don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

"And so, you can do hundreds and hundreds of studies showing a general factor and just so long as you restrict your populations, your testing materials and the kinds of situations you look at, you can keep finding the same wrong thing again and again."
~Robert Sternberg

People want clear answers with no ambiguities. They want simple truths, as absolute and specific as possible. They want good news, a brighter future and the promise of deliverance from evil. All this accounts for the popularity of religion and diets, alike. This essay deals with the latter, specifically what to make of the latest diet-related scientific studies. As in the previous studies, my advice is don't make too much of it, at least not right away, until further studies are done that corroborates the new findings. Then, as my learned colleague and former Cooking Light magazine editor would counsel, "Follow up by reading about the topic in responsible publications, such as the Harvard Health Letter, one or more of the other university-affiliated health newsletters, or Consumer Reports."

In recent essays posted at this site, I described the phenomenon of media sensationalism in reporting results of scientific research trials of a nutrition-related nature. I also summarized the fact that despite hundreds of expensive, long-term (longitudinal), double-blind trials involving tens of thousands of participants, few dietary guidelines have emerged. That is, only a handful of evidence-based principles on diet matters enjoy widespread scientific consensus as reliable guidelines for disease avoidance and good health.

People often complain that nutritional advice changes every day of the week. It does not. What changes, often more frequently than weekly, are the headlines from media accounts of research reports on nutrition. Actual study findings are usually complex, unexciting and not so at odds with existing knowledge. Thus, reporters are challenged to make stories succinct, exciting and otherwise interesting in a brief news account. Therefore, report excerpts are often highlighted out of context and/or presented as recommendations that are new and different.

My advice: Expect less of study results. Here is a brief summary of key factors that affect nutritional investigations. They all invite more humility in expectations for study outcomes. A better appreciation of limiting realities will temper expectations and hopes for breakthroughs in the years ahead. This summary should also help you appreciate the complications that affect all studies. Hopefully, this summary will make you more inclined to disregard the next batch of sensational headlines touting "new discoveries." More likely than not, such proclamations will be based upon distorted excerpts from nuanced study reports. Often, the actual investigators who conduct studies are amazed and embarrassed to read accounts of their work in the media (for example, "Study finds rats that gorge on Wheaties lose weight -- suggests humans can slim down by doing likewise"). The difficulties of generalizing diet studies to human prospects for disease avoidance, life quality boosts or lifespan expansion include the following factors:

• Research is almost always quite focused. Most studies isolate a single nutrient from one food. This makes the variable under review somewhat artificial, for it is taken away from a larger context of a basic diet and the dynamic of overall lifestyle. The interactions not observed could and most likely would be critical factors, more so than the single nutrient of itself.
  
  
• At least 50 nutrients are critical to human well-being; diet-related studies, as noted, usually focus on one. Thus, generalizations are of limited reliability.
  
  
• Humans are very untidy, unmanageably difficult research subjects. Study  trials cannot mimic real life and rarely last long enough to establish links between diet and health.
  
  
• Metabolic, observational and randomized interventions give varying depictions of the real world. The former give some control over key variables (compliance, exercise, smoking, alcohol intake, for examples) but not enough to allow confidence that other factors may be at work affecting study results.
  
  
• Sometimes, studies conducted over many years are modified in crucial ways, due to discoveries not available at the start of the research. This is known as "shifting goalposts" and, while necessary, makes the data riskier to interpret.

Well, these examples should give you a richer appreciation of the complexities of scientific research and may help you better understand principles for good nutrition. A researcher at the MedStar Research Institute in Hyattsville, Maryland, commenting on a study to better understand how to prevent colon cancer, said this: "Diet alone is not going to do it. There isn't one thing that you can or cannot eat that's suddenly going to protect you." (Source: New Scientist Magazine, Number 2570, 9/23/2006, pp. 42-49).

My sense is that this statement applies to most quests to tie a single food to either disease avoidance or health enhancement. The best course remains a wellness lifestyle. Moderate your excitement about the latest diet-research headlines, which are probably overstated if not misleading. Go about your business cheerfully and with panache, becoming and remaining as fit and nourished, rested and engaged, entertained and amused as possible while looking on the bright side of life.

Be well.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the PHYSICAL DOMAIN under the skill area of nutrition. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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