Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

OK health and nutrition people….. enough is enough.

For generations you have been giving us little correlations, tidbits of mechanisms. Vitamin X, High Intensity Sleep, Antioxidants, Kale, CR… Hot off the presses… new experiment reintroducing critically endangered carnivorous gut fauna…

There is nothing useful that we can do with this "information." It's just random letters from some book that you are throwing at us one at a time. "We found some Hs! It's the first letter in this chapter about Kano Jigaro and appears a dozen time a page. He had exceptional balance, grip strength and organizational skills. It's important. Pay attention to your Hs."

I demand a theory, preferably something simple and powerful like Darwinism that we can demonstrate by drawing sailboats. An equation would be nice.

Just this week I burned my mouth on a chili pepper. I fainted getting out of my ice bath after a 48 hour CR Fast and I went through the window doing HIIT sprints on an omnidimensional walking desk.

I'm going back to the food pyramid. Gimme some spuds.

> There is nothing useful that we can do with this "information."

You could always go for a nice curry and a pint.

The state of nutritional science really is pathetic. The ability to prey on the FUD surrounding "a long and healthy life" is second only to promises of get rich quick schemes.

Sometimes I think it would be more practical to educate the public about coming to terms with death rather than all of these food pyramids, cubes and spheres.

I think the problem is not the field, but your expectations from nutritional science research. Your comment is premised on the assumption that what you see in newspapers is representative of nutritional science. Like most research, the objective is seldom to immediately impact human health (exceptions: CDC, pharma companies, infectious disease researchers and others do that kind of stuff). Influencing human health outcomes is the hopeful eventual goal of most health-related research, but individual studies and projects are not designed to be end-all conclusions. I'd be suspicious of studies that claim this. But, read the quote by a co-author on that article. Each research project is designed to fit as a piece of puzzle into the larger picture. If you read the article, the Harvard public health professor puts it best:

> “We need more evidence, especially from clinical trials, to further verify these findings,” said a co-author, Dr. Lu Qi, an associate professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “and we are looking forward to seeing data from other populations.”

Correlations are better than nothing. You want a simple elegant theory but why do you think one actually exists. The human body is incredibly complex, maybe there are no general rules, only a plethora of interacting processes that are very hard to model.

Also I think that there is a lot of evidence and theory on the harmful effects of dietary saturated fats. Same for being overweight.

Well, if they are that hard to model, then why a simple diet change can be instantly linked to a longer life? That sounds pretty easy to model.

Of course, one is probably going to find out that there's other confounding variables involved and another paper will come up in a year or so making the exact opposite claims.

Hey! I'm an idea guy!

My idea is a simple elegant theory. Let the lab rats sort out the details.

What you're asking demands science in a field of marketing, journalism and baseless opinion. Good luck.

Then there's the almost cult-like religious aspects of fad diets to consider which almost drive the above.

Ugh.

Give them some credit: they've figured out that consuming food and fluids is good for you. I had been making the mistake of eating nothing at all so this is all a big help.

Remember, risk of death still sits at 100%.

Does it? I'm not dead yet.

Strictly speaking, the human condition only has around a 94% fatality rate at the moment.

(110 billion humans in the history of the planet. Over 7 billion currently alive.)

When I see the approximations needed to count the 7 billions humans actually living on earth, I smile at the 110 billions number.

The honest answer would be : we have no actual clue on how many people ever lived on earth, and we can only guesstimate how many are living on it right now.

Census only register people that let themselves be registered. It's probably mildly inaccurate in rich countries and terribly inaccurate in poor or chaotic countries.

Life is a terminal sexually transmitted disease.

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