Smoke low-tar cigarettes? The fatal flaw in logic of nutritional studies

Just because something bad is reduced or eliminated in cigarettes, it should not logically follow that cigarettes must now be good, right? Low-tar, filtered cigarettes may be less harmful than full-tar, unfiltered cigarettes, but still contain heavy metals like mercury, lead, and cadmium, as well as nicotine, naphthalene, arsenic, formaldehyde, ammonia and other toxic compounds. Low- or no-tar does NOT mean healthy. This may seem obvious, but it is surprising how many people—physicians and dietitians included—fall for such flawed logic when applied to nutrition. We saw this play out in yet another flawed analysis released from the U.K. this week with media headlines proclaiming “Whole grains lengthen life” and the like. This was not a new study, but a re-analysis of prior studies (a “meta-analysis”). In each and every study included in this analysis, increasing consumption of whole grains (usually in quartiles or quintiles of whole grain intake) was compared to consumption of white flour products, and there are indeed benefits (not due to B vitamins nor cellulose fiber, but due to the arabinoxylan and amylose prebiotic fiber content): longer life, less type 2 diabetes, less cardiovascular disease, less weight gain (not weight LOSS)—that is all true. In other words, if we conducted a study that compared increasing reliance on low-tar filtered cigarettes with smoking full-tar unfiltered cigarettes and demonstrated, say, a 27% reduction...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Wheat Belly Lifestyle barley corn epidemiological gluten longevity rye white flour whole grains Source Type: blogs