Tuesday 2 September 2014

When good science goes bad, part n+1.

In When good science goes bad , I looked at the effect of funding bias on research.
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ5jbxMjexo

Effects of Low-Carbohydrate and Low-Fat Diets: A Randomized Trial has just been published. As expected, low-carbers are positively creaming themselves over it. I instantly smelled a rat, as the full study was behind a pay-wall.

Remembering Krauss' shenanigans with "carbohydrate", consisting of 50% sugars + 50% "complex" carbs (maltodextrin & amylopectin are complex carbs that hydrolyse into glucose so rapidly that they have a GI of 100 on the "Glucose=100" scale.), I suspected dodgy carbs in the "Low-fat" group.

Luckily, David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP had read the full study, and wrote about it in Diet Research, Stuck in the Stone Age.

As I suspected, it was another "fix-up" job, rigged to make low-carb diets look good, and low-fat diets look bad.

See also:-
Low-carbohydrate vs. Low-fat diets for Weight Loss: New Evidence,
What I Learned By Actually Reading That Low-Carb Is Best Study,
Is low-carb really the best weight loss diet? and
A Question about the latest diet study ...

2 comments:

StellaBarbone said...

I don't know that it's a "fix-up" job, but it shouldn't be seen as such a triumph for the forces of fat vs. the forces of flour. Neither team met their restriction goals with "low carb" getting 34% of their calories from carbs (~100 gm/day) and "low fat" getting 30% of their calories from fat. Additionally the lowER carb group was advised to eat lean protein and cook with olive and evil, evil canola oil rather than whiz a stick of butter into their morning coffee. The lowER carb group was also quite a bit lower in protein.

If team Fat had not "won", the anti-carbers would have been crying "No fair!" because the lower carb diet would not have been low enough in carbs to satisfy them. I'm going to keep eating protein augmented oatmeal for breakfast. Yawn.

Nigel Kinbrum said...

Whose idea was it for the LF group to eat refined starches & sugars? That virtually guarantees over-eating in obese people. Also poor lipid profile.



I still call shenanigans!