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Comment by beagle3 | Hacker News Reader

That's true, from both the "for" and "against sides". Anyone who things that only happens on one of the sides should check their confirmation bias.

And no, this is not an "every opinion deserves equal airtime" claim. The vast majority of nutrition and health experts draw on a mix of science, pseudo science and superstition, and assume it is all science.

(Quick check: Think salt intake causes hypertension? That dietary cholesterol (and cholesterol in general) is bad for you? That you can only get B-12 from meat, or that cows make it? If you answered "yes", your answers are not based on science)

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Yes, you are making a "every opinion deserves equal airtime" claim.

When someone who isn't trained at all in a field claims to have made a revolutionary advance in that field, the rational response for a non-subject-matter-expert member of the public is deep skepticism. The discovery might indeed be revolutionary, but the way we find out is by running proper scientific tests on it, not by pioneering the revolution.

The rational objective news angle on this is as a human interest story. Until a proper, falsifiable scientific test is at least planned, this project is genuinely interesting, but has no scientific merit.

(FWIW, health advice condensed into headline "do" and "don't" edicts is bad science reporting as well)

On the contrary. I am saying "experts ALSO deserve skepticism". Not equal doubt, but certainly nonzero doubt. And I gave three examples that experts often get wrong, and the only times I see them questioned is when I do that.

Most of the criticism directed at soylent is of "this doesn't seem right" variety, rather than the "this detail is wrong" variety. The latter is what I read the discussions for. The former is a waste of bits.

>the rational response for a non-subject-matter-expert member of the public is deep skepticism

And the response in question is not deep skepticism, but equally non-scientific and inaccurate nonsense. "Soylent will kill you because you need the magic spirits of whole foods!" is not skepticism, it is bullshit.

Let's keep one thing that the poster you are replying to had in mind:

Human nutritional science is HORRIBLE from a "meta-science" perspective. Gary Taubes, who admittedly is a bit of a one trick pony, has written extensively on the failings of the nutritional scientific community to adequately fund real, controlled studies that test out poorly performing hypothesies that have been taken as gospel.

Eggs are good for you now, but a few years ago every doctor was saying they were bad for you, along with butter. Why is that? Because nutritional science SUCKS. The general public thinks that eating a serving of bacon is worse for their body than eating a serving of raisin bran. The actual data shows that the opposite is true. The fault for this lies 100% with the nutritional science community in the United States.

As a person who fell victim to their bullshit for years until I tried the Atkins diet (tons of green vegetables, meat, minimal carbs/sugar) and subsequently lost weight, improved my blood profile (HDL went up, triglycerides went down, LDL decreased slightly) and all the while going against the conventional wisdom on diet. I tried low fat, I tried vegetarian/vegan, none of it worked. It was scientifically unproven bullshit due to a flawed scientific community embedded in the study of human nutrition.

I'm not saying reject the scientific credentials of individuals in the community. I'm saying reject the establishment. They have repeatedly failed the public, so fuck em.

> Human nutritional science is HORRIBLE from a "meta-science" perspective.

What most people don't realize is that their gut is probably the single thing with the biggest influence on nutrition, and it is practically its own goddamn biome. Also, what we know of human metabolism would fill an entire wall with an intricate nightmare spaghetti chart, and that would be the abridged version.

At this point, the only viable way to proceed is to continue research and empirical data on large populations. This is why traditional diets and whole foods win, because we already have a lot of data.

"That you can only get B-12 from meat"

Well, maybe "meat sources (dairy products under the umbrella) are the only significant source of B-12 without supplementation" is more accurate.

Cereals are "fortified" so I count that as supplementation.

Sure, many yeasts contains B-12 too, some quite a bit. I'd even agree that it is significant, but it doesn't occur in foods people normally eat (maybe a guess here, but if that were true, vegans wouldn't need to supplement with yeast, etc), so it's taken as a supplemnt.

And now for the science: neither people nor animals make their own B12. Instead, we employ good bacteria in our gut to do that (and so do cows).

After the discovery of antibiotics, many people in the western world became B12 deficient - especially vegetarians. However cows and other animals are just as incapable of making it - and in the last 30 years or so, just as deficient as humans, as they've also been getting lots of antibiotics.

So we give them supplements. Thus they have enough B12, and meat eaters do too. According to some estimates, 80% of the world's B12 production goes to animals these days. So, likely, your B12 coming from meat is still from supplement, albeit one given to your hamburger while it was still alive.

I have no dietary sources of B12, and yet have good levels, way above population average. You might call me a liar, more then one MD did. But they usually apologize if they actually research this (Wikipedia B12 has enough info)

I think if anyone reasonable researches this they'll see that there is still some controversy on the issue (Studies show both sides). I don't have an axe to grind in this argument, so I'm not even going to bother digging that deep, but I'm not entirely convinced. I'm not a meat eater for the sole purpose of getting B12 and dont' try to convince vegans to eat meat with such sad arguments, so I hardly care what the true concensious is (though I'd be convinced with some real sites by actual qualified dieticians or other health professionals -sorry, It's a fallacy, but I don't like getting my "facts" from programmers and Wikipedia).

Anyway, my guess is you are in your early to mid twenties, and probably have only been a vegan for a handful of years, am I right? Give it 20, 30 years and lets see if your B12 levels are still good.

> I think if anyone reasonable researches this they'll see that there is still some controversy on the issue (Studies show both sides).

I've never heard of a study claiming B12 in animals in vivo is not synthesized by bacteria (or archaea). Care to give a reference?

> sorry, It's a fallacy, but I don't like getting my "facts" from programmers and Wikipedia

Programmers, ok. Wikipedia - why? and "dieticians and health professionals" - sorry, most of them have no idea what they are talking about - they are just parroting what they learned. You admit yourself it is a fallacy. What's the point then?

> Anyway, my guess is you are in your early to mid twenties, and probably have only been a vegan for a handful of years, am I right? Give it 20, 30 years and lets see if your B12 levels are still good.

Your guess is very wrong. Been vegetarian for over 35 years (only a few years of those vegan, but not having a B12 source in almost any). And my B12 levels are very good, although they weren't in the past.

"I've never heard of a study claiming B12 in animals in vivo is not synthesized by bacteria (or archaea). Care to give a reference?"

That's not what I was referring to. I'm referring to the (implied) claim that the B12 synthisized in our gut by bacteria is available to us.

Wikipedia doesn't support that claim, and Wikipedia is editable by anybody, so while it's mostly trustworthy, if a heavy portion of the editors have a bias, it's going to show in an article that is heavyily political/quasi-relisious like veganism. Or vice versa if Wikipedia editors are heavily carnivorous (e.g Atkins) and hate vegans or something like that.

"Been vegetarian for over 35 years (only a few years of those vegan, but not having a B12 source in almost any)."

Well, I don't know you, and can only assume you aren't lying or bending the truth, so I'll say that it is possible you are an outlier. In a cursory search yesterday (a couple hours only) I found references on both sides of the fence claiming that we can use B12 synthisized in our gut, and about the same number of sources saying we couldn't.

Who to believe in such a hot, political topic. A guy with an axe to grind (vegan trying to defend/promote his lifestyle) or the fact that there seems to be no concensious in the sciencific community?

> In a cursory search yesterday (a couple hours only) I found references on both sides of the fence claiming that we can use B12 synthisized in our gut, and about the same number of sources saying we couldn't.

If you can actually link to them, I would be grateful. I can only find yahoo-answers style discussions that claim people cannot.

> A guy with an axe to grind (vegan trying to defend/promote his lifestyle) or the fact that there seems to be no concensious in the sciencific community?

You are making an awful lot of assumptions about me. I'm not a vegan (I was for a few short years; I've been vegetarian for 35 though). And I more often in these discussions advocate against veganism and vegetarianism because even though they can be very healthy, most people do them wrong - and if you can't stand your ground with science in these discussions, you shouldn't be vegan.

And about consensus in the scientific community - I believe I have science backing me here, but let's put it aside - I gave two other examples in which the (so-called) scientific consensus is provably wrong (and others mentioned egg consumption). Personally, I'm not ignoring scientific consensus on everything and try to look at the details. Follow the common/average belief, and you get common/average results. If you like mediocrity, all power to you.

As a young-ish person with hyper tension who was told to cut back on the salt, I would love to see you back up your claims.

Could you link to a few relevant medical studies?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt#Recommended_intake

Have a look at the relationship between potassium/nacl and Blood pressure.

TLDR: Focus on unprocessed foods and foods you like that are rich in potassium. Lower your bodyfat percentage and exercise in same fashion regularly.

http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/food_myths/Salt_Causes_Hig... was the first google answer. I am on a phone and can't do a real search, but the gist is: there's a small percentage of the population (estimates I am familiar with are 5-20%) for which, once hypertension appears, it IS related to salt intake. However, in general it's a sodium potassium balance.

Analogy: peanut allergy is not caused by peanuts. But if you have it, you should avoid peanuts. It is possible that your hypertension is related to salt intake, in which the advice to cut back on salt is a good advice. But that's not generally true - not any more than general the advice to avoid peanuts is good.

As someone else in the same position (young and mild hypertension) I too was told to cut back. I am a CS PhD and have no medical/nutritional background. Everything I know came from Google, PubMed, and my GP - so (for want of a better phrase) take what I say with a pinch of salt ;)

The causal relationship between salt and blood pressure appears to have historically been under debate. I don't however think it should be so readily dismissed as not backed by "Science". In fact the evidence appears to suggest that there is now little to debate.

A study called INTERSALT [1] in the late 1980s appears to have muddied the waters, and is often brought up. It supported the causal link - but was subsequently seen to be the victim of poor statistical analysis.

This seems to have been the theme of those arguing pro-salt, finding flaws in studies. Fair game - but it doesn't disprove the link. More recently though the general consensus seems to be that a long term reduction sodium has a measurable and beneficial impact on BP[2]. A key study in demonstrating the link was the DASH-Sodium study, a randomized controlled trial [3].

The Harvard School of Public Health has some great articles[4][5] discussing the "Salt Debate" and points to a number of papers.

Personally, having taken time to read (and understand what I can), I think the evidence supporting is pretty compelling so have reduced the levels of sodium in my diet.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersalt_study [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23558162 [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11136953?dopt=Citation [4] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2010/07/10/its-t... [5] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/salt-and-heart-d...

By all means, if you already have hypertension, it is good advice to reduce salt intake - I don't know what the posterior probability for salt sensitive hypertension given hypertension, might be >50%, and it is definitely prudent especially since AFAIK there's no definite test for salt sensitivity.

However, iirc (can't review now), the data supports the following:

A) on average, if hypertension, reducing salt reduces blood pressure. But so does adding potassium.

B) despite that, there is a population with hypertension for which salt reduction does not reduce blood pressure.

C) In healthy individuals, increase of salt intake increases blood pressure slightly, but does not get to the hypertension realm.

But the often repeated meme "salt causes hypertension" is not supported by data. Furthermore, sodium deficiency is a serious condition, which was practically unheard of before the low sodium craze.

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