From: "ANNIE GAZDAG" <GAZDAG@GANDALF.PHYSED.WISC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Calorie intake: BMR, RDAs and skeletal muscle fiber typ
To: UncleWolf@worldnet.att.net, ismnt@Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE
Organization: U.W. Dept. of Kinesiology
Andrew,
You must not be involved in biological research. It is exceedingly
expensive and difficult to conduct a well controlled, long term
feeding trial on humans. Essentially, you have to put these people
in cages, just like rats. The human cages are metabolic wards, not
wire bottom cages. Well controlled food intake studies are
impossible in free living humans because they lie and cheat. They'll
tell you they ate such and such, or exercised like you said, but even
with the most mild intervention and non-screwed up subjects, you
cannot trust compliance 100%.
A rat in a cage eats what you give it, and nothing else (except feces
and some cage bedding, but this can be eliminated with wire bottom
cages). Idealistically, yes, it would be best to do diet research
ONLY on humans. Realistically, how many people will sacrifice a year
of their lives (ie lose a job, be away from family, be isolated in a
hospital) for a year just so you can feel better about whether a high
fat diet really makes you fatter than a low fat diet? You could
always volunteer...
We do the best we can within the limits of reality. Indeed, a rat is
not a human, but that does not mean information gleened from these
studies is totally useless. If you only want to consider information
on humans, that's up to you. You won't have much to go on, and what
you will have will be difficult to interpret. So they eat a low fat
diet in China. Do you compare a Chinese person to an American
because the US diet is high in fat? We also sit on our asses much
more than Chinese, and our genetic makeup may be slightly, but in
some cases significantly, different. Try controlling for that.
In the end, I share the same frustration as you, but am a little more
resigned. Hope this sheds a sliver of favourable light on the
majority of diet research done to date.
Annie