We have been diverting what we know about nutrition and health into lamentable nonsense for decades already. But now, our dialogue about nutrition seems to have devolved further into a sequence of assaults on straw man arguments, aided and abetted by the shoot-aim-ready inclination that prevails in social media. Apparently, even Dilbert has received this memo.
As an illustration, a recent study that dubiously resurrected a tired debate about low-fat versus low-carb managed to achieve neither low-fat nor low-carb intervention conditions, yet did manage to generate massively misleading headlines — and endless echoes in the ether of cyberspace. This tendency to argue over not merely outdated propositions, but caricatures of outdated propositions, is disquieting.
That there is a massive, global consensus among experts about the fundamentals of eating for human health is something I know intimately, as I am running a project dedicated to revealing exactly that. After only a matter of months, a coalition of over 180 diverse experts from more than 20 countries has already taken shape, and the initiative grows weekly.
As compelling as both the evidence and consensus are regarding diet for health, the arguments pertaining to diet for sustainability may be even more so. The idea that we can productively debate various ways of eating well when some of them are simply unviable for a population of 7 billion confronting increasingly obvious and unpleasant indications of the damage we have already wrought — the desiccation of California just one of many — is testimony not to our actual options, but to our outrageous shortsightedness. As long as we can indulge, I guess it’s OK if nothing is left for our children?
This would be bad enough. But compounding it is those straw man arguments.
For example, Dr. Dean Ornish made the case for mostly plant-based diets in a New York Times op-ed on March 23. Although Dean’s brand has long been associated with “low-fat” diets, that was always a bit of a distraction, and has evolved. It was a distraction because the emphasis was always on the foods to eat, rather than the macronutrient to avoid. Eat a diet predominantly comprised of vegetables, fruits, beans, lentils and whole grains — and “low-fat” is merely a byproduct. Be that as it may, Dr. Ornish, like the rest of us paying attention, has kept pace with science of the past two decades indicating quality of dietary fat is at least as important as quantity, and likely more so.
All this to say the op-ed was neither extreme, nor ideological. It made the case for mostly plant-based eating based on the general evidence, Dean’s own important contributions, and at least as compellingly, on the basis of the sustainability argument.
There is always some basis for debate, of course. One might argue, for instance, that what we know about the health effects of meat might not be true if the meat were from game, or free-ranging, natively-fed animals. One might argue that what we know about animal protein is partly a product of the company it typically keeps, in cheeseburgers, hot dogs and deli meats.
But that would require actual expertise, and nuance — and we have no apparent tolerance for such inconveniences. So instead, a journalist — who may or may not understand the relevant research methods and findings, who has certainly not been trained in epidemiologic research methods, who has not devoted a lifetime to cultivating expertise in this topic — tells us that everything Dr. Ornish has to say is wrong.
But the attack mounted is against a straw man. We are told that randomized trials count, and observational studies don’t — when that’s opportune — but then a whole paragraph is devoted to making a case for lean meat based on, you guessed it, observational studies. We are told that some dietary fats are healthy as if that were a rebuttal, but that very point is made in the original op-ed.
Much the same scenario played out when the Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee was released. In one corner, we had the 572-page, detailed product of a multidisciplinary group of carefully screened, independent scientists; and in the other corner, the opinion of one journalist with a book to sell, held up as if comparable. It would be as if Olympic teams were open to two kinds of members: those who had competed among the best in the world and prevailed; and those who said, “I want to play, too, and by the way, sell tickets.” The result was predictable. The evidence in the report was turned into a caricature — the government telling us all what to eat — and summarily dismissed. Leaving aside the flaws of such summary judgment, the titular allegation is quite simply false. While the Dietary Guidelines are the work of the government, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report is the work of scientists, serving only public health. Impugning that work merely increases the likelihood that politicians will adulterate it.
We have killed expertise, so that every opinion counts as much as every other. We watch straw men knocked down, and react as if it is an Olympic bout. And so the rich get richer, the fat and sick get fatter and sicker, California keeps getting dryer and it keeps getting warmer down here.
Folks, are we really this fatuous? Imagine if the Royal Order of Cudgel Sellers, as part of their annual “buy a cudgel, swing it for free!” marketing campaign, announced the following:
Our illustrious team of commissioned scientists has found no association whatsoever between cudgel blows and the rate of cerebral malaria among residents of Hamden, Connecticut (my home town, as fate would have it). Therefore, all this fuss about concussions is just so much misguided hooey.
Perhaps the National Rifle Association has already run a comparable campaign. In any event, this is how it’s done, folks. If I say that evidence overwhelmingly supports a diet of wholesome foods close to nature, predominantly plants, in any of various sensible combinations, you don’t have to waste time reviewing that evidence, or establishing a cogent rebuttal. You just fire back, “Low-fat diets are yesterday’s news!” or, “haven’t we established that calories don’t count?” Never mind that I mentioned neither fat, nor calories.
Straw man arguments not only distort the truth we know, but deny access to the legitimate debates we need to advance our understanding. They are enemy to knowledge and learning alike, because they are in the service of neither. They serve, invariably, some ulterior motive, be it book sales or bigotry, notoriety or narcissism.
There is, by the way, an interesting New Age variant on this vintage nonsense, what we might call the “straw-man-reverse.” Here, the actual position is a straw man — such as for instance, there is just one villainous nutrient to blame for all our ills, or just one silver nutrient to save us. Such views propagate best sellers, so they are lucrative. But they prove inconvenient when attacked because they are, well, nonsense. So the evolving tendency is for people to gain fortune and fame with just such contentions, but when they are exposed, to deny they ever existed. “Who, me, blame all our ills on one nutrient? My position has always been to eat wholesome foods.”
Let’s fix this. We should all be able to recognize straw man arguments if we are looking for them. And then, I propose we call them all out with: #StrawManArgument. Let us then redirect our collective attention to the cumulative weight of evidence, and the gathering, global consensus.
It’s too easy to turn any one of us into a caricature, then impugn the caricature. It will get harder when the truth is spoken not by one of us alone, but a coalition of us standing together. It will get harder when legions of the literate call out every straw man argument we find.
The health of people and planet will advance only if we apply what we know, and learn what we don’t. Straw man arguments conspire against both. They propagate distrust, disgust and dithering. They are thus enemy to us all who see a need for anything other than the status quo to secure the best possible destinies for our children, and theirs.
They are the straw that threatens to break the backs of public health and planetary stewardship — and we should carry them no more.
More from U.S. News
7 Reasons to Choose a Plant-Based Diet
Debunking 5 Common Weight-Loss Myths
Diets of Straw originally appeared on usnews.com
