Four decades of nutrition research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is seriously flawed, according to a recent study published in PLOS ONE (The Public Library of Science). Nutrition data collected and reported over all those years based on survey results are not "physiologically credible," according to the study's authors.
The study examined data from 28,993 men and 34,369 women and looked at the daily caloric intake compared with the participants' energy expenditure, as predicted by height, weight, age and gender, according to a press release on the study. The vast majority of the self-reported data "are physiologically implausible, and therefore invalid," one of the study's authors asserted.
In other words, estimates of calories consumed across different groups within the U.S. population are skewed, meaning public policy related to diet and health taking these estimates into account is bound to be inaccurate. As National Journal's Brian Resnick noted: "From the survey, we learned things about nutrition that now seem so fundamental -- that diet and exercise choices are linked to body weight, that cholesterol is linked to heart disease, and so on."
This isn't the first time that health research has generated the wrong prescription for healthy living. In this slideshow, explore other good health advice that has, with further research, gone bad.
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