Apparently the Food and Drug Administration is about to release a fairly definitive report on the effectiveness or various diets. (http://www.msnbc.com/news/514116.asp)
We were discussing diets at work, and as inevitably occurs thing broke out into a disagreement as to the relative merits of low fat vs. low carb, etc. I joked that what we need is a NASA level research project that will clear up the controversy once and for all. We should hire thousands of people of all ages and ethnicities. We should move them into a compound where we will orchestrate and supervise their every move dietary and otherwise. After analyzing everything that goes into their mouth and comes out of their anus for a couple of years, we would have the definitive answer to how food works in the human body.
Then, I realized. Maybe it isn’t such a silly idea.
If we hired 10,000 families at a cost of even $100,000. per year for 5 years, the cost would be 5 billion dollars plus the cost of paying the researchers. Even at a 1 to 1 staff to subject ratio, we could pull it off for a payroll cost of 10 billion dollars. If infrastructure cost another 10 billion, we could call it 20 billion for the entire program.
That works out to about $70. for every man, woman and child in the nation. Would it be worth it to know definitively what REALLY is good for us and what isn’t. I wonder what you folks think.
What’s the mystery? There have been lots of studies done and they all conclude that you will lose weight on any “diet” where you burn more calories than you take in.
There have already been large scale studies like the one you propose. There was a longitudinal study of thousands of nurses that is still producing data. Probably every large university with a medical research department is conducting some such study right now.
WE already know what’s good for us. Problem is people just don’t want to hear that you need to eat lots of fruits and veggies and whole grains and lay off the Big Macs.
I think what is needed is more study on motivational factors. For example, although there isn’t any evidence that protein diets are any more effective than other kinds, a lot of people swear by them. Why? Is it the structure? Is it the types of food “allowed.” What is it makes one diet easier to follow than another?
Probably a lot less than the marketing costs for any one of the dozens of diets/products claiming that people can lose weight without exercising or cutting out junk calories.
And even the “whole grains” part isn’t all that certain. (Whole grains’ll give you more fiber and B vitamins, but I don’t know of any evidence for whole grains improving weight loss.)