 Unreasonably fond of the realization that the “Mediterranean diet” fad is a random second- or third-order byproduct of pension fraud. I feel like there’s some sort of higher-level behavioural insight here, about how quickly people will latch on to things that give them any sense of agency over themselves, whatever the basis. 41 comments
@mhoye I think the Mediterranean diet is a bit of a drive-by victim here... Afaik there are valid intervention trials like the Lyon diet study that provide evidence for improved cardiovascular markers. Yeah longevity in "blue zones" is likely bullshit but that shouldn't make us throw out things where there are evidence backed claims for other good outcomes.
@mhoye I suppose the perfect symmetry for the situation where everyone thinks that people in england all died in their 40s in victorian times due to massive child mortality bringing average life expectancy down is people now thinking that everyone in okinawa lives to 120 because nobody reports when old people die  This quote from the article: Ouch, yeah. It is a security question for phone banking on how old I am. I routinely fail it. Intellectually I know I'm somewhere in my mid-late forties. I don't bother tracking the year. Emotionally? I still feel like I'm in my mid twenties-mid thirties depending on the day. It always comes as a shock when I look in the mirror. @CrypticMirror @mhoye I had a boss who routinely lied about his age (he lied to the Aus government when he moved here, found it enjoyable to do so, kept doing it). Everyone around him thought he was a different age. I had doubts that he even knew his age himself... @DarkestKale @CrypticMirror I definitely haven't told any website the truth about it in my life.  @mhoye @DarkestKale @CrypticMirror Weren’t we all born on January 1, 1970? (There are other, much less funny downstream consequences of this nonsense, of course, like the wild misallocation of public funds towards elder care and telling living people trying to improve their real health problems that they should be imitating the diets of people who’ve been dead for 30 years but don’t fill out the right forms beforehand.) "The root cause of the huge market for fake Italian olive oil is fake Italian pensioners" is just so incredible, the world needs some sort of Evil James Burke to get on top of this, Connections but for organized crime.    @mhoye (kinda OT) I do like olive oil, so I hope it's no worse than other oils. In the US (and Canada?) don't buy non-specialty EU olive oil, it isn't their best. California (and south America, somewhat) generally produce a better quality every-day EVO than the EU exports to NA. EU reserves their best for domestic distribution; they have standards for "extra virgin" and we don't, so their best goes to EU distribution .   @mhoye "If the scientific community don’t acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess I’ll just get someone to pretend I’m still alive until that changes." @mhoye @mhoye There is (or at least was) an ongoing dispute about the details of the data handling and corrections, and I'm always a little cautious about accepting the results of a single analysis. Some nerdy stats flame wars: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/08/06/are-supercentenarians-mostly-superfrauds/ Needs an independent analysis. @dan131riley It's messy, but it is also how science is supposed to work.  Of course the real conclusion here is that a good pension is the key to long healthy happy life ;)  An Italian (any gender) will never concieve bread, butter, french fries and ketchup as a proper dish. 🙄 @chriscunningham @mhoye why mastodon reply guys are so determined to shame the culture of the southern europe countries 😒 "The chip butty originated in working-class communities in the 19th century, though its exact origins are unknown.[4] According to the National Federation of Fish Fryers, it was created in 1863 in Oldham, Lancashire, at Mr Lees, the second-ever fish and chip shop in Britain."   "Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death. The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They’ve eaten the least vegetables; they’ve been extremely heavy drinkers. " @mhoye Mediterranean diet research isn't just based on reported longevity, but actual cardiovascular research. Please don't spread FUD.  @mhoye “If they don’t acknowledge their errors in my lifetime, I guess I’ll just get someone to pretend I’m still alive until that changes.”  I don't think people do latch on to agency in that way. It's more an illustration of the idea that if people hear something seven times they believe it After all, over 50% of heart attacks are now caused by covid. That beats the supposed 30% reduction from the Mediterranean diet. But you don't see many people running around with n95s on  |
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