{"id":239,"date":"2011-03-01T05:11:41","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T05:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.net\/blog\/?p=239"},"modified":"2011-11-08T12:33:25","modified_gmt":"2011-11-08T18:33:25","slug":"landmark-study-for-dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/landmark-study-for-dogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Landmark Study for Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I saw an ad for Purina dog food that touted a \u201clandmark\u201d study claiming that Purina Dog Chow “extended dogs\u2019 healthy life by 2 years.\u201d \u00a0The word landmark \u00a0caught my eye since this term is well known in human medical research, generally reserved for a kick-ass randomized study trial reporting\u00a0unassailable proof that immediately changes medical practice.\u00a0 One example is the large MR FIT dietary study of 13,000 men\u00a0demonstrating that lowering cholesterol reduces the risk of heart disease.\u00a0 Cholesterol guidelines were built from that study, and a whole drug industry was born.\u00a0 Then there is the study from the 1970s that showed that a lumpectomy is just as good as mastectomy, thus saving thousands of women from disfiguring surgery.\u00a0 And of course study that established colonoscopy as a screening method for early detection of colon cancer, with results so compelling that it has convinced millions of 50 year olds to purge and submit themselves to the utmost humiliation at the hands of gleeful gastroenterologists. \u00a0Ooops, I\u2019m exaggerating a bit on that last one, somehow nobody ever did the landmark study for colonoscopy screening.<\/p>\n

What would a landmark study of dogs entail?\u00a0 Purina provides a few workable facts on its web-page.\u00a0 The study enrolled\u00a048 labradors separated into two groups at birth and followed them until death.\u00a0 Both groups were fed Purina, but one group got 25% less food.\u00a0 Okay, a 14 year study would be considered quite a feat in the medical world particularly if you are trying to control the diet of free ranging humans.\u00a0 But a mere 48 dogs, presumably in cages.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t meet my criteria for landmark.<\/p>\n

The results of the study are perhaps not too surprising.\u00a0 \u00a0The dogs that got fed less had a leaner body and lower cholesterol, and showed fewer signs of aging.\u00a0 It looks like they all died at the same time, but the leaner group compressed their morbidity into a shorter number of years.\u00a0 Well that is an outcome that I can get enthusiastic about.\u00a0 It did strike me as odd that Purina would use the study for marketing, since it did not try\u00a0to prove that their dog food was any better than other brands, and the results suggested that you should just feed your dog less, i.e. buy less dog food.\u00a0 It must have taken Purina a bit of time to figure out how to turn this dog of a study into an ad campaign.\u00a0 The \u201clandmark\u201d results were published in 2002.<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I saw an ad for Purina dog food that touted a \u201clandmark\u201d study claiming that Purina Dog Chow “extended dogs\u2019 healthy life by 2 years.\u201d \u00a0The word landmark \u00a0caught my eye since this term is well known in human … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-squibs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-3R","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}