Big Wasabi Makes Its Move
A good week for health studies (or not). Plus: the latest in TikTok wellness trends, psychedelic programs, beauty industry initiatives, and more.
Updates: I spoke at CSICon last month, and now I’ll be talking about issues within the wellness industry at sister org Center for Inquiry (CFI). If you’re in LA, join us on Sunday, Dec. 17! More info
Three overhyped health studies?
Last week, three different health studies made the rounds—enthusiastically embraced by a good portion of the press and social media folks. Headlines more or less looked like this:
Wasabi Shows Memory-Boosting Powers
Plant-Based Diet Healthier Than Omnivore Diet
Magic Mushrooms Can Help Treat Bipolar Disorder
Wow, what a week for scientific discoveries! Exciting stuff, no? In wasabi’s case, “The improvement [in memory] was really substantial,” the study's lead researcher told CBS.
Wasabi? As in the stuff I always wish was guacamole?
A general rule: if it sounds too good to be true, your skepticism should kick in.
Let’s start with the wasabi study, which included 72 participants and claimed that the sushi condiment improves both short- and long-term memory. First and foremost, it was funded by Kinjirushi Co., the leading global manufacturer of wasabi products: grated wasabi, powdered wasabi, to-go wasabi packets. They are quite literally Big Wasabi. And while that doesn’t necessarily negate the study’s findings, it’s pretty relevant information to pass on to the reader, no? (Industry-sponsored studies tend to be a bit more biased).
And yet, some outlets neglected to include any information about conflicts of interest or limitations. Instead, they took this study at face value, not even doing the bare minimum of reading the study, let alone reaching out to relevant independent experts. That’s not journalism. That’s regurgitating press releases.
As it happens, there were several issues with this small study “published in a pretty low-quality journal,” as Gideon Meyerwitz Katz points out in his analysis. Tyler Black, MD, also chimed in, noting “a few primary outcomes showed small statistical differences Wasabi v placebo (working & episodic memory) while many more didn't (short term memory, processing speed, attention, reasoning, executive functioning, & visual-spatial performance).”
You can read the critiques but in summary, you should remain skeptical that wasabi is going to substantially “boost” your memory skills or brain function.
Plant-based vs omnivore diet study
Meanwhile, another study was garnering buzz: A Stanford University-led trial of 22 pairs of identical twins—assigned either vegan or omnivore diets for just 8 weeks—indicated that a vegan diet leads to improved cardiovascular health. “You can greatly improve your heart health in just eight weeks if you become vegan,” stated one outlet.
I was curious about this study and quickly rattled off a note to dietitian Leah McGrath for her take. (Nutrition studies can be rather tricky and I know that I can rarely evaluate them on my own.)
She, along with other experts like dietitian Kristen Hicks-Roof, shared critiques and dug into the study’s limitations (most of which didn’t make it into news articles). For example, the vegan participants were not strictly vegan “and yet this did not eliminate them or their data and also the omnivores were doing meat alternatives—which also didn't eliminate them or their data from the study.”
In addition, the senior author of the study, Christopher Gardner, received funding from plant-based meat brand Beyond Meat to create the Stanford-led Plant-Based Diet Initiative. And funding the study itself was, as Unsettled Science points out, the foundation of Kyle Vogt, a member of the “vegan-mafia,” a group of Silicon Valley tycoons who invest in vegan-focused companies.
Ted Kyle of ConscienHealth added, “This is a study of surrogate endpoints. It did not report actual heart health outcomes. Only risk factors thought to correlate with heart health. So, claiming that this vegan diet cuts the risk of heart disease in just eight weeks is a bit of a stretch when there’s no actual measurement of heart disease.”
Magic mushrooms x depression study
Lastly, a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry suggests psilocybin is a safe and effective treatment for depression in bipolar II patients. In this study, participants received psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy after having tried and failed previous medication trials.
This too had a few faulty features: The non-randomized trial included just 15 patients and lacked a control group receiving a placebo which is, of course, very difficult (if not impossible) to do when it comes to psychedelics. But knowing you’ve received a treatment can indeed affect your perception of the treatment. WIRED did a good job highlighting the issues in such studies, noting:
People's expectations about what happens on psychedelic drugs might play a role in what they experience. … How much does a person’s subjective experience and expectation of a psychedelic trip, as opposed to only the drug’s chemical effects on the brain, influence the drug’s ability to alleviate conditions like depression, addiction, or post-traumatic stress disorder?
In addition, patients underwent talk therapy throughout the treatment, which leads one to ask: How much of the effects are due to the psilocybin versus talk therapy?
And this trial was sponsored and conducted by psychedelics biotech company COMPASS Pathways, which is heavily invested in psilocybin therapy.
Overall, “This is NOT the type of evidence that should have clinicians, venture capitalists, or patients running to get psilocybin treatment clinics up,” writes Black.
As most critics note, these studies are interesting but further research is required for any definitive takeaways. That reporters accept study conclusions without further inquiry shouldn’t be surprising, but with so much talk of health misinformation and lack of trust in the media, it’s just disappointing they aren’t trying harder to win back readers.
More and more, we need media watchdogs (like the now-defunct Health News Review) to hold reporters accountable. They should be forced to relay to the reader: Is this study newsworthy? Are the findings statistically significant? Who sponsored and conducted the study? How big was the sample size? Was there a control group? And on and on.
—Rina Raphael
News & Trends:
The biggest boutique fitness company turned suburban moms into bankrupt franchisees: Xponential Fitness–the company behind PureBarre, CycleBar, Club Pilates, RowHouse, and Rumble–reportedly turned fans into franchise owners “who are now trapped in a financial nightmare.” (Bloomberg Businessweek)
“Lettuce water” is the latest overhyped TikTok trend: There are better ways to get some zzz. (McGill)
Ikea’s newest fitness collection hopes to inspire “home movement”: Dumbbells that double as decor. (FastCo)
A protein shake to go with your Ozempic? Food makers like Nestle and General Mills are working on “companion products” for Ozempic patients who might now be missing vital nutrients. (Link)
Psychedelic therapy for heartbreak? Mindbloom launches a new program for “overcoming heartbreak, burnout, and other mental health challenges.” (PR Newswire)
Hinge spending $1 million to get Gen Z outside, socializing: The dating app giant is launching a social impact fund to tackle the loneliness epidemic. (Marketing Dive)
Bandier on the verge of bankruptcy: The celeb-favorite athleisure brand is selling off its assets. (Yahoo!)
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