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Comment by toasterlovin | Hacker News Reader

Let’s just get this out there: there is no long term randomized controlled trial that has ever been conducted which is capable of proving that one diet is better than other diets.

Period.

Nutrition science is a joke. It’s basically all short term studies which tell you nothing about long term effects of diet, or it’s long term epidemiological studies which are fundamentally incapable of controlling for confounding variables.

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I heard it that the Mediterranean diet is the most studied of them all, and it seems [1] that all studies are within 5 years of length.

So yeah. No long-term studies. It's not even clear if we have hope for such. The military could summon the discipline, but soldiers do retire early. Maybe the officers, I don't know.

[1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/5-studies-on-the-medite...

It’s crazy because diet is probably the most important thing we could study right now. Surely the astronomical cost of a randomized controlled study would be way less than the healthcare costs associated with not understanding what diets are healthy.

It's not a high priority because the correct diet (raw fruits and some veggies) will lead to a huge reduction in so-called "auto-immune diseases", diabetes, cancers, all IBS related, etc. Big Pharma and all others involved in the machine called modern medicine will suffer financially.

Yes. But I think if you step back it makes (evolutionary) sense that genetics and diet are tied. That is, diet for one gene profile might not be idea for another gene profile.

That, to me, makes sense.

If that's the case, what is the ideal diet for genetic "hybrids"? Does mixing gene pools __and__ diets lead to more disease?

Modern First World dietary habits are driven by want, not needs. Does this confuse (?) the body and lead to more disease?

If evolution is about survival, and health is tied to survival, it's not as crazy as it sounds.

I’m not at all saying that there isn’t a diet that works best for most people most of the time. I, personally, believe that this is the case. But there is simply no conclusive evidence in favor of any given person’s favorite diet being that diet. And the inconclusive evidence that does exist is much weaker than most people seem to think that it is.

It might make sense to you, but there is as yet no evidence for any of this, except more broad statements such as 'eating enormous bulk calories every day will probably kill you faster than not doing so'.

What are you saying/meaning by disease? Cancer is tied to length of life, and to a small degree, diet (bowel ca) and other modifiable risk factors (ie fat people have higher rates of cancer due to increased numbers of cells... which is interesting because most data says we don't produce new cells for fat, the fat cells just get bigger. So there is a mismatch there that isn't entirely explained by the data i've seen)

Osteoarthritis is clearly linked to weight, so people put their knees/hips/backs out at higher rates.

lack of exercise/modern lifestyle again ties in with the sports injuries.

On everything else, I challenge you to Prove that there is actually more disease. More disease of what? We have reduced or eliminated huge volumes of disease through vaccination and other preventable health. The other stuff is life/longevity linked, or reduced activity linked (ie T2DM/Metabolic Syndrome).

It is a very modern and pseudoscientific concern to be trying to link all this to diet. Yes, you should probably try and eat fresh stuff more than processed stuff. Yes your life should include an exercise regime. But your body is pretty good at breaking down macronutrients into micronutrients, and even though some of those micronutrients can function as drugs, there is not enough evidence to say anything too exciting here

That is an awfully strong statement. Do you have qualifications to dismissed the entire field, or is more of an opinion? And even though it's not up to your (admittedly best case) standard, don't population studies, twin studies, et al have some value. It seems it would be effectively impossible to research anything at all about nutrition otherwise.

As a professional statistician I support the statement that most nutrition studies suffer from grave methodological problems. See https://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/10760622/nutrition-science-com... for a good layman writeup.

Overall a good write up, but that they end with a consensus statement by nutrition researchers after explaining why no nutrition research is really capable of telling us anything is just about the perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with nutrition research and reporting on the subject.

Show me your favorite nutritional study and I’ll be happy to explain why it can’t actually tell us anything about the long term effects of diet on health.

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