Psience Quest

Quote:The experiment revealed the now-well-known fact that when an individual loses weight, their metabolism slows. That’s what makes it so hard to lose weight — and to keep the weight off afterward.

Unfortunately, it is impractical — and probably impossible — for most researchers to carry out those types of studies on a large scale. Crunching the data from a big observational study is a much easier way to get a publication and some media attention. So we get what we get.
In the meantime, what do the rest of us do with our diets?

Most experts recommend avoiding processed foods as much as possible and sticking with a Mediterranean-like diet because it makes intuitive sense. It is not too restrictive. It is heavy in fruits and vegetables. It has the right kinds of fats and some grains. It includes fish and generally lean proteins.

These experts contend that you should also be wary about foods that are said to have newly revealed healthy, or unhealthy, properties. In other words, don’t buy the notion of superfoods. The evidence is just not there.

In an email, Michael Blaha, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University who has written about methodological issues with nutritional science, told me he finds “particularly distasteful studies of one particular food (e.g., broccoli) or one particular macronutrient,” because “it is impossible to disentangle the effect of one particular food or one macronutrient from the accompanying foods and macronutrients that characterize a typical dietary pattern.”