New wave of anti-meat studies in newspapers

[michaelwh]

Science is determined by the number of studies favouring each particular side. When, as in this case, there are 1,000s of studies damning the consumption of cooked foods, including cooked meats, and very, very few studies showing benefits therefrom, then it is only logical and scientifically plausible to assume, for now, that raw foods are healthier.

Even if one believes in conspiracy-theories such as that almost all scientific studies are biased or are flawed, that still does not exclude the common argument in science that the side with the highest number of studies in its favour is the best one, for now. To take an obvious example, let's say, there are 500 studies which favour the pro-cooked-meat-advocates and 40,000 studies favouring the notion of heat-created toxins causing some harm(given the studies I have already seen, this seems a reasonable rough assumption re ratios, though not numbers). Then, if 95 percent of all studies are biased or flawed or corrupt in some way, then 5 percent of 500 means there are only 25 excellent, well-done studies favouring the pro-cooked-meat side of things, and 2,000 excellent, well-done  studies favouring the notion that heat-created toxins, so that would still mean that the notion of heat-created toxins was far more likely to be correct. Now, one could pretend that absolutely all the studies favouring one side were a-ok, while absolutely all studies favouring the opposite side were totally flawed and corrupt(like Taubes tried to do but got heavily criticised for his fatal errors of assumption and his own personal bias) but this is physically impossible as human bias, flawed studies etc. appear all the time, favouring all kinds of different viewpoints, affecting all sides.

Sorry, but science does not work like this. First of all, your dichotomy of "good study" vs "bad study" is oversimplified. There are different kinds of studies, and they each carry different weight. In nutrition, studies can usually be categorized into the following:

1. observational (epidemiological)
2. clinical trial (dietary intervention)
3. animal experiment
4. biochemistry

(this list is ordered, from least weight to most weight).

(1) -- an example of this is Ancel Keys' famous seven-countries study linking fat consumption to heart disease. Such studies can not be used to prove anything, but only to generate conjectures and hypotheses. It is difficult to identify all confounding variables.

(2) -- an example of this is a study where a group of people is asked to modify their diet, and their health is compared to a control group over many years. This is much more useful than (1), but the intervention diet often changes many things at once. For example, cut out processed food and red meat, replace butter with margarine and olive oil, eat more fruit and vegetables. If a health benefit is found, you don't know which dietary change was the primary cause.

(3) -- the good thing about this kind of study, is that you can precisely control the diets. The problem is, that animals aren't humans. Another practical problem, is that in most animal experiments, the animals are fed low-grade processed food. For example, rat chow + butter is compared to rat chow + olive oil. If such experiments were done with real food, they would be much more interesting. And also much more expensive.

(4) -- an example of this is the work on the LDL receptor and palmitic acid by Brown and Goldstein. They received the Nobel Prize for this work. Nobel prizes don't get awarded for things like clinical trials or observational studies. That says a lot about what kind of work is valued. However, the problem with these kinds of studies is that they are reductionist, and look at only one very specific food component or biochemical pathway, and it is not always clear how relevant their results are in a real-life situation.

The info on AGEs is now mainstream:-

http://www.diabetesaction.org/site/PageNavigator/Complementary%20Corner/complementary_december_06

so anti-AGE diatribes by such as Chris Masterjohn are really just crackpot, fringe notions.

Second of all, your dichotomy of "mainstream" vs "fringe/crackpot" is oversimplified. Some popular article, or scientific review article, may give the impression that a result or theory is accepted by an overwhelming majority of scientists working in the field. But if you actually talk to these scientists, or go to a conference, you will get a very different picture. I have seen this first hand.

Finally, I think that PaleoPhil's post is a very good one, and I agree with him on the scientific status of cooking, and heat-created-toxins.

[Iguana]

We don’t have to prove that raw food is healthy, safe or whatever: it has been the normal nutrition of all living things on Earth ever since the appearance of life on Earth 3.7 or 3.8 billions years ago. Moreover, biochemistry show without the slightest shadow of a doubt that heat damages or destroys complex organic macromolecules, which in turn can cause various troubles in living organisms.

It belongs to the cooked food proponents to show that heating and cooking is harmless and that we are perfectly adapted to it (not only to be able to reproduce and perpetuate the specie). So far, this has not been done.

On the contrary, very simple experiments on various animals and humans show just the opposite. Nobody can live on 100% cooked and sterilized food. We have proved we can live well, remain happy and healthy without any need for medicine, give birth to children and raise them till adulthood on 100% raw nutrition. Some of them are now in their 30’s and 40’s, still eat 100% raw and are perfectly healthy.

[TylerDurden]

Iguana makes a good point. Strictly speaking, the burden of proof is on pro-cooked-advocates to show that cooking is harmless. I would love to see a study on middle-aged people doing 100 percent cooked diets for a decade or more.

[TylerDurden]

Second of all, your dichotomy of "mainstream" vs "fringe/crackpot" is oversimplified. Some popular article, or scientific review article, may give the impression that a result or theory is accepted by an overwhelming majority of scientists working in the field. But if you actually talk to these scientists, or go to a conference, you will get a very different picture. I have seen this first hand.

There is a major flaw in your above arguments:- namely, the fact that there are plenty of studies that the pro-cooked-meat advocates cite, which are highly flawed in and of themselves, or ones where the pro-cooked-advocates deliberately distorted the actual evidence so as to make it falsely seem to represent their views(example here includes this citicism of Taubes:-

http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/big-fat-fake

http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/gary-taubes-tries-to-overwhelm

. Now, even if one were to make a hasty, decidedly unproven, assumption that only, say, 10 percent of the anti-cooked meat studies were fine but that 90 percent of the pro-cooked meat studies were fine, the number of studies favouring the pro-cooked-meat position is so low by comparison to the number of studies favouring the notion that cooked meat is unhealthy, that even with those assumed percentages of 10 percent and 90 percent, the number of studies favouring the anti-cooked-meat faction would still outweigh the number of studies favouring the pro-SFA faction, thus making it only foolish not to believe in the notion that cooking heavily is harmful.


As for the above quoted claim, I was not pointing to just 1 article but simply citing a general mainstream viewpoint which is all over the web, whether among websites run by scientists or elsewhere. There are now plenty of (non-rawist) websites from nutritionists' boards which now give recommendations on how to cook one's food less harmfully so as not to produce too many heat-created toxins etc.
`

Now, of course, one can take the easy route that people like Chris Masterjohn take, which is to pretend that absolutely all the mass of studies favouring the opposing view must be inherently flawed in serious ways and that absolutely all studies favouring the same view, however few, are 100 percent perfect, but this so unlikely, statistically, that it's absurd. In the end, judging from a number of opinions I have read on nulerous websites, it involves people invariably citing ludicrous conspiracy-theories about how supposedly  some agency(Illuminati , FDA or whatever) is supposedly suppressing science or similiar nonsense. I see such comments on pro-cooked-SFA websites all the time.

[PaleoPhil]

... but also there have been studies showing how AGEs directly and negatively affect human cells in vitro

OK, could you share with me what you think is the best one of those studies and a couple more studies that you think are the best of all on AGEs or heat-related toxins and I'll take a look at them. I've checked out some of your studies before, but maybe they'll be ones I haven't reviewed yet. I don't need convincing to eat raw anyway, but if they're good they might help me in responding to questions or criticisms from non-rawists.

it is perfectly  understandable that when someone makes lame, unscientific comments in favour of the Noble-Savage theory or some other pro-cooked-oriented or pro-raw vegan topic(or tries to rewrite history by previously pretending that cannibalism was not as prevalent as claimed in palaeo times), that one should naturally step in and criticise such a move.

There you go again with your straw men. I'll probably regret asking it, but you keep bringing this vague "Noble Savage" complaint up, often directed at no one in particular and seemingly at the same time at anyone who disagrees with you, so could you please explain in more detail what you think the "Noble-Savage theory" is (preferably in a separate thread, to avoid sidetracking this one), who was the originator of it and who were the major historical promoters/supporters and who are the leading ones today? And could you please provide a passage of text or two that is an example of Noble Savage theory promotion by one of today's prominent theorists? Do you think that anything written in this thread promotes it? If so, then please provide a quote demonstrating it. If you cannot do these things then it may be much ado about nothing.

[I deleted out my comments on Tyler's "beyond absolute doubt" remarks which were based on a misreading by me--my apologies to Tyler for that one]

one only has to accumulate far more scientific evidence in favour of one's hypothesis than evidence favouring other viewpoints.

Isn't it wise to also consider credible contrary evidence and where the evidence is weak or absent, not just tally up studies that support one's bias? Science also involves questioning one's own assumptions and putting them to the test in various ways, not turning them into absolute dogmas.

Here are interesting suggestions from blogger Alex Tabarrok on how to better evaluate studies:

What can be done about these problems?  (Some cribbed straight from Ioannidis and some my own suggestions.)

1) In evaluating any study try to take into account the amount of background noise.  That is, remember that the more hypotheses which are tested and the less selection which goes into choosing hypotheses the more likely it is that you are looking at noise.

2) Bigger samples are better.  (But note that even big samples won't help to solve the problems of observational studies which is a whole other problem).

3) Small effects are to be distrusted.

4) Multiple sources and types of evidence are desirable.

5) Evaluate literatures not individual papers.

6) Trust empirical papers which test other people's theories more than empirical papers which test the author's theory.

7) As an editor or referee, don't reject papers that fail to reject the null." (http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/09/why_most_publis.html)

The greater the difference between them, the more likely it is that  the one side with the larger studies is right, and the other smaller one  wrong.

An overwhelming accumulation of evidence is indeed significant, but it's not a guarantee of "absolute" certainty. The consensus of the Western scientific community has been wrong about things in the past. Darwin and Huxley had to argue for years to get biological evolution accepted as a scientific model, for example, overturning the previous consensus. If the scientific consensus was never wrong then there would be no scientific revolutions and thus no Darwininian evolution. The scientific consensus is also wrong about some things today, such as supporting the USDA food pyramid and similar nonsense instead of a raw Paleo diet or any type of Paleo or raw diet for that matter.

The lame argument that all other studies are wrong, just because one says so, makes no sense.

Yet another one of your tiresome straw men. Neither Yuli nor I nor John Ioannidis have written that all other studies are wrong just because we say so. I'm not even arguing that the studies are wrong, only that you can't assume that they are all absolutely correct just because they support the consensus, nor can you assume that the conensus is absolutely correct.

Even if one believes in conspiracy-theories such as that almost all scientific studies are biased or are flawed...

To be precise, the article reports that Ioannidis "charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed." It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a paper that has been broadly accepted and confirmed within the medical community:

Ioannidis initially thought the community might come out fighting. Instead, it seemed relieved, as if it had been guiltily waiting for someone to blow the whistle, and eager to hear more. David Gorski, a surgeon and researcher at Detroit’s Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, noted in his prominent medical blog that when he presented Ioannidis’s paper on highly cited research at a professional meeting, “not a single one of my surgical colleagues was the least bit surprised or disturbed by its findings.” Ioannidis offers a theory for the relatively calm reception. “I think that people didn’t feel I was only trying to provoke them, because I showed that it was a community problem, instead of pointing fingers at individual examples of bad research,” he says. In a sense, he gave scientists an opportunity to cluck about the wrongness without having to acknowledge that they themselves succumb to it—it was something everyone else did.

To say that Ioannidis’s work has been embraced would be an understatement. His PLoS Medicine paper is the most downloaded in the journal’s history, and it’s not even Ioannidis’s most-cited work.... (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/)

So if you were consistent in applying your own frequently-cited guide of consensus, you would conclude that there must be something to Ioannidis' report, because the consensus, or at least a major part of the medical community, appears to accept it.

Now, one could pretend that absolutely all the studies favouring one side were a-ok, while absolutely all studies favouring the opposite side were totally flawed and corrupt

Methinks the fox smells himself.

this is physically impossible as human bias, flawed studies etc. appear all the time, favouring all kinds of different viewpoints, affecting all sides.

We agree here and that is part of what Ioannidis reported. So we should remember to keep in mind that studies can be flawed, especially in certain fields like medicine, and that interpretations of study data can add another layer of error (Ancel Keys' misrepresentations of his data on saturated fat and T. Colin Campbell's bogus interpretations and misrepresentations of The China Study data are famous examples of this), and that we shouldn't treat study interpretations as absolute truths.

What cannot be denied, nowadays, is that cooking heavily causes harm to foods. That is now mainstream thought.

It is mainstream thought and everyone seems to agree at least that cooking everything to a cinder is a bad idea, for example. On the other hand, the current consensus appears to be that there are some subtleties to it, as you indicate here:

Granted, there are still some delaying tactics with many scientists claiming, despite evidence of toxins in such foods, that boiled/lightly-cooked foods are somehow OK because they are "less worse" than well-cooked foods, but that is to be expected since humans have been eating cooked foods for so many millenia.

If we accepted the consensus, as you advocate, then we'd have to say that low-and-slow is the way to go, rather than all raw. There isn't a single major scientific, medical or nutritional organization that advocates an all-raw diet. So can you see how the consensus can sometimes be wrong?
 

Thanks Michael. Excellent post, and not just because you agreed with me.

We don’t have to prove that raw food is healthy, safe or whatever: it has been the normal nutrition of all living things on Earth ever since the appearance of life on Earth 3.7 or 3.8 billions years ago. Moreover, biochemistry show without the slightest shadow of a doubt that heat damages or destroys complex organic macromolecules, which in turn can cause various troubles in living organisms.

It belongs to the cooked food proponents to show that heating and cooking is harmless and that we are perfectly adapted to it (not only to be able to reproduce and perpetuate the specie). So far, this has not been done.

I agree, Iguana. Just because the current consensus advocates certain forms of cooking doesn't guarantee that the consensus is correct. They are starting from the wrong default reference point. They start with modern diets and ask "Why should I eat raw?" or "Why should I eliminate this modern food from my diet?" instead of starting from nature's default and asking "Why should I cook?" or "Why should I add this modern food into my diet?" This is one reason why I'm not particularly concerned personally if studies don't show any harm from certain forms of cooking. Eating raw is the default position of nature, I'm already eating raw and benefiting from it in various ways beyond health benefits, so I would need good reasons to eat cooked, not reasons to eat raw.

I'd also be interested in what you think is the best biochemistry study on this.

Nobody can live on 100% cooked and sterilized food.

Right. I think it's safe to say that even our harshest critics would agree that cooking everything to a cinder is a bad idea.

Iguana makes a good point. Strictly speaking, the burden of proof is on pro-cooked-advocates to show that cooking is harmless.

I agree.

I would love to see a study on middle-aged people doing 100 percent cooked diets for a decade or more.

No one is advocating that, so there wouldn't be much point.

[yuli]

PP, as usual, you are talking nonsense re the above comments. It is perfectly valid and understandable that I should criticise people who advocate topics which are objectionable within RPD guidelines. Some arguments  are appalling:- for example, the lame mercury-in-fish argument, frequently debunked by many scientists, is used by vegans and others to claim that one should never eat raw seafood. This means that rawists, if they believed such lame nonsense, would feel obliged to cut out all raw seafood, which is actually a very healthy type of raw food that is particularly useful in many cases. So, it is perfectly  understandable that when someone makes lame, unscientific comments in favour of the Noble-Savage theory or some other pro-cooked-oriented or pro-raw vegan topic(or tries to rewrite history by previously pretending that cannibalism was not as prevalent as claimed in palaeo times), that one should naturally step in and criticise such a move. In the past, not doing so on other forums has usually led to various pro-cooked advocates eventually attacking rawists on raw forums by trying to pretend that cooking is OK and that any pro-raw argument must be wrong and that is unacceptable.

Who was supporting the mercury in fish argument? I brought it up to say that it is in fact safe and good to eat fish regardless if it has small amounts of mercury or not. I used that as an example to say that sometimes small amounts of toxins can be negligible, how negligible and what amounts is up for the individual to decide. Not everyone can tolerate the same amounts toxins, get rid of them at the same rate, or follow the same diet as someone else etc. etc. Everyone is different. This is why studies are flawed anyway. But that does not make me a cooked food supporter and you don't have to defend raw food because there is no studies even needed to see its good as it is what animals live on and what we evolved on. Similarly we don't really need studies to show how bad is cooked food, you are putting it over high heat, geee what do you think happens, put your finger over a fire and there is your study that cooking destroys progressively.

I mean sure some studies can be ok but if you have to rely on them in order to support your diet then thats pretty weak in my point of view. You should support it because you have good results and it works for you, not because what scientists told you. If something is working for me, reading the studies that warn me otherwise has no effect for some reason, because for everything you will do there will be one or 1000 studies against it and the number of studies have no relevance whatsoever to real people in real life, thats what I think.

Do we need all these studies to tell us raw food is good, raw meat won't kill you, that you can't eat too much cooked food, that a sterile all cooked diet will kill you? I mean some people are dumb so you need to tell them that but I think we here are bright enough to figure out those things. If you need to rely on studies to support how you eat perhaps your diet is not good enough that you have to go looking for proof from scientists, cause the proof should be already evident to you no? The studies can compliment what you say ok, but to rely on them or state the fact that well now its mainstream or there are 10,000 studies is no less lame then just saying something "unscientific", because it works and thats good enough for a lot of people. Anyway I don't see how one is more lame then the other. People generally think eating lots of grains is good because that info is also mainstream so what good does it do anyway....

No one is attacking raw food here anyway so why you are afraid of being attacked or the forum being taken over? Cause it happened somewhere? Blah blah, you are fighting an imaginary war here I think. I am not seeing a raw vegan army heading in here. What I am seeing is anytime cooked food is mentioned (in anything less then completely negative way) you start with your studies, criticism, or how appalling or laughable that is...why do you have to defend it that much. If I eat raw meat but I like to eat baked potatoes is that attacking the rawpaleo diet or in any way diminishing the importance of raw food? If someone here was criticizing people that don't eat any cooked food then obviously that would be different. But so far no one is trying to do that here. If someone chooses to mention that they are eating some cooked food for a certain reason or other they are just being honest they are not trying take over. Why should you have to be critical or defensive of people like that, instead its nice that we all have little differences and all the experimentation with foods (raw, part-raw, carnivore, omnivore) is a great way to learn. Well its better to learn that way then to compare numbers of studies thats for sure. Its good to hear different sides of the story without being appalled that someone is having a different experience, for example with raw dairy, or adding cooked starches etc. That is why we have the Hot Topics forum or the Primal forum here...if not then why the hell put those forums up at all. "Here is a part of the forum where you are allowed to discuss cooked food...but only if you say how bad it is all the time"...lol, whats the point then.

[TylerDurden]

Yuli, you are mising the point. First of all, studies do matter to some extent. For example, Aajonus has used some raw dairy-related studies to argue his pro-raw dairy stance when among politicians. Simply stating that one is healthy and providing testimonials is not enough as raw vegans do that all the time, despite plenty of scientific evidence re nutritional deficiencies among raw vegans.  Besides, the more mainstream pro-raw scientific  info gets, the better for us re food-availability/prices etc.

Secondly, it is perfectly understandable why someone like myself might expose crucial flaws in pro-cooked arguments. I have been visiting other raw forums for many years, and had nasty experiences in the past. At first, some posters would openly attack 100 percent RVAFers ironically and hypocritically labelling them fanatics. Then they would usually make some nonsense comment about how supposedly HGs had lived on cooked diets for millenia and were perfectly healthy and that therefore cooking was perfectly OK(an argument with so many holes in it, it's utterly absurd, but anyway). There were also attempts by some(such as in 1 notorious raw  forum) to impose a partially-raw stance as an absolute with anyone advocating a high-raw diet being banned. Even minor straying from the subject is merely the thin end of the wedge, ultimately.(not that I am criticising you, incidentally)

The other point is that the wider a forum's focus becomes, the less it attracts members and the less interested people become in the forum re daily post-count etc. I mean, sure, if we wanted to include all viewpoints we could allow discussion of the wonders and benefits of Big Macs and Haagen Daasz icecream, but it would ruin the forum's focus.
Also, granted, we do have a hot topics forum, but one of the 3 main points of that forum, really, is to allow people to put pro-cooked arguments so that the rest of us can then  take our time demolishing them via logic and references. That is far better, IMO, than just banning all discussion of cooked foods, and gives us an opportunity to see what changing arguments pro-cooked-advocates use from time to time, so we can debunk them.

I suppose we could include a forum for the partially-raw as well, but where would it end? We can't very well include specific forums for Big Macs or Atkins or whatever. Better to have a common goal for all RVAFers, namely a 100 percent rawpalaeodiet. Sure some will like some cooked foods, some will be forced to eat cooked foods occasionally due to some noxious spouse, and others will be also interested in raw, non-palaeo foods, but almost all posters(except durianrider et al) will be mostly interested in rawpalaeo foods. Some members are even only here because they don't want to hear about cooked foods at all, so, since any cooked foods can be easily discussed on a 1,000 other forums, it is best to keep this a rawpalaeo forum, in the main.

[Iguana]

I agree, Iguana. Just because the current consensus advocates certain forms of cooking doesn't guarantee that the consensus is correct. They are starting from the wrong default reference point. They start with modern diets and ask "Why should I eat raw?" or "Why should I eliminate this modern food from my diet?" instead of starting from nature's default and asking "Why should I cook?" or "Why should I add this modern food into my diet?" This is one reason why I'm not particularly concerned personally if studies don't show any harm from certain forms of cooking. Eating raw is the default position of nature, I'm already eating raw and benefiting from it in various ways beyond health benefits, so I would need good reasons to eat cooked, not reasons to eat raw.

Exactly! I’m glad you and Tyler agree with me, so that we all agree – at least on this fundamental point. 

I'd also be interested in what you think is the best biochemistry study on this.
 

I don’t know, I’m not specialized in this matter! But any biology or biochemistry book for the layman will explain that the biochemical process are very specific and accurately organized. See for example how enzymes exactly fit on their allowed specific recognition site of a protein to split it into amino acids. It follows that it is not a good idea to play havoc in such fine mechanisms by heating the stuff above the temperature range in which life can operate.

That should be evident from what we know ever since perhaps half a century, but cooking is so much incorporated  into our culture and generally considered as a main point distinguishing us from other animals that no prominent scientist dares to question the belief that humans must cook their food.

As Yuli says, a good study is to put our hand on the fire and see what happens… 

[yuli]

OK studies do matter to some extent but both in a good way (like your sample of what AV did) but also in a bad way as well, theres many examples of that. So we should be careful how we use studies.

Besides, the more mainstream pro-raw scientific  info gets the better for us, re food-availability/prices etc.

Thats a good point, it will make my food cheaper! 

.... it is perfectly understandable why someone like myself might expose crucial flaws in pro-cooked arguments. I have been visiting other raw forums for many years, and had nasty experiences in the past......Even minor straying from the subject is merely the thin end of the wedge, ultimately....

Yeah its faulty whenever any straying from one single diet is banned, thats why we shouldn't do it here either, you said that the main point of Hot Topic forum is to demolish all non-negative references of cooked food, but in way it seems illogical to have a forum where the point is to only demolish something...a good forum is if it can contain a topic - then the point should be to discuss the topic instead. The reason that what happened on those forums you mentioned is because they forgot to do that.

....the wider a forum's focus becomes, the less it attracts members and the less interested people become in the forum re daily post-count etc. I mean, sure, if we wanted to include all viewpoints we could allow discussion of the wonders and benefits of Big Macs and Haagen Daasz icecream, but it would ruin the forum's focus...

Well yeah if it becomes too random then theres no point. But Big Macs have like nothing to do with any healthy diet I know of. However this diet forum is about RAW and PALEO and HEALTH, so discussing something paleo but not raw, or raw but not paleo, or anything that could be healthy but out of the raw paleo norm should be normal. This is why we talk about exercising naturally and also about using machines like rowing machine...or should we demolish using equipment to exercise too....the point is that we can't totally live like our ancestors, well we can but then you wont have your laptop to post with  so naturally there will be topics that not as natural as living like a HG but not as bad as Big Macs...you know what I mean. We should include all SANE viewpoints that have health in mind, show me one forum where its a HEALTH forum that promotes Big Macs and Macdonalds....but the fact that we should keep the focus rawpaleo is very true, I think the people posting here are pretty focused about raw paleo though

[TylerDurden]

OK, could you share with me what you think is the best one of those studies and a couple more studies that you think are the best of all on AGEs or heat-related toxins and I'll take a look at them. I've checked out some of your studies before, but maybe they'll be ones I haven't reviewed yet. I don't need convincing to eat raw anyway, but if they're good they might help me in responding to questions or criticisms from non-rawists.

It is pointless to mention just 1 study, as it is the masses of studies that ultimately count. I suppose one could say that if a respected scientist (not me) chose the best study, that that would count for something. However, that falls apart when one recalls that Alphagruis, a former RPF member and physicist, tried to claim that, scientifically speaking,pemmican was very healthy, despite the numerous acounts from other RVAFers that they did badly, healthwise, on pemmican.

There you go again with your straw men. I'll probably regret asking it, but you keep bringing this vague "Noble Savage" complaint up, often directed at no one in particular and seemingly at the same time at anyone who disagrees with you, so could you please explain in more detail what you think the "Noble-Savage theory" is (preferably in a separate thread, to avoid sidetracking this one), who was the originator of it and who were the major historical promoters/supporters and who are the leading ones today? And could you please provide a passage of text or two that is an example of Noble Savage theory promotion by one of today's prominent theorists? Do you think that anything written in this thread promotes it? If so, then please provide a quote demonstrating it. If you cannot do these things then it may be much ado about nothing.

Disingenuous rubbish as usual. Besides, the Noble Savage theory has been discussed a 1,000 times already. But for the mentally slow among us, (and the unscrupulous), I will rehash what the NS theory is about. The theory concerns people pointing to some tribe of savages who are seen to be supposedly more "natural" than modern man, and therefore implying that anything such tribes do is somehow "natural". As for the NS-related comments, I was naturally pointing to previous comments you have made in the past.

The aim of science is not to prove anything beyond absolute doubt. That's one thing I've tried to explain to you, such as with the quote by Erich Fromm that "Scientific knowledge is not absolute but 'optimal.'" Absolutism and absence of doubt are from the realm of mythology, religion and magical thinking, not science. That's not to say that there's no place for mythology and religion, but that as a general rule, absolutism should be avoided in science other than perhaps as conventions to save time (for example, "If we accept this as a given, then this follows"--but we should remember to question our givens now and then). Science is more about questioning, learning and accumulating knowledge than about achieving final answers that are beyond absolute doubt.
Isn't it wise to also consider credible contrary evidence and where the evidence is weak or absent, not just tally up studies that support one's bias? Science also involves questioning one's own assumptions and putting them to the test in various ways, not turning them into absolute dogmas.

On the one hand, you dismiss the huge amount of scientific data confirming that cooked foods, such as cooked meats, contain toxins, yet you are willing to defend the very few which favour cooked-meats. And, actually, one of the main reasons I went rawpalaeo in the first place  was precisely because I had noticed that there were a huge number of studies confirming the negative effects of cooked diets and non-palaeodiets, so my bias, if any, is derived from the huge number of studies not on the stance itself. As for the very few studies, since , just like with the other side, they also have their rates of flaws, it makes rather more sense to side with the larger side.

Yet another one of your tiresome straw men. Neither Yuli nor I nor John Ioannidis have written that all other studies are wrong just because we say so. I'm not even arguing that the studies are wrong, only that you can't assume that they are all absolutely correct just because they support the consensus, nor can you assume that the conensus is absolutely correct.

That's just it, I did not assume that. After all, I had previously pointed out that the attack on saturated fats in many such studies was mistaken and that AGEs in cooked foods were really responsible.

To be precise, the article reports that Ioannidis "charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed." It's not a conspiracy theory, it's a paper that has been broadly accepted and confirmed within the medical community:

The WHOLE point I was trying to make is that the argument that studies are biased applies to BOTH sides. So, the point re far more studies confirming toxins in cooked foods than the other side, still applies.

Methinks the fox smells himself.

¨Pure hypocrisy!

If we accepted the consensus, as you advocate, then we'd have to say that low-and-slow is the way to go, rather than all raw. There isn't a single major scientific, medical or nutritional organization that advocates an all-raw diet. So can you see how the consensus can sometimes be wrong?[/quote] Again, you are missing the point. The very fact that well-cooked foods are admittted by mainstream sources to be unhealthy, means rawists have already won half the argument already. Sure, it may take time to get to admitting the all-raw position, but we already have some official admissions(such as in one example, where scientists grudgingly admitted that there were no heterocyclic amines in raw meats). Small steps....

[TylerDurden]

OK studies do matter to some extent but both in a good way (like your sample of what AV did) but also in a bad way as well, theres many examples of that. So we should be careful how we use studies.

Thats a good point, it will make my food cheaper! 

Yeah its faulty whenever any straying from one single diet is banned, thats why we shouldn't do it here either, you said that the main point of Hot Topic forum is to demolish all non-negative references of cooked food, but in way it seems illogical to have a forum where the point is to only demolish something...a good forum is if it can contain a topic - then the point should be to discuss the topic instead. The reason that what happened on those forums you mentioned is because they forgot to do that.

Well yeah if it becomes too random then theres no point. But Big Macs have like nothing to do with any healthy diet I know of. However this diet forum is about RAW and PALEO and HEALTH, so discussing something paleo but not raw, or raw but not paleo, or anything that could be healthy but out of the raw paleo norm should be normal. This is why we talk about exercising naturally and also about using machines like rowing machine...or should we demolish using equipment to exercise too....the point is that we can't totally live like our ancestors, well we can but then you wont have your laptop to post with  so naturally there will be topics that not as natural as living like a HG but not as bad as Big Macs...you know what I mean. We should include all SANE viewpoints that have health in mind, show me one forum where its a HEALTH forum that promotes Big Macs and Macdonalds....but the fact that we should keep the focus rawpaleo is very true, I think the people posting here are pretty focused about raw paleo though

No, the raw forums in some cases got hijacked by masses of people who were only partially raw. Strength in numbers counts so if one allowed any old discussions, it doesn't help. Better to allow discussion but also allow people to debunk pro-cooked arguments too.

As for claims re health, actually some people do claim that Big Macs help recover peoples' health. Atkins more or less suggested that eating burgers without the bun was healthy, while there is the abysmal "eat-everything-diet" where people are urged to eat any old crap in order to become healthy.

[laterade]

Wiley Brooks says the only thing you should eat is a double quarter pounder with cheese and diet coke from the liter bottle.
 

[PaleoPhil]

It is pointless to mention just 1 study, as it is the masses of studiers that ultimately count.

Humor me. Most people I know are not going to be impressed if I just claim that "masses of studies" support what I say and that they are dumb-dumbs to question them. They might look at one or two or three, though. What are the best few studies in your opinion that you have read on AGEs and heat-related toxins in general? If there are 1,000s then surely you can come up with a few that you find particularly persuasive?

FYI: When listing links to studies and other references, it's a good idea to include identifying information on the written source material (such as titles, journal names, dates, etc.) because Internet links tend to have short lives and some of the links you posted in the stickies went dead.

As for the NS-related comments, I was naturally pointing to previous comments you have made in the past.

If you aren't referring to anyone's specific comments in this thread then it's a trollish tangent best handled elsewhere. I'll save it for another time, since this discussion is already taking up too much time and it appears to be your same tired old trollish stuff and sour grapes anyway.

That's just it, I did not assume that. After all, I had previously pointed out that the attack on saturated fats in many such studies was mistaken and that AGEs in cooked foods were really responsible.

I see, I rechecked your words and found that I screwed up in my reading of your comments on "beyond absolute doubt." I deleted my remarks on that with apologies to you.

we already have some official admissions(such as in one example, where scientists grudgingly admitted that there were no heterocyclic amines in raw meats). Small steps....

Sure, some scientists and physicians are making small steps in our direction, and I have written about his myself, but it's not because of our rants in this forum.

Much of the rest of your post was more of the same trollish BS. My point was not to completely dismiss data or defend a few cooked-meat studies, just point out that tallying up studies is only part of the picture and historically hasn't always been a good guide. Your imagined straw men are transparent attempts to distract from my original points that science is determined by more than just "the number of studies favouring each particular side" and that your effort to understand where Yuli is coming from in this thread and deal with her points honestly has been deficient. For every one of your straw men about me or Yuli or others that I refute you create two more and I'm tired of responding to them. I doubt anyone takes them seriously anyway, for I haven't seen anyone else making the same claims, so I won't do more detailed refutations of your accusations unless it becomes necessary.

.... As for claims re health, actually some people do claim that Big Macs help recover peoples' health. Atkins more or less suggested that eating burgers without the bun was healthy, while there is the abysmal "eat-everything-diet" where people are urged to eat any old crap in order to become healthy.

Do you mean Matt Stone's "High Everything Diet"?

[TylerDurden]

Do you mean Matt Stone's "High Everything Diet"?

The other label was used by another forum-owner trying to more or less adopt Matt Stone's diet.

[PaleoPhil]

The other label was used by another forum-owner trying to more or less adopt Matt Stone's diet.

Do you remember the forum?

[TylerDurden]

Do you remember the forum?

I don't even want to mention it here.

[TylerDurden]

Humor me. Most people I know are not going to be impressed if I just claim that "masses of studies" support what I say and that they are dumb-dumbs to question them. They might look at one or two or three, though. What are the best few studies in your opinion that you have read on AGEs and heat-related toxins in general? If there are 1,000s then surely you can come up with a few that you find particularly persuasive?

There is little point as I had already pointed out that there are 1,000s of available studies online(and I have already provided a link with several references to some OK studies, if hardly top-notch. I do think that people should have the patience to read through 2 dozen or more of such(easily searchable online) studies before they start saying foolish things like "AGEs are harmless" or whatever. Besides, my whole point is that the masses of studies on AGEs and the (comparatively) very low number of studies denying the negative effects of AGEs, clearly demonstrate that heat-created toxins are indeed a problem - something one can only reasonably work out if one actually reads through a large number of studies and then reads Taubes' criticisms followed by those criticisms of Taubes

FYI: When listing links to studies and other references, it's a good idea to include identifying information on the written source material (such as titles, journal names, dates, etc.) because Internet links tend to have short lives and some of the links you posted in the stickies went dead.

Well I have been altering other parts of the relevant wikipedia page quite a lot recently, so hadn't noticed those particular refs not working. Of course, being the only one checking that page, despite entreaties to others to help, makes things difficult.

If you aren't referring to anyone's specific comments in this thread then it's a trollish tangent best handled elsewhere. I'll save it for another time, since this discussion is already taking up too much time and it appears to be your same tired old trollish stuff and sour grapes anyway.

The hypocrisy in your above remark is telling. And it is perfectly legitimate to refer to certain past threads(re cannibalism/the french etc.) when you have  recently tried to rewrite history by falsely claiming to have never expressed an opinion that you did indeed express in the past. As for the other quote, a suitable description thereof would consist of  Macbeth's famous remark in Shakespeare's relevant play, act 5 scene 5.

[ys]

Phil, here is one http://pen.sagepub.com/content/31/5/430.full

have fun with it, if you need more studies just google it yourself, asking TD for references is like pulling teeth.

[Alan]

>>>    I think it is quite freeing once you become comfortable with trusting your instincts


trusting their instincts is what led almost all neolithic people to the conclusion that sacrificing humans is an effective way to assure the success of staple crops.  Try reading the pages about human-sacrifice in a book entitled "Old Country Ways".


trusting their instincts is what led the ancient greeks to the conclusion that heavier objects accelerate in in gravity, faster than light objects.

trusting their instincts is what led the Vienna Medical Society to the conclusion that kicking Ignatius Semmelweis out, is more sensible than listen to his actual evidence that washing your hands after doing autopsies, leads to lower amount of childbirthing deaths.

i don't trust my instincts and i DEFINITELY don't trust yours.   Tell you frankly,  i am sick and tired of reading statements along the lines of: "eating XXXX made me sick".  I don't trust people's powers of observation.
 

[sabertooth]

perhaps the people who conducted human sacrifice truly benefited by culling off competing humanoids and such, perhaps it was necessary to preseve social order in a barbaric time, and there was a conspiracy among the elders who arbitrarily picked the victim based on utilitarian motives while proclaiming to the community that it was a sacrifice for the gods to insure a better growing season. Just think a group of elders who see some upstart with no respect for their authority well guess who the gods want dead. It could be a way of weeding the comunity. And thank god its no longer practiced, because lord knows I would be a candidate for sacrifice based on my own derelictions. The point is that instincts are real although they are not always beneficial, curiosity killed the cat, but the curious nature also provides the means of survival.

Instincs in humans must be accompanied by proper training in order to develop healthily, In paleo times the elders would have learned what is safe to eat and what is necessary to be done, and living side by side with the youth to control the instints and usher them into a more beneficial direction.

I agree that because of the adulteration of our primal nature it is difficult to trust the instincts regarding food, because children are forced to eat gruel, formula, baby food, and so they don't grow up under the guidance of the elders trained taste, but at the mercy of factory food. That being said if we cant trust our adulterated instincts what can we trust, because before this diet I tried to follow conventional healthy dietary guidelines and wasn't any better off, and now I follow my cravings for flesh and am better than I remember.

[TylerDurden]

   Tell you frankly,  i am sick and tired of reading statements along the lines of: "eating XXXX made me sick".  I don't trust people's powers of observation.

Don't you at least trust your own powers of observation?

[raw-al]

I am beginning to hate all studies with a passion, everything I read I don't believe anymore, to make a real study just try it out on yourself and you will know. All these studies are done with one bias or another behind them, grrrr.

I agree Yuli,
Essentially most studies start with the conclusion and work backwards until they find (dream up) a story.