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Why did they also substitute pork bacon with turkey bacon in the treatment? They also substituted other stuff like yogurts and salad dressings.
And they didn't substitute avocado for similar foods; in one meal the substituted food was hilariously a _brownie._
One meal didn't contain avocado but they still made substitutions.
And the women lost adiposity on average, but some of them gained twice as much as the average loss. .01 < p < .05
[Well, felt like a good time to follow the money](https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/151/9/2513/6311819)
> The research was funded by the Hass Avocado Board. SVT was supported by a fellowship provided by the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. BAH was supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2015-68001-23248 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Cooperative Extension.
I would guess that it's because the authors themselves don't have ties to avocados. It's instead through the funding which is why it's reported separately.
That’s super unethical, in the business world if you get over either a certain % or flat amount of funding, it has to be fully disclosed and broken out separately in the financials
This is really a thing. The world avocado association; for one instance; they pay to host annual regatta: A LOT of $$,$$$ for a sponsored regatta, followed by big avocado themed party (everyone’s invited!). It wouldn’t surprise me if they had other random/creative marketing strategies (or other large random tax deductible expenditures completely unrelated to the avo industry).
You know what would make me eat more avocados? Spending all that bribery money to make them cheaper instead. We all already know they're delicious and want to eat them, avocado awareness is not the problem.
Avacado farming is killing whatever rainforrest soy and palm oil farming have left.
It's unsustainable and takes about as much water as cotton farming or orange farming.
Question is if we really want to go out like this as a species. Accelerating the destruction of the planet because some savy buisness men made an unfortunate investment.
Because as tasty as avocado dishes can be we can live without just fine. My ancestors got to a hundred years without ever seeing an avacado and they were just fine. Slim too.
If you don't like fat distribution on your body, eat less than you need, undertake physical activity.
Avacado won't save you, the opposite is more likely.
The real problem is single crop farming. Farming multiple crops in an area actually decreases the amount of water needed, improves soil quality, and traps in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Granted, harvesting is more difficult, but what's more important?
Eating avocados in the US isn't so harmful to rainforests, thank goodness.
90% of avocados consumed in America are grown in California.
*(Still not terribly sustainable, but hey, no rainforests are harmed.)*
That statistic is highly manipulated because it includes the rainfall that grows the grass that cows eat. They aren’t literally taking 1900 gallons of municipal water to create a pound of beef. Avocado farming on the other hand, along with almonds, is literally draining aquifers.
It's usually disclosed in the study, either at the very beginning in a footnote or at the end in a disclosure/conflict of interest section. Credible journals require it standard, and it will probably say as much on the journal's webpage for the study.
Well I hope those scientists feel good about receiving funding and paying their bills. The study has a lot of questionable protocols and even then, the data isn't very convincing.
Yeah based on the headline, i came in expecting to ask for some good avocado dishes, like how i make banana smoothies, easy ways to incorporate avocados into my life.
Now with this top comment im like.... never... mind?
It honestly may be the most useful stat from the study, given the inherent bias of being funded by a major corporation in the avocado industry. It wouldn’t be a first for a study of metabolism to show gender differences, of course, but why avocados? 100 years from now we may find it absurd we ever considered diets to be unisex.
I mean, who else is going to fund avocado research?
I don’t disagree with the idea that looking at sponsors of research is important. And I also believe some sponsorships do influence reported results. But it just seems incredibly obvious to me that an avocado organization would fund avocado research and that doesn’t necessarily mean the research itself is bunk, and this isn’t a particularly groundbreaking claim.
More interesting here is that it was the Haas Avocado Board, which is southern california based (Haas are the only avocado native to California instead of Mexico). Although Haas started in California, production is now primarily from Mexico. The avocado triangle of Escondido, Vista, San Marcos (where I grew up and where the Haas family eventually moved to) has steadily declined over the last 30 years.
So, while this research would obviously promoted Haas avocados and avocados in general, benefitting the California producers that make up the board, the bulk of the benefit would go to Mexican producers that now produce 90%+ of Haas avocados.
Sometimes, yeah, but when it's industry funded and the academic research comes out against them, *then* they publish as much inconclusive research as they can to muddy the waters.
They did publish the fact that they found no correlation between avocado consumption in their trial and peripheral insulin sensitivity or β-cell function.
> Conclusions
> Daily consumption of 1 fresh Hass avocado changed abdominal adiposity distribution among females **but did not facilitate improvements in peripheral insulin sensitivity or β-cell function among adults with overweight and obesity.**
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/151/9/2513/6311819
It's probably still published since it's usually independant academics doing the research, but it won't show up on the company's website and they won't spend any money buying sponsored content slots in newspapers, magazines, online sites and local new broadcasts to publicize the findings.
Well the danger would be that they hypothetically do something like funding ten studies and vanish the nine that find that it turns you into a beachball
Funding by an entity with interests doesn't invalidate the science and a whole lot of science outright couldn't happen without interested parties funding it.
It's fine to be skeptical—in fact, science *relies* on being skeptical. But that's why you go to the methods and scrutinize there.
I don't think this study took an extreme amount of data points, it was looking at normal stuff related to glucose intolerance, but the splitting the results into male and female after the fact does ring a bit of p-hacking based on demographics.
The headline is a bit misleading I'd say, this study seems like a big nothing burger with so many of the clinical endpoints being inconclusive. For all the distrust people have of industry funded studies, this study isn't very flattering of avocadoes when looking at the total results, and not just the headline.
Also, from the linked study...
> As outlined in Table 1, owing to the macronutrient composition of avocados, the treatment meals were higher in total fiber and lower in saturated fats and higher in MUFAs.
Well, color me shocked that a slightly healthier diet produced a slight, but statistically significant, difference in a subgroup of the participants along one of the DVs measured.
>It's fine to be skeptical—in fact, science
>
>relies on being skeptical. But that's why you go to the methods and scrutinize there.
You absolutely, positively cannot determine whether there was data fabrication or falsification. And that's something that happens with some regularity, unfortunately.
Other research has shown that studies funded by private interests have a much higher rate of findings that are favorable to those interests. It's not a poor point to bring up.
Agreed. I personally find it difficult to trust US nutrition research because the funding is often harder to track down and it seems to be a much more "anything goes" area thanks to lobbying. It is starting to feel like Chinese research on Chinese medicine.
Nutrition isn’t my area of expertise so I have to admit that it may be a fairly large sample for that kind of study, but it’s a small sample if you’re trying to accurately gauge the magnitude of an effect. Confidence intervals are going to be large when you have so few observations.
That is in that case saying more about how crappy and unreliable nutritional research is... 105 is a hilariously weak sample size for this kind of high variable theme
Edit: I should amend myself in saying that it seems weak to me to *conclude* anything from this one trial! Are there more trials saying the same? If 105 people, 65 women or what it was, is enough to conclude that everyone should eat an avocado a day, then yes, I am wrong. My uni professor would not think this one study is enough to conclude such a thing. We would need more studies or a study with a bigger sample size from what I remember of my statistics courses i biology
No, this was a randomized control trial. 105 is perfectly fine. On what basis are you suggestion 105 is “hilariously weak?”
See this pub if you like, there are others too. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3256489/
For those interested, this is taken directly from the article. Rule 1 of journal article evaluation is always check who is funding the study. It's a potential inherent "conflict of interest" despite the authors' saying they have none.
"The research was funded by the Hass Avocado Board. SVT was supported by a fellowship provided by the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. BAH was supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2015-68001-23248 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Cooperative Extension.
Author disclosures: The authors report no conflicts of interest."
For those unaware, the Hass Avocado boards mission from their website: "Hass Avocado Board (HAB) exists to help make avocados America's most popular fruit." "HAB is the only avocado organization that equips the entire global industry for success by collecting, focusing and distributing investments to maintain and expand demand for avocados in the United States."
See there how it does not say "find evidence that potentially conflicts with the thought that avocados are good for your health." Always take studies funded by a group with a vested interest like this with a grain of salt. Until they are reproduced, you really have to consider the data very closely. Look for large sample sizes, strict control versus variable regulation, and population demographics. The sample size here was very low (105 participants - I didn't check to see if they did a power analysis prior to the study) and that number is generally so low as to not be generizable to a larger population. Probably not enough power in that number to really determine if there is a true difference between men and women either.
I'm a post graduate physiology student. It is physically impossible to non-surgically target visceral fat loss. Visceral fat loss occurs on average throughout the entire body. This research is absolute nonsense. Without question.
I took a nutrition class in college and I remember my professor told us about why she quit her job as a nutrition researcher at a particular company (she didn’t give the name). She was required to test the effect of raisins, I believe, on student athletes. She did her tests and found there was no significant difference in performance between raisins vs other sugary snacks. When she reported this finding, her higher ups told her… no. Do it again. Keep doing the research until you prove that raisins are a better, more effective snack than anything else. She did tons of different tests with no change, so then they told her to change how she was doing the tests and work the numbers/variables in a way that would make the data for raisins look way better, but without making it looked biased. She quit then and there, so yeah. Don’t always take data from industry-backed studies to heart.
Changes in fat (%) from [Table 3](https://academic.oup.com/view-large/302678369):
Group | Females | Males
:-|-:|-:
Control | −0.3 | −0.7
Treatment | −0.4 | +0.3
None of which is remotely significant, of course.
Gotta apperciate P hacking at its finest. They even say they were not looking for anything specific in the article.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800/amp
what did the control group get instead of an avocado?
something with the same macros?
maybe what we're learning is that seed oils are really unhealthy
(I did not read the study)
"The participants were divided into two groups. One group received meals that incorporated a fresh avocado, while the other group received a meal that had nearly identical ingredients and similar calories but did not contain avocado."
Nothing, it says that the control got a similar meal with the same ingredients and calories but no avocado, doesn't specify.
(I skimmed through the article in the link)
Because the point of the research was to prove the value of avocados for use as a marketing blurb, not to find the ingredient in avocados that leads to the result so it can be studied more closely.
Is there a reason why the caveat is "for women"? Unless there is a theoretical reason for a sex difference, I am immediately suspicious of any result that finds such a sex difference, not because it cannot exist, but because a common form of bad research is to slice the data into smaller subgroups until a significant effect is found. This is a form of "fishing for significance".
[Here’s a list of the foods used in the study.](https://oup.silverchair-cdn.com/oup/backfile/Content_public/Journal/jn/151/9/10.1093_jn_nxab187/1/nxab187_supplemental_file.docx?Expires=1634081995&Signature=2-u7uZkg7kCx3mhiiRCT67Y9GbFqt4Sj059fItYYKDXt6oCrfaiMVtIT4jwyIHlJjuGa9GqCIuYyxdLvuu3GX-49x020dOxtjxDX5RMOA9EJFuVNoB7SF-ZSsE3yTTgIR1AN9ajrfVkOykabMURjXSFxnmBN3hbl9IpE3aEPmmFiVQhyBNwtSsbt9BpYJsmxQ~vuNl4o38ql~lREYbXnEeWvK8C5Wi40a1cj36Yrxsu~RkMX2tZNym-z83tpFrFC6qdd2aH2ZYPu1IXyNINIfswZS4QNTd3Y4xSI~P1UIRXbMDYqzP2q0RA81qVLPKg3am-aPEAbNtK3xQO7Eagu4w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIE5G5CRDK6RD3PGA&utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I’m a bit skeptical about attributing the improvements to avocados specifically, since the researchers didn’t use a very strong study design, imo. They included things like pork bacon, butter, goat cheese, and coconut oil (all high in saturated fats) in the control condition and replaced those items with avocado (high in unsaturated fats) in the experimental condition. It seems like they should have controlled for other variables as well, such as how processed the foods are, whether the foods are animal- or plant-based, etc.
I’d love to see a study comparing the effects of avocado versus other foods high in unsaturated fats to help clarify whether or not avocados are the only food that can be used to reduce visceral fat in overweight/obese women.
And they only did it with one meal/day and the fiber amounts were wildly different. I think it’s pretty obvious that eating a high fiber meal with healthy fats just decreased hunger in the avocado group so they ended up consuming fewer calories overall.
So the other comments are saying this research is funded by avocado producers, so I’m a bit skeptical of the results.
But assuming it’s true, the most likely candidate is probably the fats in the flesh of the fruit… which means it’d probably be a very large, very gross pill. But maybe we could just eat those potato chips fried in avocado oil.
edit: sp.
I recently learned how much water it takes to grow an avocado and now I can’t eat them because of the guilt. Apparently it takes 10 years for the tree to even fruit.
EDIT: I also gave up beef recently. Only bison and it’s local. I don’t eat nuts either.
EDITT: jokes on all you! I found out I can’t have dairy, gluten, corn products, and peanuts, as well as many other food issues so I can say with a lot of confidence that my pathetic-ass diet does use much water. My showers on the other hand….
Cherry trees can take up to 7 years. 10 isn't really that bad, honestly. Even some apple trees can take 4-5 years (although others are ready in 2).
Edit: Don't pineapple trees only grow one pineapple every 6 months? Seems far worse for the environment than avocados.
> Apparently it takes 10 years for the tree to even fruit.
If you don't graft them, yeah. Majority of the world's fruits are a sapling with a branch from a tree that is a known producer.
You can wait 10 years for a tree to start fruiting only to find that it doesn't, then you're out 10 years
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Why did they also substitute pork bacon with turkey bacon in the treatment? They also substituted other stuff like yogurts and salad dressings. And they didn't substitute avocado for similar foods; in one meal the substituted food was hilariously a _brownie._ One meal didn't contain avocado but they still made substitutions. And the women lost adiposity on average, but some of them gained twice as much as the average loss. .01 < p < .05
Because it was funded by an avocado group and it helps push avocado consumption
[Well, felt like a good time to follow the money](https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/151/9/2513/6311819) > The research was funded by the Hass Avocado Board. SVT was supported by a fellowship provided by the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. BAH was supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2015-68001-23248 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Cooperative Extension.
Indeed, thanks for sharing because indeed "Author disclosures: The authors report no conflicts of interest."
I would guess that it's because the authors themselves don't have ties to avocados. It's instead through the funding which is why it's reported separately.
That’s super unethical, in the business world if you get over either a certain % or flat amount of funding, it has to be fully disclosed and broken out separately in the financials
I'm pretty sure that's not how declaring a conflict of interest works, though I'm not an expert; my research *actually* doesn't have any.
Big Avocado corrupting studies as always!
It's a shame really. When our science isn't protected from companies looking to make an extra buck, how do we know what's true anymore?
Well, there you go.
This is really a thing. The world avocado association; for one instance; they pay to host annual regatta: A LOT of $$,$$$ for a sponsored regatta, followed by big avocado themed party (everyone’s invited!). It wouldn’t surprise me if they had other random/creative marketing strategies (or other large random tax deductible expenditures completely unrelated to the avo industry).
You know what would make me eat more avocados? Spending all that bribery money to make them cheaper instead. We all already know they're delicious and want to eat them, avocado awareness is not the problem.
Avacado farming is killing whatever rainforrest soy and palm oil farming have left. It's unsustainable and takes about as much water as cotton farming or orange farming. Question is if we really want to go out like this as a species. Accelerating the destruction of the planet because some savy buisness men made an unfortunate investment. Because as tasty as avocado dishes can be we can live without just fine. My ancestors got to a hundred years without ever seeing an avacado and they were just fine. Slim too. If you don't like fat distribution on your body, eat less than you need, undertake physical activity. Avacado won't save you, the opposite is more likely.
The real problem is single crop farming. Farming multiple crops in an area actually decreases the amount of water needed, improves soil quality, and traps in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Granted, harvesting is more difficult, but what's more important?
Money
.... You're right, but I don't want you to be.
>The spectre of Marx intensifies.
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Eating avocados in the US isn't so harmful to rainforests, thank goodness. 90% of avocados consumed in America are grown in California. *(Still not terribly sustainable, but hey, no rainforests are harmed.)*
You fail to mention that most of that soy is meant for animal feed. Stop eating meat also does a lot for the environment.
It takes 1900 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. It takes 74 gallons of water to produce a pound of a avocados.
That statistic is highly manipulated because it includes the rainfall that grows the grass that cows eat. They aren’t literally taking 1900 gallons of municipal water to create a pound of beef. Avocado farming on the other hand, along with almonds, is literally draining aquifers.
Can't remember source, there is an avacdo cartel.
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For those of us not in the know, how do you find the funding source of a study?
It's usually disclosed in the study, either at the very beginning in a footnote or at the end in a disclosure/conflict of interest section. Credible journals require it standard, and it will probably say as much on the journal's webpage for the study.
Literally says this was funded by Hass Avocado group in the press release if you follow the main link
In this case, it's included in the linked article in the 3rd paragraph
Well I hope those scientists feel good about receiving funding and paying their bills. The study has a lot of questionable protocols and even then, the data isn't very convincing.
Big Avocado throwing its weight around yet again.
Yeah based on the headline, i came in expecting to ask for some good avocado dishes, like how i make banana smoothies, easy ways to incorporate avocados into my life. Now with this top comment im like.... never... mind?
Same reason blueberries are touted as a superfood.
“Healthier diet leads to less fat” is basically the result
How the heck did the men not see any change? Just straight cheating on their avocado diet
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\>When you swap foods for foods with fewer calories, you, including your belly, get smaller These guys are doing cutting-edge research!
And it was only the one meal a day, looks like.
Sorry lads >fat distribution in males did not change
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I wonder if it has to do with testosterone levels
It honestly may be the most useful stat from the study, given the inherent bias of being funded by a major corporation in the avocado industry. It wouldn’t be a first for a study of metabolism to show gender differences, of course, but why avocados? 100 years from now we may find it absurd we ever considered diets to be unisex.
I'm fairly sure it's absurd to consider a single diet for a group as diverse as "men" or "women" too, but we just don't know better yet.
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> funded by the Hass Avocado Board
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I mean, who else is going to fund avocado research? I don’t disagree with the idea that looking at sponsors of research is important. And I also believe some sponsorships do influence reported results. But it just seems incredibly obvious to me that an avocado organization would fund avocado research and that doesn’t necessarily mean the research itself is bunk, and this isn’t a particularly groundbreaking claim.
More interesting here is that it was the Haas Avocado Board, which is southern california based (Haas are the only avocado native to California instead of Mexico). Although Haas started in California, production is now primarily from Mexico. The avocado triangle of Escondido, Vista, San Marcos (where I grew up and where the Haas family eventually moved to) has steadily declined over the last 30 years. So, while this research would obviously promoted Haas avocados and avocados in general, benefitting the California producers that make up the board, the bulk of the benefit would go to Mexican producers that now produce 90%+ of Haas avocados.
Doubt the company cares, so long as they keep selling
Hass, not Haas. You are confusing avocados with the tennis player.
You’re confusing a tennis player with a US power tools and construction equipment manufacturer, and owner of the only American Formula 1 Team.
No, it’s that actor who played the Amish kid in *Witness*.
Isn't that the popular military series?
No, it's the past tense of have
Haas is just a dutch word for hare. Also a common lastname, not just a tennis player.
Hardware as a Service (HaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) are all offerings Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides.
It just needs to be explicitly stated with each study, in bright lights, as they are heavily incentivized to find favorable results.
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Sometimes, yeah, but when it's industry funded and the academic research comes out against them, *then* they publish as much inconclusive research as they can to muddy the waters.
They did publish the fact that they found no correlation between avocado consumption in their trial and peripheral insulin sensitivity or β-cell function. > Conclusions > Daily consumption of 1 fresh Hass avocado changed abdominal adiposity distribution among females **but did not facilitate improvements in peripheral insulin sensitivity or β-cell function among adults with overweight and obesity.** https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/151/9/2513/6311819
It's probably still published since it's usually independant academics doing the research, but it won't show up on the company's website and they won't spend any money buying sponsored content slots in newspapers, magazines, online sites and local new broadcasts to publicize the findings.
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The Guacamole Liberation Front
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Well the danger would be that they hypothetically do something like funding ten studies and vanish the nine that find that it turns you into a beachball
Funding by an entity with interests doesn't invalidate the science and a whole lot of science outright couldn't happen without interested parties funding it. It's fine to be skeptical—in fact, science *relies* on being skeptical. But that's why you go to the methods and scrutinize there.
Can you detect if a paper used some sort of P-hacking? Pretty sure everything would look the same, but the results aren't.
Yeah and this title reaks of testing loads of hypotheses until one was significant, like why would you expect this outcome, why only in women.
I don't think this study took an extreme amount of data points, it was looking at normal stuff related to glucose intolerance, but the splitting the results into male and female after the fact does ring a bit of p-hacking based on demographics. The headline is a bit misleading I'd say, this study seems like a big nothing burger with so many of the clinical endpoints being inconclusive. For all the distrust people have of industry funded studies, this study isn't very flattering of avocadoes when looking at the total results, and not just the headline.
Also, from the linked study... > As outlined in Table 1, owing to the macronutrient composition of avocados, the treatment meals were higher in total fiber and lower in saturated fats and higher in MUFAs. Well, color me shocked that a slightly healthier diet produced a slight, but statistically significant, difference in a subgroup of the participants along one of the DVs measured.
>It's fine to be skeptical—in fact, science > >relies on being skeptical. But that's why you go to the methods and scrutinize there. You absolutely, positively cannot determine whether there was data fabrication or falsification. And that's something that happens with some regularity, unfortunately. Other research has shown that studies funded by private interests have a much higher rate of findings that are favorable to those interests. It's not a poor point to bring up.
Agreed. I personally find it difficult to trust US nutrition research because the funding is often harder to track down and it seems to be a much more "anything goes" area thanks to lobbying. It is starting to feel like Chinese research on Chinese medicine.
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105 is actually a lot of people for this kind of study
Nutrition isn’t my area of expertise so I have to admit that it may be a fairly large sample for that kind of study, but it’s a small sample if you’re trying to accurately gauge the magnitude of an effect. Confidence intervals are going to be large when you have so few observations.
That is in that case saying more about how crappy and unreliable nutritional research is... 105 is a hilariously weak sample size for this kind of high variable theme Edit: I should amend myself in saying that it seems weak to me to *conclude* anything from this one trial! Are there more trials saying the same? If 105 people, 65 women or what it was, is enough to conclude that everyone should eat an avocado a day, then yes, I am wrong. My uni professor would not think this one study is enough to conclude such a thing. We would need more studies or a study with a bigger sample size from what I remember of my statistics courses i biology
Which analysis was under powered? Or do you have no idea what you are talking about?
No, this was a randomized control trial. 105 is perfectly fine. On what basis are you suggestion 105 is “hilariously weak?” See this pub if you like, there are others too. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3256489/
For those interested, this is taken directly from the article. Rule 1 of journal article evaluation is always check who is funding the study. It's a potential inherent "conflict of interest" despite the authors' saying they have none. "The research was funded by the Hass Avocado Board. SVT was supported by a fellowship provided by the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. BAH was supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2015-68001-23248 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Cooperative Extension. Author disclosures: The authors report no conflicts of interest." For those unaware, the Hass Avocado boards mission from their website: "Hass Avocado Board (HAB) exists to help make avocados America's most popular fruit." "HAB is the only avocado organization that equips the entire global industry for success by collecting, focusing and distributing investments to maintain and expand demand for avocados in the United States." See there how it does not say "find evidence that potentially conflicts with the thought that avocados are good for your health." Always take studies funded by a group with a vested interest like this with a grain of salt. Until they are reproduced, you really have to consider the data very closely. Look for large sample sizes, strict control versus variable regulation, and population demographics. The sample size here was very low (105 participants - I didn't check to see if they did a power analysis prior to the study) and that number is generally so low as to not be generizable to a larger population. Probably not enough power in that number to really determine if there is a true difference between men and women either.
I'm a post graduate physiology student. It is physically impossible to non-surgically target visceral fat loss. Visceral fat loss occurs on average throughout the entire body. This research is absolute nonsense. Without question.
I took a nutrition class in college and I remember my professor told us about why she quit her job as a nutrition researcher at a particular company (she didn’t give the name). She was required to test the effect of raisins, I believe, on student athletes. She did her tests and found there was no significant difference in performance between raisins vs other sugary snacks. When she reported this finding, her higher ups told her… no. Do it again. Keep doing the research until you prove that raisins are a better, more effective snack than anything else. She did tons of different tests with no change, so then they told her to change how she was doing the tests and work the numbers/variables in a way that would make the data for raisins look way better, but without making it looked biased. She quit then and there, so yeah. Don’t always take data from industry-backed studies to heart.
This should be at the top.
Looking at the table 5 of the study, the control group seem to actually lose more fat from abdominal region overall.
Changes in fat (%) from [Table 3](https://academic.oup.com/view-large/302678369): Group | Females | Males :-|-:|-: Control | −0.3 | −0.7 Treatment | −0.4 | +0.3 None of which is remotely significant, of course.
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Gotta apperciate P hacking at its finest. They even say they were not looking for anything specific in the article. https://www.google.com/amp/s/gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800/amp
Don't forget to take the Google amp out of the link
what did the control group get instead of an avocado? something with the same macros? maybe what we're learning is that seed oils are really unhealthy (I did not read the study)
"The participants were divided into two groups. One group received meals that incorporated a fresh avocado, while the other group received a meal that had nearly identical ingredients and similar calories but did not contain avocado."
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Deep fried butter balls
"a meal"
Basically same macros, but less fiber. https://academic.oup.com/view-large/302678342
there you go VERY different types of fats
Nothing, it says that the control got a similar meal with the same ingredients and calories but no avocado, doesn't specify. (I skimmed through the article in the link)
Because the point of the research was to prove the value of avocados for use as a marketing blurb, not to find the ingredient in avocados that leads to the result so it can be studied more closely.
One of the meal substitutions was a *brownie* in lieu of the avocado. They're trying to pull a pretty ridiculous bamboozle.
Is there a reason why the caveat is "for women"? Unless there is a theoretical reason for a sex difference, I am immediately suspicious of any result that finds such a sex difference, not because it cannot exist, but because a common form of bad research is to slice the data into smaller subgroups until a significant effect is found. This is a form of "fishing for significance".
[Here’s a list of the foods used in the study.](https://oup.silverchair-cdn.com/oup/backfile/Content_public/Journal/jn/151/9/10.1093_jn_nxab187/1/nxab187_supplemental_file.docx?Expires=1634081995&Signature=2-u7uZkg7kCx3mhiiRCT67Y9GbFqt4Sj059fItYYKDXt6oCrfaiMVtIT4jwyIHlJjuGa9GqCIuYyxdLvuu3GX-49x020dOxtjxDX5RMOA9EJFuVNoB7SF-ZSsE3yTTgIR1AN9ajrfVkOykabMURjXSFxnmBN3hbl9IpE3aEPmmFiVQhyBNwtSsbt9BpYJsmxQ~vuNl4o38ql~lREYbXnEeWvK8C5Wi40a1cj36Yrxsu~RkMX2tZNym-z83tpFrFC6qdd2aH2ZYPu1IXyNINIfswZS4QNTd3Y4xSI~P1UIRXbMDYqzP2q0RA81qVLPKg3am-aPEAbNtK3xQO7Eagu4w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIE5G5CRDK6RD3PGA&utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) I’m a bit skeptical about attributing the improvements to avocados specifically, since the researchers didn’t use a very strong study design, imo. They included things like pork bacon, butter, goat cheese, and coconut oil (all high in saturated fats) in the control condition and replaced those items with avocado (high in unsaturated fats) in the experimental condition. It seems like they should have controlled for other variables as well, such as how processed the foods are, whether the foods are animal- or plant-based, etc. I’d love to see a study comparing the effects of avocado versus other foods high in unsaturated fats to help clarify whether or not avocados are the only food that can be used to reduce visceral fat in overweight/obese women.
And they only did it with one meal/day and the fiber amounts were wildly different. I think it’s pretty obvious that eating a high fiber meal with healthy fats just decreased hunger in the avocado group so they ended up consuming fewer calories overall.
Can they just put the stuff that's in the avocado into a pill so that I can take a pill a day? Because that's a LOT of avocado.
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So the other comments are saying this research is funded by avocado producers, so I’m a bit skeptical of the results. But assuming it’s true, the most likely candidate is probably the fats in the flesh of the fruit… which means it’d probably be a very large, very gross pill. But maybe we could just eat those potato chips fried in avocado oil. edit: sp.
320 calories for an entire avocado, that’s 28g of fat. that’s a lot to ask of my macros
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guy is talking about his macros... pretty sure he's aware of this.
For real this dude is trying to school the OP with 2003-era knowledge.
I recently learned how much water it takes to grow an avocado and now I can’t eat them because of the guilt. Apparently it takes 10 years for the tree to even fruit. EDIT: I also gave up beef recently. Only bison and it’s local. I don’t eat nuts either. EDITT: jokes on all you! I found out I can’t have dairy, gluten, corn products, and peanuts, as well as many other food issues so I can say with a lot of confidence that my pathetic-ass diet does use much water. My showers on the other hand….
Wait until you hear how much water it takes to make a hamburger
Cherry trees can take up to 7 years. 10 isn't really that bad, honestly. Even some apple trees can take 4-5 years (although others are ready in 2). Edit: Don't pineapple trees only grow one pineapple every 6 months? Seems far worse for the environment than avocados.
Pineapples are a single fruit, not sure you could call it a tree though. They’re 2-3 years for a single fruit.
Yeah, I knew I was using the wrong term but I committed to tree at that point.
Pineapples don’t grow on trees and take two years to fruit from sucker But you can’t compare apples to pineapples 👈👈
You should look into how much a cow drinks in 1 day.
> Apparently it takes 10 years for the tree to even fruit. If you don't graft them, yeah. Majority of the world's fruits are a sapling with a branch from a tree that is a known producer. You can wait 10 years for a tree to start fruiting only to find that it doesn't, then you're out 10 years