No
sooner had I posted #138 in 2013, “Fruit, the 3rd Rail for
Prospective Low Carbers,” when my Medscape Alert (not “The Onion”) brought me
an absurdist piece: “Consumption of Certain Fruits Linked to Lower Diabetes
Risk.” I was dumbfounded. How could the consumption of any food, whose
only macronutrient is simple sugars, “lower diabetes risk”? It
just made no sense. Am I living in an incomprehensively illogical world? A
world without meaning? Has the respected research community abandoned rational
thinking, I asked? I had to read the piece.
The
report was from the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, and
appeared as an online article in BMJ, the British Medical Journal. The Medscape
writer wrote, “Increasing fruit consumption has been recommended for the
primary prevention of many chronic diseases, including Type 2 diabetes,
although epidemiologic studies have generated somewhat mixed results regarding
the link with risk of Type 2 diabetes.”
The
impetus for the study writer’s hypothesis appears to be, “The inconsistency
among these studies may be explained by differences in types of fruits consumed
in different study populations as well as difference in participants'
characteristics, study design, and assessment methods, although a meta-analysis
did not show that the associations differed by sex, study design, or
location." Okay, all epidemiological studies inherently have many
confounding factors and biases, but the hypothesis proposed to address these
factors is, IMHO, also inherently flawed. Just because “differences in types of
fruits consumed” was not previously studied, does not lead to the conclusion
that the types of fruit consumed are a differentiating criterion. True, the
authors cache their hypothesis carefully in the word “may,” but that did
not similarly constrain the report’s conclusions, or the gushing headlines.
The
authors’ conclusion: "Overall, these results support recommendations on
increasing consumption of a variety of whole fruits, especially blueberries,
grapes, and apples, as a measure for diabetes prevention." Unbelievable!
The
article received funding from the National Institutes of Health and was
published on August 29, 2013. It immediately was picked up and
‘broadcast’ in such places as The Guardian, Science Daily, Medical
News Today, The Huffington Post, the Daily News, Today.com
and FoxNews.com. The lede in the e! Science News piece was,
“Eating more whole fruits, particularly blueberries, grapes, and apples, was significantly
associated with a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes, according to a new
study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers.” WOW!
Sadly,
and invariably, the headline and the lede is all that the mass media market
will pick up: “Eat more fruit to lower your risk of diabetes.” I feel at times
like a character in an absurdist plot, “facing the chaos of a world that
science and logic have abandoned,” to borrow from a Wikipedia passage
describing Theatre of the Absurd.
The absurdity
is further confounded by the inherent contradiction of the perfunctory
conflicts of interest disclaimer: “The study received funding from the National
Institutes of Health. The authors have disclosed no relevant financial
relationships.” In other words, fruit growers didn’t pay them to say that
“eating more whole fruits...was significantly associated with lower risk of Type
2 diabetes.” But the National
Institutes of Health did! No conflict of interest there! We taxpayers
paid the costs in furtherance of the government’s goals to promote “healthy”
fruits and vegetables and avoid animal-based “unhealthy” saturated fats and
dietary cholesterol.
Note
also that the authors were careful to say that the results were “linked” to the
outcomes. The conclusions of all such epidemiological “studies” show only an
association, not a causal relationship, and a weak
one at that. The confounding factors, including multiple biases assumed, are
expressly discussed near the end of such “studies,” inevitably making the
conclusions subjective. The final paragraph of such full “studies” then
invariably acknowledges that the conclusions are inconclusive and require
“further study,” preparing the ground, in the name of “science,” for another
grant application to pay for another round of so-called “research.” Call me
cynical, if you want, but to me this ongoing charade is phantasmagorical and
surreal, if not downright Machiavellian.
Oh,
well, at least you can be comforted to know that your humble blogger is not
paid for his opinions.
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