Twin research indicates that a vegan diet improves cardiovascular health
med.stanford.edu
A Stanford Medicine-led trial of identical twins comparing vegan and omnivore diets found that a vegan diet improves overall cardiovascular health.
  • rowinxavier@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    5 hours ago

    Man, I really don’t like this study.

    First, this is 44 people, 22 pairs of twins, followed for 8 weeks. This in not enough to be meaningful and the researchers knew this at the start. A sample of 44 people is so small you would only use it for a pilot study to show your study design and get funding.

    Second, 8 weeks? That is an insanely short time. Again, pilot study, not real study.

    Third, they didn’t measure heart disease, they measured LDL cholesterol. This is a proxy marker, not a measure of heart disease. It would be like measuring how many fires a city has by counting firefighters. It doesn’t measure how many actual fires there are, just how many resources are available to fight them. What if there is low funding? What if there is an issue with training? What if there is another disaster which is more urgent than the fires? LDL is not a good measure on its own for heart health.

    There are lots of other issues but they all boil down to this being bad science. We know what questions should be asked and how to ask them. They chose not to ask questions correctly and get meaningful answers. This is not worth the paper it was printed on and means close to nothing.

  • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    122·
    10 hours ago

    why would you go through all this effort to eliminate variables with identical twins and then not also control caloric intake between the different diets? they fed these people fixed meal plans for 4 weeks, of course the group consuming fewer calories are going to lose more weight etc.

    • canihasaccount@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      6 hours ago

      Try eating the same number of calories on a vegan diet. It’s hard. More fiber fills you quicker. The diets can’t equate both satiety and calories. Lower calories on a vegan diet is a feature, not a bug.

      • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        Nonsense, plenty of vegan foods high in carbs, sugar, and fats are more calorie dense than lean protein.

        Anyway increasing calories in a vegan diet isn’t the only option available. they also could have reduced the calories in the omnivore diet by reducing carbs and fats, increasing fiber, etc. they gave the omnivore twins a larger calorie intake for no reason.