Thank you.

Since I presume you have read the book, may I ask, how did it work for you?

I'm very interested in upping my social skills.

Cheers

I read this on a mailing list, and unsurprisingly would like to read future developments on a mailing list. :)

Or at least, that's how I'm most likely to find out such a development would exist. In practice I think I would read it on either email or a webpage.

This seems like very little evidence as far as I am concerned.

It claims that eating a higher-fat diet increased cholesterol. This is what I would expect, and I am also entirely unconvinced that this is remotely harmful. They don't even break up "cholesterol" into the relevant subtypes! Was this an increase in HDL or triglycerides? They rely on a section of the paper to claim that the link between higher cholesterol and cardiovascular mortality is well-established... but then why didn't they make a study showing increased CVD or all-cause mortality? They have those data as part of the study! I want the body count.

Also, if you look at the correlations they found with increased cholesterol levels, the ones they don't report in the abstract include "sweet buns and crisp bread rolls, and boiled potato" (as well as boiled coffee and salted fish). So it looks like some kinds of fats and some kinds of carbs correlate with higher cholesterol. That doesn't seem nearly as compelling as the headline. (Let's also note that fat consumption as a % of energy only once again reached 1986 levels in 2010, and yet total cholesterol is still significantly lower.)

The continually-rising BMI is more interesting to me. They lowered fat intake, people got fatter. They lowered carb intake, people got fatter. Hmmm... Oddly enough, they don't report much about total caloric intake - everything is mentioned as a proportion of calories. The shift in fat intake was a fall of 3-4% of calories, then an increase of 3-4% of calories. This would only require a small amount of increased total calories from fat, with no reduction in carb content, to explain the shift as well as the increasing BMI. (Note that they didn't try to draw any correlations with BMI, because of the well-known bias in food frequency questionnaire reporting.)

What other major food shifts did they note in the study? First of all, potatoes were being replaced with rice and pasta. Second of all, alcohol intake rose continuously over the period in question. I would bet hundreds of dollars that the strongest statistical correlation with BMI would be wine intake, based on the figures they report.

Even as far as associational studies go, this is a really bad one. I mean that seriously, this is methodologically one of the worst I've ever seen. I was expecting to actually have my beliefs challenged, a few good associational studies have given me pause, but this is not one of them.

Great summary; just read it and bookmarked it. Much thanks for writing this. I had thought I needed to reread Eat That Frog but had been reluctant to take the hours required; now I don't have to.

I have also found Eat That Frog to be an unusually good collection of the major productivity techniques. Incidentally, I also heard about the book from Patri via Divia.

For a shorter and more rationality-friendly version of the book, I summarized it here:

EDIT: http://becomingeden.com/summary-of-eat-that-frog/

By:

our cultural sentiments surrounding meat consumption

Do you mean the rationalist community or the human community at large?

As mentioned, I'm in if this happens.

I also found it confusing, because the community has 'heroes' in the sense of much-talked-about role models who are generally admired. One of the odd things about the London meetup I went to was that there were several names being spoken of in mildly reverent tones. I'm not criticising this: it has ups as well as downs. But it's that, not organisers, thatI think of when you say 'heroes'.

I'm a little surprised to see the issues of LWers interacting with women reduced to "being careful when discussing explicit awareness of social reality" ... with a link to PUA stuff.

1) PUA stuff is hardly the only example out there of "explicit awareness of social reality".

2) It's quite telling that the implication of the post is that "women don't like explicit awareness of social reality", rather than the (more accurate) "women don't like PUA".

One way to encourage women to participate in rationalist communities might be to make a conscious effort not to portray us as silly, manipulative, fickle, irrational gold-diggers. Some rationalists do a good job of this ... many don't. And PUAs, rationalist and otherwise, are usually bad at this. (Yes, there are exceptions.)

Me + 1 coming in from NYC! :)