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Carnivory - An Interesting Video

ghost_whistler said:
I don't think this is true at all. There are plenty of nutritional studies
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Not really... there are plenty of studies based on food questionnaires and observations as to what people eat for a few days. To do "proper" nutritional studies you have to lock people up and feed them exact ratio of foods so they can't "cheat". This will never happen so there will never be "scientific" trials of nutrition or diet because these days they are simply unethical. Once you realise that every study and report probably reflects the bias of whoever is writing the report then you start to see why there are studies that support every type of way of eating. I have even seen the Virta studies criticised because there isn't a "control group" who are presumably supposed to get more ill with Type 2 whilst those on the program get better..
That is why I am far happier to look at anecdotal evidence in this field where real people get real results rather than someone pontificating in a scientific journal and credit doctors helping people to get better over "theoreticians" saying it can't be proven because there has been no RCT.. but hey that's just me..
 
Given the lack of scientific nutritional trials, I tend to do a lot of reading, including anecdotes and the source of those anecdotes, and then use trial and error to find what works for me. I also try to engage common sense at all times : )
 
bulkbiker said:
Not really... there are plenty of studies based on food questionnaires and observations as to what people eat for a few days. To do "proper" nutritional studies you have to lock people up and feed them exact ratio of foods so they can't "cheat". This will never happen so there will never be "scientific" trials of nutrition or diet because these days they are simply unethical. Once you realise that every study and report probably reflects the bias of whoever is writing the report then you start to see why there are studies that support every type of way of eating. I have even seen the Virta studies criticised because there isn't a "control group" who are presumably supposed to get more ill with Type 2 whilst those on the program get better..
That is why I am far happier to look at anecdotal evidence in this field where real people get real results rather than someone pontificating in a scientific journal and credit doctors helping people to get better over "theoreticians" saying it can't be proven because there has been no RCT.. but hey that's just me..
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So what was the PURE study that people were enthusiastic about then?
 
ghost_whistler said:
And it was touted by many sites, including this one iirc, as pretty solid evidence venerating saturated fats
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My understanding of epidemiological studies is that they are a starting point for figuring out causation. If something is associated with a health problem, then you need to do more work to figure out if that something is a cause and what the mechanism is. It may turn out that the association observed can't be confirmed as a cause or is even disprove as a cause with additional work

However, I think that the way it works is that causation is disproved if there is no association or an inverse association. For example, in the PURE study, they found that higher saturated fat intake was associated with lower risk of stroke and, therefore, saturated fat intake can't be a cause of stroke.
 
Right, but it's frustrating when you hear people in the community critical of epidemiological studies who then tout the same kind of studies themselves.

On top of that, there's a number of articles I've seen that present, to my layman's eyes, a strong rebuttal of the claims made by people like Nina Teicholz and Gary Taubes.

How can we ever make sense of this when you get no clear answers. The carniovery crowd seems to subsist simply on 'well i feel good'. Great, but that's not really good evidence
 
ghost_whistler said:
Right, but it's frustrating when you hear people in the community critical of epidemiological studies who then tout the same kind of studies themselves.
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Criticism is justified when people draw incorrect conclusions from such studies on associations of results .. however when the reverse happens and a non association is shown then that is a far stronger outcome. The non-association of saturated fats with CHD as mentioned by @NoCrbs4Me was a very positive thing that PURE showed.

ghost_whistler said:
How can we ever make sense of this when you get no clear answers
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As I said in my previous comment "we" can't. What we can do is to try to do what feels good for us and if we get great results then we can advocate it as working well for ourselves to others. That is the whole strength of n=1 experimenting. You have to try things and see what works for you. Individualised ways of eating that seem to help the problems that you have. I have gone from Low Carb to Keto to now Carnivore. I may well move back to Keto in the future if long term Carnivore doesn't do much for me. Maybe even to Low Carb or I may carry on with Carnivore for life. You are looking for black and white answers where there are only shades of grey, and individual shades at that.
 
bulkbiker said:
You are looking for black and white answers where there are only shades of grey, and individual shades at that.
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Amen to that!

There is no "one true way". All we can do is read the "evidence" and decide for ourselves what makes sense to us and what doesn't - then try it out. The question I always asked myself is: "does this make sense in light of the evolution of our species?" If there appears to be a reasonable biological explanation, I'm much more likely to accept an idea has merit.
 
And remember that should we be lucky enough to find a way of eating that suits us right now we may also find that we need to adjust that regime as we age or if age related conditions develope. Nutrition is not linear neither is it an exact science.
 
Indy51 said:
According to John Ioannidis, nutrition isn't even close to being science at all:

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You can apply science to nutrition. A claim as to whether X food does Y is an empirical claim that science can investigate. That's triue of any claim made in the physical world. I don't think it matters whether nutrition is per se claimed a scientific discipline
 
ghost_whistler said:
You can apply science to nutrition. A claim as to whether X food does Y is an empirical claim that science can investigate. That's triue of any claim made in the physical world. I don't think it matters whether nutrition is per se claimed a scientific discipline
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I have not had time to watch the video yet, but applying science to nutrition is a very different thing from considering nutrition is a science. Those two phrases have different meanings and confusing the two is where half the problem lies.

Scientific investigations are interesting and may be useful.
Scientific declarations, sweeping assumptions and assuming that we all function the same is just misleading and causes a lot of misunderstandings.

There are far too many variables to make such declarations possible (although some people announce their ignorance by making such announcements). We are all individuals with genetic and environmental differences. Different capacities to absorb different nutrients, and different tolerances to foods. Claiming otherwise is simply incorrect.

Even the foods we eat vary tremendously, depending on where in the world it was produced, and how it was produced. Whether the soil was depleted. How long it was stored. Which strain of plant is being tested. The variables are endless.

Often people turn up on the forum with one of several different forms of diabetes, pre diabetes, or other glucose intolerance. Then they may have additional health issues, which often affect liver, stomach, upper and lower intestines, gall bladder and pancreas. Then there are other factors such as age, genetics, environment, food allergies and intolerances - all of which can affect how food affects the individual.

Making empirical claims about food acting in certain ways for everyone simply doesn't make sense.
 
With the use of continuous blood glucose sensors fitted to 'normal' people , they should be able to devise trails on how foods effect people at different stages of their lives. It would be interesting to take a healthy pregnant mum and see how blood glucose response changes over pregnancy.
If we could find markers before prediabetes is even indicated and what are the triggers, which could be excess or certain types of carbs, action could be taken far earlier.
This is interesting.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322614.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_country=US&utm_hcp=no&utm_campaign=MNT Weekly Full (non-HCP US) - OLD STYLE 2018-08-01&utm_term=MNT Weekly News (non-HCP US)
 
Honeyend said:
With the use of continuous blood glucose sensors fitted to 'normal' people , they should be able to devise trails on how foods effect people at different stages of their lives. It would be interesting to take a healthy pregnant mum and see how blood glucose response changes over pregnancy.
If we could find markers before prediabetes is even indicated and what are the triggers, which could be excess or certain types of carbs, action could be taken far earlier.
This is interesting.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322614.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_country=US&utm_hcp=no&utm_campaign=MNT Weekly Full (non-HCP US) - OLD STYLE 2018-08-01&utm_term=MNT Weekly News (non-HCP US)
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This is exactly what was done recently with cornflakes where it was shown that even "normal" people have fairly dramatically elevated blood sugar after eating cornflakes and milk.

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005143
 
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