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Comment by bluedevil2k | Hacker News Reader

I can’t read it due to the paywall but I heard it talked about on a podcast. It is one of the dumbest papers I could imagine. The conclusion is things like “you add 17 minutes to your life every cup of broccoli you eat” and “you lose 32 minutes every cheeseburger you eat”. Obviously that kind of data is ridiculous and can’t apply to any individual, human lives are never that simple.

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This is a pretty dismal response to something we know has merit. While the human condition is complex we have data to support the habits of our eating. It's clear that many diesese are outcomes of poor nutritional choices. While calculations to the minutes are obviously a generalization at least it puts into perspective different choices.

Calling it a "one of the dumbest papers" seems overly dismissive with little to base it on other than subjective condideration.

Putting the calculation into minutes turns the paper into a farce. As you said, we already know eating broccoli is good, eating a burger is bad. We can also say eating a double cheeseburger is worse than eating french fries. What is dumb is trying to attach such precision to every item of food, which is the goal of this paper. Wouldn't you agree that there's some HUGE standard deviation on each food item (which isn't addressed in the paper). Some people can eat a cheeseburger a day every day and live to 100. Some people can eat vegetarian every day and die of coronary artery disease.

I think putting the calculation, even if not an exact representation, is much more valuable than someone blindly stating "this is dumb because it's not exact". The precision is not the point, but to make it consumable for a broader audience and to educate how you can potentially better your long term life.

Also, a vegetarian diet does not guarantee any level of health. This is just the same as saying cutting carbs is healthful. Both state nothing because a vegetarian diet can very easily be high in sugar just the same as cutting carbs is not representative of eating diets high in whole foods.

Conflation and ignorance aren't productive.

> I heard it talked about on a podcast […]

Do you remember which one? I'd like to get some more detail on this...

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