Good food is bad? Bad food is good?
The importance of seeing the whole picture in food & nutrition
Many conversations with activists on the #farm365 Twitter feed come to a “links war” of trying to use scientific articles to prove each other wrong. I thought it was very cool when, at the same time, @nonbirdberry and I shared the following two studies about protein consumption.
According to these two articles taken together, eating meat is good for your good cholesterol and weight but you will die earlier or risk serious disease because of it. So is meat healthy or unhealthy? What’s the correct action to take? In my opinion, there isn’t one. When it comes to health, looking at a singular trend, or even a few different measures, doesn’t give you a black and white answer. Of course, these are only two studies out of the thousands about protein that exist and aren’t representative of that wealth of information, but the fact that conflicting information exists makes it even more important to understand the science behind it.
Science has started moving toward more holistic approaches rather than single isolated variables, but that’s very difficult to do. With our current technology we can’t possibly account for every single variable and disseminate the information in a reasonable amount of time. We are only able to look at trends and correlations and comparisons. This is something important for anyone researching health science to keep in mind.
Originally published at lelper.tumblr.com on March 15, 2015.
