conflating questions

let's hear it for common sense

I am not sure the vast majority of scientific studies released seemingly daily are contributing much to our contemporary lives beyond creating bewilderment about the actions we should take. I am not seeking to pick out individual ones as I am sure they may be methodologically legitimate but get released without adequately explaining the questions under study.

How many changes have you heard about how you eat for health in the past six months? Past year? Past decade? Over your entire life?

Of course science changes all of the time as a result of solid testing of a hypothesis, collection of data, blind (or unbiased) analysis of the data to support or disprove the hypothesis. This is the scientific method. It’s not based on a series of anecdotes or cases to support a particular claim. ‘I’ve heard that some people….’ is the point at which one should stop listening to a claim. If you have the money, go through the scientific process to do rigourous testing but too often we are too impatient, too disappointed not to hear what we had hoped, or simply one to another miracle to follow established processes that would create a replicable outcome of use to others.

In particular, we the people seem to hear a broad topic like exercise or health or the environment, then bundle studies into those topics as if this meant every study answered each topic’s entire raft of possible research topics. We are poor at understanding the difference between coincidence and genuine cause-and-effect. In fact, it turns out proving cause and effect is a pretty high standard to meet for a scientific study.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines the noun science as ‘The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena’. Wikipedia broadens the definition a bit

‘Science is a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. Modern science is typically divided into three major branches: the natural sciences, which study the physical world; the social sciences, which study individuals and societies; and the formal sciences, which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules.’

In both cases, science by nature stresses creating explanations for various events or phenomena. Posing a hypothesis allows the student to explore a question, gather data, test the data against the hypothesis, then see an outcome to prove or disprove the question as proposed.

But not everything out there meet these standards of rigorous stupidly. Therein lies a problem of epic proportions. Because we tend to lump things together in huge categories for ease in the modern world, we almost invariably lose all nuance about what the actual question asked. Additionally, as we fall prey to the proliferation of conversations in our lives, we forget that coincidence does not guarantee causation. It’s amazing how often we seem to do this as, surprisingly, do too many headline writers for various publications. A perfect example is the human diet, a topic I followed voraciously for half a century as my body went up and my body went down as I assured myself I had found the single answer to eat the right thing to be thin forever, regardless of how much or when or why I was eating.

Uh, I was the queen of knowing what diets said they would accomplish but I was even better at failing to recognise this required accepting the immutable that I would gain weight if I ate too many calories I did not burn, not matter which book or person or hope (it sort of took on a life of its own for me) I pursued. I wanted a clear cut ANSWER how rather than recognizing why mattered more. After all, if eating food ‘good for me’ was the advice, how could more be bad? It was terribly wrong in so many ways.

In an era of people seeking certainly and unambiguity, we living in a world of nuance, ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflating conversations. Too often there is no single answer that is correct but there are relative improvements or degradations over a long period of time. Human behaviour is mostly about habits rather than binary choices.

The problem is that too many different studies, sometimes scientifically valid while others were on touted as such, created preferred rationale rather than providing a guaranteed outcome I could live with. I therefore would cling to ‘I heard that’ kind of studies with a wish and a prayer, discarding the inconvenient effects as they piled up or the obvious methodological dubiousness (ok, sometimes stupidity) involved. It’s why too many times picking up a book because its promise worked for someone else—‘influencers’ (a concept that is bizarre if you think about it as these folks demonstrate nothing other than personal assurance of a ‘fact’ rather than providing any evidence of why their influence is relevant even to themselves) or the headline associated with some study of unknown scientific veracity, made no sense. In short, I wanted simplicity on the broadest categories of life choices yet was embracing nuanced ‘studies’ that often don’t explain quite how targeted their hypotheses were—or why they won’t provide you with overall knowledge on much at all.

The proliferation of information I consumed voraciously on diets generated such poor suggestions that it’s amazing I made it to this point in life because I stressed this old body a lot with some truly crazy rubbish. The irony of too much ‘information’ (not necessarily accurate information) required sifting through the rubbish to find anything worthwhile. Instead, I went for whatever I wanted to hear because, on some level, I knew the ‘advice’ will change tomorrow.

Yet there is remarkably clear long term indication of one thing. Burning fewer calories than those eaten will lead to storing the excess (it’s a physics problem, pure and simple) as fat. To be thinner, I must take in fewer calories than I use. Period. What kind of calories, when consumed calories, delivery method of calories, or anything else about the calories except their numbers in versus burned is irrelevant to the equation. Calories measure heat that food will generate to fuel the body.

As usual, it took me a long while—ok, decades—to accept this. For me, I discarded diet rules for eating satisfying meals three times a day. Yes, I eat certain things and don’t eat others by choice rather than by someone else’s mandate. I hear that studies come out but no longer pay much attention to them which would shock people who’ve known me for years. (My brother once said to me that he could not understand my relationship with food. Yes, it was a nightmare as I shifted from one desperate approach to another with disasterous interludes). The bottom line is that I started eating food that I want because I enjoy it. I prefer roasted brussels sprouts for dinner to most a burger much of the time. Sauteed broccoli with walnuts and garlic is divine but some times it’s sorbet and a matzo (sweet and crunch, people).

The point to this wandering column is that I had to figure it out the hard way by looking at the most basic of basics. I no longer read diet books, no longer worry about whether it’s the ‘right’ decision to eat something because there is no right or wrong. But I had to figure that out by asking what we truly know versus what do we want to assume. I eat enough to be satisfied, then I stop. I feel so much better than stuffing myself with ‘advised’ foods. I eat far less because I eat what I find satisfying.

It might not be the right thing for anyone else but it’s how I started relying on common sense. The action of slowing down to recognize the basic physics reality created a consequence of far greater satisfaction. I am healthy and calm. What utter pleasure.

Thank you for reading ACC today. Please circulate if you find this useful. Thank those who support the column with a subscription.

No pictures of the eclipse but aa fabulous sunrise on Spa Creek.

Be well and be safe. FIN

American Heritage Dictionary, Fifth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 2018, retrieved at https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-american-heritage-dictionary-of-the-english-language-fifth-edition-editors-of-the-american-heritage-di?variant=39935040782370

Christine Peterson, ‘How many steps do you really need? That’s the wrong question’, 14 March 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/well/move/walking-steps-fitness.html

Wikipedia, ‘Science’, retrieved 8 April 2024 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science