A new study comparing a low-carbohydrate diet with a low-fat diet found no important differences in weight loss or other important outcomes between the two diets. Some experts believe the result shows that the debate over the relative worth of these different diets has been overblown and confirms the view that calories count. Others say…
Guest Post: Vegetable Oils, (Francis) Bacon, Bing Crosby, And The American Heart Association
June 16, 2017 by 26 Comments
–Gary Taubes responds to the AHA presidential advisory on dietary fats. Editor’s note: I was planning to write about the American Heart Association’s new statement about dietary fats so I asked Gary Taubes for a brief quote. Taubes, of course, is an investigative science and health journalist who has written three major books (Good Calories,…
Has Nutrition Science Been Poisoned?
March 9, 2017 by 9 Comments
–The inevitable weaknesses of observational and diet studies “Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition,” Adam Smith wrote more than 200 years ago. Unfortunately, it often seems as if the science of nutrition has itself been poisoned. Two recently published papers illustrate this problem. Nutrition and Mortality A good example of…
Top Cardiologist Blasts Nutrition Guidelines
February 27, 2017 by 15 Comments
–Salim Yusuf says new evidence fails to support many major diet recommendations. One of the world’s top cardiologists says that many of the major nutrition guidelines have no good basis in science. “I’m not a nutrition scientist and that may be an advantage because every week in the newspaper we read something is good for…
Saturated Fats Linked To Heart Disease Once Again
November 27, 2016 by 10 Comments
–But critics say that observational studies can’t establish causal relationship. A prominent group of nutrition researchers have once again linked saturated fats to increased coronary heart disease. The new paper, published in BMJ, is the third paper in the past year to decry saturated fats. Along with the previous two papers, published in JACC and JAMA Internal…
Calcium Levels and CV Risk: New Study Finds No Link
October 24, 2016 by 1 Comment
–But most agree dietary calcium is preferable to supplements A new review concludes that a high level of calcium intake, whether from food or supplements, is not linked to increased cardiovascular risk, as long as the total calcium intake remains below the tolerable upper level of intake (2,000-2,500 mg/day). The systematic review, published in Annals…
How Sweet: Sugar Industry Made Fat the Villain
September 13, 2016 by 3 Comments
–Harvard researchers received sugar industry money to write a NEJM review. Newly uncovered documents reveal that 50 years ago the sugar industry gave secret support to prominent Harvard researchers to write an influential series of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine that downplayed the negative effects of sugar. Instead, the articles shifted the blame…
Changes In Eskimo Diet Linked To Increase In Heart Disease
July 29, 2016 by 7 Comments
New paper explores the fascinating history of research into the Eskimo diet. The Eskimo diet and its effect on the heart has been a source of confusion and contention for decades. The observation that Eskimos, who traditionally consumed large amounts of saturated fat and small amounts of carbohydrates, had low rates of heart disease appeared…
New Analysis Of Old Study Delivers Another Blow To Traditional Diet Advice
April 13, 2016 by 2 Comments
–Replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils lowered cholesterol but didn’t improve outcomes A new analysis from a long-forgotten study dating to the 1960s adds to mounting doubts over a cornerstone of dietary advice for more than 50 years: the demonization of saturated fat in the diet. Although in recent years the nutritional establishment has retreated…
Recipe For Disaster: The New US Dietary Guidelines
January 18, 2016 by 4 Comments
The science of nutrition is a disaster. For a variety of very good reasons it is nearly impossible to perform high quality, long term randomized controlled trials to provide satisfactory answers to most of the pressing questions of the day. But many experts are convinced they do know the answer to many of these questions….
New Analysis Finds Small But Significant Advantage For Low Carb Diets
October 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment
A new meta-analysis finds that low-carb diets are more effective than low-fat diets in weight loss and reducing cardiovascular risk. The study finding suggests “that a low-carb diet should be the first line approach for weight management,” said the first author of the study, Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein. But the difference between the two dietary approaches was not…
Study Questions Conventional Wisdom About Trans Fats
September 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Could a little trans fat found naturally in meat and dairy actually be protective? Amid the stormy debate over dietary recommendations regarding saturated fats and carbohydrates, there’s been one area of calm and consensus. Nearly everyone seems to have agreed that trans fats have no place in the diet. The FDA’s recent move to ban trans…
Weight Loss Programs: Slim Evidence And Poor Results
April 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment
A new study concludes that some weight loss programs may be slightly better than other programs but that in the long run none of the programs have been able to show a substantial weight loss over a sustained period. For even the best programs, an editorialist writes, “weight loss is modest and likely below patients’…
No, An Apple A Day Won’t Keep The Doctor Away
March 30, 2015 by Leave a Comment
No, an apple a day does not appear to keep the doctor away. But, a new study semi-seriously suggests, it may keep the pharmacist away. The study serves as an instructive and humorous way to look at the perpetually thorny problem of how to best understand and make use of findings from observational studies. As this new paper makes clear,…
Very Simple High-Fiber Diet Stands Up To American Heart Association Diet
February 16, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Diets notoriously fail to help people lose a lot of weight. One problem is that most diets include a broad range of restrictions and guidelines that many people find difficult to follow. Another problem is that negative recommendations may have unintended consequences, such as low-fat recommendations leading to increased consumption of refined carbohydrates. Now a new…
How Much Salt Should Old People Consume?
January 19, 2015 by Leave a Comment
A new study offers fresh evidence that current salt recommendations should be taken with, well, a grain of salt. Current guidelines now recommend that everyone should have sodium intake levels below 2300 mg per day. For many people at higher risk, including everyone over 50 years of age, sodium intake should be below 1500 mg/d….
Get Rid of Sugar, Not Salt, Say Authors
December 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Too much negative attention has been focused on salt and not enough on sugar, write two authors in Open Heart. Reviewing the extensive literature on salt and sugar, they write that the adverse effects of salt are less than the adverse effects of sugar. The evidence supporting efforts to reduce salt in the diet is not convincing…
Popular Diets Achieve Only Modest Long-Term Weight Loss
November 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Four of the most popular current weight loss diets produce at best only modest long-term benefits, a new study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes shows. The study also found few significant differences across the four diets, offering little hope that any one diet can produce a serious dent in the obesity epidemic. Mark Eisenberg and colleagues systematically searched…
Paper Behind The Green Coffee Bean Diet Craze Retracted
October 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The “scientific” paper that helped ignite the green coffee bean diet craze has been retracted. The details of the retraction and the full background of the story were fully reported by Ivan Oransky on Retraction Watch. The paper, published in Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, purported to report the substantial weight loss findings of a randomized, double-blind,…
Another Diet Myth Exploded: Gradual Weight Loss No Better Than Rapid Weight Loss
October 15, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Once again, a popular weight loss myth has been exploded. It has been widely believed that weight loss, which is nearly always difficult to maintain, is even less likely to stay lost if it is the product of a rapid weight loss. The belief is even enshrined in current guidelines. Now a study published in The Lancet…
Studies Provide Little Support For Guidelines On Dietary Fats And Supplements
March 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The precise cardiovascular effect of dietary fats and supplements has been the subject of heated controversy. Although there is no strong supporting evidence from clinical trials, current guidelines tend to discourage or minimize the role of saturated fats and trans fats and to encourage the intake of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Two new studies published today help clarify…
Lower Blood Pressure Found In Vegetarians
February 24, 2014 by Leave a Comment
A new study provides the strongest evidence yet that a vegetarian diet is strongly associated with lower blood pressure. Although various health benefits of a vegetarian diet have often been proposed, a rigorous examination of the effect on blood pressure has not been previously performed. In a paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine, Japanese researchers analyzed data from…
The Not So Sweet Facts About Sugar
February 3, 2014 by 1 Comment
A new study offers a broad overview of the use of sugar in the US diet and its consequent health implications. The good news is that the growth in sugar intake appears to have stopped and may even have slightly declined. The bad news is that people still consume way too much sugar and that…
Mediterranean Diet Protects Against Diabetes, Regardless of Weight Loss
January 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Even if it doesn’t lead to weight loss, a Mediterranean diet could help prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes, according to a subanalysis of last year’s influential PREDIMED study. In the main trial, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, nearly 7500 people at high risk for cardiovascular disease were randomized to a low-fat diet or…
A PR Pitch For The Worst Diet In The World
August 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
I get all sorts of PR pitches. Most of them are uninteresting or ridiculous and I just ignore them. Here is one that is so stupifyingly wrong that I can’t resist sharing it. It should win some sort of award for combining the most amount of fraudulent claims in a single pitch. I don’t see…
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