A New York hospital tested this, with groups eating various amounts and one that had nothing. And the only group to lose weight was … the group that skipped breakfast. Other trials, too, have similarly contradicted the federal advice, showing that skipping breakfast led to lower weight or no change at all. The Washington Post reported:
“In overweight individuals, skipping breakfast daily for 4 weeks leads to a reduction in body weight,” the researchers from Columbia University concluded in a paper published last year.
Examine the way that government nutritionists adopt the breakfast warning for the Dietary Guidelines. It shows how loose scientific guesses can be raised into hard-and-fast federal nutrition rules. Proudly broadcast for all to obey.
This year the Dietary Guidelines’ credibility has been called into question by a series of scientific rows. Its advisory committee called for dropping the longstanding warning about dietary cholesterol, long a plague of the egg industry; prominent studies contradicted the government warnings about the dangers of salt; and the government’s longstanding condemnation of foods with saturated fats is downright off track, according to critics, given the understanding of the nutrition in fatty foods.
The full Washington Post article is here.
Relying on observational studies has drawn fierce criticism from many in the field, particularly statisticians. S. Stanley Young, former director of bioinformatics at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences has estimated that for observational studies in the medical field, “over 90 percent of the claims fail to replicate” — that is they cannot be replicated later by more exacting experiments. Replicating results is the whole basis of science fact. Failing that makes it speculation and little more than that.
Photo: Wheaties
Cornflakes and strawberries and hormone-laced milk, bon appe$#%&!@*e!