Why Are Europeans Thinner than Americans?

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aokoye
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Re: Why Are Europeans Thinner than Americans?

Postby aokoye » Fri Mar 24, 2017 3:41 am

Xenops wrote:It's just been this week I've realized "uh...Maybe snacking is bad". I've been following the advice on this link this week:

https://wellnessmama.com/5356/fix-your-leptin/

And I'm already noticing a difference.

Snacking on what exactly? Honestly advice on things like that is best given by people with university degrees in nutrition.
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Re: Why Are Europeans Thinner than Americans?

Postby blaurebell » Fri Mar 24, 2017 8:43 am

aokoye wrote:Snacking on what exactly? Honestly advice on things like that is best given by people with university degrees in nutrition.


I wish! Nutrition is a very ideologically biased subject. Lots of studies have been misinterpreted due to errors in using statistics and these misinterpretations have then influenced teaching in this topic and governmental policies. Part of this was influenced by the food industry which is financially strongly tied to the pharma industry. The best thing one can do is to stop eating processed food, never listen to nutritionists and to read the original studies. I took a nutrition course at university and it was full of outdated information and discussions on the flaws of the studies were discouraged. Most students were not even in the position to have a proper discussion anyway, because they never properly studied statistics or knew too little about medicine to even understand the original studies in the first place.

Years before that I actually followed the advice of a nutritionist. It caused one of the worst flare ups of one of my chronic diseases ever and her advice is basically the direct opposite of how I eat now! Diet has sorted out 90% of my health problems and how I eat would make a nutritionist shake their head! Seriously, I think nutritionists are actually dangerous - I almost ended up in hospital because of one of them!

One example: A nutritionist will tell you that for diabetes you must follow a strict eating plan and eat a certain amount of carbs. You then need to carefully measure your blood sugar and administer insulin as needed. However, I know several people (5 or 6) with Diabetes Type 2 who got off insulin by eating a low carb diet. If you barely eat any carbs your blood sugar won't spike, it's as simple as that. That's too much logical thinking for the average nutritionist though.

That said, I agree with you that following random advice on the internet is not a good idea either if you don't know what the heck you're doing! 99% of health advice on the internet is even more dangerous than the average nutritionist. I never wanted to study medicine or nutrition, but well, I got ill and doctors told me that my diseases aren't treatable. So, I had to do my own research and I spent a year studying everything I could find about my diseases, about nutrition and all sorts of other related things. I now know more about my diseases than some of the specialists, because they don't have the time to keep up with the research on every single disease out there. I was just lucky that I had access to a university library. I sorted out 90% of my health with advice from the internet in the end, yes. I'm a trained scientist though and read the original studies!

On some level it's like with language learning - I've had many trained language teachers who were just plain bad and encouraged me to do things that were counterproductive or even harmful to my progress in the long run. There is plenty of great language learning advice on the internet, but most of it is very specific and might only work for the person who's giving the advice or for specific languages. Obviously whatever worked for those "language learning gurus" worked for them or otherwise they wouldn't be speaking so many languages. Doesn't mean that it will work for me though! Benny Lewis' method doesn't work for me - too much anxiety about making mistakes and one language I learned this way still has deeply ingrained mistakes from bad habits I picked up due to speaking too early. Steve Kauffman's method works for me, but I don't use lingq, because it's not the best tool out there for the method. Gabriel Wyner's method doesn't work for me - I hate anki. I do love his pronunciation trainers though and use them for every language I learn! We're all different and have different needs. In the end listening to any kind of advice is sometimes the worst thing one can do, no matter where it comes from. And this is especially true if this advice isn't tailored to your own needs.
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Re: Why Are Europeans Thinner than Americans?

Postby Xenops » Fri Mar 24, 2017 2:26 pm

aokoye wrote:Snacking on what exactly? Honestly advice on things like that is best given by people with university degrees in nutrition.


People without degrees aren't allowed to research? ;)

Going along with blaurebell's line of thinking, I'm not just willy-nilly trying everything I read online. I went to a chiropractor that follows the Maximized Living philosophy ( http://maximizedliving.com http://drhardick.com/ ), I still follow this regiment when I had to move away. I also use my background in molecular biology to evaluate claims. For example, I had heard of leptin resistance, and read about how it affects weight loss. Having this knowledge in mind, I look at articles that have the same approach toward nutrition, and I think, "hey, this agrees with my chiropractor, and with other knowledge I've gleaned, and it makes sense biologically, I'm giving it a try".
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Re: Why Are Europeans Thinner than Americans?

Postby aokoye » Fri Mar 24, 2017 3:47 pm

blaurebell wrote:I wish! Nutrition is a very ideologically biased subject. Lots of studies have been misinterpreted due to errors in using statistics and these misinterpretations have then influenced teaching in this topic and governmental policies. Part of this was influenced by the food industry which is financially strongly tied to the pharma industry.
I can see how my post could have been interpreted as, "doctors/nutritionists are always right." They clearly aren't for a whole host of reasons and I think that taking what they say at face value can be dangerous. I also agree that information on nutrition, especially information that is easy for the general public to access, is steeped in ideology.

I would argue that comparing nutritionists (with an academic degree pertaining to nutrition) to language learning is slightly different. You don't actually need to have studied anything about teaching or linguistics (and I'm not even talking about SLA) in order to get paid to teach a language.

Xenops wrote:
aokoye wrote:Snacking on what exactly? Honestly advice on things like that is best given by people with university degrees in nutrition.


People without degrees aren't allowed to research? ;)

Going along with blaurebell's line of thinking, I'm not just willy-nilly trying everything I read online. I went to a chiropractor that follows the Maximized Living philosophy ( http://maximizedliving.com http://drhardick.com/ ), I still follow this regiment when I had to move away. I also use my background in molecular biology to evaluate claims. For example, I had heard of leptin resistance, and read about how it affects weight loss. Having this knowledge in mind, I look at articles that have the same approach toward nutrition, and I think, "hey, this agrees with my chiropractor, and with other knowledge I've gleaned, and it makes sense biologically, I'm giving it a try".


I'll give you that - especially the research bit. Though, unless people are doing lit reviews, I would question medical research done on human or non human subjects (note - that isn't to say that research done by people working at institutions shouldn't also be questioned). That said I there's a lot of pseudoscience whirling around on the internet. I think one of the other problems is that health literacy, at least in the US, is far lower than general literacy. Given your background in molecular you likely don't fit into this category, but there are a lot of people who do. You actually did research which is great. Most people aren't going to have the ability to do that. Heck they might not even think to do that.


In short - I agree with some, if not a lot, of what both Blaurelbell and Xenops said.
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Re: Why Are Europeans Thinner than Americans?

Postby rdearman » Fri Mar 24, 2017 4:21 pm

OK, I'm closing this thread as well because of complaints.
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