High protein diet not as bad for you as smoking
nhs.uk
nhs.uk
Certainly, when I was younger I used to engage in more recreational/social drinking, ie going to a bar or a party, but I got tired of it.
As to your point, yes, of course hardly anyone who ever drinks never drinks more than one unit of alcohol per day; that is practically impossible. But many will drink on average, no more than one unit per day.
Eating well in seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.". ...where "food" is defined more or less as: "as little processed as available, mostly plant-based food in as close to it's natural form as possible".
We think cholesterol is bad in excess, and conventional wisdom dictates, that since eggs are high in cholesterol, that eggs should be avoided. Except, the body doesn't metabolize much if any dietary cholesterol, and instead it's the cholesterol that you synthesize that's dangerous. There are some interesting observations with high fat dairy, which actually reduces cholesterol instead of increasing it. Again, conventional wisdom is demonstrating itself to not be correct. Calories in, calories out sounds good on paper, eat less, and you will lose weight. But this also is proven incorrect over and over. I have seen this in studies, and witnessed it first hand with a girl I was living with who was trying to lose weight. She would eat a fifth of the calories that I would eat, and would gain weight, where I would chow down on meat, fats, and green beans and lose weight. What does appear to be apparent is it's easier to maintain a healthy weight if you never gain weight in the first place; essentially your body attempts to return to it's heaviest when calories are available. Many new studies show that the war on salt is based in bad science, and it may not have as much of an impact as we thought. So is a little haiku the answer? I don't know what the right answer is, but I know it isn't that simple.
I really really enjoy a beer or two now and then, and I'm not going to feel the least bit guilty about it.
I also happened to meet my (now) husband in a pub.
* http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1059/is-alcohol-...
EDIT:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity
Study of the regions of the world known as blue zones,[11] where people commonly live active lives past 100 years of age, have speculated that longevity is related to a healthy social and family life, not smoking, eating a plant-based diet, frequent consumption of legumes and nuts, and engaging in regular physical activity. In another well-designed cohort study, the combination of a plant based diet, frequent consumption of nuts, regular physical activity, normal BMI, and not smoking accounted for differences up to 10 years in life expectancy.[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_into_centenarians
Many centenarians manage to avoid chronic diseases even after indulging in a lifetime of serious health risks. For example, many people in the New England Centenarian Study experienced a century free of cancer or heart disease despite smoking as many as 60 cigarettes a day for 50 years. The same applies to people from Okinawa in Japan, where around half of supercentenarians had a history of smoking and one-third were regular alcohol drinkers. It is possible that these people may have had genes that protected them from the dangers of carcinogens or the random mutations that crop up naturally when cells divide.[15]
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-secrets-of...
The results are sobering: "There is no pattern," says Barzilai, 54. "The usual recommendations for a healthy life -- not smoking, not drinking, plenty of exercise, a well-balanced diet, keeping your weight down -- they apply to us average people," says the researcher, "but not to them. Centenarians are in a class of their own." He pulls spreadsheets out of a drawer, adjusts his glasses and reads out loud: "At the age of 70, a total of 37 percent of our subjects were, according to their own statements, overweight, and 8 percent were obese; 37 percent were smokers, on average for 31 years; 44 percent said that they only moderately exercised; 20 percent never exercised."
But Barzilai is quick to point out that people shouldn't start questioning the importance of a healthy lifestyle: "Today's changes in lifestyle do in fact contribute to whether someone dies at the age of 85 or already at age 75." But in order to reach the age of 100, says the researcher, you need a special genetic make-up. "These people age differently. Slower. They end up dying of the same diseases that we do -- but 30 years later and usually quicker, without languishing for long periods."
37 percent isn't disproportionate. It is about average.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_tobacco_consumpti...
You can't just go around spouting "facts" without any basis.
EDIT:
Congratulations, you have just been hellbanned for your comments to me. But since you asked for a citation, here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof
I can't for the life of me figure out what was so offensive or trolly about a8da6b0c91d's comments.
>You can't just go around spouting "facts" without any basis.
Really?
In no way is it an "open question' if "light smoking" is even bad for you: "light and intermittent smoking pose substantial risks; the adverse health outcomes parallel dangers observed among daily smoking, particularly for cardiovascular disease."
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-4362.2000....
http://www.data-yard.net/10v2/parkinson.htm
http://www.data-yard.net/30/asthma.htm
http://www.data-yard.net/10c/nicotine.htm
http://www.data-yard.net/10b/cm.htm
http://www.forces.org/evidence/files/brea.htm
http://www.data-yard.net/13/tlj.htm
http://rheumatology.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/5/366.abst...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3613836?dopt=Abstract
http://jap.physiology.org/content/63/1/152.abstract?ijkey=3e...
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/80/16/1329.abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1447-0594.2006....
http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/13/9/1444.full http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailV...
Thalidomide is a good anti-nausea drug. Women who take thalidomide during pregnancy are at lower risk for nausea. Now, do you want to argue whether or not "light thalidomide" exposure during pregnancy is bad is an "open question"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide#Birth_defects_crisi...
Because that's what you're arguing with nicotine, along with cherry picking questionable studies, moving the goal posts, and even linking to organizations associated with tobacco manufacturing.
Opioids have beneficial uses. So do you want us to think that it's an "open question" about whether "light intravenous use of heroin" as practiced is a good thing?
Did you actually READ any of the articles you linked? In almost every case you cite, mention is made of the overall risks of smoking ANY amount. In some cases, the articles aren't even talking about smoking - they are merely talking about nicotine in a variety of forms.
“Any smoking, even social smoking, is dangerous,” says David Wetter, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Health Disparities Research at M. D. Anderson. “Cigarettes and cigars are the only legal products whose advertised and intended use -- smoking -- will cause cancer and kill the consumer.”
http://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/iss...
But let's play citation. Is second-hand smoke "light" enough exposure for you? Here are the health risks, which are not "open questions":
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+scholar+second+hand+s...
And c'mon, really? Really? You cite a damned mouse study on carbon monoxide as that you think might be evidence that smoking might somehow, some way, be helpful...for...wait for it....heart attack and stroke? You cite a cell study that shows elevated levels of glutathione in smokers lungs and you want us to therefore magically jump to the laughable belief that smoking is therefore somehow good for your lungs? You cite a study that claims that rare thyroid cancer is reduced among smokers, when the likeliest explanation is that thyroid cancer is so rare that smokers die of other more common cancers and little things like strokes and heart attacks long before they can ever develop thyroid cancer.
Many of the other bullshit claims you cite above have been thoroughly debunked:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3637838/
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/long-term-smoking-increase...
I don't think much of anything you've said or linked has bearing on a cigarette a day in the context of a healthy diet. Are you as dogmatic about not living in cities? Because urban air pollution is a known stressor.
Why don't you tell us more about the "open questions" of how safe dirty needles and dirty nicotine delivery systems are.
Now if you'll excuse me, you seem like someone uninterested in reason or in supporting your silly, shifting claims, and who is much more interested in rationalizing your own bad health habits.
Have a nice day.
> “People who eat diets rich in animal protein carry similar cancer risk to those who smoke 20 cigarettes each day,” reports The Daily Telegraph.
A person I know doesn't freeze bread because she says it causes cancer, and she's not the only one (far from this...) with such ridiculous preconceptions.
That headline was plastered across the front-pages of all the newspapers I read with no caveats. Both scare-mongering of unproven dangers and diminishing of more certain dangers like smoking & dietary excess. IMHO media outlets should be heavily fined for bad science journalism. Its a grave form of libel but poor injured science isn't able to sue them for it.
For those interested in statistics behind studies like this, I think this (not very long) video is a good explanation why it is not so easy to remove all residual confounding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hnWaNThBFw
The lector actually discusses a very similar or even the same study - mortality as a function of meat consumption. Not too complicated for a technical person even without a background in statistics, I believe.
And those who aim to be healthy will probably try to be at least moderate w.r.t their meat intake because they have heard that meat is unhealthy, which further "proves" that meat is unhealthy, while in reality it might be because of other habits that they might have, like exercising.
Things like paleo might make things a little less one-sided.
Note: this post was sponsored by High Fructose Corn Syrup and Monosodium Glutamate Industries, Inc.
A cross-sectional study of this type of data will yield crappy, linkbait-friendly results.
For confounders, they didn't look at: income, geography, genetics (self-reported ethnicity is not a good proxy), etc. etc. etc.
The time and sample scale for powerful epidemiological research often seems higher than publish! publish! publish! researchers are given time and money to do.
Any morsel of truth to animal protein having a negative effect is lost in the structure of the study and data available.
Also isn't it possible teenagers and young adults could need way more protein than the middle aged?
I suspect that there are confounding variables at work.
So if we take that to be generally accurate, then these findings make sense because I would wager that if you studied any diet or habit thought to be unhealthy, more people would die off between 50-65 than after 65.
This also explains why averages don't make sense with regard to any conversation about life expectancy since the averages really need to be observed in bands.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/MortFinal2007_Worktable23r....
Here's another breakdown from the Social Security Administration that shows each year individually:
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html
The latest age where the death rate decreases is 27, and the decrease is extremely small.
Besides, death rates increasing monotonically is not at odds with what I am saying. Once a person reaches age 65, their odds of reaching age 85 are higher than the average person at the age of 50. Many serious medical problems onset between the ages of 50-65. With each passing year, people who are susceptible to hereditary illnesses, for example, will die. This leaves people less likely to succumb to those illnesses. Yes, within the smaller group mortality rates will be higher than the previous overall group because more medical complications occur as you age.
In short what I am saying is that even though overall death rates increase, the odds of each person in those groups of living to the age of 85, goes up after the age of 65.
> more people would die off between 50-65 than after 65
And that is clearly untrue.
Yes, someone who's 65 is more likely to live to 85 than someone who's 50. That's extremely obvious once you know that 1) people occasionally die and 2) people don't come back to life after they die. The closer you are to an age, the more likely you are to reach that age.
I'm getting confused as to what sort of point you're trying to make. You originally seemed to be saying that there's a spike in mortality around ages 50-60. Now you seem to be saying... well, I can't figure it out.
What you're doing here is grossly oversimplifying the statistical significance of that fact. You seem to think that all people, regardless of race, genetic profile, income, etc. have equal chance of dying the older they get. This is simply untrue.
For example, people between the ages of 50-65 have a higher likelihood of dying from cancer before the age of 85 than somebody who is age 66. This isn't simply because the 66 year old has already made it to 66 so is 1/3 of the way ahead of a 55 year old, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
The fact is that certain diseases, statistically, have a higher incidence in that 50-65 age band and once you are out of it, your odds of succumbing to those diseases are lower. Sure, the 66 year old could get a clean bill of health and then walk in front of a bus, but the odds are they aren't going to die of cancer. That isn't insignificant. Obviously the longer you live the greater the odds something will happen that will end your life, but looking at life expectancy in a black box and ignoring the causes of death is misinformed.
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/mort...
You can get the equivalent statistics for the US here, although I couldn't find a way to link to specific results:
http://wonder.cdc.gov/cancermort-v2010.HTML
The rate of death from cancer goes up with age. There's no age where it decreases.
Perhaps there are certain diseases that have a higher incidence in the 50-65 group than in the 65+ group. Cancer, at least taken as a whole, is not it though.
If you're going to continue this, please give me some numbers before calling me "misinformed" because I'm actually checking your claims.
The results were similar once the researchers took into account the proportion of calories consumed from fat and carbohydrates. Further analyses suggested that animal protein was responsible for a considerable part of this relationship, particularly for death from any cause.
However, the opposite effect of high protein intake was seen among those aged over 65."
"Researchers doing observational studies have much the same problem. They try to think of all the differences between two large populations of subjects so that they can statistically negate them so that only the observation in question – the vitamin C level in the example above – is different between the groups. Problem is they can never possibly think of all the differences between the groups. As a consequence, they never have a perfect study with exactly the same number, sex, age, lifestyle, etc. on both sides with the only difference being the study parameter. And so they don’t really ever prove anything. In fact, we would all probably be a lot better off if all the researchers doing observational studies had followed my lead and fallen asleep mid study."
I'm wondering if there are better statistical tools to deal with it today.
Give it the individual profile of each person and let it draw the correlations.
http://web.archive.org/web/20090223222003/http://www.nutriti...
And even though it was epidemiological (statistically based), it's findings were strong and it confirmed prior laboratory results and hypotheses.
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal...
She uses Campbell's own figures, but comes to almost diametrally opposite results. It's up to statisticians here to judge how right or wrong she is ...
On the other hand, "The China Study", Dr. Campbell's best-selling popular book wherein he attempts to interpret the data causatively, has been absolutely demolished and debunked as egregiously bad science for some time now. Evgeny already linked to Denise Minger's notorious initial critique that got the ball rolling. Dr. Eades (of the grandparent post) wrote his own critique at:
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/cancer/the-china-study-vs...
"The web has been alive with commentary the past few weeks since Denise Minger lobbed her first cannonball of a critique across the bow of The China Study, the vessel T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. rode to fame and bestsellerdom. Seems like everyone is now jumping into the fray and gunning for poor Dr. Campbell, who early on in the fracas made a few halfhearted attempts to fight back but has now fled the scene. I've been laying low watching it all play out, and so now figured it's about time I add my two cents worth to the debate."
I wonder if the researchers' and USC's ploy to use sensationalist(though outright false) PR is going to end in them getting more funding. I hope not, but they do say no publicity is bad publicity.
This study is even less meaningful than most. I'd go so far as to say that it's utterly devoid of useful information and quite probably is misinformation.
I wonder how much was spent on performing the study?
I think the real story here is illustrated in the contrast between that last section that you mention, and how many folks are reacting to this study: The actual science is full of nuances and caveats which experts in the field are expected to understand, and like literally any scientific paper its results should be considered tentative unless and until it's been corroborated by further research, including research that uses different protocols. The public reaction, on the other hand, treats this as if it should be a cut-and-dry statement on a black-and-white issue.
To expand, this study is interesting in that it opens an avenue for further investigation. It's like learning an extra person was at the scene of crime. It proves nothing, and doesn't even necessarily SUGGEST anything. It's just another "lead" that researchers should investigate.
In this case, it doesn't help that the additional "suspect" is something sexy like protein-rich diets.
> The public reaction, on the other hand, treats this as if it should be a cut-and-dry statement on a black-and-white issue.
That's because the public as a whole usually wants cut-and-dry statements and black-and-white issues. And the news caters to the public.
Garbage in, garbage out.
They're simply using statistics to analyze data. Their data is bad. That means that their results are meaningless.
That is the average amount of calories consumed in certain sub-Saharan African countries along with very poor places such as Haiti.
Alternatively, in the US the average daily consumption is somewhere around 3,770 calories and the UK around 3,440.
Scroll all the way to the bottom of this list to see countries which match the average reported in this study: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energ...
Under reporting or just lower historical consumption combined with the age groups, it just does not match up to typical Western behavior today.
Good lord, I eat pretty normally, and when I count calories it's usually closer to 2,200.
It's also true that people tend to self-report lower than they really consume. But that isn't exactly earth-shattering news to scientists who work in the field. They know about it & know how to adjust their interpretations of the research accordingly.
Probably a lot less than on marketing it. :-)
almost nobody in this thread thinks this. in fact, quite the opposite. it seems everyone thinks, "well, this study doesn't conform to my preconceived notions, so it can't be true".
in fact, this is one study (although there was also a similar one done on mice) that shows a surprising result. i think an appropriate reaction is: maybe its true, and we should definitely do more research in this area.
The people who designed the study used absolute garbage for inputs. They should be heavily mentored or fired for ever proposing it, much less for releasing misleading information to a gullible public.
This has nothing to do with preconceived notions. This has everything to doing credible statistical work.
how are you supposed to get funding for (expensive) studies with high statistical power without first conducting the studies with low statistical power?
Is it any surprise that it shows very odd, contradicting results based upon age groups?
do you honestly think that NO conclusions can be drawn from observational studies?
Well, I didn't say that - but if the study referenced is the best they could do then they might as well give up.
Haven't you noticed the meta analysis of many studies recently that show that most of the original studies were flat-out wrong? Do you think maybe it might be because of weak studies like the one in this article?
IE: A man smoked in Vietnam for 1.5 year tour. Never smokes again for 42 years. Man develops neuroendocrine cancer and dies after stage 4. Tumors found in lungs(and everywhere else), death certificate's official cause of death? 'Probably' tobacco. One more stat for the witch hunt, one less for the Agent Orange cover-up/compensation. Yay statistics!
I don't know why the bad health reference is smoking really.
Furthermore, you can't just talk about "meat". The distinction between fish, pork, chicken, and ruminants matters. The question of quality matters enormously. Are we talking about really cheap meat fed on moldy corn slop and handled improperly after slaughter (aged, dyed, pumped up with water and chemicals), or totally fresh grass fed beef?
People who are more conscious of the hyperbole often prefer the term "minimally processed."
† There are legal requirements for what percent of a meat needs to be present to be a considered meat, thus we get things like "beefy tacos" which contain a meat-like product with so much filler they do not meet the already low standards of what the USDA considers to be meat.
Enriching foods with vitamins is generally considered a form of "processing" (i.e. potentially "bad") because we may not fully understand the way our bodies digest the 'original' food with all of its nutrients, compared to whatever nutrients we've managed to discover to put back in whatever is lost in processing. In the case of orange juice, processing may lose vitamins and fiber, and even if we put the vitamins back in, that doesn't guarantee the body would absorb them the same way it would if it ingested the vitamins and fiber together (may not be exactly accurate in this example, but that's my general understanding of the difference)
Complete and total nonsense. Hotdogs, peperoni, sausage, bacon, and lunch meat all come shrink wrapped. Even Slimjims and jerky.
http://blog.womenshealthmag.com/scoop/what-is-processed-meat...
>Typically, it means anything more manipulated than cut or ground,” says dietician Lisa Cashman, RD. “This includes most lunchmeats found in deli counters, anything with a casing or in sausage form, and, of course, anything smoked or cured like bacon.”
And the American Meat Institute (that's a thing?) defines processing as "processed meats are fresh products that have been changed from their original state. Some have added ingredients like spices. Some are cooked and some are cured."
http://www.meatami.com/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/94559
Right so even cooking is a form of processing. This should be pretty obvious. Eating "unprocessed" means eating basically food that is in its natural state, like eating a peach. Processing changes it, like cooking that peach.
Not sure if there's a generic term for it.