(Press-News.org) Rochester, MN, June 9, 2015 - U.S. government-issued dietary recommendations continue to evolve over time. In a special article published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, an obesity theorist and cardiovascular health researchers claim that the main source of dietary information used by the U.S. Government's 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) is scientifically flawed because the underlying data are primarily informed by memory-based dietary assessment methods (M-BMs) (eg, interviews and surveys). In an editorial response nutrition experts suggest that the purported flaws are well-appreciated by nutritional researchers and can be mitigated by using multiple data sources, resulting in valid data.
The data under scrutiny come from the "What We Eat in America" and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (WWEIA/NHANES), a five-decade long study of American's diet and exercise behaviors. In this case the standard M-BMs employed include asking participants to recall what they consumed during the last 24 hours (24HRs) as well as completion of food frequency questionnaires (FFQs). It is the authors' contention that these data suffer from five major and potentially fatal flaws.
Lead author Edward Archer, PhD, of the Office of Energetics, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, and co-authors Gregory Pavela, PhD, and Carl J. Lavie, MD, from the Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute, Ochsner Clinical School - the University of Queensland School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA, present a large body of evidence to support their conclusions:
1. The vast majority of the WWEIA/NHANES data are physiologically implausible (i.e., incompatible with life) and therefore are not valid estimates of food and beverage consumption.
2. Human memory and recall are too inaccurate and imprecise to be used as tools to collect scientific data.
3. The protocols used in WWEIA/NHANES mimic protocols known to induce false memory and recall.
4. Mental phenomena such as memories of food and beverage consumption are inadmissible as scientific evidence because they cannot be independently observed, measured, or falsified.
5. Physical activity, cardio-respiratory fitness and exercise are major determinants of health and are largely ignored or improperly measured by federally funded nutrition researchers.
According to Dr. Archer, "Our work indicates there is no scientific foundation to past or present U.S. Dietary Guidelines. This finding may explain why nutrition recommendations are continually changing and the average consumer is confused as to what constitutes a healthy diet."
In an accompanying editorial, Brenda M. Davy, PhD, RD, and Paul A. Estabrooks, PhD, both from the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, VA, provide empirical evidence that recall measures can be scientifically sound. They present a different perspective that values multiple forms of evidence to determine the scientific appropriateness of measurement instruments, including predictive validity, sensitivity to change, feasibility, and actionability.
"Attempting to develop recommendations to improve health is a complex enterprise due to the interactive nature of genetics, environmental factors, and individual behavior; however, one thing is clear--behaviors matter," Dr. Davy and Dr. Estabrooks explain. "The body of research that contributed to these findings includes a variety of scientific approaches that range from retrospective and prospective epidemiologic studies to randomized controlled trials. One consistency across scientific inquiry and behavioral domains is that participant recall has been used as a representation of behavior." They note that the authors of the special article and others have used participant recall to draw conclusions about other aspects of diet and exercise.
In conclusion Dr. Davy and Dr. Estabrooks maintain that "To argue that these data represent a waste of resources, while concurrently citing scientific findings where those same data collection methods were used to demonstrate the importance of diet and activity in health, is scientific doublespeak--and an impediment to scientific progress in obesity and nutrition research."
INFORMATION:
Reacting positively to stressful situations may play a key role in long-term health, according to researchers.
In a study measuring adults' reactions to stress and how it affects their bodies, researchers found that adults who fail to maintain positive moods such as cheerfulness or calm when faced with the minor stressors of everyday life appear to have elevated levels of inflammation. Furthermore, women can be at heightened risk.
Inflammatory responses are part of the body's ability to protect itself via the immune system. However, chronic -- long-term -- inflammation ...
DARIEN, IL - A new study suggests that insomnia decreases empathy in health care workers and may lead to adverse clinical outcomes and medical errors.
Results show that subjects with an Insomnia Severity Index ISI of greater than 8, scored significantly higher across all four subscales of empathy.
"Insomnia affects empathy in health care workers which can lead to adverse clinical outcomes,"
said lead author Venkatesh Basappa Krishnamurthy, MD, assistant professor, Sleep Research and Treatment Center, department of psychiatry, Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, ...
DARIEN, IL - A new study suggests that the timing of exposure to moderate levels of light may influence body mass index (BMI) and body fat.
Results show that people with more exposure to moderate or higher intensity light earlier in the day had lower body mass index and percent body fat than those with more of their moderate or higher intensity light exposure later in the day.
"These results emphasize the importance of getting the majority of your exposure to moderate or higher intensity light during the morning and provide further support that changes to environmental ...
Teenagers who are incarcerated tend to have substantially worse outcomes later in life than those who avoid serving time for similar offenses, according to a distinctive new study co-authored by an MIT scholar.
"We find that kids who go into juvenile detention are much less likely to graduate from high school and much more likely to end up in prison as adults," says Joseph Doyle, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the results of the study.
Indeed, the research project, which studied the long-term outcomes of ...
BOSTON (June 9, 2015) - Latinos who worry about having enough food to eat -- so-called food insecurity -- report having a poorer diet and exhibit worse glycemic control than those who aren't worried about having sufficient food to survive, according to a study presented at the American Diabetes Association's 75th Scientific Sessions. The findings suggest that food insecurity should be a factor considered in overall diabetes management.
Approximately 24 percent of Latino households in the U.S. were food insecure in 2013, compared to 14 percent for Americans overall, according ...
BOSTON (June 9, 2015) - The evidence is clear that the children of obese parents are prone to obesity themselves, placing them at higher risk for type 2 diabetes, but how and why this occurs remains under investigation. A study being presented at the American Diabetes Association's 75th Scientific Sessions found evidence suggesting that the in utero environment in obese mothers may program a child's cells to accumulate extra fat or develop differences in metabolism that could lead to insulin resistance.
"One of the questions that needs to be explored is how children ...
BOSTON (June 9, 2015) - Gut hormone-based medications used to treat diabetes, such as GLP-1 receptor agonists, have also been shown to reduce body weight. Researchers have been working to understand how. This study, presented today at the American Diabetes Association's 75th Scientific Sessions, sheds light on how GLP-1 receptor agonists alter the brain's response to food, possibly reducing cravings and increasing satisfaction while eating.
Previous studies have shown that the brains of obese people have a greater response to pictures of food than those of lean people, ...
Photoinduced chemical reactions are responsible for many fundamental processes and technologies, from energy conversion in nature to micro fabrication by photo-lithography. One process that is known from everyday's life and can be observed by the naked eye, is the exposure of photographic film. At DESY's X-ray light source PETRA III, scientists have now monitored the chemical processes during a photographic exposure at the level of individual nanoscale grains in real-time. The advanced experimental method enables the investigation of a broad variety of chemical and physical ...
Amyloid precursor protein (APP), a key protein implicated in the development Alzheimer's disease, may play an important role in eye and muscle health. In a new report published in the June 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal, scientists have discovered that when proteins that bind to the APP, called FE65 and FE65L1, are deleted, they cause cataracts and muscle weakness in mice. Additionally, this study demonstrates that the expression of laminin, a protein pivotal for the interaction between lens epithelial cells and the lens capsule, is severely altered in mice lenses missing ...
Women who have just given birth are often motivated to prevent a rapid, repeat pregnancy. For those who prefer a contraceptive implant, getting the procedure in the hospital immediately after giving birth is more cost-effective than delaying insertion to a 6-8 week postpartum visit, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers.
Published online ahead of print in the July issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the study compares costs associated with immediate implant insertion with costs of unintended pregnancy. The implant is placed in the arm and can ...
