I’ve been grappling with the ins and outs of food for some years now, and my current concerns about how we should be eating for the health of the planet and ourselves have led me into some interesting places.
Recently I’ve been trying to understand who to believe in this “studies have shown” game. I thought Ben Goldacre cracked it for me in his TED talk about publication bias. There is another skeleton in the cupboard of health research though, and that of course is the question of vested interests.
A recent study on high protein diets and aging suggests (well, actually shouts) that high protein diets (especially animal foods) in middle age are dangerous, but as soon as you turn the corner to 65, they are necessary. In the interesting detail found in the paper’s funding, we can see that one of the named authors, Valter D. Longo, has equity interest in L-Nutra, a company that develops “medical food”. This medical food, it should not surprise us to learn, is a plant-based meal substitute, so there is a whiff of “follow the money” in the study’s conclusions. He appears to be the study’s designer (most? of the co-authors are his students)
Zoë Harcombe has analyzed this study and given a thoughtful assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. It’s a headline grabbing concept, she says, but the study doesn’t actually prove its case. She’s going to run the mortality numbers herself and see what they show.