The news is everywhere in my social news feeds this morning: A popular fad diet is apparently lethal, scientific research says. Specifically, a study found that caloric restriction, also known as intermittent fasting, has a 91% higher risk of death due to cardiovascular disease.
Except scientific research doesn’t say that — and not only should you not be worried about this study, you shouldn’t be wasting brain glucose thinking about it. Even including that 91% number, which you’ll remember, caused me pain, because I don’t think this result should be remembered.
The study is a type of nutritional research that is notoriously weak, and right now it’s only available as a press release.
Part of the problem, the easy-to-understand part, is that people answering surveys are not always entirely honest. More than that, especially with food, we often misremember what we’ve eaten and how much. For instance, we might think we followed our diet and totally forget when we slipped up.
But the bigger problem is that the people who choose to be on a diet, or those who stay on it, might be fundamentally different from those who don’t in ways that we cannot measure. Perhaps people go on time-restricted diets because they are worried about their health.
