Is the danger of being overweight being overestimated?

I don´t think so, as a conclusion he says that "only" a 1% yearly probability is increased from 0,5% not overweight population, that doesn´t sound as too much but we are not mice(with short life span), in ten years that means 5% more probability for being death( just taking his numbers) It sounds quite a lot for me( unless you are used to live in a gulag camp). Also this study is not talking about lots of illnesses that will make your daily life much more complicated or a nightmare directly. But this is just my unqualified opinion, I would like to hear more educated ones!

... Is the danger of being overweight being overestimated? ...

No. If anything the risk is underestimated.

For example, most of my wife's immediate family lives far out in the countryside in the Philippines where they grow most of their own vegetables and eat mainly seafood and chicken; with pork or beef saved for very special occasions. As a general rule, they all live to their 90s or 100s remaining lean and in very good health (note: When I first met my father inlaw, I thought he was in his mid 50s, when in reality he was in his early 80s. He is in his mid 90s now and still going strong).

However those family members who move into the city to work in offices and follow a western diet gain a great deal of weight and usually die in their early to mid 60s from cancer, diabetes, heart disease etc. This has been a consistent trend within the family for many years now.

The levels of physical activity you engage in and what diet you follow have an enormous impact on your overall health and longevity.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

That is very interesting Coach!

I wonder how much is connected to diet and how much to the other lifestyle changes that accompany moving to the city.

Coach Sommer said:

... Is the danger of being overweight being overestimated? ...

No. If anything the risk is underestimated.

For example, most of my wife's immediate family lives far out in the countryside in the Philippines where they grow most of their own vegetables and eat mainly seafood and chicken; with pork or beef saved for very special occasions. As a general rule, they all live to their 90s or 100s remaining lean and in very good health (note: When I first met my father inlaw, I thought he was in his mid 50s, when in reality he was in his early 80s. He is in his mid 90s now and still going strong).

However those family members who move into the city to work in offices and follow a western diet gain a great deal of weight and usually die in their early to mid 60s from cancer, diabetes, heart disease etc. This has been a consistent trend within the family for many years now.

The levels of physical activity you engage in and what diet you follow have an enormous impact on your overall health and longevity.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

No one is discounting that there is a benefit to good diet and exercises, just the degree of contribution to health or lack thereof.

Your story cannot be evidence against the statistics.

It's a good example of how humans are made to tell stories. Studies show that "stories" have much more of an impact on belief formation than numbers/statistics. That is, people are more convinced by stories. This worked well in many cases for most of human evolution ("My friend got eaten by tiger so I'm going to be careful around anything that looks like a tiger") but in our more complicated world it is not up to par. We now have a more powerful method of forming beliefs. I am of course referring to science. Science will always be better and more truthful than anecdote.

trianglechoke7 said:

No one is discounting that there is a benefit to good diet and exercises, just the degree of contribution to health or lack thereof.

Your story cannot be evidence against the statistics.

It's a good example of how humans are made to tell stories. Studies show that "stories" have much more of an impact on belief formation than numbers/statistics. That is, people are more convinced by stories. This worked well in many cases for most of human evolution ("My friend got eaten by tiger so I'm going to be careful around anything that looks like a tiger") but in our more complicated world it is not up to par. We now have a more powerful method of forming beliefs. I am of course referring to science. Science will always be better and more truthful than anecdote.

Science/understanding is only as accurate as the information about the subject is. Don't forget that people have been doing very scientific things for many, many years, even though the so-called almighty science has not proven, without a doubt, the validity of it... I get very weary of hearing science worshiped as if it is the only thing that is reliable in this world.

"Science" used to believe that fat caused obesity and that people needed to decrease their fat intake and increase their carbs in forms of grains, pasta, etc. Sound healthy? Not for the majority of Americans, because although the changes were made, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and the like absolutely went of the charts. "Science" was wrong. Not for long, though, science has, over time, discovered about nutritional types and all sorts of things that disprove the one size fits all myth of the common nutrition info. Do you see what I mean? Science is ONLY as good as the current understanding/information available. There are many, many things that we have yet to learn.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of scientific advancement, studies, and the like. In fact, I am studying to enter a rather scientific career; however, there is a huge problem in the scientific community with arrogance, and your post absolutely reeks of it. It also came off as being somewhat snobby towards Coach. The point I am trying to make is that science is only as good as the current information available. Therefore, a certain amount of humility is definitely warranted.

There are so many studies that evidence has shown as incorrect. This is why we have things like lowfat diets. Both should be used but evidence disproves studies.

Patrick Smith said:

Science/understanding is only as accurate as the information about the subject is. Don't forget that people have been doing very scientific things for many, many years, even though the so-called almighty science has not proven, without a doubt, the validity of it... I get very weary of hearing science worshiped as if it is the only thing that is reliable in this world.

For many types of beliefs science IS the only thing that is reliable in this world. What other methodology could you use to determine the chemical composition of water, for example?

In regards to the topic at hand, how could you possibly measure the magnitude of difference in mortality rates between obese and normal weight individuals without the methods of science? When we observe the people around us, this is an extremely limited sample. Would you say that such a limited sample is very reliable? We also don't keep detailed records, so it would be extremely easy to confuse our observations/memories over long periods of time. That isn't reliable either.

If science is not the only thing that is reliable, for these sorts of questions, then what else is?

"Science" used to believe that fat caused obesity and that people needed to decrease their fat intake and increase their carbs in forms of grains, pasta, etc. Sound healthy? Not for the majority of Americans, because although the changes were made, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and the like absolutely went of the charts. "Science" was wrong. Not for long, though, science has, over time, discovered about nutritional types and all sorts of things that disprove the one size fits all myth of the common nutrition info. Do you see what I mean? Science is ONLY as good as the current understanding/information available. There are many, many things that we have yet to learn.

I honestly don't see what you mean. What does the self-correcting nature of science have to do with "statistics vs. anecdote?" Perhaps you mean that because science can be wrong it's possible that an anecdote is closer to the truth than the conclusions of science. Sure, that's possible. But I don't see how that very helpful in guiding us towards having he right sorts of beliefs.

however, there is a huge problem in the scientific community with arrogance, and your post absolutely reeks of it. It also came off as being somewhat snobby towards Coach.

Stating your beliefs and disagreeing with someone is not snobbery or arrogance. Coach countered statistics with a story. That's what anecdote is, they're stories. I then explained how his refutation was an example of this dichotomy and how people are hardwired to take stories over statistics. I don't see the problem and I think you are reading too much into it.

The point I am trying to make is that science is only as good as the current information available. Therefore, a certain amount of humility is definitely warranted.

My post which prompted your response had nothing to do with the current information available in science. It was a philosophical disagreement about the value of anecdote compared to statistics.

Please keep in mind all that this is a discussion board, not a debate center. The purpose of posts should tend more towards uplifting and enlightening than establishing absolutely who is right or wrong. I'm not directing this at one side or person, so just make sure before you post that it is positive rather than visceral.

To re-rail this topic-- Triangle, as a personal trainer, I have a number of clients at a given time working to lose weight. Do you feel this impacts their goals or what I do professionally? In short, what is the relevance you want me to take home from you having made this post? I didn't follow the full trail of every link on the blog, but I immediately noticed that the study used BMI. Do you feel the study would have drawn the same conclusion if the variable had been percentage body fat?

I don't pretend to speak for Coach, but I have done moderation for much larger boards, and in my experience the difference between a discussion and a debate is "I disagree, I think X because of Y" vs "You're wrong because." It's a subtle distinction, but over a couple recent threads it's leaned at times towards the latter. It's also easy to be misunderstood online, so I just wanted to put it out there for everyone to stay level-headed.

My questions boil down to "so what?" Not in a sarcastic way, but the scientific one. What is the impact of this study to someone overweight or myself who has a percentage of clients who begin overweight? According to these statistics, being overweight itself is not going to kill you. Does that mean that my clients should make no attempt to lean out because of it? If they still should because their quality of life will improve, what about the study then matters?

I brought up BMI because it gives you such a shadowy picture of the person in question. To clarify, I'm talking a parameter set of say 5% body fat up to 60% body fat and seeing if the results are the same. We'd need to see if the median body fat for this study's population would be higher relative to the 26.2 BMI found for the study. Also, would the results come out the same for a different population if we used, for example, the Philippines as Coach brought up? Where the ratio of lean to overweight individuals might be significantly different?

Patrick Smith said:

"Science" used to believe that fat caused obesity and that people needed to decrease their fat intake and increase their carbs in forms of grains, pasta, etc. Sound healthy? Not for the majority of Americans, because although the changes were made, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and the like absolutely went of the charts. "Science" was wrong. Not for long, though, science has, over time, discovered about nutritional types and all sorts of things that disprove the one size fits all myth of the common nutrition info. Do you see what I mean? Science is ONLY as good as the current understanding/information available. There are many, many things that we have yet to learn.

The issue with the "science" behind the fat fallacy had nothing to do with the "science"; it had to do with the very unscientific manner in which large sections of the available scientific evidence were (either conveniently or deliberately) ignored. That poorly conducted science exists is no indictment of the scientific method.

Patrick Smith said:

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of scientific advancement, studies, and the like. In fact, I am studying to enter a rather scientific career; however, there is a huge problem in the scientific community with arrogance, and your post absolutely reeks of it. It also came off as being somewhat snobby towards Coach. The point I am trying to make is that science is only as good as the current information available. Therefore, a certain amount of humility is definitely warranted.

There was nothing disrespectful in the way that triangle presented his opinions. That it was interpreted as arrogance (certainly not by me) speaks only to the strength of his beliefs; and not to a weakness in either his arguments or the manner in which they were delivered.

We are all adults; and as such, should be able to engage in healthy debate without becoming defensive.

Perhaps a bad example but you get the point. The reason the story works is because it is actual evidence. Not something conducted in a lab by people who don't always test it correctly. How about that study on fat adaptation? Experience once again proves otherwise.

trianglechoke7 said:

Studies show that "stories" have much more of an impact on belief formation than numbers/statistics. That is, people are more convinced by stories.

We now have a more powerful method of forming beliefs. I am of course referring to science. Science will always be better and more truthful than anecdote.

I thought stories are more powerful method of forming beliefs? :wink:

Science is limited. Life has many variables, and it is impossible to control them all.

trianglechoke7 said:

Patrick Smith said:

Science/understanding is only as accurate as the information about the subject is. Don't forget that people have been doing very scientific things for many, many years, even though the so-called almighty science has not proven, without a doubt, the validity of it... I get very weary of hearing science worshiped as if it is the only thing that is reliable in this world.

For many types of beliefs science IS the only thing that is reliable in this world. What other methodology could you use to determine the chemical composition of water, for example?

In regards to the topic at hand, how could you possibly measure the magnitude of difference in mortality rates between obese and normal weight individuals without the methods of science? When we observe the people around us, this is an extremely limited sample. Would you say that such a limited sample is very reliable? We also don't keep detailed records, so it would be extremely easy to confuse our observations/memories over long periods of time. That isn't reliable either.

If science is not the only thing that is reliable, for these sorts of questions, then what else is?

I do not mean to say that science is not necessarily the MOST reliable means of explanation for material confusion, but that it is not the ONLY one. Stories like the one Coach told are great supporters of many scientific conclusions.

I also meant to say in my original post that I hope I did not come off as sounding confrontational or insulting; however, I am a long time member of a forum or two where debate is all that is done. I fear that my weariness of hearing the pompous arguments of so-called skeptics at these other forums has caused me to mistakenly misinterpret your post.

I do think your post sounded a little condescending towards Coach and his input, though.

trianglechoke7 said:

"Science" used to believe that fat caused obesity and that people needed to decrease their fat intake and increase their carbs in forms of grains, pasta, etc. Sound healthy? Not for the majority of Americans, because although the changes were made, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and the like absolutely went of the charts. "Science" was wrong. Not for long, though, science has, over time, discovered about nutritional types and all sorts of things that disprove the one size fits all myth of the common nutrition info. Do you see what I mean? Science is ONLY as good as the current understanding/information available. There are many, many things that we have yet to learn.

I honestly don't see what you mean. What does the self-correcting nature of science have to do with "statistics vs. anecdote?" Perhaps you mean that because science can be wrong it's possible that an anecdote is closer to the truth than the conclusions of science. Sure, that's possible. But I don't see how that very helpful in guiding us towards having he right sorts of beliefs.

That is my point. Science does not always have all the facts, and even the conclusions of scientists must be analyzed for mistakes and weak points. You are correct, though.

trianglechoke7 said:

however, there is a huge problem in the scientific community with arrogance, and your post absolutely reeks of it. It also came off as being somewhat snobby towards Coach.

Stating your beliefs and disagreeing with someone is not snobbery or arrogance. Coach countered statistics with a story. That's what anecdote is, they're stories. I then explained how his refutation was an example of this dichotomy and how people are hardwired to take stories over statistics. I don't see the problem and I think you are reading too much into it.

The last paragraph in your original post did come off as slightly snobby to me. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, maybe it's just the way you wrote it, maybe you actually meant it like that. I don't know, but that's the feeling I got.

trianglechoke7 said:

The point I am trying to make is that science is only as good as the current information available. Therefore, a certain amount of humility is definitely warranted.

My post which prompted your response had nothing to do with the current information available in science. It was a philosophical disagreement about the value of anecdote compared to statistics.

I know. My comment about the limitations of science was not wholly relevant to what you said, but to what position I thought you were taking, i.e. that science was infallible and superior to all (a position I have had to argue against numerous times). I did not mean to offend you, if anything, I meant to correct any disrespect towards Coach Sommer and perhaps provide a different point of view regarding science's limitations. I'm sorry if I did offend you.

coreathlete said:

Please keep in mind all that this is a discussion board, not a debate center. The purpose of posts should tend more towards uplifting and enlightening than establishing absolutely who is right or wrong. I'm not directing this at one side or person, so just make sure before you post that it is positive rather than visceral. ?

You are completely right. As I said, debating practically everything has become a bad habit picked up from too much debate on other forums. It was out of place.

pogo69 said:

There was nothing disrespectful in the way that triangle presented his opinions. That it was interpreted as arrogance (certainly not by me) speaks only to the strength of his beliefs; and not to a weakness in either his arguments or the manner in which they were delivered.

We are all adults; and as such, should be able to engage in healthy debate without becoming defensive.

I wholeheartedly agree, I did not mean to come off as being offensive, that is definitely not how I stand. However, whether Triangle presented his opinion rather pompously or not is a bit of a matter of opinion. It does not necessarily credit one to present his opinion as fact, though. Not always.

Patrick

Before I begin, please understand that I completely believe that empirical data is the only way to truly understand exactly how things work. Knowledge, meaning true and accurate insight into the nature of reality, only comes from experimental manipulation. Everything else, from casual observation to correlational data, is an opinion or a belief and does not offer actual insight into the mechanics. It could be an emotional opinion or an opinion based on statistics but those are not concrete data that can be considered knowledge... they are guesswork. The great strength of empirical science and true experiments is that we can use them to gain actual knowledge, at least as far as we are aware.

I also believe that debate, and knowing how to debate with data as opposed to arguing, browbeating, or otherwise using volume or emotions to sway a discussion, is one of the most fun and rewarding things we can do with our larynx and/or keyboards. When we are shown to be wrong we get to learn a lot, and when no one is wrong we get to be exposed to different opinions that may end up leading us to new knowledge and understanding. Or maybe indigestion, but here's hoping for the former!

Now I must go on and point out how difficult it is for science to deliver causal data regarding any complex system. By the way, that whole water composition thing is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Simple magnification of a static molecule is in no way comparable to the explanation of a complex and dynamic system's inner workings and how they are influenced by external and internal factors. It also is unnecessary for us to know that water is H20 for us to know we need water. When we don't get it we die, so we drink. I didn't need the periodic table to help me out with THAT one.

Example 2: You COULD spend forever reading every study about attraction or you could just go copy the players and practice what they do until you too are good at it. I'll leave it to all of you to figure out which one is going to increase your chances with the ladies the most. When something works, it works. Empirical science is not more powerful or less powerful than this process, it is simply able to uncover root causality. It is one tool in a tool box, not a master tool that somehow makes all other tools inferior.

It is nice to know every little detail about how each variable influences the whole but it is far more important to be able to actually get results. If foreknowledge of the science behind everything was so vital for results, Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine could not be developed. As we read journals, it turns out that more and more of their treatments are being found to be effective. There are FDA approved, human-tested accupuncture devices that are based entirely on a treatment system that talks about chi and the meridians it flows along, something that we still can not prove with science. They are trying, but according to science we don't know why the hell some of that is working. Yet there is a useful device based on this "unscientific" practice that is helping many people successfully manage their pain and treat a number of medical conditions. Over the centuries the only thing that happened was that the Chinese studied what worked, copied it, and as they found more things that worked they kept adding to and updating their methods. There was no chemical analysis or microscopic autopsy of tissue to determine where tiny dendrites were.

Science is inherently limited when it comes to isolating variables and their effects on complex systems. The entire experimental process is reliant upon successfully isolating one variable and proving that it causes a direct effect in a predictable manner without fail. That is the only way to give a true causal statement, and in human systems (and other complex systems) almost nothing happens in just one way. When it comes to being overweight, I am overweight. According to BMI I am almost at 30, and that is purely a weight index. Without an appeal I probably couldn't get prime insurance rates with a BMI that high, despite the fact that I am in as close to perfect health as I know anyone to be according to all of the health markers that are used other than weight tables. Overweight isn't even a good construct without strictly defining overweight as "over-fat" which is what we are generally referring to, and as is suggested by the titleof this thread the METHODS through which any particular individual gains weight will directly affect just how bad that weight gain is for them. Those are going to be varying degrees of bad, do not think otherwise. That is addressed somewhat in a later paragraph.

Trying to claim that science has some sort of superiority in accuracy is only a valid statement inside the laboratory or within the mathematical context of a correlation. Science is great, but in this thread the weakness of science's reliance on variable isolation within a system composed of a multitude of variables is clear. Nutrition, exercise, genetics and mental health ALL have measurable effects on body composition and each other, and body composition often directly affects gene expression, dietary habits, willingness and sometimes ability to exercise, and certainly mental health as well. With all of the variables to try and measure in just one of these areas, we will certainly never see a conclusive scientific verdict in our lifetimes as far as causal data regarding being overweight goes. We will make progress, but it will be a very very long time before we have anything that is rock solid.

The problem with trying to use studies is that if it is a true experiment you have extremely low external validity. In other words, you can certainly accurately predict what will happen within very, very narrow parameters in a specified condition but you typically have a very limited ability to predict what will happen in a random and uncontrolled system in regard to the same phenomenon. Search around: Almost nothing is causal. We simply do not know exactly how we work. If we did, we would all have access to a neat little foot-noted pamphlet called Science's Comprehensive Guide to Not Being Unhealthy. We don't have that. The scientific world is currently a firestorm of conflicting nutritional data with large areas being ignored because of a lack of funding, which in turn is because there isn't a way to make people spend more money based on the results. If I were a drug company I would have to be a complete idiot to sponsor any research that would make people realize that they do not always need my products!

Then you have correlations. Anyone here who has taken introductory statistics should know that you can use numbers to say almost anything, and that even when looking at effects it is very difficult to make any judgements regarding WHY anything happens even with a very small list of variables. In fact, the scientific community specifically says that you should never assume a correlation has any relation to actual causation. You can see that there is some kind of relationship with something, but you can not be sure what is happening because correlations do not establish direction of causality. All you know is that if A goes up, B either goes up or down or doesn't seem to follow a pattern at all.

To really nail things down you have to do extensive experiments on each individual variable that could be at work in a correlational study and see if you can isolate a consistent causal trend.

By contrast, what are you reading in more and more health and nutrition journals these days? The benefits of traditional dietary practices from pre-industrial times and civilizations. Maybe we'd be healthier if we just ate what grows out of the earth with as much variety as we can reasonably manage. That is the prevailing wisdom in modern nutrition and it seems to have worked quite well for pretty much everyone until life changed and we were compelled to live in increasingly industrialized settings (which of course changed our dietary practices due to local food availability and affordability).

If we just listened to and copied the lifestyles the old people who are healthy in various parts of the world and chose one of those lifestyles we would almost certainly be much healthier than we are as a group. That's pretty much a diet of plants, meat, water, and cultured milk products. I mean seriously, are you going to wait until science puts a foot-noted pamphlet on the table or are you going to go mimic what works and not wrack your brain over WHY it works? There are times when it is much less important to be causally accurate and much more important to just do what gets results, and this is one of them. It is crazy to think that science proving the old people right is better than copying the traditionally healthy cultures and getting the same benefits.

Eat what grows from the earth. Eat animals that eat what grows from the earth. Culture your milk products. Drink plenty of water. Be more healthy than everyone you know because of that. The end. Screw waiting for science to nit-pick its way through the plethora of food products available, just do what clearly works. Tweak it for yourself if you're lactose intolerant or an animal sympathizer, but stick as true to the basics as your budget and ethics will allow. We haven't needed published studies to keep people healthy for the last six million years, and if we have been reduced to simpletons who blindly wait for someone to tell us what to do instead of watching what works and copying it then we all deserve to be victims of evolution.

It's always exciting to watch science verify things that we can clearly watch with our own eyes, and it's insightful to realize how things work, but it is asinine to depend on such things when you can watch something work and copy it. If you see a family go from health and longevity to disease and short life as the lifestyle changes you should at least have the ability to say "wow, I don't know what the heck is actually going on but they are clearly doing things wrong. I am going to stick to what they did when they were healthy."

That's all I have to say about that.

As far as being over-fat goes, excess body fat is inherently inflammatory and appears to inherently have a negative effect on insulin sensitivity. It is certainly possible to counter that inflammation with a diet that is sufficiently high in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory substances and low enough in substances that promote the inflammatory processes.

It is also certainly important whether your over-fatness comes from simply eating too much glucose polymers, meat, or olive oil( as an example of a healthy fat source) or if excess fructose, alcohol, hydrogenated fats, etc. is the source of your over-fatness. Some of those substances are highly inflammatory and lead to horrible cholesterol, liver damage and blood pressure problems and some do not. Some people are inherently more resistant to the negative effects of being over-fat and of over-stimulation of less than health-promoting metabolic processes, but that should not be misconstrued as those factors being any less important.

In the end, at some indeterminate point in the future that current rates of knowledge acquisition will put beyond our own lifespan, science will be able to tell us exactly what the heck is going on with our bodies, exercise, nutrition, and the whole shebang. In the meantime, I will be using my startling observations and superhuman powers of logic(sarcasm) to look at what healthy groups are doing, compare health trends in modern society to known health data from the 1800's and 1900's and observational reports on groups of people who seem to live forever in great health and figure out that I need to be eating some combination of various vegetables (both leafy and starchy), meats and eggs, cultured milk products (if I were to eat dairy, which I personally do), spread fruit throughout my day when I eat it and drink reasonable amounts of water. I probably won't die any sooner if I use a bit of olive oil when I cook either. I'm going to stay active so that my joints stay healthy and so that I can always take care of myself. I hate being a burden.

I'm going to not get fat because I see a lot more fat people having tons of health problems than lean people, and I'm going to eat what I listed because I have noticed that people on such diets as a group do not have anywhere near the number of health problems that the group of people who do not follow such a diet have. I will chuckle with delight as studies confirming the superior health effects of such a lifestyle continue to trickle forth and I will continue to grumble quietly as I am forced to pay for the health care costs of those who doom themselves to a life riddled with minor and major diseases by not doing the same, but I do not need those studies to tell me that being over-fat is not a good idea. I can see that for myself, and unfortunately I HAVE to see it whenever I go out in public.

There we go, I knew you'd jump in somewhere!

I said my peace on this in another thread, but Slizz that was beautiful.

I have a degree in Physics and Math, and know first hand what science is and isn't. Slizz just summed it up as well as anyone could.

Science is great, but its really only one tool we have as human beings. Yes we do need to keep our feet on the ground and not get carried away by every crazy idea, but there is a gift that humans have called common sense.

If you're a member of this forum, its pretty clear that being obese will get you nowhere.

The Buddhists had a great idea, the middle way, not too this not too that, i like to call it the path of Goldilocks. Its one thing that appeals to me about this style of training, its not too this or too that, just a great mix of methods to build practical strength.

With our approach to logic, science, the Middle Way still holds sway.

We know, as Slizz pointed out that all the evidence just isn't in yet, in fact it won't be in during our lifetimes, so as every new and seemingly earth-shattering piece of information comes in we have to weigh it against what we already know and make a judgement call. Like it or not we are walking down the narrow blade of Occam's Razor. We have to make our best call based on what we know and what we want to be. Common sense is often the most sophisticated tool we have to use and it is far under rated.

Another point to ponder; just because someone presents an anecdote to explain something doesn't mean they don't understand the science behind it. I cannot remember and cite every article/book/paper that I have read that lead up to my current beliefs, but I remember many of the experiences along the way. If someone were to ask why I eat or train in a certain way, I would explain to them my experiences, not the science behind it. Might that present an oversimplification of a complex topic, one that a science minded person could easily assail? Of course, but if someone chooses to practice what I suggest is not my concern. They asked, I responded, and if they value my opinions they may try it out. If they do not, I would hope they would be courteous enough to ask questions about, rather than attempt to poke holes in, my suggestion.