An Open Thread: a place for things foolishly April, and other assorted discussions.
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
I recently got into some arguments with foodies I know on the merits (or lack thereof) of organic / local / free-range / etc. food, and this is a topic where I find it very difficult to find sources of information that I trust as reflective of some sort of expert consensus (insofar as one can be said to exist.) Does anyone have any recommendations for books or articles on nutrition/health that holds up under critical scrutiny? I trust a lot of you as filters on these issues.
There are lots of studies on the issue, and as usual most of them are bad and disagree with each other.
I tend to trust the one by the UK Food Standards Association because it's big and government-funded. Mayo Clinic agrees. I think there are a few studies that show organic foods do have lower pesticide levels than normal, but nothing showing that it actually leads to health benefits. Pesticides can cause some health problems in farmers, but they're receiving a bajillion times the dose of someone who just eats the occasional carrot. And some "organic p... (read more)
The famous metaanalyses which has shown that vitamin supplementation is essentially useless, or possibly even harmful totally destroys the basic argument ("oh look, more vitamins!" - not that it's usually even true) that organic is good for your health.
It might still be tastier. Or not.
0RobinZ
Is the methodology of the Amanda Knox test useful in this case? (I didn't attempt the test or even read the posts, but it sounds like a similarly politicized problem.)
An Open Thread: a place for things foolishly April, and other assorted discussions.
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
Update: Tom McCabe has created a sub-Reddit to use for assorted discussions instead of relying on open threads. Go there for the sub-Reddit and discussion about it, and go here to vote on the idea.