>I'm not sure which gap you think needs to be bridged here?
I said it explicitly: "there is simply no good reason to believe that mycotoxin levels in ordinary coffee are high enough to have any measurable effect on humans who drink it."
>When I look at it, I don't think "butter protects against heart problems" (which seems to be your interpretation, and I agree cannot be concluded from this data, not even remotely), but rather "butter can't be the evil it is made to be, as this statistic shows". Which is perfectly reasonable.
It isn't perfectly reasonable. Life expectancy in 1910 was 48 for men, and 51 for women. The average age for heart attacks today is 66 for and 70 for women. Some, but not all of that is infant mortality, yes, but the fact is that if people in 1910 had less heart disease than people today, it is likely largely because people in 1910 often didn't long enough for heart disease to become a problem.
And that's just one factor that the comparison fails to control for. The way people lived and ate in 1910 was completely different from the way people lived and ate in 2000, and it is quite likely that those changes simply overwhelm the change with respect to one particular kind of saturated fat. That doesn't mean that butter fat is harmless. It just means that you can't see the harm if you also change everything else.
As a side note, where are these statistics about heart disease in 1910 coming from? We get the top-level URL for dietheartpublishing.com (which is low on data, high on sensationalist paleo-quackery), but no link to specific data. Are we relying on what doctors were able to diagnose in 1910? Because that's a whole other level of flawed.
>I've tried several things they recommend, and the vast majority of the practice checks out (regardless of the theory behind it).
What you think you've experienced through personal trials is not significant evidence.
> "there is simply no good reason to believe that mycotoxin levels in ordinary coffee are high enough to have any measurable effect on humans who drink it."
I don't keep the links handy, but a one second google brings up this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16284846 and a tens of other references. Coffee was not studied as extensively as far as I know, but if you have reason to believe that it is better protected than wheat and maize, please let me know why. The only non-asprey link about coffee toxin studies I could find is a single article from the 1980 that says "I looked, I didn't find, I stopped looking".
> Some, but not all of that is infant mortality, yes, but the fact is that if people in 1910 had less heart disease than people today, it is likely largely because people in 1910 often didn't long enough for heart disease to become a problem.
Well, in 1860-1910, US white infant mortality rate was coming down from 21% to 10% (with black mortality rate, when documented, being 50% higher than the white one). I don't know if that data is included in the "1910 life expectancy", but it is likely that it is. In Italy, it was going down from 25% to 13% over the same period. That's enough to make the "48/51" lifespan you quote meaningless (sources I found say 54, but whatever). http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/haines.demography
If you consider "life expectancy of anyone aged > 4", then all of a sudden 50 years jumps to 62 years; and if you consider "life expectancy of anyone aged > 20", then it will surely increase the 1910 number to 70 or more, while hardly nudging today's numbers. I agree that his statistic is not conclusive in any way, but your interpretation is not valid either.
> That doesn't mean that butter fat is harmless. It just means that you can't see the harm if you also change everything else.
That is true. And yet, there is virtually no direct evidence of harm from butter than I can find. (Neither is there from cholesterol intake, for that matter - or salt intake, with the exception of a well defined 20% of the population - that is, if you're not in those 20%, there is no evidence of salt harm).
> Are we relying on what doctors were able to diagnose in 1910? Because that's a whole other level of flawed.
Yes, that's true. But that throws away any study done before the early 1990s - which is also flawed. We're damned if we do, damned if we don't, and everyone gets to pick their own favourite data and interpretation.
> What you think you've experienced through personal trials is not significant evidence.
What I discovered is significant for my daily life, is significant for my daily life (duh, it's a tautology). I'm not saying you should believe it because it worked for me. I'm saying you should try and figure what works for you.
FWIW, my ex was a medical doctor and I regularly read BMJ and NEMJ for a while. That was before Ionnadis's paper, but I remember thinking back then that 70% of what was published was statistically invalid.
Much of what is considered significant evidence in medicine and health today, is not significant evidence. If the experiment is simple and cheap enough, you should do it yourself.
>I'm saying you should try and figure what works for you.
And I'm saying that that's the same mantra that homeopaths, chiropractors and other peddlers of pseudoscience repeat. "Figure out what works for you" has implications dangerously close to relativism. To find out what works, you need science. "Try it yourself" isn't science.
I figured out that wheat is bad for me. As in, I've stopped taking in wheat (much harder than it sounds, because it's used as a filler in just about everything), upped my overall caloric intake (mostly coconut fat and butter), and lost 30 pounds in a month feeling much much better. As in, better than in years. That happened 24 months ago, and it stayed off.
My doctor, seeing it, said it was impossible - because every test HE had at his disposal said I did not have a wheat allergy (or intolerance, or whatever other variations of "bad for you" medicine has).
If you claim that losing 30 pounds in one month and it staying off for two years since is placebo, I'm going to laugh at you, and so will everyone else who actually has a brain and is not religiously following some mantras.
A friend of mine is allergic to peppers of any kind. Not deathly allergic, but excruciating-pain allergic. 20 years ago or so, it was not a standard diagnosis, and some doctors therefore suggested it was psychosomatic (because apparently, that was the only "scientific" explanation). Whatever it is she has, has since become a standard diagnosis (she's missing an enzyme, and it is a recessive genetic trait). Are you seriously claiming that she should have eaten peppers all these years because her self diagnosis was "not scientific"? I would give you the benefit of doubt that you do not, although your response indicates otherwise.
The "science" you talk about is a religion, and if you refrain from self experimenting because "it is not science", then you are a religious zealot. Physics is science; Chemistry is science; Nutrition and Medicine are religions that are controlled by politics and money, that are informed by science, but are definitely not following it.
Yes, science is a great thing. It's hardly related to modern nutrition, and missing from some areas of modern medicine.
Doctors and nutritionists have been claiming for years that salt is bad for you, and dietary cholesterol is too (to the point that you should limit e.g. eggs to no more than two a week). If you can find scientific evidence anywhere that, say, 25 eggs/day, is not healthy, then please show it. Because no one I know is aware of any. Or any evidence for calorie balance (carb=4kcal/g, fiber=0kcal/g, ...) theory for that matter. Add nutrition experts and "MDs" to your list of homeopaths and other pseudoscience peddlers - they're only better on the average because their pool of (mandated!) beliefs is culled more often -- but definitely not often enough to give it the halo of science that you assume it has.
I said it explicitly: "there is simply no good reason to believe that mycotoxin levels in ordinary coffee are high enough to have any measurable effect on humans who drink it."
>When I look at it, I don't think "butter protects against heart problems" (which seems to be your interpretation, and I agree cannot be concluded from this data, not even remotely), but rather "butter can't be the evil it is made to be, as this statistic shows". Which is perfectly reasonable.
It isn't perfectly reasonable. Life expectancy in 1910 was 48 for men, and 51 for women. The average age for heart attacks today is 66 for and 70 for women. Some, but not all of that is infant mortality, yes, but the fact is that if people in 1910 had less heart disease than people today, it is likely largely because people in 1910 often didn't long enough for heart disease to become a problem.
And that's just one factor that the comparison fails to control for. The way people lived and ate in 1910 was completely different from the way people lived and ate in 2000, and it is quite likely that those changes simply overwhelm the change with respect to one particular kind of saturated fat. That doesn't mean that butter fat is harmless. It just means that you can't see the harm if you also change everything else.
As a side note, where are these statistics about heart disease in 1910 coming from? We get the top-level URL for dietheartpublishing.com (which is low on data, high on sensationalist paleo-quackery), but no link to specific data. Are we relying on what doctors were able to diagnose in 1910? Because that's a whole other level of flawed.
>I've tried several things they recommend, and the vast majority of the practice checks out (regardless of the theory behind it).
What you think you've experienced through personal trials is not significant evidence.