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Comment by IIlllIllIIIIlII | Hacker News Reader

"X is good for you" is not typically a universal statement, but a probabilistic one. It doesn't have to be good for every single person in every single circumstance in order to be correct. It merely needs to be better for most people.

For example, not being overweight is good for you. The existence of people who survive famine because they started out obese doesn't disprove that.

"Breakfast is good for you" implies that it has some benefit. In some cases, however, the cost of eating breakfast is greater than its benefit.

For instance, if you have to get to work at 5am, are you better off waking up earlier to eat breakfast? In this case, the cost of lost sleep may be greater than the benefit of breakfast.

The NYT article points out that many of the studies that claim breakfast is good may be flawed. If that's true, then we are likely overestimating the benefit of breakfast. And that means that in many cases where we thought

perceived_benefit(breakfast) > cost(breakfast)

it could actually be that

real_benefit(breakfast) < cost(breakfast)

Yes, of course. I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just saying that "breakfast is good for you" is not disproven merely by showing that it's not always good for you.

my original thoughts were wrong. it makes more sense to use a cost/benefit function (ala economics) rather than a logical argument

Gotcha. I think that's what I'm trying to say as well.

Feel free to leave original comments up. No shame in knowledge or thoughts!

I contend that lunch and dinner are also good for you.

Can you apply the same logic there?

Well, yes, that's why you have people investigating intermittent fasting. Some interesting results there too. It's good to question things.

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