This Mediterranean diet study was hugely impactful. The science has fallen apart

NickOttens

From Vox:

The million-dollar question in nutrition science is this: What should we eat to live a long and healthy life?

Researchers’ answers to this question have often been contradictory and confusing. But in recent decades, one diet has attracted the lion’s share of research dollars and public attention: the Mediterranean way of eating. And in 2013, its scientific cred was secured with PREDIMED, one of the most important recent diet studies published.

The study’s delicious conclusion was that eating as the Spanish, Italian, and Greeks do — dousing food in olive oil and loading up on fish, nuts, and fresh produce — cuts cardiovascular disease risk by a third. As Stanford University health researcher (and nutrition science critic) John Ioannidis put it: “It was the best. The best of the best.”

Not anymore. Last June, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine pulled the original paper from the record, issuing a rare retraction. It also republished a new version of PREDIMED, based on a reanalysis of the data that accounted for the missteps.

PREDIMED was supposed to be an example of scientific excellence in a field filled with conflicted and flawed studies. Yet it now appears to be horribly flawed.

Click here for the whole story.

Roey

Having read the article, I'm not sure the science has totally "fallen apart". But still, it's a good reminder that nutritional studies are prone to... shall we say... mishaps.