Today is day eight in the new chapter called "The rest of my life".  It is a little surreal not having the business as a constant backdrop to life.  I really thought I would miss it - for many years it was my sole source of intellectual stimulation.  As I wound it down over the past few months it became apparent to me that there are so many areas of interest to me that I have only been able to give a passing glance.

I have commented regularly on FB and elsewhere about my interest in nutritional science.  It is an area of research that has had too much bad science, pseudo-science and politically charged science applied to it.  In recent years it has been an area overwhelmed with opinion-based "woo science" (crap pulled out of the imaginations of fear-mongering charlatans, posing as champions of the good and pure.)

This morning I heard a refreshing interview with a researcher hailing from the University of Alabama.  He has a new study result accepted for publication in the journal Circulation, a major peer-reviewed publication of the American Heart Association.  His major finding was that a smoking gun exists between the "Southern" dietary pattern and Coronary Heart Disease (CHD).  That should be no surprise to anyone.  What struck me as just as powerful was that a Plant-Based dietary pattern did not have an inverse correlation to CHD.  This goes against mountains of hype that has been published in recent years.

I read the pre-publication article this morning and found it totally refreshing.  The author uses a statistical technique that allows statistical segments to define themselves, allowing groupings to be further aggregated to definable, meaningful units.  This approach limits the bias associated with a priori segmentation techniques which can lead to predefined conclusions.

I reached out to the author this morning to see if I can set up an interview with him.  If he agrees, this should lead to my first article (or series of articles) in this forum.  Of course I will then be sharing the publication with my FB audience and hopefully other similar publishers in the evidence-based research blogosphere.  Stay tuned - I haven't been able to sink my teeth into this type of writing assignment in quite some time.  It could be a lot of fun and hopefully useful to a population too accustomed to hearing opinions from self-appointed experts and not enough facts from actual scientists.