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Diet of Fast Food and Candy May Cause Alzheimer's
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Nov 30, 2008 08:05 AM
from the you-are-what-you-eat dept.
from the you-are-what-you-eat dept.
lurking_giant sends along a Reuters report on research out of Sweden indicating that a diet rich in fat, sugar, and cholesterol could increase the risk of Alzheimer's, at least in mice. "'On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain,' [said] Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center... 'We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's.' ... These mice showed chemical changes in their brains, indicating an abnormal build-up of the protein tau as well as signs that cholesterol in food reduced levels of another protein called Arc involved in memory storage."
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Obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not surprised that generally mismanaging your body with bad nutrition would make it more likely to get some kind of degenerative disease... While it's nice to find hard evidence I think at least the geek population would be plain dumb so assume otherwise.
Now if we could only get governments to have some kind of taxes on the bad stuff, and subsidize the good stuff. I'd eat better if I could afford it, quite frankly.
Re:Obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually why is that obvious? Alzheimers is caused by the inability for neurons to clean up after themselves properly, it's not obvious at all and in fact this statistical link might not even be correct because we are currently only theorizing on the mechanism.
Why the first two replies are commenting on the obviousness of this I have no idea.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Informative)
It is somewhat naive to claim that those things are "really, really, really bad for you", though. While it is clear that these can have significant negative side effects on weight in some portion of the population if consumed in excess, the fact that this does not occur across the population universally, however, means that one could argue that the consumption of these foods by people who do not exhibit extreme weight gain from them might actually be helpful, and that not consuming energy-rich foods may be starving those people's cells. Everyone's body has different nutritional needs in terms of calories, etc., and painting with too broad a brush does more harm than good when it comes to understanding the issues involved.
For example, by some people's standards, caffeine is really, really bad for you. The same goes for alcohol. However, we now know that both of these substances decrease the risk of stroke and heart disease. Caffeine even decreases the risk of Alzheimer's and other neurological disorders. Following conventional wisdom and common sense to answer nutritional or medical questions frequently results in getting entirely the wrong answer.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you saying that, among the three diets you're discussing (the standard American diet (SAD), the broad-stroke, nutritionally recommended diet (BSD), and the genetically individually-tailored, optimal diet (GIT)) that BSD is actually the worst?
Unless by "some portion of the population" you mean 90-95%. Anyhow, "energy rich" doesn't have to mean nutritionally poor. It doesn't even prevent a vegetarian or vegan diet. Look at the energy content of foods like peanut butter, avacadoes, honey, and olives, ju
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So there remains nothing that is the absolute cause of altzheimers. Fast food joins genetics, aluminum, and all manners of early symptoms in that category.
It's already been blindingly clear for some time that alzheimers is a complex disease requiring many different factors to produce the disease. A little like cancer, in fact. Lung cancer almost certainly existed before smoking, and non-smokers can get it. Does that mean that smoking does not cause lung cancer? Only to complete simpletons.
It's importan
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It is obvious? Really? Please tell that to my mother who is developing it after a lifetime of never eating sugar (genetic diabetes) and eating like a bird.
People love to jump to conclusions based on personal biases and zero evidence.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Stats tend to be quite useless when it comes to these things... Correlation is NOT causation!
e.g. if I eat an orange every day and my stress level goes down, does not mean the orange is reducing my stress!
Granted, it's possible, but it would be more reasonable to assume the brief break while I'm eating the orange is what is beneficial.
Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Statistics are, to the contrary, one of the best ways to study things such as these. Your hypothetical experiment is of course ridiculous. However, imagine that we had many subjects *randomly* assigned to eating oranges, and many subjects assigned to eating placebo oranges. They did not know which one they were eating, nor did whoever was evaluating their "stress levels". Now, what if the group assigned to eating oranges had a statistically significant lower stress level? Then our conclusion would be that oranges cause lower stress levels. Now, I did not read this experiment, but if mice were *randomly* assigned to different treatments, a causal conclusion could certainly be warranted.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It certainly is not "obvious'. Also, "fast food and candy" are attributes more likely associated with recent generations. Degenerative brain diseases typically affect older people who are much less likely to have lived that kind of lifestyle to a level that is impacting significantly on their health.
My aunty, at 72 years old, and slowly but surely is descending towards full Alzheimer's disease, yet her lifetime diet could hardly be considered "junk food". It was more like the typical diet of the working
Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sadly, the price on vegetables in Finland where I live is such, that it's a hell of a lot more expensive to go on a healthy diet. In fact, a chicken salad does indeed cost more than a McMeal, at least for the same energy content.
Parent
Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Informative)
Not a great idea. A lot of US agriculture industries have a lot of "government relations" clout. See Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac? [pcrm.org]. Then we can talk about McDonalds, KFC, and Coca Cola.
Parent
Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget that it's easier to control the sheeple when they're not healthy and strong.
*tinfoil hat off*
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
CC.
Re:FDA (Score:5, Funny)
Of course they're in it together. Ever wonder why the US has a 100% mortality rate?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wait... they've gotten to you!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd eat better if I could afford it, quite frankly.
Yes, fast/junk food can be astonishly cheap, but that does not make it good value, especially if it's loaded with stuff that's bad for your health, (typically far too much saturated fats, salt and sugar).
But you can eat well, and cheap. For example, if you have no time to cook, get a slow cooker. Throw some natural rice and whatever else you fancy into it, (fish, meat, veg.), turn on & go to work. Hot meal waiting for you when you get home in evening. Ingredients will cost less than a hamburger, and
Huh? Tax it? (Score:3, Funny)
Just wondering, who do you think you that you can run around getting government involved in everything? Seriously, tax it? Where did that come from? Because more government is all we need, right? If people want to put crap into their bodies, so be it.
Are you going to tax healthy restaurants too? Which menu items will you tax? I hope you won't tax the Salad+Vinegarett combos. I suppose if you support universal healthcare then you could make a case for taxing unhealthy foods. I love people that think we need
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it would be sufficient to eliminate the existing subsidies for "the bad stuff". Current agricultural policy rewards vast overproduction of grain, especially corn. That grain has to go somewhere, because it represents way more calories than 300M people need. Grain can be converted into other foodstuffs, like meat, dairy, and alcohol, which are generally bad for us in the quantities we Americans consume. About half the corn we produce goes to feeding animals that will eventually feed us.
Since the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How is healthy food more expensive than bad food?
Bad food is always processed food. Processing costs money. Always.
The only reasons you pay more, are that most products that are marketed as healthy actually aren't, and those that are healthy are not marketed,
and that healthy stuff is produced in smaller quantities and sold by smaller shops. Those companies can't afford dump prices like that.
There is an easy rule for healthy food: Healthy = unprocessed.
That's mostly it. And I mean really unprocessed. Like, r
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd mod you you if I had mod points.
Except for this tiny tidbit -
How is healthy food more expensive than bad food?
Bad food is always processed food. Processing costs money. Always.
Conspiracy theories aside, not even the evil corporations want you to eat crappy food if healthier food can be made as cheaply. A lot of the commercial processing is to make the food last longer for storage, so that storage and shipment costs can be lower. So that the food products can be produced in bulk. Which means less expensive.
Re:Obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree completely. I eat very well, and cheaply, as a vegetarian. All of my food is home-cooked and a large majority of it is even home-grown. I wouldn't be able to afford eating out two or three times a day because of the ridiculous price of processed foods. People aren't cheap, they're just lazy. Not being able to sit down and eat a proper meal with your family also says a lot about our culture in and of itself.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You wouldn't be able to afford it, because you'd eat at a reasonably nice restaurant. What if you just hit the chippie?
For poor people, who might not have enough money to pay rent, power, telephone, and food, but who still need energy to live and work, the equation might not be the same. A guy in England looked at the price of food per calorie. 100 calories worth of broccoli? 51p. 100 calories worth of chips? 2p. The equation was similar for other foods: cheap, fatty sausages give you more energy for y
"Everything in moderation" (Score:4, Informative)
That's an ancient cliche but very relevant. Eating too much rock dust would cause cancer. So too would anything else consumed in a quantity that creates an imbalance.
Re:"Everything in moderation" (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:"Everything in moderation" (Score:5, Interesting)
Both my parents are Type II diabetic... meaning it wasn't hereditary. Been there, seen that, hoping it skips a generation.
That's not to say my dietary habits are perfect; I have an aggressive sweet tooth and love fatty junk like cookies, chips, and ice cream (Breyer's Natural Vanilla!), but I'm very conscious of it. I'm within 15 pounds of my ideal 150 weight, and never more than 40 past it. In my twenties I had 5% body fat and a 43 pulse (from cycling and hiking). Contrast that with my father who even in his early twenties, according to my uncle, would binge on pastries and crap, starve himself for a day or two, then go right back to eating more junk. I grew up watching him stand in the kitchen eating peanut butter mixed with honey! He was always obese, not surprisingly.
I think another cliche applies here, in my case: "sins of the father". Trying not to repeat them....
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You should read What if it's all been a big fat lie [nytimes.com] - first, "we" the government knew better when you were growing up, but "we" the people didn't, because the USDA, operating on completely bullshit findings from the NIH, told us to eat a lot of carbs on purpose. They knew what it would do to us, but let's face it, there's money in processed foods. Second, there is basically no difference in your body between white bread and refined sugar. So it frankly does not matter one tenth of one shit whether the sugar
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hogwash (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
speculation (Score:2)
Yeah...I also can suspect that a giant skids are aliens incarnations from Frodo...
The world is already full of FUD, comeback with real prof please.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The world is already full of FUD, comeback with real prof please.
You know the difference between "we suspect" and "we conclude"? About 10 million dollars.
Still looking forward to funding this with your hard-earned tax money?
Meanline, a control group of mice ... (Score:5, Funny)
. . . fed on a diet of nicotine and alcohol, behaved in a way described by Dr. Akterin as "ladish", and taunted her with "tits out for the mice!"
This just in! (Score:5, Informative)
Living will kill you.
Re: (Score:2)
Living will kill you.
Are you sure? It hasn't so far.
Common Sense (I would guess) ... (Score:2)
CC.
Alzheimer's is the new Cancer? (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought MSG and Nutrasweet caused it... (Score:3, Informative)
Before anybody runs to diet products because they shouldn't have sugar: There's plenty of anecdotal evidence... [google.com]
What about the sugar (Score:4, Insightful)
The title states that a "Diet of Fast Food and Candy May Cause Alzheimers" and the link states that "diet rich in fat, sugar, and cholesterol could increase the risk of Alzheimer's".
Yet in the body of the article we get this little gem: "We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances...".
Seems they conveniently left out sugar in the summary.
Interesting
Missing pic (Score:2)
a Reuters report on research out of Sweden indicating that a diet rich in fat, sugar, and cholesterol could increase the risk of Alzheimer's, at least in mice.
The poster neglected to link to the pic of the test subject [wikimedia.org].
Bad scientist! (Score:3, Informative)
There are more studies needed, focusing on the separate compounds; is a diet rich in sugar bad? Is the sugar rich diet bad if the net caloric intake is low? Is the sugar rich diets bad when combined with nutritional supplements that cover the nutritional needs that sugar doesn't provide? Is a combination diet of sugar and fat worse or better than the single sugar or single fat ones? Is HDL cholesterol a equal factor as LDL cholesterol? In what manners do the mice metabolism change in the diets? Could these changes perhaps be blocked by medication, and if yes, will it prevent alzheimers?
The study tells us what we already know, a diet of junk food is bad for you. However, most likely a diet of junk food will kill you trough some other pathway before you develop alzheimers.
More bad research and unsupported conclusions (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, you won't find that here. All fat is assumed to be bad. Other studies show all cholesterol to be bad, or all protein to be bad, or all carbs to be bad, without actually examining in detail the nutrient content of the food to find what component actually correlates the most with their definition of "bad".
Until a randomized, double blind study is done, the only thing you can conclude from this is that junk food correlates to a certain degree with Alzheimer's. Nothing can be said about "fat", nor about cholesterol, nor about sugar.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is it that, whenever the media gets a hold of a single research paper, then draws wildly inaccurate or overly broad conclusions, people accuse the study of misinforming the public? From the story:
You wrongly claim that the researchers "fed the mice junk food." What they actually fed them was a high-f
Diet of Diet Foods Might Not Be So Good Either (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy [wikipedia.org]
I drink a ton of diet tea myself, and its all about weighing risks:
1) Eat a bunch of sugar and you get the terrible pains in old age that obesity and diabetes cause.
2) Eat a bunch of vegetables and you get viruses from the water used to irrigate them.
3) Eat a bunch of red meat and maybe get bowel problems.
4) Eat a bunch of chicken and contribute to the destruction of your environment due to a cavalcade of chicken shit.
5) Eat a bullet and dream without worry.
Remember when eggs were bad for you? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The "eggs are bad" example is recent history. A better example is margarine being touted as the healthy (and tasty) alternative to butter. Some of us knew better, of course, but the margarine evil lasted a few generations.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Just to stop anybody on slashdot from switching from (or staying with) butter because this comment has been moderated "interesting"... margarine IS better...as long as you pick a decent one that's not 59 cents per 1 kg tub.
From the Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/butter-vs-margarine/AN00835 [mayoclinic.com]
The American Heart Association: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=532 [americanheart.org]
And if you're looking for more info, here's how a search engine works:
http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=butter+mar [letmegoogl...foryou.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn, that explains Alzheimer's and cancer and diabetes and stuff over a hundred years ago; it was all the Big Macs and pizza slices and sodas... Oh, WAIT. They didn't have that stuff a hundred years ago. Wow, maybe the Government needs to fund a study on what caused say, Alzheimer's, one hundred years ago if it wasn't a Big Mac.
That a implies b doesn't mean that c cannot imply b.
I now hope to never hear this flawed argument again.