Hi folks. I have just finished a FutureLearn course called Food as Medicine and it was brilliant. Part of the course was looking at various claims around foods. Some around dieting, some medical but mainly put forward as being based on fact or research. One of the areas we looked at were health claims about certain foods and why we see that coffee is good for us one day then bad for us a week later and so on. You do of course know that newspapers are just looking for a headline and are not interested in publishing the whole of a scientific paper – even if that scientific paper is sound – not just that but they couldn’t possibly publish the whole thing so just give the gist but with whatever spin they want to push.

Obviously I cannot publish the whole of the course content as it would be too long. Also it would be plagerism but here is the gist (just like the newspapers do!!!) If you dont like research then stop reading here – I know a lot of you really get into this stuff.

The example we used was research into coconut oil – the newspaper claims being that a) by “adding one teaspoon of coconut oil to your usual intake each day, slowly increasing to four teaspoons to help with weight loss”. Then they claimed that b) • it protects against insulin resistance • it reduces the risk of Type 2 diabetes • and contains MCFA (medium chain fatty acids) that can reduce the amount of fat we store and improve insulin sensitivity.

Then we went on to consider the things they didn’t say about the studies that might be relevant. Firstly they didn’t say was that these were 2 completely different studies. Then other things Like – • one study used highly inbred strains of mice and rats that may differ in their digestion and metabolism from humans. Also only male rats were used no evidence on what happens in females. The experiment did not examine the effects of whole coconut oil but used compounds and it did not examine the effect of coconut oil as a component of a human-type diet. The compounds gave 45% to 60% of total energy which is at a much higher level than would be present in most normal human (or rodent!) diets. The rats were fed this diet containing for only 4 to 5 weeks, therefore not showing the long term effects. At the end of the diets, they investigated the effects on specific serum and tissue markers in the rats and mice. The diet improved some markers relating to insulin use and that it also reduced body fat in the test animals. However, the authors also give a warning that was not noted in the newspaper reports warning that this was their conclusion as to the effects on rats, not on humans. “Unfortunately the downside to eating medium chain fatty acids is that they can lead to fat build up in the liver, an important fact to be taken into consideration by anyone considering using them as a weight loss therapy.” So a scientific study that was well carried out and reported in a well regarded scientific journal has not been very well explained in a subsequent newspaper article. So what it concluded was that some perfectly good and ethical research was completely misrepresented. This is rather like some of the reporting on the Prof Taylor research which we know is absolutely sound but has been reduced to soundbites.

This is not to raise a discussion about coconut oil, but was used as an example. You can look into this practice of extrapolation (making one thing relevant to something unrelated) by reading “Behind the Headlines – A Guide to Science That Makes the News”.

Hope those of you who are into research and evidence found this interesting. There are lots of other questions to the raised like who carried out the experiment, what are their interests, who is paying them and so on but that is for another chat.

It sounds like an interesting course.

I don’t like experiments and research done on animals for several reasons. One is that we don’t need to know the result of eg force feeding rats coconut extract. We need to know if coconut oil is good for us. The best way to test that surely is to feed it to people? I bet worldwide there are lots of hungry people who’d be willing to participate in dietary trials in exchange for food, water and shelter.

It is more to do with not believing everything you read, especially in the press.

S-G, it must have been very labor intensive to write this post. Thank you for posting it 🙂 I believe that the jury is
still out on coconut oil, too. It’s heavily promoted for fat burning on a number of naturalopathy sites, but cardiologists
aren’t on board with it yet. I do have a jar, but I’m using it up as a moisturizer…Kind of messy, but it has anti-bacterial
properties. I smell nice, though!

Allie

S-g I started the course but only got half way through week 1 ! Now I’ll finish it. Thank you!

Oh V you must it was one of the best yet. Allie you too would love this. It is being rerun I think in September. It is not all as heavy going as the above and it talks a lots of common sense which few people seem to have these days. I too bought coconut oil on the basis that Dr M tested it on himself but looking at the above about proof and evidence, he only tested it on himself, he only came to a small conclusion i.e. on the day of his blood test his HDL was higher and his LDL was not affected. What were the other variables and so on. The point of the post and the content of the course were nothing to do with coconut oil, as I’m sure you realise, more to do with the way the press present snippets of ‘evidence’ for the sake of headlines. Saying. Believe nothing of what you read and half of what you see. And even I might have got that the wrong way round. 🙂

Completely understand, Sunshine! I’m making a note of the September restart date on my “permanent notepad”, and
I’ll be watching for the rebroadcast. Thanks! It puts me in mind of that well worn cliche, “a little knowledge is a dan-
gerous thing” 🙂 🙂 🙂 KOKO

Allie

S-g I will do my very best to finish it before they pull the plug!