Hacker News Reader

Comment by technocratius | Hacker News Reader

From what I understand from TFA this study was merely observational in nature and did not involve any blind randomized interventions of eating habits to probe the effect on insulin resistance and cognitive capabilities. Yet another correlation-not-causation study in a field already littered with conflicting data....

View on HN

The title is then false

I think this is a good time to point out the title of the study seems to be "Chronic refined carbohydrate consumption measured by glycemic load and variation in cognitive performance in healthy people", which is quite different than the title in a news article. I recommend always treating news reporting of science with a healthy level of skepticism, not driven from the assumption that the news will lie, but driven from the assumption that the news isn't written by scientists who understand the technicalities of scientific writing nor the existing body knowledge about the specific topic.

Study link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...

I agree it's not technically lying, but it's definitely something bad when people who know they don't know enough about something still write about it.

I did wonder what they used as placebo snacks.

But would you make placebo taste good without messing with the study itself?

Good point, had the same analyze.

That would be an interesting coincidence if bright people were eating organic while dumb people were eating processed food

The organic vs non-organic argument is a false dichotomy anyway, so you got to be joking right?

Since they mentioned processed foods, I think this could be mainly referring to ultra processed foods, where there is now a plethora of evidence that such foods contribute to poor health outcomes.

Pretty sure organic vs non-organic is a textbook definition of a dichotomy...

We're talking about organic food vs in-organic food. Who do you think defines organic and what's healthy food for long-term consumption? A lot of people , including the FDA...

Although not unthinkable, more likely, consider the effect of mental health, socioeconomic background, momentary stress levels, education level, etc that can influence both eating habits and cognitive abilities...

I'm not saying their hypothesis isn't plausible, their data just doesn't get us an inch closer to confirming it...

Not necessarily. “Smart” people could be having very similar perceptions around being healthy whereas “dumb” people maybe don’t agree or don’t care or have a less homogeneous mind set. In other words, even if there is a causal relationship it could be reversed or not even have anything to do with being dumb or smart but around a third factor. Not to mention that this article isn’t about organic but about processed carbs. Also it says nothing about whether this is a long-term effect developmentally or just that it suppresses it temporarily and you bounce back to normal otherwise.

Right, it could be that 'high-educated' people have been raised to snack on health food, say cucumber, while low-educated people were not and snack on whatever.

Then you would find that eating health food correlates with high-education. The correlation is real: if you see someone snacking cucumber, he is likely highly educated. It doesn't mean that eating more cucumber will make you smart though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com