Adele Costabile

Such a pleasure to learn from @ProfWhelan who was visiting us @SinaiHealth to talk about the state of IBD research and nutritional intake. Thanks Kevin for sitting in on our lab meeting to hear what we are working on. Thanks also for teaching us about the challenge of controls in diet studies - pick the least bad option. Good lesson. But grant and paper reviewers seem way more critical of diet studies compared with pharmaceutical intervention studies. Challenge of controls in dietary research: 1. Tolerability, nutrient intake, food-related QoL: People have to eat something, ideally that is feasible, nutritious and enjoyable 2. Dietary collinearity: Changing intake of one component changes the intake of many others. Ideally a control should be identical to the intervention, except for the one component of interest (emulsifiers) 3. Placebo and blinding: Double-blinding of participants and researchers is a gold-standard 4. Comparators (not controls): An active intervention, that has physiological effects beyond placebo, is not a control group it is a comparator group