Gimme that old time nutrition

Q: Did you see that eating a bowl of quinoa every day helps you live longer?

A: No.

Q: There’s story on Stuff (well, from the West Island branches). Is it true?

A: Hard to say.

Q: Well, does the research claim it’s true?

A: Hard to say.

Q: Why? Didn’t they link?

A: No, they linked, and the paper is even open-access. It just doesn’t say anything about the effects of quinoa.

Q: But the story said “A new study by Harvard Public School of Health has found that eating a daily bowl of the protein-packed, gluten-free grain significantly reduces the risk of premature death from cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease and diabetes.”

A: Sadly, yes.

Q: This is your correlation and causation thing again, isn’t it?

A: No, the paper just doesn’t mention quinoa. It talks about grains and cereals.

Q: Ok. So they just didn’t break out the data for quinoa separately. It’s still a grain and a cereal, isn’t it?

A: Yes, as long as you aren’t even more pedantic than me. But it’s not just data analysis. They didn’t even ask their study participants about eating quinoa.

Q: So? Some of the grain they ate must have been quinoa, and there’s no reason to expect it’s different from other grains, is there? Won’t it all get averaged in somehow?

A: I suppose so. But there can’t have been that much of it getting “averaged in”

Q: Why not? You old folks may not have caught on, but quinoa’s getting popular now.

A: The study was in people over 50. That’s older than both of us. Even assuming we weren’t the same person.

Q: Even so. Things are changing. People have more adventurous diets. It’s not the twentieth century any more.

A: It is in the study.

Q: Huh?

A: The dietary data were collected in 1995 and 1997, from people with average age 61 years.

Q: Oh.