Tea and Reducing Weight
- 3
- Add a Comment
There is a story on Reuters about obesity and tea. Chinese scientists claim that tea can help with reducing weight:
“”They found that the polyphenol compound in tea — especially Oolong tea — can help obese people battle the bulge,” the newspaper said. “Scientists have proved that drinking tea can help people lose weight.”"
Link: China scientists “prove” tea can help fight obesity
One cannot be a bit skeptical in light of the pet food recall and other warnings about consumer goods (example: toothpaste) from China. The findings seem somewhat self serving in light of the fact that China is one of the leading tea exporting nations. It would be interesting to scrutinize the experimental paradigm and see if water could produce the same results.
Catherine Forsythe
Tags: china, tea, weight, toothpaste, pet food recall, experimental paradigm, water
3 Comments
marc klink
June 6th, 2007
at 12:38pm
Agree. I, as a young child, hated the taste of beets…still do. I presented my parents with a study I did concerning the consumption of beets.
For example, did you know that 89% of deaths last year involved people who ate beets? Studies show that 74% of people who developed heart disease have regularly eaten beets?
One should always look askance at ’studies’ which present facts without relevance to an issue, and without control criteria.
tseax
June 7th, 2007
at 8:23am
Ha!! Indeed. Marketing and marketeers… why DO we live among such a preponderance of professional liars? Oh yeah, no choice.
forsythe
June 7th, 2007
at 3:53pm
Marc - further to your comment, you know that famous study concerning what causes a problem with alcohol. It was found that nearly all people who had this problem also drank milk as children. The correlation was close to perfect. It is not a great leap, from the data, to conclude that milk might be causing future adult alcohol problems.
That is an example of how people use the data to support their claims. Often the error is made that correlation has nothing to do with causality. It just sounds good to throw in some ’statistical claims’. - And, of course, three out of four dentists recommend such and such a brand of toothpaste. It was just tedious to find those three people…
Catherine