Comment by TimPC
13 years ago
So does it apply to all SDA's or just in Loma Linda. This reminds me of the best schools being small schools example, where governments tried to make schools smaller, ignoring the fact that the worst schools were small schools. How do you separate the data from the variance with such small groups?
Admittedly lack of smoking and reduced stressed are well studied factors: avoiding red meat can help, although entirely non-meat diets commonly hurt from inadequate amounts of iron and in some cases protein. Drinking in moderation can have health benefits however, so it seems strange to list it first, even though binging and alcoholism is terrible for life expectancy.
I actually tend to disagree with PG slightly (here comes massive downvotes). I find a lot of the moderate: gather more data approaches are in response to one or more wild leaps unsupported by data often on a single anecdote. We leap to causes quickly and badly. Testing our hypothesis with good data or at least many anecdotes (those of customers) is a great thing for start-ups. Being skeptical of conclusions from a single anecdote is useful: if you want to leap to those conlusions you'd do well to add other data or background supporting them.
> So does it apply to all SDA's or just in Loma Linda.
Applies all across the country. Scientists looked at just high school grads w/o college, or those with four year degrees. You could group by people with incomes above, or below, certain thresholds. You could throw out irregular church goers and only look at evangelicals or conservatives by denomination. SDAs consistently emerged as the longer living group, no matter how grouped.
And regardless of the slicing, the factors most indicative proved to be how closely the health plan is followed. Looking within the SDA group, and dividing by adherence to the health guidelines, found the differences there as well.
Unlike your sibling comment suggests, this was not a black swan.
> although entirely non-meat diets commonly hurt from inadequate amounts of iron and in some cases protein
This is a common misconception. It's remarkably easy to get more than enough iron and protein in a non-meat diet. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism#Protein and the next section for some specific food ideas.
SDAs have espoused vegetarianism since the 1800s, and have been focused on diet and health since the beginning. In fact, there's a good chance you ate food formulated by the Kellogg brothers this morning...
To quote Wikipedia:
Kellogg's was founded as the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company on February 19, 1906, by Will Keith Kellogg as an outgrowth of his work with his brother John Harvey Kellogg at the Battle Creek Sanitarium following practices based on the Seventh-day Adventist Christian denomination.
Admittedly, the middlebrow dismissal is often worse than that: a call to ignorance rather than a call for more data. In that respect I agree that we should probably be dismissive of that dismissal.