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Basically, the scientists carefully designed three diets: - low-fat - medium-fat - AVOCADOpic.twitter.com/y7tse15NNl
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The diets were pretty much identical in many ways, except for the fat content and the inclusion of the smooshed avopic.twitter.com/jSFE1kCdyN
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The results were hilariously unimpressive Avocados reduced LDL ('bad') cholesterol a tiny bit, and changed the levels of a couple of antioxidants a tiny bit as wellpic.twitter.com/rF2czhzJgg
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(For reference, the reduction in LDL here is <10% from baseline, while guidelines tend to argue for a 50% reduction if possible)
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So, there was a minimally important reduction in 'bad' cholesterol But here's the funny part - it may not be important at all!
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This is because, like many of these silly food studies, the researchers did a lot of what's known as "within-group" comparisons
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Basically, this means that you compare the avocado diet at the end to the avocado diet at the beginning, rather than the control groups that they had This makes the result a bit meaningless because of regression to the mean (among other things)pic.twitter.com/TgLwBWRfeD
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If you ignore all the within-group comparisons, you're left with this. Avocados: - increase lutein concentrations a tiny bit - increase carotene concentrations (but less than another medium-fat diet) - decrease 'bad' cholesterol by ~4% more than another medium-fat dietpic.twitter.com/RQ3PZGXCrq
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And remember, these weren't (as the headlines suggest) people just adding avocados to their diets! These were people eating care-fully controlled, formulated diets centered around avocados
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It is ABSURD to suggest that you could take these complex, within-study diets and apply the results to people who are wondering what to eat to be a bit healthier
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So why were the results blown so wildly out of proportion by the media (seriously, this was a pretty meaningless study)? Hard to say. But, could be to do with the funders of the trial...
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Yes, this research was funded by the Hass Avocado Board, the organisation for the most commonly-grown avocado in the world (who the senior study author also works for) In other words, BIG AVOCADOpic.twitter.com/AgfBmsVIxY
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(As a side note, I'm confused how you can be employed by an organisation and then claim that they had no role in your study design - sure, not your primary role, but still...)
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Another ~truly amazing~ thing about this study? The trial registration specifies 4 primary outcomes (total cholesterol, HDL, trigs, AND LDL) They only reported one I WONDER WHY THAT MIGHT BE????pic.twitter.com/TwaDjM733C
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There is some mention of HDL cholesterol, but only in reference to CETP (enzyme changes), nothing on differences between diets and nothing at all on triglycerides or total cholesterol!!!pic.twitter.com/J85nBIjNaJ
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In summary: - industry-funded study - showed pretty much no benefit for avocados - didn't report 3 out of 4 primary outcomes (!) - probably doesn't apply to most people anyway
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End of conversation
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