Where Does All the Misinformation Come From?
lucypstacy
Posts: 178 Member
I mean this as a serious question. There's a lot of misinformation when it comes to food, diet, exercise, etc. I know that I've heard things like 'starvation mode' and how 'muscles weighs more than fat' for years, and there was a point I didn't even question their validity. I simply accepted it as fact. There were the foods you couldn't eat if you wanted to lose weight and the foods you had to eat. There were the specific exercises, etc. I know all this information actually hindered me a lot in the past.
Now, here I am, a little smarter and a little lighter in terms of pounds. I've learned a lot, but I'm just curious. Where does all this misinformation come from? I know the people who used to say things like that probably believe just like I did. So what are the sources? People trying to sell or push specific products, or others simply parroting what they've heard all these years?
Now, here I am, a little smarter and a little lighter in terms of pounds. I've learned a lot, but I'm just curious. Where does all this misinformation come from? I know the people who used to say things like that probably believe just like I did. So what are the sources? People trying to sell or push specific products, or others simply parroting what they've heard all these years?
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people10
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People are experts at everything, just ask them, they will tell you.
We rely on advice from well meaning yet misinformed friends and acquaintances, without going and asking experts. That friend read an article in Cosmo 15 years ago, and got the story wrong in their head and keeps repeating the same wrong information believing it to be true.
It doesn't help that the diet industry is full of scams and "programs" designed to prey on those who don't or won't research with the simplest of google search (aint the future great?)
I wish someone would have taken me aside at 20 and said "Hey fat kid. Its nothing but math. You don't need to eat 5 pounds of lettuce and 6 pounds of kale per day to loose weight" But I bought into that thought process of "clean eating, well rounded diet" or whatever and said I could never do that. Instead of just understanding the simple truth of 3500 calories is a pound that I know today and am down 181 pounds in 2 years.32 -
Part of it comes from the pursuit of money. If someone wants to sell you something, (s)he'll tell you all kinds of things about the product, even if they aren't (at least strictly) true.
Part of it comes from a basic misunderstanding of nutrition/physiology, but also observation. If Joe does five things and succeeds, he may very well attribute his success to one particular thing he did - even though it may have actually been the combination of the other four things, with that fifth thing being irrelevant. But, it seemed to work for him, so it must be what works. This would be one of the many cases of correlation != causation.
Additionally, some people do have certain needs and/or health issues that work better with certain ideals. For instance, women with PCOS tend to respond better to low-carb diets than they do to high-carb diets. For them, low-carb is a good thing. However, it's not necessarily appropriate for everyone, yet some may again think that since that's what works well for that segment of the population, that it's what everyone should do.14 -
Keeping people confused is a great way to get them to buy miracle cures because they don't believe they can do it on their own. Great marketing ploy to drive up the demand for the next greatest weight loss gimmick.11
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People trying to make money
Bad journalism
Consumer impatience - two fold
1)Peoples desire to believe there is a magic pill, a magic food or combination that can "save them"
2)Fad diets that get spread as "working" cuz they lost weight in that first week(almost always water weight) instead of waiting to see how it works long term
A critical thing to understand as well is that many fad diets are created KNOWING and Purposefully to fail. They design them to lose water weight early so that you think it works. Then fail when you cant keep eating grapefruit and only grapefruit for the next 50 years of your life. They then attach gimmicks and books to it so that you buy them hoping to find the secret to make it work.
Another angle is, lets say you are a pumpkin(just to pick a random food) farmer or distributor. You experience low sales 11 months of the year for obvious reasons. How do you get people to buy more pumpkin? Tell them it helps with weight loss.9 -
Some of it comes from facts that get misunderstood or exaggerated.
Some comes from the simple fact that we learn over time. Once it was believed that smoking was good for you!
And some comes from marketing ploys intended to sell a product or generate hype.5 -
Some usual suspects come to mind:
- People with a product to sell (MLM's, diet pills and supplements, gimmick products, books) - they have to hype up whatever benefit they can to justify the cost to the buyers
- People with an agenda (health and food activists) - they tend to focus on a few foods or dietary patterns and promote their point of view with selective scaremongering documentaries and blogs
- People needing to create content - (Tabloids and supermarket magazines, buzzfeed listicles, Youtube and Pinterest celebs) - They need to crank out stuff on the regular to maintain their audience, and "eat this - not that" type articles are an evergreen source when they're trying to meet a deadline.
- Career gurus - (celeb doctors, fitness celebs, etc) - They need a "hook" to make their advice sound more knowledgeable and useful than the simple "eat less, move more" appraoch
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A given volume of muscle does weigh more than the same volumef fat.17
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Muscle does weigh more than fat so that one isn't misinformation.
A pound weighs a pound. But by volume, muscle weighs more than fat. Rarely does anyone specify volume in the "muscle weighs more than fat" truism because we figure your smart enough to figure out the obvious.
I'm quite certain the idea of starvation mode comes from people's experience. They cut calories drastically and exercise intensely and they get stuck at the same weight for months at a time. Or they diet and lose weight, then when they try to add back even a tiny bit more calories than their calories, they gain huge amounts of weight very quickly.12 -
Also I think there is often mistakes made between causation and correlation.
Take this scenario:
Jane has been eating at 1250 calories for 10 whole days and the scale has not moved. Someone tells Jane to eat more. Jane eats 1500 and the next day, the scale is down 1 pound. Eating more caused Jane to lose weight? No. The scale drop happened at the same time as the 'eating more' but that is not direct proof that eating more made Jane lose weight. More than likely Jane had 'lost weight' from eating at a deficit over the past 11 days but something different about the foods consumed (less sodium, for example) dropped water weight. And that caused the 'loss'. But now Jane is convinced eating 1250 will not allow her to lose weight, but 1500 will. In reality unless Jane's TDEE is very low, either will result in weight loss. Though 1500 is probably easier to manage long term than 1250! But now Jane goes around telling anyone who 'can't lose weight' to eat more.
Real weight loss happens over time. So comparing weigh ins that are weeks apart not days apart.19 -
I think it's the basic paradox that we want the cure for being fat to be fast and easy while simultaneously wanting it to be complex and mysterious to explain why we can't do it.
The basic truth that eating at a deficit and possibly becoming a little more active is not sexy and not easy to monetize.8 -
Some of it, over the years, has come from whatever the latest accumulation of knowledge seems to indicate. As science is able to determine more, we come closer to an accurate assessment. For example, in George Washington's time, the limited medical science available said that bleeding a patient would help the patient recover. We know today that was wrong because we have more scientific knowledge than we did 200 years ago.
In the 60s, we were all told to avoid all fats. That turned out to be not quite right. The answer is more complex. We now know that different fats are good and bad. For example, now we should avoid trans-fats altogether, limit our consumption of saturated fats, especially animal-based saturated fats, but consume enough fats, especially mono- and poly-unsaturated fats, for health. As knowledge increases, our assumptions must change.
The trick is to evaluate the information we are given. One way is to find an information source you trust. My favorite is the Harvard School of Public Health's NutritionSource https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/
In looking for trustworthy sources, non-profit sources, especially university, government or hospital based sources are more reliable than those that are trying to sell anything, including books. Remember that the popular press is giving you only a snapshot or headline they think will draw you to their magazine, site, or TV station because audience size drives advertising revenue.1 -
Tried30UserNames wrote: »Muscle does weigh more than fat so that one isn't misinformation.
A pound weighs a pound. But by volume, muscle weighs more than fat. Rarely does anyone specify volume in the "muscle weighs more than fat" truism because we figure your smart enough to figure out the obvious.
I'm quite certain the idea of starvation mode comes from people's experience. They cut calories drastically and exercise intensely and they get stuck at the same weight for months at a time. Or they diet and lose weight, then when they try to add back even a tiny bit more calories than their calories, they gain huge amounts of weight very quickly.
No, no, no no no, nonononononono, nooooooooooo !!
There is no such thing as weight by volume.
These are two totally different measurements.
Weight is a measure of how heavy something is.
Volume is a measure of how much space something takes up.
They are not the same thing.
They are not interchangeable.
A kilo of fat weighs the same as a kilo of muscle and a kilo of feathers, but each of them takes up a different amount of physical space.
However, it's stuff like this where people confidently put forward ideas that are factually incorrect which leads to widespread nonsense getting believed by so many others.
People cling to notions they like the sound of, regardless of truth.
But facts remain true whether you like them or not, that's just the way it is!
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Because the diet and fitness industry is a multi billion dollar industry...they would cease to be a multi billion dollar industry if they kept things simple.
Some things like "muscle weighs more than fat" isn't really misinformation...I think most people understand that volume is what is being considered here...i.e. a Lb of muscle is going to take up less volume than a Lb of fat.
Some things aren't exactly misinformation...but their importance is often exaggerated, particularly when you're talking about the average Joe/Jane...
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MontyMuttland wrote: »Tried30UserNames wrote: »Muscle does weigh more than fat so that one isn't misinformation.
A pound weighs a pound. But by volume, muscle weighs more than fat. Rarely does anyone specify volume in the "muscle weighs more than fat" truism because we figure your smart enough to figure out the obvious.
I'm quite certain the idea of starvation mode comes from people's experience. They cut calories drastically and exercise intensely and they get stuck at the same weight for months at a time. Or they diet and lose weight, then when they try to add back even a tiny bit more calories than their calories, they gain huge amounts of weight very quickly.
No, no, no no no, nonononononono, nooooooooooo !!
There is no such thing as weight by volume.
These are two totally different measurements.
Weight is a measure of how heavy something is.
Volume is a measure of how much space something takes up.
They are not the same thing.
They are not interchangeable.
A kilo of fat weighs the same as a kilo of muscle and a kilo of feathers, but each of them takes up a different amount of physical space.
However, it's stuff like this where people confidently put forward ideas that are factually incorrect which leads to widespread nonsense getting believed by so many others.
People cling to notions they like the sound of, regardless of truth.
But facts remain true whether you like them or not, that's just the way it is!
You are not understanding the statement correctly or you are choosing to.
If you take an equal volume of muscle and fat. Then weigh it. the muscle weighs more.31 -
It comes from half-truths. People tend to hear what supports what they want vs what is true.2
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Poisonedpawn78 wrote: »MontyMuttland wrote: »Tried30UserNames wrote: »Muscle does weigh more than fat so that one isn't misinformation.
A pound weighs a pound. But by volume, muscle weighs more than fat. Rarely does anyone specify volume in the "muscle weighs more than fat" truism because we figure your smart enough to figure out the obvious.
I'm quite certain the idea of starvation mode comes from people's experience. They cut calories drastically and exercise intensely and they get stuck at the same weight for months at a time. Or they diet and lose weight, then when they try to add back even a tiny bit more calories than their calories, they gain huge amounts of weight very quickly.
No, no, no no no, nonononononono, nooooooooooo !!
There is no such thing as weight by volume.
These are two totally different measurements.
Weight is a measure of how heavy something is.
Volume is a measure of how much space something takes up.
They are not the same thing.
They are not interchangeable.
A kilo of fat weighs the same as a kilo of muscle and a kilo of feathers, but each of them takes up a different amount of physical space.
However, it's stuff like this where people confidently put forward ideas that are factually incorrect which leads to widespread nonsense getting believed by so many others.
People cling to notions they like the sound of, regardless of truth.
But facts remain true whether you like them or not, that's just the way it is!
You are not understanding the statement correctly or you are choosing to.
If you take an equal volume of muscle and fat. Then weigh it. the muscle weighs more.
Yeah, it's not particularly hard...11 -
I can't believe this is devolving so quickly into the 1,342nd "muscle weighs more than fat" argument where everyone is misunderstanding each other anyway.
OP, some of the stuff is just old info that has since been misproven but has stuck in people's heads so they keep repeating it.
Some of it is a product of people looking to make money realizing you can't profit much off the truth so they take one old research study, over-dramatize the dubious results, and sell the crap out of it.
Some of it (like "toning") is health & fitness pros finding a term or concept strikes a chord with people and use it to their advantage.
Some of it is internet hoaxes, like lots of the fad crash diets and cleanses.
Some of it is people misunderstanding how the body works, misunderstanding how the scientific process works, and conflating the two into rules or guidelines that sound good at a glance.
Some of it is people desperate for a short cut or quick fix who do something random, accidentally eating less calories because of it but crediting the random thing, and then telling everyone about it.
I'm sure there's more!3 -
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JerSchmare wrote: »It comes from people selling things. But, it also comes from people wanting magic to be true. It's a hard pill to swallow to say, "you eat too much. So, stop doing that." It's much easier to sell a system that makes it complicated, but if you follow it, it works. A good example is Weight Watchers.
I get a good laugh from weight watchers. I am glad that it works for some people but i just do NOT understand why you would put all that effort into learning a points system instead of just learning the calories.5 -
Poisonedpawn78 wrote: »JerSchmare wrote: »It comes from people selling things. But, it also comes from people wanting magic to be true. It's a hard pill to swallow to say, "you eat too much. So, stop doing that." It's much easier to sell a system that makes it complicated, but if you follow it, it works. A good example is Weight Watchers.
I get a good laugh from weight watchers. I am glad that it works for some people but i just do NOT understand why you would put all that effort into learning a points system instead of just learning the calories.
Because you don't know any better. I tried so many things because I also wanted the magic to be true haha1 -
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When the simplicity of the truth became clear to me I felt personally victimized by my own ignorance lol7
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MontyMuttland wrote: »No, no, no no no, nonononononono, nooooooooooo !!
There is no such thing as weight by volume.
? Am I missing something? There is such thing as weight per unit volume: it's called density.32 -
It comes from people trying to sell things or push an agenda.
In general i've seen it go like this:
Researchers publish a paper about science
Media Blatantly mis-represents said science
Companies jump on the bandwagon to capitalize on "science"
Sometimes the first step is "we have a product we want to sell, let's fund some research".4 -
^ ThisJerSchmare wrote: »It's because people honestly don't know. And, they want losing weight to be difficult. The truth is harsh to many people.
Because it is "difficult" they can easily rationalize why they are not doing sufficient work to make it happen.
It is too hard, too complicated, too restrictive, or their genetics are special or their thyroid is unique or any number of other excuses, but NOT because they are simply eating more than they need to.
Explain CI:CO simply to most of the over-fat population and just listen to the excuses they immediately reply with.
I explained it to a person last week but the individual retorted that he only has a chicken breast and salad for dinner, and completely forgot I just watched him eat more for lunch than I had.
He then proceed to explain that he couldn't exercise at all because of "nerve damage" in his leg.
Therefore I reminded him that my ankle has been surgically reconstructed. Twice.
People often repeat and choose to believe what they want to be true instead of checking their facts.
It is part of confirmation bias.9 -
Also paying someone to teach CICO would take about 1 day plus the cost of a food scale and you can't make money on that repeatedly9
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All of the above, and I'll add: some bad "word of mouth" advice. For example, someone looks great, someone else asks *how* they lost the weight. They give an imprecise short hand answer like: "I'm doing atkins. I eat all the fat and protein I want and no carbs". Which, of course, isn't Atkins. And hopefully isn't what they're doing if they think they're doing Atkins.
Or "I lost weight by not eating anything white". WTH?
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MontyMuttland wrote: »No, no, no no no, nonononononono, nooooooooooo !!
There is no such thing as weight by volume.
? Am I missing something? There is such thing as weight per unit volume: it's called density.
Yes, they weren't clear. The objection is that weight-relative terms are used when it's density that's really being compared.
The counter-argument is that 'everybody knows' that when you say X is heavier than Y that you mean equal volumes of X and Y.
Now personally, I'd be ripped a new one if I use heavier and lighter in that way but I came up through a biochemistry and physics track and am still in a branch of science where assumptions and inaccurate terminology are frowned upon.6
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