More Misleading Headlines

A recent article in Eurekalert says in the headline, "University of Minnesota researchers discover Mediterranean diet ingredient may extend life." This illustrates two problems with popular science articles.

First, the authors emphasize the university where the research was done more than the research itself. Of course, this is the job of the PR people who write press releases, as sites like Eurekalert and Science Daily simply print the press releases as they come in, without editing them.

Second, and more important, the headline mentions "Mediterranean diet ingredient," which turns out to be olive oil. If they mean olive oil, why don't they say olive oil. People on a lot of different diets use olive oil. But seeing something in a headline tends to make people remember it. So many will see this headline and think, "Oh yes. If I follow a Mediterranean diet, I'll live longer."

That might be true if they're currently on a fast-food diet or a diet with lots of processed foods. For someone without diabetes, I think the so-called Mediterranean diet is healthy, even though it doesn't represent what many people in that part of the world actually eat. But the diet emphasizes whole grains, which make blood glucose (BG) go up in people with diabetes. Of course, whole grains are better than highly processed grains, but better doesn't mean best. And many people don't really understand what a whole grain is.

Corn and rice are whole grains, but in people with diabetes they'll make BG levels soar.

Health writers, and even some researchers, tend to get on the Diet du Jour bandwagon. You're more apt to get funding if you're researching the popular Mediterranean diet, looking at it from some new angle, than if you're researching the Blubber and Kale diet, which no one eats.

I'm all for informing nonscientists about research results. But not if the publicity is misleading. In this case, the original article was titled "Lipid Droplet-Derived Monounsaturated Fatty Acids Traffic via PLIN5 to Allosterically Activate SIRT1," and although it mentioned that the Mediterranean diet is high in monounsaturated fats (olive oil is monounsaturated), the focus of the research was on how olive oil helps, not on any life extension of that diet.

They write, "While undoubtedly a plethora of components in the Mediterranean Diet contribute to its positive effects on health, the data presented herein provide at least one feasible biological mechanism that may underlie these well-established benefits."

Almost any whole-food diet will show benefits when compared to the Standard American Diet. Maybe the mechanism of the benefits of the Mediterranean diet is simply eliminating chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, french fries, and doughnuts rather than using more olive oil.

Physician Reviews

The internet allows us to see reviews of our physicians, or of physicians we're thinking of seeing.

However, we're all aware of the dangers of believing online reviews of anything. It's very easy for people to hire people to write positive reviews. Or a disgruntled reader can write negative things. When the book The Four Corners Diet," which advocated low-carb eating, came out, someone didn't like something I said online (I think it was a suggestion that they should count the carbs in coffee) and proceeded to write negative reviews of the book, for which I was a coauthor.

The same applies to online reviews of physicians. Irl Hirsch, an endocrinologist who has had type 1 diabetes for most of his life, wrote this in an article titled "Ranting in 2020: Reflecting About the Past and the Future (with Concerns About the Present)":

"There are other frequent venues to evaluate physicians, particularly on the Internet. I was not even aware of physician evaluations on Yelp until I was emailed that I received a low grade (1 star out of 5) from a dissatisfied patient. I went to the site and indeed, I was a horrible disrespectful man, saying derogatory things about a woman's weight. Not only that, I had horrible body odor (at least no mention was made of my bad breath). In the email I received, I was told the poor review could be removed from the website for $3000. After checking with a few people, I learned this is a common scam and many of these evaluations are posted by swindlers looking to make a quick dollar."

I knew about negative reviews by disgruntled patients. But I'd never heard of review scams.

One more reason to not trust online reviews. If you do read them, see if there are at least several reviews that make similar points, but not so similar that they're probably written by the same person. Then if you decide to try that physician, keep the criticisms in mind and see if they seem to be valid.

The internet offers us a chance to get a lot of information with very little effort. It also offers us a chance to read lies.

Caveat emptor, buyer beware.

Big Pharma and Research

I'm hardly a big fan of big pharma (understatement). But I think we sometimes don't think of how difficult it is to develop an effective drug that is also safe. Derek Lowe is a chemist who used to work in drug development, and I follow him to see how such people think. I found this recent blog interesting.

Management puts pressure on their chemists to develop profitable drugs in a minimum amount of time. But that means they sometimes don't have time for rigorous testing. He cites a trial in France in which 2 of 9 patients in a phase 1 trial (which is supposed to test safety) died.

PK = pharmacokinetic, and PD = pharmacodynamic.

Is Dietary Protein Dangerous?

A currently popular diet is a low-carbohydrate diet, often high fat with normal amounts of protein. But some people call low-carb diets high-protein diets. So recent headlines disparaging high-protein diets may cause worry to people on low-carb diets even if they're not eating an especially high amount of protein.

Two examples of such headlines are

High-protein diets boost artery-clogging plaque, mouse study shows.

And Lower-protein diet may lessen risk for cardiovascular disease.

If you just read headlines like this, you might worry that you're eating too much protein.

But we need protein. And as we get older, we need more protein because our muscles tend to lose strength and the dietary protein helps to slow this decline.

So how much protein do we need? A rule of thumb is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, or 0.36 grams per pound. An ounce of meat has about 7 grams of protein.

If you're math-phobic, Jenny Ruhl has a calculator that will estimate how much protein you need on the basis of size and age, and you can find other calculators online. Some use lean body mass, rather than weight, for the calculations because it's muscle mass, not fat, that determines how much protein  you need.

Note that all these calculations refer to a minimum amount needed for good health. Especially if you're getting older, you should eat a little more than the minimum, and recommendations increase to 1.2 to 1.5 grams per kilogram weight or lean body mass. I weigh about 50 kg, and different calculators say I need from 31 to 71 grams of protein a day, so don't take the results as totally accurate.

When I was first diagnosed in 1996, I was told to follow the ADA low-fat diet, which prescribed an average of less than 2 ounces of meat per meal. I felt very deprived and not satisfied. I now try to eat 3 or 4 ounces of meat or other protein per meal, and that satisfies me.

But the real question here is what the authors of the papers I've cited mean by "high protein" or "low protein." The mice in the first study were fed 46% protein. This is indeed high. Normal protein intake in humans is 12% to 20% of calories from protein. And except for people on the Carnivore Diet (nothing but meat), I doubt that many people, even those on low-carb diets, are eating 46% of calories as protein. 

However, with protein, the amounts rather than the percentages are the important factors, because as you reduce one nutrient, like carbohydrate, the percentages of the other nutrients go up even if the amounts stay the same.


In addition, this study was done in mice, and mouse results often don't translate to  human results. In the wild mice eat mostly seeds, grains, and small fruit, although they'll eat almost anything they can get their paws on.

However, people seeing "high protein" and "artery clogging" linked in the headline might cut back on their protein intake and end up protein deficient.

The second study, citing "lower protein diet," focussed on sulfur-containing proteins, and their intake is difficult for the average person to estimate. But again, the headline is misleading. It doesn't refer to sulfur-containing proteins but proteins in general.

And just to confuse patients even more, a 2015 study was titled "High protein foods boost cardiovascular health, as much as quitting smoking or getting exercise."


Nutrition is a very fuzzy science. Many studies are done with food-frequency questionnaires. I sometimes can't remember what I had for lunch, much less how many chicken legs I ate last month. Sometimes people don't mention foods they think are unhealthy. Or they'll overestimate or underestimate the amounts they ate.

So when you see headlines like the ones cited here, take them with a grain of salt (unless, of course, you're on a low-salt diet). If they worry you, try to read the papers themselves to find out what they mean by fuzzy terms like "high protein," and ask your doctor for another opinion.

If you eat real foods, not fast foods or boxed foods, in reasonable portions, you probably have a healthy diet. If your blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c levels are good, you're following a diet that is good for your diabetes. Keep it up and don't obsess about sensational headlines.