Oliver Todt's research while affiliated with University of the Balearic Islands and other places

... However, RCTs are not always suitable or possible. While RCTs are easier to conduct when assessing the shortterm effects of nutrients on human health, 15 they are not appropriate when establishing the long-term and lifestyle effects of nutrients, for practical, ethical and methodological reasons. 16 This is why evidence for the latter is based on observational and cohort studies. ...

... Proving the health benefits of consuming foods is, however, often challenging for various reasons: nutrition is known to result in multiple, but subtle, effects; the biomarkers that are used may be more appropriate for reflecting a state of disease rather than health processes; and it may require a long timeframe to establish the actual impact of nutrients (Blumberg et al., 2010;De Boer et al., 2014;Stroeve et al., 2015;Weseler and Bast, 2012;Witkamp, 2021). The low number of authorised health claims has therefore also been (partially) explained in the literature to be due to the reliance on RCTs to establish health effects of nutrition (De Boer, 2021;Lenssen et al., 2018;Todt and Luján, 2021). Trials, or human intervention studies, are considered the type of experimental study design that has the best ability to establish causal relationships between the intake of substances and biomarkers of health. ...

... They use a small suite of criteria, ignoring many potentially critical, context-specific aspects of evidence needed to test some hypotheses. For instance, the evidence hierarchy does not account for whether evidence of the response to an intervention is applicable to conditions in practice (i.e., in the real world, such as under commercial fishing conditions) and has been externally validated, or otherwise evidence is available only from controlled conditions (Stegenga 2014;Jones and Steel 2018;Luján and Todt 2021;Pullin et al. 2021). ...

... Cualquier medida que se adopte, sea del tipo que sea, afecta de manera distinta a diferentes sectores sociales. Pero no es difícil ver en algunos de los ejemplos anteriores como las desigualdades en poder y capacidad de influencia entre distintos 3. En el caso europeo, la reacción de las administraciones fue particularmente lenta (Luján y Todt, 2020). 4. De hecho, de acuerdo con el supuesto i), que no cuestiono, cualquier medida es híbrida. ...

... EFSA's guidance documents were the result of various scientific research projects into which scientific evidence should be required for supporting health benefits of foods (Aggett et al., 2005;Boobis et al., 2013;De Boer et al., 2014;Diplock et al., 1999). This has resulted in a requirement for the 'highest possible standard' of evidence (Luján and Todt, 2020). The development of scientific opinions on the dossiers that are submitted by industry have also been described by Panel members as a 'huge peer review process' (De Boer and Bast, 2015b). ...

... La ciencia regulatoria, pese a la importancia social de las decisiones finales por su grado de afectación a los ciudadanos, se desarrolla en un contexto de controversias y falta de consenso, indeterminación e incertidumbre, deficiencias en los procesos de validación de hipótesis, o de urgencia con la que se necesita (Jasanoff, 1989;Rodríguez, 2004;Todt et al., 2010). Adicionalmente, otros aspectos como la precaución, el bienestar social, los riesgos (Todt y Luján, 2011) o la presión de determinados grupos de interés con expectativas individualistas (Jasanoff, 1995), son tenidos en cuenta en los procesos, resultando cuestionable que el asesoramiento científico para la toma de decisiones pueda basarse, como se presume, en la precisión y legitimidad del proceso científico (Frewer and Salter, 2002). ...

... The tension between these two regulatory approaches has direct implications for the consumer of foods identified by authorized health claims [Luján and Todt (2018)]. Let us consider each approach in turn. ...

... The criteria are used to develop an inference, which is a conclusion reached based on evidence and reasoning (Rothman and Greenland 2005). Long term randomized controlled feeding trials assessing effects of red and processed meat intake on chronic disease outcomes (e.g., stroke, myocardial infarction) would be preferred to infer causality but this study design is infeasible and often unethical (Todt and Luján 2017). Therefore, observational studies are relied upon for dietary guidance purposes (DGA 2015; DGA 2020). ...

... Such demarcation is, in our view, part and parcel of the task of an ethics committee and the field of research ethics. They should not shy away from determining the allocation and the strength of the burden of proof, through an assessment of the health risks and benefits and other non-epistemic values (such as financial costs) (Todt and Luján 2017). Obviously, this also involves carefully weighing the evidence and counter-evidence for what is or seems at odds with existing knowledge. ...

... . Impacto en la percepción social y los hábitos de consumo de los alimentos con propiedades saludablesNo es extraño al consumo diferencial en general, y al alimentario como uno de sus casos destacados, el haberse convertido durante el siglo XX en una fuente más de instrucción técnica de la población(Todt y Luján, 1997). Pero saber más no genera necesariamente actitudes más positivas ni una mayor motivación para la acción ciudadana. ...