And both fields have a lot of "experts" who all somehow manage to disagree with one another.
and then there are some basic/no-brainer principles that do seem to make sense: don't eat loads of sugar, include a <title>.
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.
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.
https://medium.com/life-tips/processed-meats-as-bad-as-cigar...
Oh god, I go through a gallon of milk a week- what do I need to know?
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-se...
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-bu...
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/trans-fat-saturated-fat-and-...
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.
This is how we know that sugar and refined carbs are bad. The author does a huge disservice by claiming everything is a correlation study