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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

> There have been several studies that have shown eggs to be healthy. There are several studies that show they are unhealthy. Bias is a real problem in nutrition science.

Mostly because "healthy" is a bit subjective.

If some study finds a correlation between egg consumption and a +1% chance of developing a rare cancer - who really cares? When you look at how rare the cancer is, when you might develop it, and the small increase in probability - you're looking at maybe a -1 day life expectancy for a life-time worth of consuming eggs.

Why is living 1 less day "unhealthy" - especially compared to all the other ways one can be "unhealthy"?

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It's just such a nuanced topic people have a really hard time reasoning about it. For example, Drinking Alcohol every day clearly increases your chances of developing disease.

Drinking zero Alcohol actually decreases the likely hood of you living to a ripe old age.

Is it that Alcohol is healthy in small doses? Probably not. Perhaps people who drink a glass of wine once or twice a month have a less stressful life than someone who never drinks.

That's why nutrition studies are so hard to be done right. You have to literally watch them consume it and you need a control group and it needs to take place over years.

There are books written about Bluezones that say eating meat shortens your life yet HongKong has the both the highest life expectancy and the highest per person meat consumption in the world.

You really have to take every single claim and study with a big giant grain of salt and a whole lot of skepticism.

>Drinking zero Alcohol actually decreases the likely hood of you living to a ripe old age.

There could also be confounding factors here, which is that people who drink no alcohol may have other factors in play. i.e. There might be a health-related reason they don't drink anything.

e.g. They may be people who are alcoholics that have ceased drinking. They may have drunk heavily in the years before, but being asked "How many units of alcohol do you drink in a week" they would answer 0.

They may be on (serious) medications or have medical conditions for which they are strongly recommended to not drink.

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