Just because an action follows another, doesn’t necessarily mean it is caused by the first. It could be a coincidence and, in some cases, the thing that happened second might have caused the earlier one.
A football stadium fills up with people, then the game starts. Did the game start because the people arrived or do the people arrive because the game is about to start?
A friend of mine once hurt her back tying her shoes. Is it likely that tying her shoes was too challenging and caused a disc issue or was that the final straw in an injury that had already been building up?
When it comes to food and lifestyle choices, it is easy to identify correlations, but incredibly difficult to identify causes. What makes it so challenging?
- Unreliable data – most of the data in food and lifestyle studies is based on what people said they did, not what they actually did. How accurately do you remember what you ate, how much you exercised, etc?
- Lack of controls – it is prohibitively expensive to control everything that two groups do so you can vary one factor and look for an effect.
- Selection bias – it is easier to get data from people in hospitals, so it can appear that some choices create illness. What if, in fact, you found out that most people that behaved the same way did not actually end up in a hospital?
- Conflicts of interest – scientific journals are more likely to publish studies that show significant or surprising effects. Studies of the same area that show no effect might not be published.
If a study showed that highly processed food is good for you, would you believe it?
Do you need a study to tell you that getting good sleep, moving every day and eating whole foods is the best way to be healthy?
How do all of the other animals manage to survive without studies to tell them what to eat or how to live?
That was a good one!
And yes, someone does have to tell me how & what to eat and teach me how to rest .
Amazing… I could learn a lot just from watching the wide world of animals .
You are right! 🤣