Is Ice Cream Healthy?
Issue #21
Is Ice Cream Healthy?
No, seriously.
This nonsensical question was raised recently (in The Atlantic), based primarily off an ancillary result in a study examining the relationship between dairy foods and chronic disease. Apparently, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with lower risk of heart problems among diabetics.
Sounds delicious but surely there’s a catch, right?
If you’ve been following research in the social sciences, you’d know that for several years there has been a “replication crisis.” That is, in many cases, independent researchers have not been able to reproduce the results of the original study, leading to embarrassment and worse. Perhaps the most famous outing is bluntly titled, “Why Most Published Research Findings are False”.
This can happen for a variety of reasons including mundane ones like small sample sizes and publication bias (only positive results being published), as well as more nefarious ones like the creatively named, “researcher degrees of freedom.”
Another reason for questioning the ice-cream-is-good-for-you result is that nutritional studies are notorious for finding spurious correlations and contradictory findings (is coffee good for you or not?).
Rather than randomized control trials, these studies use observational methods (including surveys recalling health behaviors) and are hence susceptible to different kinds of errors. Not to mention, the human body is not exactly a simple thing to study.
So, you shouldn’t expect a single study (even one based on a Harvard doctoral dissertation) to be the basis of an article in a reputable publication – and it isn’t. The author investigates several previous studies, and they all point in the same direction . . . dairy in general, and ice cream in particular, seems to reduce the odds of developing insulin resistance which is a precursor for diabetes.??
Though none of these are experiments, one hilarious “study” approaches experimentishness. YouTuber Anthony Howard-Crow ate about two pints of ice cream a day for three months – and found his blood work actually showed improvement (unlike the poor guy in Supersize Me who feasted on McDonald’s for a month and nearly paid with his life).
领英推荐
Understandably, nutritionists don’t want to talk about the ice cream results. One reason to question the results is reverse causation (diabetics or overweight people reducing consumption), though that doesn’t seem to fully explain the results. It’s also possible that ice cream consumption reduces intake of other (worse) carbs, so that the magic may not be in the ice cream (even one as delicious as my favorite, Jeni’s). ???
All I can tell you is that when it comes to eating, I subscribe to the Michael Pollan formula – Eat (real) Food, Mostly Plants, Not Too Much – while also allowing for occasional packaged-food indulgences like ice cream.
To compensate, perhaps you can do some soleus pushups after enjoying your ice cream (check Issue #19 – The Miracle Muscle, if that doesn’t sound familiar).
End Notes
David Merritt Johns – The Ice Cream Conspiracy in The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/
Why Most Published Research Findings are False – John Ioannidis, https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Michael Pollan – Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual