Here we go again…more junk science that the popular media sensationalizes to attract more eye balls (regardless of whether its true or not).

“Meat is the New Tobacco” declared The Huffington Post.

“Animal Protein-rich Diets Could be as Harmful to Health as Smoking” said the Guardian.

The Daily Mail chose “Eating Lots of Meat and Cheese in Middle Age is ‘As Deadly as SMOKING‘”.

No wonder everyone is so confused about what to eat, it seems like on a monthly basis so called journalists throw out crap like this.  (I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that this article was forced on them and they knew nothing about the topic and just did the best they could.)

And this time it’s not only the media who is skewing the truth, the original research article, published in Cell Metabolism, is heavily biased. The researchers clearly had an agenda.

Since there seems to be new ‘junk science’ in the news almost every week I thought I’d help arm you with the knowledge to decipher for yourself if the headline is worthy of your attention, or whether it’s just another journalist begging for a few moments of fame, or in this case, an unethical scientist looking to sell more of his magic potion.

So, using this latest article as an example I thought I would highlight some of the most common things to look for.

Activate your BS meter.

Anytime you read a study, or a news article reporting on a new study, ask yourself, does the result make sense?

This particular study would have us believe that animal protein increases cancer deaths in people between the ages of 50 and 65, but then magically reverses this ‘causation’ at age 65 such that you’d better be in the high protein group or you’ll drop dead. This just doesn’t make sense.

The choice of headlines says it all.  Instead of “protein will save you in old age” the author chose “protein will kill you in middle age” clearly illustrating his bias.

As for the smoking comparison, it’s clearly a stunt to grab headlines.  No ethical researcher, who wants to be taken seriously, would ever pull such a stunt.  Smoking presents an absolute risk (see the definition below).  If they are going to claim that eating meat and dairy is as bad as smoking than they’d better be prepared to compare the absolute risk of both – which of course they didn’t.  Common sense tells us that it wouldn’t even be close.

My research clearly shows that you need to buy my product.

One thing I almost always do before reading too far into any research is skip to the end to see if the author has declared any ‘conflicts of interest’.  I also do a quick search, with the help of Google, to see if there are any non-declared conflicts of interest…yes it happens, and more often that you think. Ask yourself the question: Does the researcher(s) have anything to gain from ‘finding’ certain results?

Unfortunately, it is very common in today’s research culture for the authors to have multiple conflicts of interest.

And this case is a perfect example. The lead researcher, Dr. Longo, recommends a plant-based diet.  He is also the founder of L-Nutra – a company that makes ProLon (sorry no link, by putting it here I’d be helping him do exactly what he wanted and that’s get more attention for his product) – an entirely plant based meal replacement product.  Is it any surprise that his conclusion damns animal protein and promotes a plant-based diet?

Does eating ice cream cause shark attacks?

I promise not to bore you with research methods, but it’s important to distinguish between types of studies that look at causation and others that look at correlation.  This one – an epidemiological study – is designed to measure patterns in health in disease in defined populations.  At best, epidemiological studies are useful to identify correlations and are a place to start the conversation about causation, but they are absolutely not a place to begin drawing conclusions.

‘Correlation does not imply causation’ is something that you’ll likely come across often when reading reviews of research.  What it means is that just because events or statistics happen to coincide with each other it does not necessarily mean that one caused the other.

For example, in the summer time, in California both ice cream sales and shark attacks increase.  To suggest that eating more ice cream caused the increase in shark attacks is clearly ridiculous.  There is a correlation between the increase in shark attacks and the increase in ice cream consumption, but obviously one did not cause the other.

The reality is that cause and effect can be indirect, or due to what are called ‘confounding variables’ (other variables not studied in a particular study). Back to our example in California, it is likely that the number of swimmers dramatically increases in the summertime which is much more likely to be the cause of the increase in shark attacks.  The number of swimmers would be a confounding variable.

How’s your memory?

Questionnaires are a very commonly used tool when it comes to health-based research (because they’re cheap).  Recent research has damned this line of investigation as being literally, worthless.

For example in this particular study, the participants were given questionnaires (in this case it was called NHANES) and asked to recall their eating habits.

I took this directly from the NHANES website:

“The dietary intake data are used to ESTIMATE the types and amounts of foods and beverages (including all types of water) consumed during the 24-hour period prior to the interview (midnight to midnight), and to ESTIMATE intakes of energy, nutrients, and other food components from those foods and beverages. Following the dietary recall, participants are asked questions on salt use, whether the person’s overall intake on the previous day was much more than usual, usual or much less than usual, and whether the respondent is on any type of special diet.”

Sounds really accurate.  Enough said.

Fancy Math.

When it comes to statistics there’s a common saying that you can twist the numbers to say anything you want.  The author has certainly done it in this case.

And the way he’s done it is a common tactic in health research, frequently used in marketing material for cholesterol lowering medication as one example.  What he’s done is exploited the difference between relative risk and absolute risk.

Absolute risk of a disease is your risk of developing the disease over a time period.

Relative risk is used to compare the risk in two different groups of people.

Relative risk is a poor measure when absolute risk can be reported instead.

If you buy two lottery tickets rather than one, you double your chance of winning.  Your relative chance is twice as high as it was before. Your absolute chance was 1 in 25 million and is now 2 in 25 million. You’re still not going to win the lottery!

This particular study has chosen not to share the absolute risk.  There could be 4 deaths in 1,000 people from cancer in the high protein group and 1 death from cancer in the low protein group. So you can see where the headline “four times as likely to die of cancer” comes from, but it’s very different to having a 1 in 1,000 chance of dying vs. a 4 in 1000 chance of dying.

We are not cars.

Human beings and the environment we live in are incredibly complex systems that are often reduced to mechanistic parts (like a car) so that they comply with the framework of any given research project.

At Life By Design, we frequently talk about the 4 core requirements we must fulfill to live an extraordinary life.  Each requirement depends on the other; they do not function independently.  You could eat the perfect diet and yet if your brain is not coordinating your digestive system in the most optimal way then it is impossible for you to use the nutrients in the most optimal way.  If someone’s nerve system is dysfunctional, they are sedentary and they are depressed it will have a significantly different affect on the health outcomes of those who eat any diet.

For example, in this particular study food quality is never taken into account.  Grass fed, pasture raised, humanely treated beef will have a dramatically different effect on human physiology than Oscar Meyer’s ’so called beef slices’.  The importance of food quality is never debated and well accepted no matter what diet is being promoted.  I believe that any researcher who has a genuine desire to seek the truth should have the common sense to take this into account in their research.

I could go into a discussion of how exercise levels, and emotional stress levels will alter physiology, metabolism and ultimately how your body uses the food you consume but I think you get the point.  The human body is complex and cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts.

Did that help?

Do you feel better armed to dispatch of the crap that many researchers are publishing as science these days? My hope in writing this is that you will be able to notice similar trends in future articles.

Unfortunately, there are bound to be more…likely later this week.

Dr. Michael Gibson has committed himself to helping others to live the best life possible. After graduating with a Bachelor of Kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario, he received his Doctor of Chiropractic Degree and Masters of Science in Chiropractic Sports Science from Life University.   He is the co-creator of Life By Design, owner of The Wellness Group, and co-owner of CrossFit 613. His passion for empowering families runs deep. After experiencing the loss of his sister due to illness, Michael’s purpose became reaching and teaching as many as possible the foundational principles of an extraordinary life.  Since that time he has passionately pursued and been successful in living out his dream. He maintains a busy family chiropractic practice, a full speaking schedule and finds time to implement the principles and practices of Life By Design in his own life.