Dear Mark: Mortality Risk, Fish Heads, Metformin and Exercise, and Cooking Frozen Veggies
For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering four questions from readers. First, what does an “increased risk of mortality” actually mean if everyone’s going to die in the end? Second, what makes fish heads so delicious and nutritious? Third, what is the relationship between metformin and exercise? And finally, how do you prevent frozen vegetables from getting all mushy when you cook them? Let’s go: Hey Mark, In regards to the “garbage” meat study, how does relative versus absolute risk work? Does 3% increased risk of dying mean that if my chance of dying this year based on mortality tables is say, 10%, if I eat red meat my chance of dying is 10.3%? Thanks, Steve Yep, you got it. It means that for the duration of the study, the subjects eating more meat had a 3% higher risk of dying. Some people lived, some died. It’s not open-ended, though (because as everyone knows, everyone dies someday). The risk is confined to the duration of the study. Since you mentioned eating wh