Nick
Sun, Oct-27-02, 20:57
Thesse types of studies are not suited to nutritional issues.
If we leave aside the major problems of the reporting
involved in epidemiological studies, as well as how the
public takes advice, which may be good on some level but not
to an extreme (such as drinking a shot of flax oil a day),
there are still significant issues that are often ignored
(and I'm certainly not the first person to point this out). I
explain it to my students as follows: if there is a disease
that is related to a "bug," for example, cholera, then we can
look at it under a microscope, give it to healthy test
animals, see what happens when kill off the bug, etc.
Physiological mechanisms are clear, for example, if toxins
are produced by a bacterium that do not allow the body to
function properly, if the bacterium isn't killed off, the
body will eventually be unable to perform necessary
functions, and the person or animal will die. Under such
circumstances, epidemiology works very well, and that's how
it came into being - attempting to try to control infectious
diseases. However, telling people that nuts are "good"
prompts many questions. What food(s) was not eaten by the nut
eaters that the non-nut eaters were eating? What if I hate or
have sensitivities to nuts? If we knew it was the type of
vitamin E or magnesium in the nuts, we could just supplement
that, or eat a different source of it. Why not suggest that
Americans need vitamin E to counteract the free radical
damage done by the unsaturated fats? Are there special
interest involved (how would Archer Daniels Midland like to
hear that all the soybeans they are distributing is extremely
unhealthy except in small amounts, and in forms that
Americans won't eat?). Are nuts good for everyone, or are
there some people who should only eat very small amounts?
Without knowing anything about the physiology involved,
epidemiologists can do a lot more harm than good, and in this
case, the harm might be from people hearing about the study,
then eating a lot of peanuts (which are not nuts) or walnuts,
both of which are potentially big trouble, and those who
understand human physiology know this, but the
epidemiologists can say, "well, we saw an association, and
that's all we said," thereby protecting themselves from being
blamed at some point for advice that may be bad (like all the
non-physiological attacks on saturated fats) or misread
(people eating peanuts and walnuts).
Marion Nestle remarked that "Americans die from eating too
much food and the wrong kinds of it. The food industry,
blinded to any concerns beyond short-term profits, preys on
its customers with advertising, corrupts the political
process, and manipulates the very nature of what people desire
to eat." The scientific process has also been corrupted, and
though the examples of bogus epidemiological studies are
endless, you might want to read "Heart Failure," "Tainted
Truth," or "The Cholesterol Conspiracy," towards this end.
Interestingly, Nestle helped launch a project (in 1988) by the
U.S. Surgeon General's Office to write a definitive report on
the hazards of fat consumption (and, apparently, still sees
saturated fat as a food to be avoided). Yet eleven years
later, this report was "killed," with no explanation except
that the resources needed to complete it were too great, or as
Nestle claims, the subject matter "was too complicated."
Epidemiology simply cannot work, on its own, in the field of
nutrition. Without understanding important physiological
concepts, you can "tweak" a study to show just about anything,
for example, using frozen, homogenized eggs to show that they
increase coronary heart disease risk (which they do because
the cholesterol gets oxidized in the processing), when in
reality, nobody eats an egg that has been homogenized. But all
the public hears is that buying egg beaters is the "safer"
alternative - and yet all the egg beaters eaters are dropping
dead just as fast as the junk food eaters.
This is not the case with epidemiological studies in the
nutritional context. For example, if we give one group of
people a lot of steak to eat, and another group a lot of fish
to eat, then notice that the steak-eaters have a higher
incidence of heart disease, we might be told that it is
because of saturated fat, when the arachidonic acid and the
oxidized cholesterol in steak are more likely to be the
problem, when considered in a physiological context. The fish
eaters, like Eskimos, will have their blood vessels
disintegrate after so many years on such a diet (assuming a
great deal of fish high in omega 3s are consumed, of course),
but if the epidemiological studies are only for a few years,
only "good" results will be seen (though a few people might
get strokes from such a diet in that time frame - they are the
"canaries in the coal mine"). There is no epidemiological
study that can demonstrate that saturated fat is a "cause" of
heart disease because just giving people saturated fatty acids
to eat, and nothing else, is obviously not healthy because
they do not supply complete nutrition (vitamins, protein, etc.
are required). Instead, foods are given to people that contain
saturated fatty acids, but also all kinds of other things, and
the problem is that too many "nutritional scientists" take for
granted that certain foods are "good" while others are "bad"
and never question such basic assumptions. To me, this is
anti-scientific, and cannot be accepted without being looked
at very carefully. It amazes me how so many of these people
who love their epidemiological studies discount the best
epidemiological evidence in support of at least unrefined
coconut oil as a great saturated fat for humans, since
millions have used it over the course of thousands of years
with almost not heart disease!
Here is an example of "scientists" who fail to question basic
assumptions (and this is not even a loose epidemiological
study, but instead what I call a "test-tube magic" study,
demonstrating how much room there is to "fudge" the
physiological reality):
"Diets high in saturated fatty acids have been implicated in
the development of coronary artery disease." and then the
authors say ".we confirm the toxicity of palmitate [one of
many different kinds of SFAs] in other cell types.
Specifically. cell death in human umbilical vein endothelial
cells. a human hepatic cell line. and a macrophage cell line.
Cell death in these lines is specific for the saturated fatty
acid palmitate and does not occur with the mono-unsaturated
fatty acid oleate." What the authors do not mention is that
apoptosis (cell death) can be very beneficial, as damaged
cells can cause major health problems and need to be
eliminated - conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is produced
in large amounts by animals such as cows, goats, and sheep
that are free-range fed (the "natural" way), has apoptic
effects on fat cells, which is why it is being sold as a
weight-loss supplement in pill form (I suggest you consume
high-quality, non-homogenized dairy products instead of taking
pills for this effect, if desired). Just as is the case with
(non-oxidized) cholesterol, there is nothing wrong with
apoptosis occurring in your body (in fact, it must occur if
you want to continue to live), provided that it is happening
under the right circumstances. What happens in a test tube
under these kinds of conditions is not human physiology
("Cellular Death in Response to Fatty Acid" by S. Schiller and
J. Schaffer - 2001). Human nutritional science is more like a
detective story. There are pieces to the overall puzzle that
need to be put together correctly. You can force together
pieces that don't fit in various ways, but the picture you get
will look horrible, and that's exactly what the American scene
looks like, in the context of "diseases" related to
nutritional fallacies.
In the case of human nutrition, you had better begin to think
outside the box, or you will soon find yourself in one made of
pine! At least hear people like Ray Peat out. His writing is
the modern, nutritional version of Socrates' notion of the
bite of the gadfly. We all like to feel secure in the notion
that by avoiding saturated fat, or whatever, we will be
healthy, but if we admit that the evidence actually points in
the opposite direction (when we take into account the diets of
"traditional" cultures and the problems with nutritional
epidemiological studies) then we feel uncomfortable. I'm the
kind of person who has to find out for himself what is really
going on under such circumstances, but I guess most people
just want to be the proverbial ostrich, sticking its head in
the ground.
If we leave aside the major problems of the reporting
involved in epidemiological studies, as well as how the
public takes advice, which may be good on some level but not
to an extreme (such as drinking a shot of flax oil a day),
there are still significant issues that are often ignored
(and I'm certainly not the first person to point this out). I
explain it to my students as follows: if there is a disease
that is related to a "bug," for example, cholera, then we can
look at it under a microscope, give it to healthy test
animals, see what happens when kill off the bug, etc.
Physiological mechanisms are clear, for example, if toxins
are produced by a bacterium that do not allow the body to
function properly, if the bacterium isn't killed off, the
body will eventually be unable to perform necessary
functions, and the person or animal will die. Under such
circumstances, epidemiology works very well, and that's how
it came into being - attempting to try to control infectious
diseases. However, telling people that nuts are "good"
prompts many questions. What food(s) was not eaten by the nut
eaters that the non-nut eaters were eating? What if I hate or
have sensitivities to nuts? If we knew it was the type of
vitamin E or magnesium in the nuts, we could just supplement
that, or eat a different source of it. Why not suggest that
Americans need vitamin E to counteract the free radical
damage done by the unsaturated fats? Are there special
interest involved (how would Archer Daniels Midland like to
hear that all the soybeans they are distributing is extremely
unhealthy except in small amounts, and in forms that
Americans won't eat?). Are nuts good for everyone, or are
there some people who should only eat very small amounts?
Without knowing anything about the physiology involved,
epidemiologists can do a lot more harm than good, and in this
case, the harm might be from people hearing about the study,
then eating a lot of peanuts (which are not nuts) or walnuts,
both of which are potentially big trouble, and those who
understand human physiology know this, but the
epidemiologists can say, "well, we saw an association, and
that's all we said," thereby protecting themselves from being
blamed at some point for advice that may be bad (like all the
non-physiological attacks on saturated fats) or misread
(people eating peanuts and walnuts).
Marion Nestle remarked that "Americans die from eating too
much food and the wrong kinds of it. The food industry,
blinded to any concerns beyond short-term profits, preys on
its customers with advertising, corrupts the political
process, and manipulates the very nature of what people desire
to eat." The scientific process has also been corrupted, and
though the examples of bogus epidemiological studies are
endless, you might want to read "Heart Failure," "Tainted
Truth," or "The Cholesterol Conspiracy," towards this end.
Interestingly, Nestle helped launch a project (in 1988) by the
U.S. Surgeon General's Office to write a definitive report on
the hazards of fat consumption (and, apparently, still sees
saturated fat as a food to be avoided). Yet eleven years
later, this report was "killed," with no explanation except
that the resources needed to complete it were too great, or as
Nestle claims, the subject matter "was too complicated."
Epidemiology simply cannot work, on its own, in the field of
nutrition. Without understanding important physiological
concepts, you can "tweak" a study to show just about anything,
for example, using frozen, homogenized eggs to show that they
increase coronary heart disease risk (which they do because
the cholesterol gets oxidized in the processing), when in
reality, nobody eats an egg that has been homogenized. But all
the public hears is that buying egg beaters is the "safer"
alternative - and yet all the egg beaters eaters are dropping
dead just as fast as the junk food eaters.
This is not the case with epidemiological studies in the
nutritional context. For example, if we give one group of
people a lot of steak to eat, and another group a lot of fish
to eat, then notice that the steak-eaters have a higher
incidence of heart disease, we might be told that it is
because of saturated fat, when the arachidonic acid and the
oxidized cholesterol in steak are more likely to be the
problem, when considered in a physiological context. The fish
eaters, like Eskimos, will have their blood vessels
disintegrate after so many years on such a diet (assuming a
great deal of fish high in omega 3s are consumed, of course),
but if the epidemiological studies are only for a few years,
only "good" results will be seen (though a few people might
get strokes from such a diet in that time frame - they are the
"canaries in the coal mine"). There is no epidemiological
study that can demonstrate that saturated fat is a "cause" of
heart disease because just giving people saturated fatty acids
to eat, and nothing else, is obviously not healthy because
they do not supply complete nutrition (vitamins, protein, etc.
are required). Instead, foods are given to people that contain
saturated fatty acids, but also all kinds of other things, and
the problem is that too many "nutritional scientists" take for
granted that certain foods are "good" while others are "bad"
and never question such basic assumptions. To me, this is
anti-scientific, and cannot be accepted without being looked
at very carefully. It amazes me how so many of these people
who love their epidemiological studies discount the best
epidemiological evidence in support of at least unrefined
coconut oil as a great saturated fat for humans, since
millions have used it over the course of thousands of years
with almost not heart disease!
Here is an example of "scientists" who fail to question basic
assumptions (and this is not even a loose epidemiological
study, but instead what I call a "test-tube magic" study,
demonstrating how much room there is to "fudge" the
physiological reality):
"Diets high in saturated fatty acids have been implicated in
the development of coronary artery disease." and then the
authors say ".we confirm the toxicity of palmitate [one of
many different kinds of SFAs] in other cell types.
Specifically. cell death in human umbilical vein endothelial
cells. a human hepatic cell line. and a macrophage cell line.
Cell death in these lines is specific for the saturated fatty
acid palmitate and does not occur with the mono-unsaturated
fatty acid oleate." What the authors do not mention is that
apoptosis (cell death) can be very beneficial, as damaged
cells can cause major health problems and need to be
eliminated - conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is produced
in large amounts by animals such as cows, goats, and sheep
that are free-range fed (the "natural" way), has apoptic
effects on fat cells, which is why it is being sold as a
weight-loss supplement in pill form (I suggest you consume
high-quality, non-homogenized dairy products instead of taking
pills for this effect, if desired). Just as is the case with
(non-oxidized) cholesterol, there is nothing wrong with
apoptosis occurring in your body (in fact, it must occur if
you want to continue to live), provided that it is happening
under the right circumstances. What happens in a test tube
under these kinds of conditions is not human physiology
("Cellular Death in Response to Fatty Acid" by S. Schiller and
J. Schaffer - 2001). Human nutritional science is more like a
detective story. There are pieces to the overall puzzle that
need to be put together correctly. You can force together
pieces that don't fit in various ways, but the picture you get
will look horrible, and that's exactly what the American scene
looks like, in the context of "diseases" related to
nutritional fallacies.
In the case of human nutrition, you had better begin to think
outside the box, or you will soon find yourself in one made of
pine! At least hear people like Ray Peat out. His writing is
the modern, nutritional version of Socrates' notion of the
bite of the gadfly. We all like to feel secure in the notion
that by avoiding saturated fat, or whatever, we will be
healthy, but if we admit that the evidence actually points in
the opposite direction (when we take into account the diets of
"traditional" cultures and the problems with nutritional
epidemiological studies) then we feel uncomfortable. I'm the
kind of person who has to find out for himself what is really
going on under such circumstances, but I guess most people
just want to be the proverbial ostrich, sticking its head in
the ground.