Everyone is fed up with the endless amount of alleged scientific research claiming one thing one day, and a few weeks later just the opposite. Consuming red wine, cheese and coffee are found to decrease the risks of certain cancers and heart disease in one study, and in a short time another study states that the three foods in fact cause it. Both reports are trumpeted by all the TV, print and online media, leaving the consumer bewildered, not knowing what to believe.
Much of the media sensationalizes
nutrition and health news in general, creating distortions and exaggerations:
“Distorted
journalistic reports can generate both false hopes and unwarranted fears. For
instance, when a finding is reported in a sensational way, the results may create
a national media feeding frenzy. An example is the reaction to a report of a single-blinded
study involving only four patients with Alzheimer disease. News about such
topics as diet,
cholesterol, the toxic
shock syndrome, and
breast implantation affects individual
behavior and sometimes
causes panic. Subsequent research
does not support some claims or interpretations, as in the cases of pancreatic
cancer and coffee drinking or breast implants and collagen vascular disease……
“While most
reporting of medical news seems accurate, fair, and balanced, the cases of
sensationalized reporting receive, by their very nature, a disproportionate
amount of attention. They can also cause
a disproportionate amount of disillusionment and distancing of the public. The central
problem is that
scientists and journalists, while each
remaining responsible to
their own professional
standards, may become
complicit in a
system in which miscommunication
helps each reach certain ends. The system is characterized by the lack of clear
responsibility or oversight to prevent miscommunication. We believe
that a small
amount of attention
and oversight might go a long way
to help provide some balance and may
keep the public
informed and involved
in important scientific debate.”
Everything causes cancer - remarkable study on
specific foods and cancer risks:
“We selected 50 common ingredients from random recipes in a cookbook.
PubMed queries identified recent studies that evaluated the relation of each
ingredient to cancer risk. Information regarding author conclusions and
relevant effect estimates were extracted. When 10 articles were found, we
focused on the 10 most recent articles.
“Forty ingredients (80%) had articles reporting on their cancer risk. Of
264 single-study assessments, 191 (72%) concluded that the tested food was
associated with an increased or a decreased risk; 75% of the risk estimates had
weak or no statistical significance …… Associations with cancer risk or
benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies
highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak. Effect sizes
shrink in meta-analyses……
“At least
one study was identified for 80% of the ingredients selected from random
recipes that investigated the relation to cancer risk: veal, salt, pepper spice,
flour, egg, bread, pork, butter, tomato, lemon, duck, onion, celery, carrot,
parsley, mace, sherry, olive, mushroom, tripe, milk, cheese, coffee, bacon,
sugar, lobster, potato, beef, lamb, mustard, nuts, wine, peas, corn, cinnamon,
cayenne, orange, tea, rum, and raisin. These ingredients studied include many
of the most common sources of vitamins and nutrients in the United States
diet.”
The limits of observational studies
in reaching conclusions:
“Epidemiologic
– or observational – studies examine the association between what’s known in
epidemiologic jargon as an exposure (e.g., a food, something in the
environment, or a behavior) and an outcome (often a disease or death). Because
of all the other exposures occurring simultaneously in the complex lives of
free-living humans that can never be completely accounted for, such studies cannot
provide evidence of cause and effect; they can only provide evidence of
some relationship (between exposure and outcome) that a stronger design could
explore further. In other words, observational studies cannot distinguish
direction–whether exposure A influences outcome B, or B influences A, or both
are influenced by something else, even if that association may be strong and
consistent. What other design could illuminate a causal nature and direction of
the relationship, if present?”
Each body processes ingested food in
its own way:
“In a recent
study published in the journal Cell,
Israeli scientists tracked 800 people over a week, continuously monitoring
their blood sugar levels to see how they responded to the same foods. Every
person seemed to respond wildly differently, even to identical meals, ‘suggesting
that universal dietary recommendations may have limited utility,’ the
researchers wrote.
“‘It's now
clear that the impact of nutrition on health cannot be simply understood by
assessing what people eat,’ said Rafael Perez-Escamilla, a professor of
epidemiology and public health at Yale, ‘as this is strongly influenced by how
the nutrients and other bioactive compounds derived from foods interact with
the genes and the extensive gut microbiota that individuals have.’
“Making
things even more maddeningly complicated, seemingly similar foods can
differ wildly in nutrition profile. A local, farm-fresh carrot will probably be
less diluted in its nutrients than a mass-produced baby carrot that's been
bagged in the grocery store. A hamburger at a fast-food restaurant will have
different fat and salt content compared with one made at home. Even getting
people to better report on every little thing they put into their bodies can't
completely address this variation.”
The deception of data dredging in one
“scientist’s” lab is a typical example:
“Dr.
Wansink’s lab was known for data dredging, or p-hacking, the process of running
exhaustive analyses on data sets to tease out subtle signals that might
otherwise be unremarkable. Critics say it is tantamount to casting a wide net
and then creating a hypothesis to support whatever cherry-picked findings seem
interesting — the opposite of the scientific method. For example, emails
obtained by BuzzFeed News showed that Dr. Wansink prodded researchers in his
lab to mine their data sets for results that would ‘go virally big time.’”
Most nutritional studies have serious
limitations:
“Scientists
routinely scour data sets on large populations looking for links between
specific foods or diets and health outcomes like chronic disease and life span.
These studies can generate important findings and hypotheses. But they also
have serious limitations. They cannot prove cause and effect, for example, and
collecting dietary data from people is like trying to catch a moving target:
Many people cannot recall precisely what they ate last month, last week or even
in the past 48 hours. Plenty of other factors that influence health can also
blur the impact of diet, such as exercise, socioeconomic status, sleep,
genetics and environment. All of this makes the most popular food and health
studies problematic and frequently contradictory.”
Call for reform in nutrition science:
“…researchers
should publicly register their study protocols beforehand to eliminate data
dredging, share their raw data to increase transparency, focus on large
randomized controlled trials to produce better results, and refrain from
slicing and dicing large observational data sets into multiple papers that
magnify weak findings.”
7 Questions to help put health news
in context:
--One of the
most crucial things to keep in mind is how does a given study fit into the
entire body of evidence on a topic. What is the weight of the evidence?
--Is the
story reporting the results of a single study? A single study is rarely
influential enough to warrant that people change their behaviors based on the
results.
--How large
is the study?
--Was the study
done on animals or humans? Many important studies have been carried out on
animals, but to best understand how food and nutrients affect human health they
must be studied in humans.
--Did the
study look at real disease endpoints, such as heart disease or osteoporosis?
Chronic diseases, like heart disease and osteoporosis, often take many decades
to develop.
--How was
diet assessed?
--What type
of study is it? Study types fall into different categories, including cohort
studies, randomized controlled trials, meta-analyses, systematic reviews, case
control studies, and animal studies.
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Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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