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Do you read with a sense of skepticism?

NorthCascades
NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
edited December 19 in Debate Club
I'm exhausted from New Year's Eve and from a lot of exercise today. I've been reading to stay awake until a respectable hour to go to bed. There was an article about how dairy is dangerous and addictive, should come with warning labels, gives you leaky gut syndrome, and makes your car break down.

This quote early on got me in a ranting mood:

While milk and dairy products, such as cheese and yoghurt, are good sources of protein and calcium and can form part of a healthy, balanced diet, as Dr Michael Greger, from NutritionFacts.org, put it to me: "There's no animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning - and then to drink milk of another species even doesn't make any sense."

Problem is, I have a cat, years old and fully weaned, who loves goat and cow milk. I mean, it's also a problem that leaky gut syndrome isn't actually a thing.

There's a thread going on in the health section, somebody is slammed at having read that deli meat will give you cancer.

When you read things, especially health and diet related, do you have a healthy sense of skepticism?
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Replies

  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,496 Member
    Yep BS detector is fully activated. If it says always, all, lose more than 2 pounds a week, gain more than a couple pounds of muscle a month, etc the information is thrown out of my brain.

    As @launenq1991 mentions WHO, USDA, etc information is in my line of trust.
  • midlomel1971
    midlomel1971 Posts: 1,283 Member
    I do EVERYTHING with a healthy dose of skepticism.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,423 Member
    I would say I read critically. I am aware that there are a lot of articles that are there to manipulate rather than just inform.
    I look at if statements are opinion or fact. I look at the source and if more than one reputable source is in agreement.
    I think about if it jives with my own experience.


  • mycatjasper
    mycatjasper Posts: 7 Member
    I very rarely read 'entertainment' articles based on hyping minor research findings related to veganism/meat etc! Things have normally been taken out of context to make them sound shocking or novel. Everything should be read with a pinch of salt (and that's coming from me as a science communicator!!). I always read the original research paper - or at least an article describing the research paper in a non-biased way that has references. If it's not referenced (the claims are not backed up to reputable scientific research papers) then I don't read it.
  • Crafty_camper123
    Crafty_camper123 Posts: 1,440 Member
    Unless it comes from a reputable source such as NHI, WHO, CDC, or Mayo Clinic or something like that, I am automatically suspicious of what I am reading. The research in gut permeability seems to be in its infancy. From what I can gather it does seem to be a thing that effects some people. But, it's not something scientists understand fully yet. I do not believe it is as pervasive and as common as some of these bloggers would have us beleive. Take hashimotos for example. I was just recently diagnosed myself (high antibodies). And I went on a quest to find out more about it, and what kind of things I could do to support my health naturally, and maybe slow down the inevitable progression of the disease. I was immediatly bombarded with articles telling me about how gluten is secretly killing me and causing ALL of my ailments. It took a lot of digging to finally produce a peer reviewed study about the link between celiac and hashimoto's on the NIH website. (If need be in the name of citation I can go find it again. Let me know) They frequently run together, but one isn't caused by the other. And while yes, going gluten free does seem to help SOME people with Hashimoto's disease, it does not help everyone and anyone. If I stopped at the first few search results, they would have me believing I need to throw out all the gluten (and in some cases dairy) in my house immediatly or suffer the consequences. Disclosure: I did go GF for a while to see if it helped with some digestive issues I was having. It didnt. Nor did it magically cure anything else for me.

    TLDR: I read from several resources to form an educated opinion. I have a higher level of skepticism for bloggers or so called doctors then I do from more reputable medical research sources such as NIH and others of the like.
  • lmsaa
    lmsaa Posts: 51 Member
    Always skepticism. Realize how difficult evaluating studies is for most people. First, evaluation of scientific trial methodology and statistical significance is a skill that not everyone has. Also, many scientific full articles are behind a paywall and inaccessible to those without a university library pass or scientific company subscription; unless we want to spend around $35 per article, we rely on secondary reporting about a study to go beyond the abstract.
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    edited January 2019
    Healthy skepticism, grain of salt, etc.... :smiley:

    No dairy debate from me, I eat yogurt, cheese, drink chocolate milk almost every day. Can't give it up, I am one of those at my age something is going to knock me out at some point, might as well enjoy my dairy in the mean time.
  • nvmomketo
    nvmomketo Posts: 12,019 Member
    I find that it is best to go to the source and read re actual studies, then I might go and read some critiques of both sides and follow their logic and studies. Eventually conclusions can be drawn.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    I'm exhausted from New Year's Eve and from a lot of exercise today. I've been reading to stay awake until a respectable hour to go to bed. There was an article about how dairy is dangerous and addictive, should come with warning labels, gives you leaky gut syndrome, and makes your car break down.

    This quote early on got me in a ranting mood:

    While milk and dairy products, such as cheese and yoghurt, are good sources of protein and calcium and can form part of a healthy, balanced diet, as Dr Michael Greger, from NutritionFacts.org, put it to me: "There's no animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning - and then to drink milk of another species even doesn't make any sense."

    Problem is, I have a cat, years old and fully weaned, who loves goat and cow milk. I mean, it's also a problem that leaky gut syndrome isn't actually a thing.

    There's a thread going on in the health section, somebody is slammed at having read that deli meat will give you cancer.

    When you read things, especially health and diet related, do you have a healthy sense of skepticism?

    But it's somehow okay to take that same "another species" milk and consume the cheese and yoghurt made from them? That distinction always makes me chuckle. According to Michael Greger (who is a quack, btw) shouldn't we all be consuming human breast milk cheese then?

    Or eat their flesh. If the body is good to eat why wouldn't the milk be?

    I mean there theoretically could be some reason that cow milk was actually poisonous to humans, but we wouldn't be drinking a lot of it every day if that was the case.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    It depends on the source and the information collected by that source. A peer-reviewed meta-analysis published in a respected journal and available on the NIH website, or an official recommendation by the World Health Organization based on many studies' worth of research (ie. red and deli meat being probable carcinogens) is more likely to be accurate than a website run by a doctor who cherry-picks studies and has his own personal reasons for wanting people to follow a certain diet.

    I read this detox from cheese article in the health section of the BBC site, after reading a good article there and clicking links at the end...

    Unfortunately this is an important lesson. You can trust the news to find out what's going on where you live, who won the election, stuff like that. But that doesn't mean you can trust them about nutrition.
  • leiflung
    leiflung Posts: 83 Member
    I'm exhausted from New Year's Eve and from a lot of exercise today. I've been reading to stay awake until a respectable hour to go to bed. There was an article about how dairy is dangerous and addictive, should come with warning labels, gives you leaky gut syndrome, and makes your car break down.

    This quote early on got me in a ranting mood:

    While milk and dairy products, such as cheese and yoghurt, are good sources of protein and calcium and can form part of a healthy, balanced diet, as Dr Michael Greger, from NutritionFacts.org, put it to me: "There's no animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning - and then to drink milk of another species even doesn't make any sense."

    Problem is, I have a cat, years old and fully weaned, who loves goat and cow milk. I mean, it's also a problem that leaky gut syndrome isn't actually a thing.

    There's a thread going on in the health section, somebody is slammed at having read that deli meat will give you cancer.

    When you read things, especially health and diet related, do you have a healthy sense of skepticism?

    But it's somehow okay to take that same "another species" milk and consume the cheese and yoghurt made from them? That distinction always makes me chuckle. According to Michael Greger (who is a quack, btw) shouldn't we all be consuming human breast milk cheese then?

    Or eat their flesh. If the body is good to eat why wouldn't the milk be?

    I mean there theoretically could be some reason that cow milk was actually poisonous to humans, but we wouldn't be drinking a lot of it every day if that was the case.

    If there's any interest, it might actually be the other way around. There seems to be a readon why it isn't toxic to a good many people.

    https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/27/168144785/an-evolutionary-whodunit-how-did-humans-develop-lactose-tolerance

    But it really is toxic to some people. If you have some kind of general health ussue that never seems to get better, it might be worth cutting dairy for a bit to see how that makes you feel.

    That goes for a lot of foods. Allergies and tolerance issues don't always these immediate and obvious consequences.
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,563 Member
    I don't know how people who just take this stuff at face value manage to get on in life. I would think they'd live with constant fear and anxiety about what they eat, how they exercise, what insidious thing might be slowly destroying their body unless they supplement with X. I mean, there is so much contridictrary drivel out there that if a person were to try to avoid all the "bad" stuff and do all the "good" stuff (which might actually be the same "stuff" depending on the article) they could end up huddled in bed unable to find a suitable eating window to consume the few foods that haven't been demonized at some point in a blog post by a random internet "doctor".
  • Bry_Fitness70
    Bry_Fitness70 Posts: 2,480 Member
    "There's no animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning - and then to drink milk of another species even doesn't make any sense."

    If their mothers would allow them to nurse indefinitely or they could figure out how to extract milk from other animals, they would certainly be drinking milk at every opportunity. This quote is confusing capability with preference.
  • urloved33
    urloved33 Posts: 3,323 Member
    absolutely. except when my kids write things...they note the source even if its a result of their own work. ...and they are so thorough. <3 top notch scientists.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    The truth is that doctors, nutritionists, and researchers by and large have been saying the same things about what constitutes a healthy diet for many decades, and it's about what you would expect -- based on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, moderate amounts of animal products, and limiting red meat, high-mercury fishes, processed sugar, refined grains, processed oils, alcohol, etc. It may not be what people want to hear or what most people end up eating, but the majority of nutritional recommendations have remained consistent for a long time.

    Yes, but one issue is that the way the media tries to make everything new and interesting (or just clickbaity) means that many people are confused about this and think everything is constantly changing.

    I can think of some changes, but the main advice has been pretty consistent.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    mph323 wrote: »
    I don't know how people who just take this stuff at face value manage to get on in life. I would think they'd live with constant fear and anxiety about what they eat, how they exercise, what insidious thing might be slowly destroying their body unless they supplement with X. I mean, there is so much contridictrary drivel out there that if a person were to try to avoid all the "bad" stuff and do all the "good" stuff (which might actually be the same "stuff" depending on the article) they could end up huddled in bed unable to find a suitable eating window to consume the few foods that haven't been demonized at some point in a blog post by a random internet "doctor".

    A very good friend of mine is someone who believes most of what she reads, as long as the source has the appearance of authority. She is a very intelligent woman who has had a successful career as a nurse (20 years in geriatrics and the last 10 in mental health). She is also very naive. She has a good heart and assumes everyone else does too. I don't think she lives in fear. It is more like she tries to live "right" so she follows whatever is the flavor of the month because it is a good thing, not because she needs to avoid a bad thing.
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    "There's no animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning - and then to drink milk of another species even doesn't make any sense."

    If their mothers would allow them to nurse indefinitely or they could figure out how to extract milk from other animals, they would certainly be drinking milk at every opportunity. This quote is confusing capability with preference.

    I've see a cow with a nursing calf, sulking on it's mother. All 3 lined up and happy as could be. I've also seen cats drinking milk pouring out of a cream separator, and knowing the only time the barn cats would let me go near them is when I wash washing up the separator.
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