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Comment by jiggywiggy | Hacker News Reader

This is simply untrue. The fault is not with the doctors, but the nutritional scientists.

Doctors just repeat advice given by national boards. These organisations are a bit slow, but still update their advice every few years, and these are heavenly reliant on statistics & research.

Just read Harvard's nutritional advice pages, they are exactly what a doctor will tell you.

The problem is nutritional science is highly unreliable. And the main reason is, that it's incredibly difficult.

Lots of the generic advice given is based on large scale studies over long years of population in the advice against red meat etc. But there are just too many variables. Which is why they keep changing their advice, however they thoroughly understand statistics.

Also the main focus has been on risk factors instead of understand in the mechanisms behind certain things, partially because the mechanisms are just so darn complicated.

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The larger issue is from studies being intentionally misleading for corporate gain. The food pyramid is the most prominent example that comes to mind.

That's only possible because the science itself is difficult.

I think you are being generous. The science behind cigarettes isn’t difficult and yet the industry was able to obfuscate for too long. It happens all the time and there are many, many examples. Climate change is another recent one.

Climate change science is super complicated.

Cigarettes was pretty clear pretty fast, they resorting to hiding the research, it was much more difficult to obfuscate it.

> That's only possible because the science itself is difficult. So was (and still is) landing a man on the moon, but we still managed to do it. Difficult doesn't have to mean "impossible" and accepting wrong/bad results just because getting the right results is hard, is plain stupid, at best. The vested interests of multi-billion $$ corps who often directly and indirectly fund the said "researches" make it hard to take lot of research at their face values. There is good reason to question your doctor and nutritionist, out of genuine concern for your own health and well-being. And if a doctor is not open to questions or addressing our concerns sufficiently, we should be on the lookout for a better doctor.

It's difficult because it's hard to know what assumptions are correct.

With practical matters putting a man on the moon it's easy to figure out who's wrong and right.

> The fault is not with the doctors, but the nutritional scientists

Not all NutScis work for the national boards. But those that do are bombarded with lobby.

> The problem is nutritional science is highly unreliable. And the main reason is, that it's incredibly difficult.

Science is --if the proper protocol if followed-- never unreliable, at best the scientific conclusions change often. Science is ALWAYS difficult, or it would not be science but mere common sense.

> national boards [...] are heavenly reliant on statistics & research.

So how come there's soooo much difference between countries? Canada recently started to advice against milk, but the US still promotes it. To me this shows the power of lobby is very stronger in these boards.

Regarding Canada you could also argue the opposite. The modern progressives are against dairy and meat, and Canada has quite a progressive wind blowing at the moment.

But there are risks of deficiencies in a meat & dairy free diet. I've people close to me had b12 and iron deficiencies who cut out those because of modern diet ideas.

Especially B12 is a big one, and if you don't supplement it's almost impossible to get on a diet without dairy or meat. It's also full of many other nutrients. So recommending milk doesn't sound so crazy to me, even though I agree the milk lobby is a known powerhouse in many countries.

To me the science is clear on dairy: really unhealthy. Meat/eggs is another story wrt health (though I dont eat it).

B12 is produced by bacteria in dark soil, and water soluble; so found in surface waters. Now we and most livestock drink treated water, so no more B12 in the water. Hence I supplement. The B12 that's in meat, eggs and dairy is typically also supplemented to them in their feed.

What substances in milk are unhealthy according to your research?

There might be issues with contanimated milk, but milk in itself doesn't seem to have much negative substances in it.

Lactose intolerancy is annoying for those who have it, but doesn't seem to have much consequences. Kale also has similar effects.

There are many issues with dairy... This video touches on many:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3c_D0s391Q

A main thing is the hormone content.

> Lactose intolerancy is annoying for those who have it

I believe we all have it to some degree. And LI is the default, it is just some europeans who became better at digesting lactose.

All food comes with downsides. I'd say for us humans the least downsides can be found in fruits and tender green leafs, which is what the diet of the other primates (yes humans are biologically classified as primates) predominantly eat in their natural habitats.

Apart from science and research, there's also common sense: no other animal consumes milk after their (if mammal) weaning stage.

Ahh so the progressive wind also blows over you :). Another MD with an opinion, wether you are vegan, vegitation, pro or anti seed, carnivore. There is always an MD who knows and fully understands everything.

Kind of strange you are going all the way back to primates. The last 200.000 years we've evolved to eat 60-90% of our kcals diet of animal based food.

The last 10.000 - 15.000 years we moved more to agriculture, mainly grains and rice. Which is not that long but allowed us to be better adapted to grains and other plants.

Overall the body seems to be very good at processing different kinds of food. From meat, dairy, eggs to plants. In these debates all sides invest too much in their moral positiion and have to resort to very complicated logic that doesn't have any backing in research but makes sense for them with a few graphs and 1 or 2 principles that they think define are the base of human health.

Meat & dairy come with its issues, but so do plants. They contain lots of antrinutrients blocking nutrient intake (which is main reason why iron is spinach is not taken up well). And plants are much less nutrient dense and are harder to digest. It's the vegans & vegetarians that need to supplement, which says something.

> Another MD with an opinion

He shares some facts on dairy, that's all.

> The last 200.000 years we've evolved to eat 60-90% of our kcals diet of animal based food.

Evolution is not that fast. We can "adapt" in that time (like the lactose tolerance), but not evolve to live of different foods. Evolutionists seems to agree.

> Overall the body seems to be very good at processing different kinds of food. From meat, dairy, eggs to plants. So people engrained too much in these debate resort to very complicated logic that doesn't.

Short term yes. Long term no. Primates are already omnivores. They eat bugs and rarely hunt. So its not far off. Dairy after weaning stage is a new thing.

> It's the vegans & vegetarians that need to supplement

Source? B12 is already discussed in this thread. Apart from that D maybe? Because we left our original sunny habitat. Otehr than that I dunno. See what the keto fans are recommending in supplements :)

No facts, he literally blames the whole obesity crisis on cheese. And he just doesn't like cheese because of high fat.

> Canada recently started to advice against milk [...]

What's the source for that?

https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/

The "make water your drink of choice" replaces a reference to milk in the previous recommendation.

That's not "advising against" milk, they just put it together with others in a group called "protein foods", where it belongs.

From the guidelines [0]:

"Vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and protein foods should be consumed regularly. Among protein foods, consume plant-based more often. Protein foods include legumes, nuts, seeds, tofu, fortified soy beverage, fish, shellfish, eggs, poultry, lean red meat including wild game, lower fat milk, lower fat yogurts, lower fat kefir, and cheeses lower in fat and sodium." (Italics mine)

[0] https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/guidelines/appendix-b-summar...

Ah, yes, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-... , the Harvard guide telling you to checks avoid potatoes, the most nutritionally diverse thing you could live off of solely for longest, and to eat 'healthy' vegetable oils like processed canola and soybean oil...

Oh it's true.

From Credit Suisse Foundation in 2015: 54% surveyed doctors falsely believed eating cholesterol-rich food raises blood levels of cholesterol. Concluded: "Clear example of the level of misinformation that exists among doctors."

> Just read Harvard's nutritional advice pages

Haha. The Economist: A researcher at the University of California uncovered documents from 1967 showing that sugar companies secretly funded studies at Harvard University designed to blame fat—not sugar—for the growing obesity epidemic

from: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie

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