Ignore nutrition studies

Recently, an oft-quoted and respected food researcher who founded the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University was booted from his position at Cornell because of “academic misconduct in his research and scholarship, including misreporting of research data.” He’s not alone with his misconduct; just a big name who was busted.

Nutritional research is plagued with credibility problems. One reason for this is something called “data dredging” wherein researchers run exhaustive analyses on data sets then cherry pick the “findings” that suit them. Another problem is incorrectly assuming cause and effect; that is, concluding that A causes B, when in fact some other factor may be causing B. To make matters worse, the press publishes the most newsworthy studies (eating a single mandarin orange will add five years to your life)! Many researchers go for newsworthy results.

For these reasons, I rarely write about nutritional studies—unless they support my own biases. Case in point: I recently wrote a post called “Eat full fat dairy for your heart’s sake.” A big study showed that eating two or more servings of full fat dairy was “associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease and mortality.” The study was huge and went on for nine years and was controlled for age, sex, smoking, physical activity and other factors.

The journal report went so far as to state that “some saturated fats may be beneficial to cardiovascular health, and dairy products may also contain other potentially beneficial compounds.” Because the results of this study go against conventional “wisdom,” it won’t make headlines. I was lucky enough to find a brief mention of it in The New York Times.

As you can see, I cherry-pick my studies too. But I’m right!

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