Learning to Be a Critical Consumer of Research

In the article, “Dietary carbohydrate intake and mortality: a prospective cohort study and meta-analysis”, the authors substituting a plant-based diet or animal-based fats and proteins can be substituted instead of carbohydrates, as well as how the connection between carbohydrate intake with long life spans and mortality. They did this analysis due to people losing weight through low carbohydrate diets, however if the diet is persisting for a long period of time, it may lead to early death. The authors did this by examining participants living in the United States of America through interviews about the occurrence with which they ate precise foods and drinks, they also did this by assessing plant-based diets and animal-based diets that have been substituted for carbohydrates. From their results, the authors found that both high and low carbohydrate diets have a connection with amplified mortality risk as well as briefer lifespans. In addition, they also found that plant-based protein and fat diets are related to lower mortality compared to animal-based protein and animal diets, which shows how the type of food ingested alters the connection between carbohydrate intake and mortality.

The headline somewhat truthfully represents the findings in the original study. Firstly, the findings from the interviews shown in the article illustrate how a low intake in carbohydrates does lead to lower life expectancy; However, the article also expresses how having a high carbohydrate intake diet can also lead to lower life expectancy, which is not shown in the headline. Secondly, what helped the headline truthfully represent the original study is the fact that it says, “study suggests”, this means that time and effort was put into finding out what a low carbohydrate intake diet does in terms of mortality. In addition, they are funded by the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the US government that is responsible for biomedical and public health research, which means they believe the research found in this article was to show straight facts and nothing else.

There has been an enormous amount of literature investigating the influence of carbohydrates in an individual’s life. For instance, substitution of carbohydrates with saturated fatty acids was associated with a higher (CVD) mortality risk and substitution by total fat was associated with a higher all-cause mortality risk (Kuijpers et al. , 2016). In addition, individuals training to increase muscular hypertrophy may see beneficial effects with supplementing carbohydrates during high-volume upper body RE through reducing catabolism (Smith et al. ,2017). In contrast, there are multiple sources showing how dietary carbohydrates have received negative publicity in the last decade following the popularity of high protein diets for weight loss, and the more recent findings establish that carbohydrates may be ‘worse than saturated fats’ for cardiovascular disease (Augustin et al. , 2015). Furthermore, high-fat high-carbohydrate diet induces oxidative stress, which results in neuronal damage and interference with synaptic transmission; hence, a decline in cognitive function (Alzoubi, Khabour, Salah, Hasan, 2013). Specifically, there are numerous pieces of literature on how Carbohydrate ingestion prior to physical stress may attenuate cortisol concentrations (McAllister et al. , 2016). In conclusion, the research on how carbohydrates can affect an individual’s life has shown that there are both positive and negative results.

From comparing the excerpt to the original article, I’ve learned that even though if a headline shows some truth for the research article it is for, it doesn’t show the whole truth to the article. This is shown in the article “CBC” made since they only talked about what would happen if you don’t eat enough carbs, but not what would happen if you had a high-carb diet. Finally, I’ve learned that reading the article and analyzing other articles related to it gives you a clearer understanding on what the topic is about, rather than just reading the headline and believing it.