Re: High Quality Foods
Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 10:08 am
A few additional comments from the discussion on the topic from my FB page
About 12 years ago, I was sitting in the back of a health conference with the person responsible for putting the conference on. Several leading proponents of a healthy diet were on stage debating the issues similar to the ones I covered in the above linked discussion. The person I was with looked at me and asked, what I thought. I smiled and said, it is like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, as that there is no evidence at all for the debate going on.
The debate is really over something else and is what I call "market differentiation" or what Dr McDougall calls "unique positioning." It is understandable to a point but it is also why, in the article above, I ended it with the quote from Dr Katz who said, anyone telling you anything different is either "misguided, selling something or both."
The reason I say this is because there is something called "effect size" which is basically a measure of the strength of the intervention or how powerful is the intervention.
Well, when it comes to the Standard American Diet (SAD), it is SO bad, literally being the most extreme version of the worse diet ever fed to humans, then moving away from it to anything healthier will provide a positive effect. This is why most diets that promote limiting any of the C.R.A.P. consumed in the typical SAD and adding in some more of the good stuff, sees a benefit. And, the more this happens, in relation to moving away from the SAD, and including some good, the better the effect size.
This is also why moving all the way over from the SAD to the plant centered, minimally processed, calorie dilute, low/no SOS diet made up of a variety of fruits, veggies, starchy veggies, roots/tubes, intact whole grains and legumes, with a few nuts and seeds, produces such a HUGE effect size. It is why we see the dramatic and almost miraculous results we do.
However, once you get all the way over here, and then want to debate the impact of one more serving of kale, or a serving of kale vs a serving of sweet potato, the true potential impact and the true potential effect size if it exists at all, is SOO very small that it is most likely non existent for most people and if it does exist, it may only exist for some remote individual who may be genetically predisposed. So, out of 10,000 people eating this way, maybe one, may benefit. Problem is, we don't know who the one is and we would have to make all 10,000 who are already eating this way, which is already far and above what is known to be of benefit, to eat the kale instead of the sweet potato &/or another serving of kale then they are already eating, to find out who the one is.
Here is another example to illustrate effect size. Say there is a new study method. Kids who are using the old study method get 77 out of 100 on a test. With the new study method, the average is now 78. We are not impressed as there is not much difference or because the "effect size" is very small. However, what if with the new method, their average is now 95? We would be very impressed as that would be a big difference and a "big effect size."
Extending that analogy to this discussion, the typical America diet is like a 50 and those on a decent WFPB diet are already at 98 or 99. Fine refinements may take us to 98.3 or 99.3 but maybe ONLY in the .01% who are genetically predisposed.
But again, why would we do that when we know we are going to get 9,999 out of 10,000 well with the largest effect size if we could just get them to eat this way. And, remember, less than 1% of the population comes even close to eating well. Look what happened above to the Japanese women in Okinawa when we got them to go from half the recommended amount of vegetables to the recommended amount.
From what I have seen, most often, those who are arguing over the benefit of eating another serving of kale instead of a sweet potato or more kale, are not even covering the basics of a healthy diet and lifestyle yet. They are just hoping that in spite of their bad or less than healthy diets, a few more servings of kale will buy them a ticket to heaven.
Last but not least, this is what has also been called by Freud, the "narcissism of small differences."
Here are two points on that...
1) From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism ... ite_note-6
In terms of postmodernity, consumer culture has been seen as predicated on 'the "narcissism of small differences"...to achieve a superficial sense of one's own uniqueness, an ersatz sense of otherness which is only a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness'
2) From an article in the New Yorker about the TV show Portlandia has a line which aptly applies to this situation
“Portlandia” is an extended joke about what Freud called the narcissism of small differences: the need to distinguish oneself by minute shadings and to insist, with outsized militancy, on the importance of those shadings."
In Health
Jeff
About 12 years ago, I was sitting in the back of a health conference with the person responsible for putting the conference on. Several leading proponents of a healthy diet were on stage debating the issues similar to the ones I covered in the above linked discussion. The person I was with looked at me and asked, what I thought. I smiled and said, it is like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, as that there is no evidence at all for the debate going on.
The debate is really over something else and is what I call "market differentiation" or what Dr McDougall calls "unique positioning." It is understandable to a point but it is also why, in the article above, I ended it with the quote from Dr Katz who said, anyone telling you anything different is either "misguided, selling something or both."
The reason I say this is because there is something called "effect size" which is basically a measure of the strength of the intervention or how powerful is the intervention.
Well, when it comes to the Standard American Diet (SAD), it is SO bad, literally being the most extreme version of the worse diet ever fed to humans, then moving away from it to anything healthier will provide a positive effect. This is why most diets that promote limiting any of the C.R.A.P. consumed in the typical SAD and adding in some more of the good stuff, sees a benefit. And, the more this happens, in relation to moving away from the SAD, and including some good, the better the effect size.
This is also why moving all the way over from the SAD to the plant centered, minimally processed, calorie dilute, low/no SOS diet made up of a variety of fruits, veggies, starchy veggies, roots/tubes, intact whole grains and legumes, with a few nuts and seeds, produces such a HUGE effect size. It is why we see the dramatic and almost miraculous results we do.
However, once you get all the way over here, and then want to debate the impact of one more serving of kale, or a serving of kale vs a serving of sweet potato, the true potential impact and the true potential effect size if it exists at all, is SOO very small that it is most likely non existent for most people and if it does exist, it may only exist for some remote individual who may be genetically predisposed. So, out of 10,000 people eating this way, maybe one, may benefit. Problem is, we don't know who the one is and we would have to make all 10,000 who are already eating this way, which is already far and above what is known to be of benefit, to eat the kale instead of the sweet potato &/or another serving of kale then they are already eating, to find out who the one is.
Here is another example to illustrate effect size. Say there is a new study method. Kids who are using the old study method get 77 out of 100 on a test. With the new study method, the average is now 78. We are not impressed as there is not much difference or because the "effect size" is very small. However, what if with the new method, their average is now 95? We would be very impressed as that would be a big difference and a "big effect size."
Extending that analogy to this discussion, the typical America diet is like a 50 and those on a decent WFPB diet are already at 98 or 99. Fine refinements may take us to 98.3 or 99.3 but maybe ONLY in the .01% who are genetically predisposed.
But again, why would we do that when we know we are going to get 9,999 out of 10,000 well with the largest effect size if we could just get them to eat this way. And, remember, less than 1% of the population comes even close to eating well. Look what happened above to the Japanese women in Okinawa when we got them to go from half the recommended amount of vegetables to the recommended amount.
From what I have seen, most often, those who are arguing over the benefit of eating another serving of kale instead of a sweet potato or more kale, are not even covering the basics of a healthy diet and lifestyle yet. They are just hoping that in spite of their bad or less than healthy diets, a few more servings of kale will buy them a ticket to heaven.
Last but not least, this is what has also been called by Freud, the "narcissism of small differences."
Here are two points on that...
1) From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism ... ite_note-6
In terms of postmodernity, consumer culture has been seen as predicated on 'the "narcissism of small differences"...to achieve a superficial sense of one's own uniqueness, an ersatz sense of otherness which is only a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness'
2) From an article in the New Yorker about the TV show Portlandia has a line which aptly applies to this situation
“Portlandia” is an extended joke about what Freud called the narcissism of small differences: the need to distinguish oneself by minute shadings and to insist, with outsized militancy, on the importance of those shadings."
In Health
Jeff