http://sethroberts.net/science/ is totally unconvincing. The main promoter of the diet doesn’t seem to have any decent evidence that it works.
Lacking evidence, it seems like another fad diet, whose most obvious purpose is to sell diet books by telling people what they desperately want to hear—that they can diet and lose weight—while still eating whatever they like.
To me, it looks like junk science that distracts people from advice that might actually help them.
The graph of Roberts’s weight compared to fructose water intake on p. 73 of “What makes food fattening?” is very persuasive in my mind. I don’t think there is any evidence that it is effective in the population at large, but I think it is clear cut that it worked for Roberts.
I don’t think the cynical explanation gets very far. The details of the diet are freely available. There is only a single, cheap, slim book that Roberts published so that someone could learn about the diet in a format other than his website. Roberts could easily be mistaken, but I think his tone has consistently been “here is a little-known, easy technique that was highly effective for me; I have a theory why it could work for you too”. It’s hard to make money by telling someone to take three tablespoons of extra-light olive oil a day in addition to whatever other diet they are following.
One rat is just not statistically significant evidence—especially not when the rat is also the salesman. I don’t know whether Roberts is motivated by wealth, fame, or whatever—nor do I care very much.
Many tests on the same rat can be statistically significant! Do X, Y changes in the rat. Undo it, Y changes back. Repeat until it’s statistically certain connection...
We just have no particular reason to expect that it’ll generalize well to others.
This really stands out to me as a physicist because we do things like one rat tests all the time. Well, usually we get a few other ‘rats’, but we rely heavily on the notion that identically prepared matter is… identical. Biology, of course, doesn’t allow that shortcut.
Clinicians sometimes have a cohort of 1 for rare diseases… but of course that’s simply the best they can do under the circumstances.
Many tests on the same rat can be statistically significant! Do X, Y changes in the rat. Undo it, Y changes back. Repeat until it’s statistically certain connection...
True—but it won’t be too convincing if self-experimenting on yourself with your own diet. Science is based on confirmations of experiments by other scientists.
I agree that the theory is unconvincing. Roberts seems to argue that organisms have brain-regulated mechanism which force the organisms to eat more if the food is more easily available. Such behaviour could be beneficial because during famines the supplies would be later depleted, but the explanation smells of group selection—I suppose that especially during famines the individual who eats as much as possible and stores that as fat will have great advantage against more modest members of his group, not speaking about other species. Am I missing something?
Pop evo-psych stories are a marketing strategy for diets, not a real reason to follow one. Look at the paleo diet—which apparently promotes the ancestral state of malnourishment and dehydration, on the basis of an evo-psych story.
Diets are best evaluated by testing them, not by telling memorable stories about their origins.
Why evo-psych? Psychology has nothing to do with that.
Diets are, of course, evaluated by testing, but Roberts goes further and makes an explanation of his diet, and whether this explanation is consistent from evolutionary perspective is a relevant question.
I suppose that especially during famines the individual who eats as much as possible and stores that as fat will have great advantage against more modest members of his group, not speaking about other species. Am I missing something?
Yes—the cost of gathering the food. Roberts’s hypothesis is that if food is not plentiful, it’s counterproductive to be so hungry that you burn a lot of calories looking for more food, versus sitting tight and drawing on your fat stores. Conversely, if food is plentiful, you’d be an idiot not to go get as much as you can handle.
http://sethroberts.net/science/ is totally unconvincing. The main promoter of the diet doesn’t seem to have any decent evidence that it works.
Lacking evidence, it seems like another fad diet, whose most obvious purpose is to sell diet books by telling people what they desperately want to hear—that they can diet and lose weight—while still eating whatever they like.
To me, it looks like junk science that distracts people from advice that might actually help them.
The graph of Roberts’s weight compared to fructose water intake on p. 73 of “What makes food fattening?” is very persuasive in my mind. I don’t think there is any evidence that it is effective in the population at large, but I think it is clear cut that it worked for Roberts.
I don’t think the cynical explanation gets very far. The details of the diet are freely available. There is only a single, cheap, slim book that Roberts published so that someone could learn about the diet in a format other than his website. Roberts could easily be mistaken, but I think his tone has consistently been “here is a little-known, easy technique that was highly effective for me; I have a theory why it could work for you too”. It’s hard to make money by telling someone to take three tablespoons of extra-light olive oil a day in addition to whatever other diet they are following.
One rat is just not statistically significant evidence—especially not when the rat is also the salesman. I don’t know whether Roberts is motivated by wealth, fame, or whatever—nor do I care very much.
Many tests on the same rat can be statistically significant! Do X, Y changes in the rat. Undo it, Y changes back. Repeat until it’s statistically certain connection...
We just have no particular reason to expect that it’ll generalize well to others.
This really stands out to me as a physicist because we do things like one rat tests all the time. Well, usually we get a few other ‘rats’, but we rely heavily on the notion that identically prepared matter is… identical. Biology, of course, doesn’t allow that shortcut.
Clinicians sometimes have a cohort of 1 for rare diseases… but of course that’s simply the best they can do under the circumstances.
True—but it won’t be too convincing if self-experimenting on yourself with your own diet. Science is based on confirmations of experiments by other scientists.
The rat being the salesman is the more serious issue there, yes.
I agree that the theory is unconvincing. Roberts seems to argue that organisms have brain-regulated mechanism which force the organisms to eat more if the food is more easily available. Such behaviour could be beneficial because during famines the supplies would be later depleted, but the explanation smells of group selection—I suppose that especially during famines the individual who eats as much as possible and stores that as fat will have great advantage against more modest members of his group, not speaking about other species. Am I missing something?
Pop evo-psych stories are a marketing strategy for diets, not a real reason to follow one. Look at the paleo diet—which apparently promotes the ancestral state of malnourishment and dehydration, on the basis of an evo-psych story.
Diets are best evaluated by testing them, not by telling memorable stories about their origins.
Why evo-psych? Psychology has nothing to do with that.
Diets are, of course, evaluated by testing, but Roberts goes further and makes an explanation of his diet, and whether this explanation is consistent from evolutionary perspective is a relevant question.
Or, in my view, not as far, by promoting an almost totally-untested diet.
Yes—the cost of gathering the food. Roberts’s hypothesis is that if food is not plentiful, it’s counterproductive to be so hungry that you burn a lot of calories looking for more food, versus sitting tight and drawing on your fat stores. Conversely, if food is plentiful, you’d be an idiot not to go get as much as you can handle.