Eating nuts won’t make you healthier

Eating nuts won't make you healthier

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Most people don’t realize that the studies that the news media reports are pretty much garbage.

Any study done on human beings has a significant problem.

For example, there is this discovery supposedly that nut consumption is this miracle solution.

They say it can lower your chances of getting a heart attack or cancer.

But there are serious problems with this study.

Let me look at that study closely.

I’ll show you how it’s bogus and how all sorts of these similar studies are bogus.

Notice the first word in the study is “Association.”

That tells you that there’s really nothing here except a potential pattern.

And the problem with potential pattern and people’s eating is that people don’t reliably report what they eat.

People forget and people feel guilty and leave things off.
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And a problem in this study is that people that eat healthy tended to BE healthy.

While the people who eat junk food and fried food at McDonald’s every day tended to be unhealthy.

So even if healthy people eat nuts, that doesn’t mean that if an unhealthy person needs nuts, he will become healthy.

It may have no meaning at all.

But let’s look more closely to see the bogusness of this study, and all studies of this type.

The first problem is this:

Dietary intake was measured with the use of validated food-frequency questionnaires administered every 2 to 4 years.

Imagine trying to remember what you ate two or four years ago.

It may have changed.

Maybe you started eating better a few years ago — when exactly did that happen?

And, you may have forgotten how many times you ate the fried fish at McDonald’s.

Or you can’t remember how many bags of chips you usually consumed in a week.

We all forget things that we don’t want to remember.

Now the good part of the study: this is really the ONLY  good part.

Our primary end point was death from any cause.

I never believe any studies that try to show that, consuming X food will lower your rate of death from heart disease.

If it’s all about mortality from a particular cause that doesn’t count.

I’m not looking to trade causes because I just don’t want to die of heart disease, I’d rather from diabetes.

No, it must be “all cause mortality.”

So they got this part right.

But this is the big problem, their conclusion.

Those who consumed nuts more frequently were leaner, less likely to smoke, more likely to exercise, and more likely to use multivitamin supplements; they also consumed more fruits and vegetables.

Now, there’s no proof here that any of this has anything to do with eating nuts.

What the study really measures is, will you live longer if you eat lots of fruits and vegetables?

Is it better to stay lean, don’t smoke, and take good quality supplements?

We already know that the answer is yes.

We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t.

And by the way, people that are like that tend to eat nuts.

Well okay, but doesn’t mean that eating nuts is healthy.

Maybe if they didn’t eat nuts, they would live ten years longer.

It just so happens that we have been told so many times that nut consumption is good for you.

And people who are very health conscious will eat nuts because they read a million times that nuts are healthy.

So here’s the punchline:

The difference between eating nuts less than once a week or seven or more times a week is a hazard ratio of .74 versus .67.

And this is a nothing number spread over almost 400,000 “person-years.”

It’s NO difference at all.

And you’ll notice that not that many people eat nuts seven or more times a week.

So, naturally, there are fewer deaths in their group (202).

But if you divide it out, you find the reality.

Whether someone ate nuts every day, once a week, or not at all, they were no more likely to live longer than anyone else.

All the study really says that people who eat healthily and exercise probably live a bit longer than people who do not.

Any study that purports to tell you that people that eat nuts are healthier or live longer is just so much bogus nonsense.

And by the way, I do not eat nuts, and I do not think nuts are healthy.

I think that if people avoid nuts and avoid all forms of nuts and nut butters, they will live longer and healthier.

I’d like to see a study on that.

But there will be none because these studies get their funding from very large agricultural and pharmaceutical corporations.

These organizations have an interest in getting you to eat more nuts and take more drugs.

And it’s working.

 

 


Matt Cook is editor-in-chief of Daily Medical Discoveries. Matt has been a full time health researcher for 26 years. ABC News interviewed Matt on sexual health issues not long ago. Matt is widely quoted on over 1,000,000 websites. He has over 300,000 daily newsletter readers. Daily Medical Discoveries finds hidden, buried or ignored medical studies through the lens of 100 years of proven science. Matt heads up the editorial team of scientists and health researchers. Each discovery is based upon primary studies from peer reviewed science sources following the Daily Medical Discoveries 7 Step Process to ensure accuracy.
Association of Nut Consumption with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality 
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1307352#t=article 
 

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