as bad as or even worse than e.g. social psychology. And this is all ignoring the massive economic interests involved.
It is in fact only science illiteracy that would lead one to think nutrition science is a serious science. At the most absolute charitable, it is a protoscience like alchemy (which did have some replicable findings that eventually led to real chemistry, but which was still mostly nonsense at core).
Matter of the fact is that the entirety of belief that saturated fat "clogs the arteries" was based on the epidemiological studies which failed to adjust for other risk factors such as trans fat intake, intake of processed foods, and many more.
We should not throw away "80+ years of scientific studies and data" because... said "80+ years of scientific studies and data" do not exist. Not a single actual study had ever been made. The best we have are epidemiological studies, and these have massive issues.
"This is an insane take and thoroughly discredits anything you have to say. Science has some basis in reality, even if it is somewhat flawed. The idea that we should throw out all science food guidelines because it's not perfect is completely crackpot.
I have no idea why nutrition brings out the crazy left field engineer types but it's a common pattern."
It is not an insane take, you are just being a dumbass. Doctors do not have any training in nutrition. When I asked my doctor - doctors, actually, plural - for dietary advice, literally all of them told me "I don't have knowledge to advise you on that, figure it out on your own".
Science has basis in reality, yes. But doctors aren't scientists.
Every health authority mentions both cholesterol/saturated fat and blood sugar as contributing factors.
The issue is more that people eat too much fatty food, a specifically unhealthy fats.
On the other hand sugar is probably never good for you and you should aim to reduce it as much as possible.
I expect more of government though, and while I see the vague rationale behind hamfisted soda regulations, I remain deeply irked by the Fat Tax that Denmark once imposed. I offer no benefit of doubt and view that thankfully now bygone usurpation of the family table as unforgivable and implemented in full awareness of its flaws.
If one chooses to blame this on corporate influence and ignorance, then either way it exemplifies how easily fundamental aspects of our personal lives can be controlled based on deception.
Ain't sure about anyone else, but I certainly wonder how many other similar delusions we're subject to under such influence and "research'. I know of more than a few.
For me it begs the question of how and why we've allowed such centralized frameworks to persevere. Independent groups do exist, but then there's SEO, mainstream-media and all the other factors that make them practically invisible. And with abandonment of the Internet in favor of corporate friendly LLMs, I expect it to get worse.
But notice how "Sugar industry blames [saturated] fat for CVD" doesn't mean it's good for you. Their motive is to sell you sugar.
Just like finding evidence of the meat/dairy industry sowing FUD on saturated fat doesn't mean it's bad for you. Their motive is to sell you saturated fat.
We should instead look at our best converging contemporary evidence on how saturated fat impacts human heath outcomes, not wank off to blog posts like this.
To put it bluntly, jut eat maintenance calories with most of it coming from good protein sources and eat good amount of fibre. No, dietary cholesterol isn't gonna kill you, nor is sugar but obviously that doesn't mean you eat tons of them.
And the most important is enough sleep and WORKOUTTTT. 240 min of cardio and resistant training combined. Is that a lot to do?
Why do you need to optimize each and every aspect of each nutrition? "Oh, I don't eat meat because it is correlated to heart disease, so I consume dairy. Oh wait it isnt exactly digestible so I consume vegetables. Oh wait, I will have to eat like KGs and Kgs of veggies to meet the nutrient requirement. Oh wait, that means I am eating tons of carbs". How about you stop brushing your ego and just keep it simple by having a sense of number of calories you want and then eat enough protein from natural sources.
Yeah, for sure if you have any beliefs which prevents you from eating something then by all means find alternatives and have processed food. Processed food is not necessarily bad. Whey protein is processed but it is very important for vegetarians. What grinds my gears is this push to find the ideal diet. Vegans hate carnivores. Carnivores make fun of vegans for eating veggies. Like bro, shut up.
I got really into reading about nutritional science a few years ago and there's a surprising amount of stuff which people don't think is bad for them which probably is. Eating 3 meals a day with snacking between meals is probably a significant contributor to diabetes and CVD, for example. Yet a lot of people believe it's unhealthy or strange to only eat once a day.
Similarly fruit drinks are bad when a lot of people think they are good, and we probably over empathise problems with "red meat" these days – the main risks with there are more specifically with processed red meats like sausages and also how the meat is cooked.
If people care about their health they should be curious enough to ask questions and read scientific papers themselves.