I am not trying to be a downer, but when I saw this article, I started thinking about how good I feel on this way of eating. I am 55 years old, and I feel healthy and mentally focused. It does make me wonder if the high carb lifestyle is a factor too. I know in the book “Big Fat Surprise,” the author mentions people feeling depressed when their diet was low fat.
I hope when the truth gets out there this type of trend will reverse.
I read the article earlier today and it sounds like bad math to me. The same type of people that don’t understand that the vast majority in the gains in average life expectancy come from preventing infant mortality and childhood disease. I hate to sound pessimistic but the people that write studies like this are just trying to get published.
What do you mean by bad math? The statistics reported in the article is based on death rates of those between ages 45 and 54. How does life expectancy of children factor into the math?
The reference to long term trends of increasing average life spans. The subtext is that humans are living significantly longer than they previously did. The increase in average life span is overwhelmingly due to decrease in infant mortality, not people living longer. It’s one of those oft repeated myths like “calories in, calories out” and it is one of my pet peeves. Any story that leads with a line like “reversing decades of longer life expectancy” is automatically suspicious to me.
If the percentage of deaths for those aged between 45 to 54 increases, their is evidence that more people are dying at an earlier age.
Imagine if we learn that bridges or airplanes that are 45 to 54 years old start to breakdown at a greater rate today than they did decades ago within the same age category of 45 to 54 years old. we would easily be inclined to draw a conclusion that the design or upkeep of the bridges and airplanes are inferior.
I believe that was the message that @Glenn_Graham said in his original post. If I may paraphrase his words, he is wondering if the effect of high carb diets has a correlation or causation with increased death rates. It’s an interesting thing to think about.
