Why not have the leading diet 'experts' get together and design the diets for a randomized study monitored by an independent group?

#1

Not sure where else to put this:

Admitting that a single study is not likely to ever be completely conclusive, I was thinking something like this might be optimal to help eliminate a lot of controversy and denials on all sides whenever diets are compared and settle at least a lot of questions within a reasonable degree, or at least forward the conversation significantly.

So, why not get a bunch of the experts on the divergent diet ideas together to themselves design and check on a diet plan for a randomized trial of say a thousand people divided into the different groups (after much data is taken on each group and individual for things like current health markers, body fat %, levels of various biomarkers, etc), and see how things go?

I’m thinking perhaps Volek and Phinney and maybe some others design a nutritional ketogenic diet, McDougal or whoever is big in the starch crowd today for theirs, some paleo people, whatever else is out there, etc. Maybe have at least 5 or 6 variants to divide a thousand people among or something. While I know there are a million different diets under the sun, a lot are not significantly different in meaningful ways, so I’d think you could come up with a reasonable set that most would agree on as major competing diets to consider and agree on the reasonable people in the respective fields to design the diets for each.

That way, it can’t be complained later “well, that research didn’t do my version of the diet right for such and such a reason, or they overlooked this or that, etc”.

Unfortunately, I think the closest we get to something like this are game shows like “The Biggest Loser” and “My Diet is Better than Yours”, which don’t really take that many types of people, have a clinical structure, nor more get enough data points for each set (typically they are n=1).

With that in mind, what other considerations would you guys think would be needed here? What details are important? Beyond the expense and ulterior motives, is there some reason this kind of approach doesn’t make sense?

(John) #2

Its like the old ‘you can never buy a good used car’ thing. The status quo is benefiting a huge number of people/companies/scientists, they have nothing to win with this and everything to lose. You need people and companies with the good of the people in mind and those seem hard to come by.
Government funded is really the only way, but anything opposed to the current state would be shot down somehow, too much liability. Imagine a ‘prestigious’ organization like the FDA or the ADA having to come out and say they were wrong all along and millions suffered and died because of it. Never gonna happen. On top of that people could easily prove that there were studies that showed this all along, or at least the current way was wrong, more liability. Everyone with a study opposing the findings would be accused of deliberate bias for money and be out of a job.

The only way I see it happening is by slowly piling on the information and giving an ‘escape route’, something to assuage the cognitive dissonance and some plausible deniability. Within a generation or 2 it can be like they supported it all along. You can see it happening with all of the maybe x isn’t as bad as we thought sort of studies that come out.
It isn’t just their fault, what everybody ‘knows’ is also to blame. Tell people yourself that fat doesn’t make you fat, counting calories doesn’t matter, lose weight by eating bacon and you probably know that you will be laughed at and dismissed.

(KCKO, KCFO) #3

No big corp. can make bucks off of it. So it probably will never happen in America at least.

I am just happy that young researchers are gathering megadata from previous studies to point folks in the right direction.

(KCKO, KCFO) #4

Well, I like to learn something new everyday. Guess what? Some folks are banding together and raising funds for research that traditional funding sources are not interested in supporting. This is by Richard Feinman & some others. It is also a keto diet experiment.

(Alice Ph.) #5

The sound is great! I love this suggestion idea. However, I just wondered about where we may start…

(Bunny) #6

I wish they would all get together and challenge congress and local jurisdictions to force the food and agricultural industries to stop putting so much sugar (preferably no sugar or high fructose) in everything, it is slowly killing everyone (a slow cruel mass murder suicide) endocrinologically, neurologically and has an extreme and devastating impact on the entire human physiology!

Go into any local store and look at the walls of sugar i.e. candy, pastries etc. All targeted (placed on the lower shelves) at children which is impairing their brain, body and endangering their health; and to accommodate for all this sugar and carb intake is the use of all these drugs to calm all these hyperactive disorders and learning disabilities, emotional problems i.e. adrenal stress tolerance etc? And an endless laundry list of so many other diseases and disorders that are directly linked to the sugar cane industry and excessive carbohydrate (including highly refined/processed or stringent laboratory manufacturing conditions) intake!

I just do not get it? The answer is staring us right in the face?

The cure to cancer is in our kitchens, fast food establishments and grocery stores!

I think about this in a paleo sense (as I do not see any evidence for evolution only partial adaption to environmental variables).

If you lived in ancient time and food is scarce and you kill animals to eat, to survive; what we know now is that every part of that animals internal organs including the bones has every vitamin and trace mineral that exists already in it, including the bones, so if there is no vegetation to eat then that is how they are surviving!

Keto & Plant Adapted has to be it!

(Doug) #7

Well said, bunny. :slightly_smiling_face: There is huge momentum, inertia, and amounts of money on the side of the status quo, but the acceleration in the pace of change can be surprising. We certainly live in interesting times, if nothing else.

I do shudder when I go in most stores…

#8

Standard care, move along. (I was picking up keto strips for a friend)

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(Todd Allen) #9

Check out Chris Gardener’s “A to Z” trial conducted in 2004 which tested 4 popular weight loss diets Atkins, LEARN, Ornish, and Zone for a year.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17341711

Chris Gardener was a vegan at the time of the study and probably expected them to rank best to worst as Ornish, LEARN, Zone and Atkins but Atkins won by a big margin and the other diets didn’t vary much in results. However, there were individuals who did very well on each diet. Later analysis suggested people who did well on higher carbs had good insulin sensitivity. Improvement in metabolic markers correlated with weight loss so Atkins won there too.