[spooningtamarin]

This is completely false. Scientific studies, controlled, on nutrition and health are going back at least 30 years, and in these 30 years you can find a huge amount of quality research and quality data.

Problem is that no one looks at meta-analyses, no one reports about it. WHO has reports that are sometimes half-assed and clearly * put large food industry * neutral.

Just take the newest biggest report on eating processed meat being equivalent to 3-5 cigarettes per day (cancer up by 18%). They did a meta-analysis on 800 articles, and in those articles and conclusions authors clearly state that meat can be substituted by alternatives that do not cause cancer, but WHO decided to skip that and mention that there are health benefits to eating meat (high iron which is not that high compared to plant sources, B12 which of course, cannot be found anywhere except animals and fortified foods).

They do the same thing with milk, supplements etc.

[trowawee]

Except most of those studies are bullshit bad science done with fundamentally flawed methodology. It got a throwaway line in the article, but just about the only honest way to make scientific conclusions about nutrition would be to take a human population of statistically significant size and diversity, move them underground to a controlled environment, and control and monitor their food intake for some period of years. That would be a data set that might not be spurious (although I bet even within that, people would find ways to eat stuff the researchers can't record). That's not going to happen, so nutrition will continue to mostly be junk science that utilizes crappy methods and statistical manipulations to create sensationalist headlines and keep selling books.

[spooningtamarin]

Well, I just said that there's a huge amount of quality work done in those 800 studies.

And what you suggested isn't at all uncommon in those quality work studies.

Checkout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Cornell%E2%80%93...

A controlled environment of people not changing their diet and lifestyle in a 20 year time span.

There's plenty of studies like that.

There are quality studies where p-values tell that their sample size isn't large enough, but when you do a meta-analysis of studies with same methodology you get a relevantly sized sample.

I do guess you are talking about those "Phd nutrition guys" and yes, they are full of bullshit and aren't scientists, because if you are talking about the real science, your comment is full of disinformation.

[Grishnakh]

Not only that, but people's bodies differ greatly. People have different metabolisms, males use more energy than females, some people are bigger (taller) and heavier than others, etc. Also, people's bodies just work differently, some of which may be attributable to gut bacteria. Some people can get away with eating a lot more calories than others, or different foods, and have a totally different effect.

[woobar]

All these factors are accounted for. I.e. in a controlled environment individual metabolic rate, weight, gender, etc will be measured.

[HelloMcFly]

What wouldn't likely be measured with any sort of accuracy is individual variance is gut microbiota, which I'd assume could lead to notable differences. Even so, I think we'd get more signal than noise doing our best to measure and factor out what we are currently able to.

[biomcgary]

Sequencing to identify gut microbiota is now common in research. The general makeup of gut bacteria is relatively stable, so weekly or monthly sampling should be adequate.

[DrScump]

Microbiome, one of the most important factors, is not accounted for. Neither is genetics.

[TeMPOraL]

The 538 article argues against your point. It implies that those 30 years of studies are mostly shit, and explains why.

[gill984]

I don't think it's equivalent to 3-5 cigarettes. An 18% increase isn't the same when the incidence rate on colorectal cancer starts off so low compared to lung cancer. This article is one that got posted on HN a while back.

https://medium.com/life-tips/processed-meats-as-bad-as-cigar...

[trentmb]

> milk

Oh god, I go through a gallon of milk a week- what do I need to know?

[talmand]

Current study says it's bad for you. Next study says it's good for you. Next study says it's bad for you. Next study says it's good for you.

This study is good because group A paid for it. This study is bad because group B paid for it. This study is good because group B paid for it. This study is bad because group A paid for it.

And so on. And so on. And so on.

And, of course I'm generalizing.

[trowawee]

Hahaha. Just wait 25 minutes and someone else will tell you it's actually good for you, then just avoid any and all other nutrition advice for the rest of your life.

[noondip]

The only studies you will ever find supporting milk consumption are funded by the dairy industry. I challenge anyone reading this to prove me wrong.

[rhexs]

Unfortunately, the medical industry (and their lack of focus on nutrition) has done a rather poor job illustrating why milk is bad for you. The studies do support that, but due to poor communication, you get people hand waving away the results suggesting it will be shown to be good for you next week, i.e. this thread.

[noondip]

I can't help but draw parallels to the 60's, when the causal link between smoking and lung cancer was absolutely apparent. Yet, most doctors smoked, so few actually recommended people cut it out. As a result, millions of people perished or had serious health complications. Yes, it's incredibly unfortunate the medical authorities have failed us - but it's not entirely their fault. Doctors receive no nutrition training during their education - none!

[justncase80]

A gallon per week by yourself, or for a household?

Milk isn't inherently bad but the things you need to know are:

A) Consuming it doesn't really affect your calcium levels.

B) Its basically just another sugary drink.

C) Excessive amounts of it can cause anemia.

D) Don't give much of it to small children due to reason C.

Here are some more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzyFZcuHmeI

[nikolay]

What milk though? UHT nonfat milk is not milk, it's what they fed the pigs with to gain weight. For years, I've been drinking raw milk without any issues. In fact, I have UHT milk spoil and never the raw kind. Never had any stomach upset, nothing! The taste is without a match! No need to homogenize - in raw milk, fat is evenly distributed. It's medicine, not food! You should try it! Organic Pastures is widely available in California! And as a bonus - try their raw cream and cheddar! Yum! In fact, the cream has the most precious nutrients in milk, it's much healthier than butter.

[noondip]

http://nutritionfacts.org/?s=milk

[nikolay]

NutritionFacts.org should rebrand to VeganPropaganda.org, because that will reflect its mission much better! Otherwise, it's the most single-sided nutrition site I've encountered so far!

[noondip]

Why don't you evaluate the evidence presented on the website on its own merit, rather than appealing to ridicule?

[nikolay]

There's evidence on both sides, many conflicting studies and findings and so on. The Greger guy cherry-picks - he's a propaganda leader, not a scientist!

[DrScump]

Recheck your pulse. Statistically, you've been dead for months.

[noondip]

Meat has heme iron which is actually quite bad for you. B-12 can be found in a weekly sub-lingual pill and it's the only vitamin which needs to be supplemented on an animal product-free diet. The dangerous of meat consumption far outweigh any purported "health benefits".

[briHass]

The [sic] "dangerous" of meat consumption are not established and likely non-existent. Almost all "evidence" that meat is harmful comes from the type of poorly conducted, magic-statistics studies this article discusses. Also, meat is an awfully broad category. Fish is meat, and almost every reputable nutrition information source considers fish to be very healthy.

If it's your moral position to avoid animal products, so be it, but don't think you're doing it to improve your health.

[noondip]

They're absolutely well established; don't kid yourself. Look at the latest report from the World Health Organization on the carcinogenic properties of meat for just one recent example. All meat is high in saturated and trans fat, has animal cholesterol, has industrial pollutants which bio-accumulate in fatty tissue. It really isn't just the moral and environmental imperatives which should cause one to question the habit of eating animals - your own health greatly depends on it. Check out my post history for further citations and references if you're not convinced.

[logfromblammo]

Did you read the linked article?

Did you read it far enough to get to the part about correlating foods with cancer risk?

If you did, you are implicitly saying that broad-based search for significance on survey-based data sets is good enough science to plan your entire lifestyle around it.

Many people saying similar things does not make any of them correct. Being correct makes them correct. And to be correct, we have a religious ritual known as the scientific method, wherein the value of your conclusion is dependent not only on the strength of your data, but also how you collected it, and even how you asked the question that you wanted to answer.

According to the article, the overwhelming majority of dietary studies do not strictly adhere to the ritual, and therefore produce unreliable results. So if you would, please indicate the biochemical mechanism by which ingested meats promote any single type of cancer.

When you say "saturated fat", "trans fat", and "animal cholesterol", you are eliding over the fact that these are not specific chemicals, but broad classes of many different chemicals, each of which has a distinct biochemical role in humans.

For instance, the trans fats in meats and dairy are, specifically, vaccenic acid (18:1 trans-11) and rumenic acid (18:2 cis-9 trans-11), along with a few other conjugated linoleic acids. They are produced by gut bacteria. There's a fun article about those, showing how rumenic acid is actually the trans fat that prevents breast cancer in rats, by interrupting the normal conversion of VA to RA. [0].

The trans fats in partially hydrogenated oils are an entire zoo of chemicals, most of which are not naturally produced by the intestinal flora of livestock animals.

And stearic acid (18:0) and lauric acid (12:0) are probably healthier in isolation than palmitic acid (16:0) and myristic acid (14:0). Meats, while having a higher saturated fat fraction than vegetable oils, also have more stearic acid in proportion to palmitic.

Additionally, humans can and will convert stearic acid (18:0) to oleic acid (18:1 cis-9) with stearoyl-CoA 9-desaturase, and palmitic (16:0) converts to palmitoleic acid (16:1 cis-9) by the same enzyme.

So what chemical present in all meat promotes the cancers?

[0] http://jn.nutrition.org/content/134/10/2698.abstract

[noondip]

Your study is on rats and funded by the dairy industry. That ought to give you some idea of how desperate Big Ag is to exonerate the poisonous saturated fat.

[logfromblammo]

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/3/352.full

Scroll down to references and citations, and educate yourself about the trans fats that are present in meat and dairy.

You may wish to re-examine your previous claim that vaccinic acid and conjugated linoleic acids may contribute to negative health effects when eaten with meat.

It is also worth mentioning that some of those trans fatty acids are produced by bacteria found inside the human intestinal tract [0]. You're getting those anyway, whether you eat meat or not.

Can you identify one or more of the saturated fats found in meat that produce adverse health effects? Better yet, can you identify the reactions in the biochemical pathway that produce those effects?

I am reluctant to accept your apparent claim that "saturated fat is bad for you", when I am well aware that medium chain saturated fats are sent directly to the liver, whereas long chain saturated fats are assembled into triglycerides if not already in that form, packaged up with cholesterol and protein, and transported through the lymphatic system before reaching the bloodstream.

As the original article stated, correlation based on survey responses is a weak, weak, weak way to do research.

It may be true that eating meat is relatively unhealthy. But it also may be the case that the unhealthful effects are produced by the Maillard reaction products from the cooking process, and that changing the preparation method removes the additional health risks [1]. You won't know until doing enough real, rigorously scientific studies to more precisely identify the mechanisms in play.

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19118369

[1] Some raw meat advocates already believe this.

[spooningtamarin]

> Almost all "evidence" that meat is harmful comes from the type of poorly conducted

In the last 30 years there have been studies claiming that with very very good methodology, you could cite some of the stuff from the '80s and you wouldn't be incorrect.