New Study Finds 'Mediterranean' Diet Significantly Reduces Brain Shrinkage (bbc.com) 176
schwit1 writes that 562 elderly research subjects cut their brain shrinkage in half just by changing their diet. (Paywalled article here). The BBC reports:
A study of pensioners in Scotland found that those with a diet rich in fresh fruit, vegetables and olive oil had healthier brains than those with different eating habits. They suffered less brain shrinkage than those who regularly ate meat and dairy products. The study was carried out by University of Edinburgh researchers.... Scientists found that those who adhered most closely to the diet retained significantly greater brain volume after three years than those who did not... Lead researcher Dr Michelle Luciano said: "As we age, the brain shrinks and we lose brain cells, which can affect learning and memory. This study adds to the body of evidence that suggests the Mediterranean diet has a positive impact on brain health."
And the next food craze starts (Score:5, Insightful)
It starts to remind me of the old times in the East Bloc where "scientists" came up with any sort of revelation every time something was in shortage or for some odd reason there was suddenly a surplus. You could bet your ass that the revelation was that eggs are an important source for any kind of vitamins but meat makes you sick.
Same shit now. What happened, did the olive harvest turn out to be the harvest of the century?
Re:And the next food craze starts (Score:5, Informative)
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In other news, my anti-tiger device has been working perfectly.
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There is a long chain of scientific articles over many years exploring the benefits of the Mediterranean Diet.
I understand that you may be skeptical of a single article but this research goes back many years.
The following will give you the references you need to make an informed decision:
https://scholar.google.com/sch... [google.com]
(About 509,000 results)
Re:And the next food craze starts (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I certainly ain't anti-science. But with this kind of research we get contradicting results every other year. First milk was important for you, now milk is harmful. Eggs used to be the way to an early grave, now eggs are the fountain of youth. Cholesterol was deadly, now we need it like a drug.
Or maybe it is already the other way around again, I don't keep track to be honest.
And in between all that we have various other food crazes from low-carb to neanderthal diet. What the fuck, people?
Re:And the next food craze starts (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right that we keep getting contradictory information, but the problem often isn't that the studies are bad in themselves, it's that the reporting on the study is bad.
One group does a study that shows a correlation between diet and "brain shrinkage". That's all. One study finds some kind of statistical correlation. Further study is needed. First, the study should be replicated before really trusting the results. Someone would also have to hypothesize what the causal link is, and then study that, because (sorry, I know it has become a cliche, but...) correlation does not equal causation.
But ok, let's assume for the sake of argument that it's determined that the exact diet described here as the "Mediterranean diet" prevents "brain shrinkage". Ok. Now what? What is "brain shrinkage"? Is brain shrinkage bad? What are the negative effects of it? Are their positive effects of brain shrinkage? Oh, and are there other negative effects of the Mediterranean diet that outweigh the benefits of preventing brain shrinkage?
Nobody really knows. I'm sure an expert could provide some information in response to their answers, but they won't have a complete answer.
But reporters don't necessarily understand all of that, and in any case, that kind of nuanced and intelligent reporting won't sell ad time on CNN. You know what will grab people's attention? The headline, "Drinking olive oil will make you smarter!" So that's what they report, and suddenly the common wisdom is that we should all be guzzling a gallon of olive oil per day.
And then a few years later, there will be another study where there's some correlation between olive oil and an increased risk of some particular rare form of cancer. There will be all the same uncertainties and complications of interpreting the results of the study, but reporters won't report on the complications. There will just be a headline, "Olive oil causes cancer!" Now everyone decides we're supposed to cut olive oil our of our diets.
Science may eventually find that the studies themselves were flawed, or the results were misinterpreted, or the correlation was just a statistical anomaly. Or we may eventually find that there is a correlation, but the causal link is something unexpected. Maybe people who cook with olive oil are less likely to eat butter, and butter causes brain shrinkage. Or, it's possible, just possible, that olive oil does in fact help to prevent brain shrinkage as well as increase the risk of a rare form of cancer, but that it does each of these things to such a minor degree that it's not worth considering when choosing what to eat.
It's also true that some studies are bad. Unfortunately, we don't put much priority on repeating studies to confirm results. However, the far bigger problem is that most of our news outlets suck. Even the respectable ones like the BBC and New York Times are just awful. Honestly, I'm not sure how to improve them, because another big piece of the problem is that *we, the audience*, suck. We insist on clicking on clickbait, watching tabloid junk, and superstitiously believing whatever our chosen news outlet reports.
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But ok, let's assume for the sake of argument that it's determined that the exact diet described here as the "Mediterranean diet" prevents "brain shrinkage". Ok. Now what? What is "brain shrinkage"? Is brain shrinkage bad? What are the negative effects of it? Are their positive effects of brain shrinkage? Oh, and are there other negative effects of the Mediterranean diet that outweigh the benefits of preventing brain shrinkage?
Maybe it's like the "brain cloud" from "Joe Versus The Volcano"?
Re:And the next food craze starts (Score:4, Interesting)
You're right that we keep getting contradictory information, but the problem often isn't that the studies are bad in themselves, it's that the reporting on the study is bad.
I agree with this, but I don't quite agree with the restricting the blame as you do...
But reporters don't necessarily understand all of that, and in any case, that kind of nuanced and intelligent reporting won't sell ad time on CNN. [...] However, the far bigger problem is that most of our news outlets suck.
Etc.
That may all be true, but it's a far deeper problem than that. It's fundamentally tied up with science funding. Here's what actually happens:
(1) Researchers do research and write detailed findings. ("A correlates with B.")
(2) Researchers know that studies which get citations will help their careers, and studies that get more attention will help get them future funding. So, they include a lot of stuff in the "Discussion" section of their study that's incredibly speculative, but it makes it look like their findings will lead to a cure for cancer or something. (E.g., "We've shown correlation between A and B, but some preliminary studies show a connection among B, C, and D, and if C and D are true, then we might even have future research leading to E," where E is "curing cancer.")
(3) A university press office wants to draw attention to its faculty and its prominence as a university, so when it writes up the findings, it plays up the "MAY lead to cancer cure!" angle. The press office interviews the faculty member in charge, who gives an interview agreeing about what the study "MAY" ultimately lead to, but this gets bumped to the first paragraph of the press release, while the hedging "this is just a preliminary finding..." quote gets buried in paragraph 4 of the press release (whereas the hedging was integrated in the discussion section of the original paper). Now we effectively have the correlation between A and B buried deep in the press release, while C and D (which most people will have heard of) get the main story, and the speculation on E is foregrounded.
(4) Now science reporters finally get a crack at this. They see the university press release and its "may cure cancer!" in the first paragraph, which the mainstream news reporters now upgrade to the headline. They bury any hedging even further into the story, where few people will ever read it. They also find three other "experts" who are eager to get their names in the press, and who also present somewhat hedging statements, but the quotations are selected and broken up in ways that exaggerate the importance. In this case, A and B are now completely left out of the story (even though that's what the study measured) because average people don't know about them and wouldn't understand that. E becomes the headline, and C and D are used to support it.
So, while I agree with you that the news media is sensationalizing things, it's actually endemic to the whole process. Everyone from the actual researchers to the university press offices to the mainstream news media wants to get the study noticed.
Moreover, if you look at what actually happens AMONG SCIENTISTS is the same thing. Unless they are specialists in the particular area, they often just read the abstract of the old study, and if the original researchers includes some speculative sentence about the "broad ramifications" of the study in the abstract, the study frequently gets cited as if it PROVED this. I've seen instances of this in some fields where some "well-known" fact gets cited all the time, but when you track it back to the original study, what you actually find is a hedging very preliminary claim made in a discussion section that was never very well supported by the data (and the original researchers often explicitly hedge and SAY "more research is needed" or whatever).
I'll definitely agree with you that there are problematic elements here. And the news media is a part of it. But it's certainly not the only (and maybe not even the main) part of how bad science becomes accepted dogma.
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Honestly, I don't have enough real insight into the research, publishing, and review process to agree or disagree with you about their share of the blame. I would say this, though: Part of the job of reporters is to research the topic they're reporting on and vet their sources. If we assume that the universities and researchers are misrepresenting their results on a regular basis, then reporters should start refusing to air stories about these "discoveries", or at least report them with a tone of skeptici
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I think the problem is, every year you have tens of thousands of new medicine and biotech students needing to write their thesis or doctorate about something. They research just one of the many moving parts, since they only have a limited time, and by cherry picking the results that fit with whatever it is they are trying to prove, they can pretty much get any result they want. Then they have to defend their work in front of their peers, so they obviously want to make it look as good as possible. Therefore
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But with this kind of research we get contradicting results every other year. First milk was important for you, now milk is harmful. Eggs used to be the way to an early grave, now eggs are the fountain of youth. Cholesterol was deadly, now we need it like a drug.
We don't, really. The foundation of a lot of the confusion was the U.S. government recommendations of 1977, which were often not based on any science. I suspect corruption, but incompetence might have been a factor. There were some voodoo notions about calcium, cholesterol, sodium and fiber. Even the Feds have since retracted the idea that dietary cholesterol is meaningful.
Milk is fine in reasonable amounts, if you can digest it; probably 1/3-1/2 of the recommendations. You don't need the skim crap. Eggs ha
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It isn't the studies, it's the industries behind the studies. Livestock is big business in the US and Canada, and have powerful lobbies and influence school programs very heavily. Cow's milk is practically devoid of nutrition (short of protein, which virtually ALL of us are already well in excess of), and there are plenty of other common foods that provide the same nutrients in higher amounts, and without the 'baggage' (like saturated fat, hormones, fecal matter, blood, pus, etc). Milk is credited with havi
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Perhaps there are studies showing animal fats are good for you, because animal fats are good for you? (or saturated fats)
See e.g. the French paradox, which is no paradox because all the science was wrong anyway. BTW, the sugar industry advertises now and then and we can thank it for fraud and obesity/diabetes pandemic.
Yes mayo has eggs in it, like egg sandwich has eggs in it. I don't know how you can name egg-less mayo, and make the name stick across a few continents.
I don't want to not eat eggs to please y
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Please show me one credible study that shows animal fats are "good for you". There have been some recent studies indicating they may not be "as bad" as some other studies suggest, but I've not come across any that say they're "good", as-in, everyone should increase how much you eat. Every nutritional body (ADA, WHO, etc) recommends restricting animal fat consumption. For example:
Less than 30% of total energy intake from fats (1, 2, 3). Unsaturated fats (e.g. found in fish, avocado, nuts, sunflower, canola and olive oils) are preferable to saturated fats (e.g. found in fatty meat, butter, palm and coconut oil, cream, cheese, ghee and lard) (3). Industrial trans fats (found in processed food, fast food, snack food, fried food, frozen pizza, pies, cookies, margarines and spreads) are not part of a healthy diet. http://www.who.int/mediacentre... [who.int]
Do a little research into how much egg is in mayo. (Spoiler: very little.)
You say milk is for kids, yet cheese is concentrated mil
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10kgs of cow's milk goes into making 1kg of cheese. How can you possibly say that's not 'concentrated'?
By your standards, they shouldn't call 'concentrated orange juice' concentrated either...it's only 3 cans of water to make 4 cans of OJ, and is significantly less concentrated than the 1:10 cheese ratio (at least, by every other standard than yours. ;)
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Twaddle. in yoghurt the lactose is converted to lactic acid. Lactic acid doesn't contain any nitrogen.
If there are amino acids in cheese (some of them smell like it) then that's from proteins.
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For the record I live below the poverty line, and 'consume' less than nearly anyone I know, but thanks for playing. Best you stay out of the profiling industry. ;)
I'm not in much disagreement at all, but I somehow wanted to end my post with a cheap shot at straw people. I do disagree about supposed harm from saturated fats as I doubt such harm is much demonstrated. "Eat salmon and avocado", I'm tired of hearing and reading that! but I know you're not advocating for these, I credit you for that. In the same vein, fuck the "lean meats" : that fat-free cut of chicken tastes like cardboard. So yes, I do like to eat vegan-ish much of the time.
Seen another poster make the
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Well, no, you targeted me specifically. Cheap shots rarely improve a conversation as well, as something to consider.
Why do you disagree about saturated fats? What do you know that nearly every other dietician doesn't know, and that countless studies have determined? Just because you like how something tastes doesn't mean you should eat it. Dogs love the taste of antifreeze, but it'll kill them every time.
You're probably right about the subsidies, smaller scale agriculture gets even less subsidies. Crops lik
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If a person is not allergic and has the ability to digest milk, it can be a valuable part of a good diet.
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Milk was a component of the European diet long before any 'growth industries'.
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You're confusing the research with the reporting in the media.
Researchers said decades ago that some type of saturated fat was dangerous, but they weren't sure what kind yet, and said not to change your diet, and that the same dietary advice as always still applied; eat a balanced diet of mostly non-processed traditional foods.
Media reported that as "saturated fat is bad, stop eating butter, stop eating this, stop eating that, instead substitute this more-highly-processed stuff."
People who believed the medi
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Yes, "private doctors" hired by the media are just media talking heads, they are not working as doctors while they're on the air. That is obvious.
Government officials are not medical researchers, and primarily their job is to promote industry when talking about anything that is part of the economy. That's not even bad, but it also isn't health research.
People are this stupid, and then they blame the researchers, who they ignored. The researchers and doctors were always saying the same thing, eats traditiona
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Don't get me wrong, I certainly ain't anti-science. But with this kind of research we get contradicting results every other year. First milk was important for you, now milk is harmful. Eggs used to be the way to an early grave, now eggs are the fountain of youth. Cholesterol was deadly, now we need it like a drug.
Or maybe it is already the other way around again, I don't keep track to be honest.
And in between all that we have various other food crazes from low-carb to neanderthal diet. What the fuck, people?
I think you - and perhaps the majority of intelligent people - should stop reading popular science; or rather start learning what real science is actually like, so they can see through what popularisations of science say. Popular science is entertainment, simply; all attempts at making science "exciting" or "fun" are simply entertainment - it's like talking about "the biggest horse that ever was", which may give you a "wow", but it won't teach you much about farming. Real science is not primarily exciting -
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And in between all that we have various other food crazes from low-carb to neanderthal diet.
I recently had to cut carbs from my diet. I have lost 5 belt notches worth of weight in the past 4 months. It may be a craze, it may not be. I would highly recommend it though.
FYSA, I did not cut carbs to adhere to that particular diet, I cut carbs to manage blood sugar levels. It is amazing, in retrospect, at how bad carbs are. They are quite tasty though... pastries, pasta, pizza, all gone. :(
On the bright side, I love steak, eggs, and cheeses so I get to eat as much as I want! It is weird how the weight
Re: And the next food craze starts (Score:5, Funny)
You could drown in it.
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"How, exactly, is milk harmful?"
It's sugary, fatty water, with about the same calories as soda, destined to give a calf a nice pelt.
BTW, I like your hair.
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"How, exactly, is milk harmful?"
It's sugary, fatty water, with about the same calories as soda, destined to give a calf a nice pelt.
BTW, I like your hair.
The difference between milk and soda is that the fat in milk will slow down the glycemic reaction, whereas soda is just sugar and water (and a bit of flavor) and so the glycemic reaction is higher. The glycemic index for 250ml of both milk and skim milk is 31. The glycemic index for 250ml of Coca Cola is 63. (Source [harvard.edu])
On top of that, milk contains protein, which also slows down the glycemic reaction.
So yes, we can objectively point to well-tested and (importantly) repeatable scientific experiments (glycemic i
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Unless you belong to the 75% of the population that is lactose intolerant, or if you have a milk/dairy allergy.
Both of which are orthogonal to the question of whether milk is nutritious.
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Milk isn't nutritious at all if it makes you shit your arse inside-out; it's probably anti-nutritious.
It's fairly nutritious if it doesn't.
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How, exactly, is milk harmful?
It isn't. The problem is that the GPP gets his nutritional information from tabloid headlines, which do indeed contradict each other regularly, and assumes that the tabloids accurately reflect the scientific consensus.
The truth is that the benefits of eating vegetables, fruit, and mono-unsaturated fats (such as olive oil) have been known for 40 years, without any significant "contradicting results".
Re: And the next food craze starts (Score:4, Informative)
Since when have nutritionists pushed starch? Fats were indeed treated as bad - first all fats because studies showed links between fat-rich diets and heart disease. It was later shown that it wasn't "all fats", just saturated fats. And nothing has changed that; it's still widely accepted my medical science that saturated fats are associated with heart disease. The problem was all in manufacturer responses. Manufacturers largely responded to requests for fat reduction not with increases in fiber, protein and healthy fats (monounsaturated, omega-3) as nutritionists preferred, but with with carbohydrate increases and replacing saturated fats with trans fats - both of which were on their own harmful, and in some cases worse.
The fact that the negative health effects of things like saturated fats were discovered later than the negative health effect was a consequence of them being little used previously but increasingly used after the health effects of saturated fats. So it's not negligence on the part of nutritionists, they were just investigating the health issues in the diets that were the most common at the time. To be fair, it would be nice if the food industry would do a lot more of the precautionary principle (including nutritionists).
Concerning this: note that you almost have to have either some dairy, egg, or meat in your diet; or, to take supplements. Because primarily of B12. It's not produced by plants. It's not even found in many unicellular species like spirulina. It's only produced by certain types of primary unicellular producers that are not generally consumed by humans.
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Wow, I can't type. That should be:
"The fact that the negative health effects of things like saturated fats were discovered later than the negative health effects of saturated fats was a consequence of them being little used previously but increasingly used after the health effects of saturated fats were discovered.
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Well, it's a tad (more) complicated. Yes, at first glance, saturated fats are (relatively) bad, fiber is good (although, as you point out, we're aren't ruminants), you need some carbs, some protein.
Deciding what is 'best' for a population is damnably hard. Humans grow slowly relatively to human attention spans. So it's difficult to time experiments well. Ethics boards tend to frown on sticking people in metal cages for the entirety of their lives (although the same can't be said for the US legal system,
Re: And the next food craze starts (Score:5, Interesting)
Since when have nutritionists pushed starch?
First off, the parent post didn't say "nutritionists push starch" -- the post referred to SPECIAL INTERESTS. And the post you're responding to specifically cited the food pyramid [wikipedia.org], which was endorsed by the U.S. government and nutritionists. The base of that pyramid (i.e., the largest portion of daily food intake) was "Bread, Cereal, Rice and Pasta."
This [whale.to] is what one of the leading nutritionists at the USDA said later about what happened in the 1980s:
When our version of the Food Guide came back to us revised, we were shocked to find that it was vastly different from the one we had developed. As I later discovered, the wholesale changes made to the guide by the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture were calculated to win the acceptance of the food industry. For instance, the Ag Secretary's office altered wording to emphasize processed foods over fresh and whole foods, to downplay lean meats and low-fat dairy choices because the meat and milk lobbies believed it'd hurt sales of full-fat products; it also hugely increased the servings of wheat and other grains to make the wheat growers happy. [...]
Where we, the USDA nutritionists, called for a base of 5-9 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables a day, it was replaced with a paltry 2-3 servings (changed to 5-7 servings a couple of years later because an anti-cancer campaign by another government agency, the National Cancer Institute, forced the USDA to adopt the higher standard). Our recommendation of 3-4 daily servings of whole-grain breads and cereals was changed to a whopping 6-11 servings forming the base of the Food Pyramid as a concession to the processed wheat and corn industries. Moreover, my nutritionist group had placed baked goods made with white flour -- including crackers, sweets and other low-nutrient foods laden with sugars and fats -- at the peak of the pyramid, recommending that they be eaten sparingly. To our alarm, in the "revised" Food Guide, they were now made part of the Pyramid's base.
Normally I'm not a believer in "conspiracy theories," but here we have the story told by a former director of nutrition at the USDA. To my knowledge, no one has come out to contradict her account in the years since she made those claims.
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studies showed links between fat-rich diets and heart disease. It was later shown that it wasn't "all fats", just saturated fats. And nothing has changed that; it's still widely accepted my medical science that saturated fats are associated with heart disease.
No, that's actually completely false, and contradicted by current medical science [wsj.com]. Yes, nutritionists and doctors have been propagating that message for years, and continue to do so even today. But that message is not based on science, it's based on tradition, and they should be held accountable for the crime they're committing on the American public.
There is a link between saturated fats and cholesterol, and another link between the ability of statins to lower cholesterol and, simultaneously, to reduce the
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From the Wikipedia article on saturated fats and health, with links to the organization statements: [wikipedia.org]
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There is a difference between "... a study says...." and "... the body of evidence as a whole says...". And it's not for a WSJ author to decide the difference, it's for major medical associations to decide. The article goes into several dozen studies, which is in turn just a tiny fraction of the entire corpus.
Yes. And every one of those institutions based their conclusions on the "science" of Ancel Keys (or his proteges), whose errors and outright falsifications we are still discovering today. And every one of those organizations that currently recommends against saturated fats will, in the next 20 years, either walk back that message or stand unsupported by more recent science. Most of them are already standing on pretty shaky ground, and that will only continue to accelerate.
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As for what AHA says about saturated fat, link [heart.org].
In particular, the end:
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Yes, because recommending eating "fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fewer calories" is totally a recipe for "almost single-handedly made America obese". Damn those fattening fruits, vegetables, whole grains and reduced-calorie diets.
Then what do you suppose was the trigger that caused the entire population to shift radically toward obesity starting in the 70s?
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Sorry, but the research is far from settled that grains are bad. In fact if you look at the Mediterranean diet its part of the biggest segment.
That's a correlation, but not a causation. We know definitively that an excess of carbohydrates (and yes, grains still count as carbohydrates) tends to cause diabetes. The trick to the mediterranean diet is that the carbohydrates are balanced against other things that slow down the glycemic reaction.
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Now you're making me hungry.
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Spaghetti is cheap and filling, and tastier with greasy meat sauce.
Contrary to popular belief, the greasy meat sauce is actually pretty good for you, assuming there's no trans fat in it. It's the other stuff that will kill you.
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Are fresh dates better than dried ones?
But did they account for the people? (Score:3)
Do they exhibit the same effects?
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These were pensioners in Scotland.
How far from the Mediterranean would you like to go?
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And if not, did they look at such a group as a control...
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Maybe it's all the cursing that reduces brain shrinkage.
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I've read that these days the mediterranean diet is closer to what the Germans eat than to what the Spanish eat, the Germans moving away from meat and beer and the Spanish moving towards it.
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I am talking about statistical findings.
A wee joke (Score:5, Funny)
Q. What's the Scottish definition of a salad?
A. Cold chips.
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He said, Scots wha hae, hae, Scots wha hae nay, hae nay.
Hae ye hae?
Whit do ye cry the dressor, want tae write it doon fur iz!
Ye dinna ken, guid luck! Bumpin yer gums o'er a hashet of varaflame dressor like a bog bin howker, aye.
Mediterranean Diet? (Score:2)
They suffered less brain shrinkage than those who regularly ate meat and dairy products.
Pizza (Most are full of meat & dairy products) originated in the Mediterranean
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I buy frozen pizzas made in Italy and they're almost identical to hippy pizza in the US; a little bit of sauce, a little bit of cheese, vegetables are the main ingredient.
It is true that it doesn't resemble Chain Store Delivery Pizza, but then again, neither does higher quality American pizza. ;)
The whole "pizza is American" meme is just an urban myth based on a no-true-Scotsman.
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what you'll get depends on which part of Italy you're in. Crust coated with olive oil, smoked tomatoes and basil leaves is one possibility. Crust with cheese and the above another. Weird things like potatoes and hot dog on a crust also possible in Italy.
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I had an awesome pizza in San Francisco at a little place on Haight Street, it was potato, garlic cloves, spinach, and feta, over a pesto sauce. Incredible!
I'm in a small city in the US, but all the more expensive pizza places in town serve at least 5 or 6 varieties of authentic Italian regional pizza variants.
People who eat at Processed Monoingredients R Us(TM) give themselves an inaccurate understanding of American food.
Misleading summary (Score:2)
Re: Misleading summary (Score:2)
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Evidence has shown for a long time that it really doesn't matter what the protein source is, as long as you get complete protein.
With the exception of soy, which is not really a healthy staple unless fermented.
Good (Score:4, Funny)
More meat for me.
Newsflash (Score:2)
Newsflash: eating food that people have eaten for thousands of years and thrived on, is better than eating highly processed, deep-fried, and/or chemical additives-rich junk that incidentally makes money for their manufacturers and sellers.
Eat more food grown on plants and less food manufactured in plants.
(To be sure, a smallish component of meat and dairy is often advised, but if your diet consists of only this (and perhaps bread or your locale's starchy staple) then health problems shouldn't even be surp
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So ... aphids?
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So ... aphids?
If you've got a "sweet tooth," it is probably a lot healthier than the other snacks you could turn to!
A man thinks with his penis (Score:2)
Therefore many of us will be adopting this diet in an effort to reduce shrinkage.
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Maybe you should try some Horny Goat Weed drizzled in olive oil?
Epimedium alpinum (aka Bishop's Hat) is the variety native to the Mediterranean region.
Anti-inflammatory (Score:3)
I've been greatly increasing the amount of anti-inflammatory foods over the last many years. It is very good for every part of your body. Doctors who have studied the right mixture of nutrition and diseases can attest that most things are the result of inflammation, including many chronic diseases. People in the Mediterranean areas often have much lower instances of these inflammation related diseases, and that is largely due to their diet of olives and use of (real) extra-virgin olive oil.
No loss of neurons through aging (Score:2)
Loss of neurons due to aging has been shown to be a measurement error before.
Haug, H. (1985). Are neurons of the human cerebral cortex really lost during aging? A morphometric examination. In Senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (pp. 150-163). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Unfortunately the article is paywalled. However it says that there is no statistical evidence of neuron loss in healthy people due to aging. Previously widely reported loss was shown to be a systematic bias in measurement.
The point... (Score:2)
Translation:
"Scottish person found eating vegetables"
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Deutschland Deutschland Über Alles!
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Long as one can consume it all before the expiration date, otherwise it's wasted money.
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Rich people can comparison shop. If your local market doesn't carry a variety of fresh fruits and veggies, you just jump in the car and drive a couple of miles to one that does. So every grocery store has to compete on this level or go broke.
If you live in a poor neighborhood or a big city without access to flexible transportation, you have to use the corner bodega. Distance is a major factor in shopping decisions. These urban village markets know this and stock more high profit processed foods. And price
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Feet are flexible and walking two miles each way is not an unreasonable burden.
On the other hand, genuine olive oil is expensive. Making olive oil requires a lot of processing, and olives aren't exactly large fruits.
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walking two miles each way
Easy if you have the spare time and don't have to haul food to feed a family. And since each urban grocer is more likely going to use the same strategy to serve their locked in market, nobody nearby is going to compete for a small additional number of customers. So, while I can drive 2 miles to the next store, urban dwellers might have to leave town to find decent produce. And if you live in some no-cars city like New York or Seattle, no business has to worry about the small market share that can shop elsew
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Feet are flexible and walking two miles each way is not an unreasonable burden.
Found the young person!
Wait until you get old and have arthritis and other physically-limiting health issues and are stuck surviving on Social Security Disability (~$900USD/month) plus $60/month in food benefits and have to walk to, and carry home groceries from, the closest grocery you can find ('residential zoning' so sorry, no grocery stores allowed nearby and the city had to cut bus routes for budget reasons) in snowstorms and 15F/-17C temps in the middle of January in Michigan and much of the walk havi
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Wow, this shows how evil the "zoning" really is.
Also, it is perfectly fine if the house's side walls touch with other houses's side wall, and there's a sidewalk next to the front door instead of a front yard. You still can have a backyard.. I even suspect that in this arrangement, much everyone grown vegetables in that backyard, they stopped doing it post WW2.
Re: Rich People Diet (Score:5, Informative)
The unit cost doesn't begin to capture what's going on here. Meat is amazingly cheap if you consider what a meat animal is: an extraordinarily complex, balky, and inefficient converter of commodity crops like feed corn to concentrated protein. I don't say this because I'm anti-meat -- I love meat and eat a lot of it. But boneless pork chops for $3.99/pound are a by-product of federal agricultural policies that include over twenty billion dollars of subsidies.
The influence of industry political contributions distorts the US food supply, making commodity crops like corn, soy, and sugar beets over-plentiful and cheap and actually discouraging farmers from growing vegetables and fruit to be marketed directly to consumers. So it turns out that high quality produce, which is not subsidized, can actually cost more than meat.
Consider an apple. Unlike a peach (if you've never had an actual ripe peach off the tree you don't know what you're missing), apples ship and store extremely well. So it's not particularly remarkable that a Red Delicious apple cost only 25% as much on a weight basis as a boneless pork chop if you consider the labor inputs. It ought to cost even less.
The real problem is that "Red Delicious" as a term is a triumph of marketing mendacity. A Red Delicious is indeed red, but it tastes like Styrofoam. If you want a good eating apple, say a Honey Crisp, you'll be paying as much on a weight basis as you would for a pork chop. Last year Honey Crisps hit $4.50 a pound. And the tomato -- normal market price is about $0.75 per pound, but if you want a tomato that is marginally tastier than the plastic it's packaged in you've got to go for a hothouse tomato that cost twice that. And for a good tomato you're paying almost as much as you would for a piece of meat.
No wonder people hate vegetables. Very few people will buy a tomato if it costs as much as a pork chop, and since the pork chop is subsidized and tomatoes aren't, that means most people have never tasted a good tomato. Or a really good peach. Many have never even tasted a good apple.
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Terrible tomatoes including canned tomatoes can be thrown into the frying pan so that you make your own tomato sauce, at least. I wonder how many people never even tasted that.
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I made a tomato sauce with garden tomatoes and it was so strong and acidic that none of the processed-food-eaters could even keep it in their mouths; they would just spit it right out onto the plate!
Of course, people used to eating traditional foods really loved it. That's why Italian pizza has less sauce; you only need to smear it across the bread, you don't need a whole drippy water layer.
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That's interesting! Must be why some (people or recipes) call for sweetening the sauce with carrot or even sugar, but I would hate to do that. Not only that I don't like sweet much ; there's just no need, as there isn't much anything acidic in the tomatoes.
I did try some canned "tomato sauce" that was sweetened, contained only tomato, carrot and some starch or syrup (!), and was the lowest end I've ever seen. *That* one was worth spitting out. Small jars with bolognese, napolitan, provençal sauce are v
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What angers me most, is that we actually used to have wonderful GM tomatoes that were tasty and easily transportable. But no, greeny idiots forced them out of the market.
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The tomatoes sold cheaply in supermarkets here in the UK are almost universally watery, mushy garbage, grown fast and cheap under intensive conditions in Spain, Morocco, Senegal, etc. and yanked from the plant before they have a chance to develop any flavour at all.
Of course, all these supermarkets have their own brands of "premium" tomatoes - often domestically grown - and these are generally much better, but the cost is usually in the region of 150-170% of the standard fare, and even more if you want them
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Consider an apple. Unlike a peach (if you've never had an actual ripe peach off the tree you don't know what you're missing), apples ship and store extremely well. So it's not particularly remarkable that a Red Delicious apple cost only 25% as much on a weight basis as a boneless pork chop if you consider the labor inputs. It ought to cost even less.
The real problem is that "Red Delicious" as a term is a triumph of marketing mendacity. A Red Delicious is indeed red, but it tastes like Styrofoam. If you want a good eating apple, say a Honey Crisp, you'll be paying as much on a weight basis as you would for a pork chop. Last year Honey Crisps hit $4.50 a pound.
Learn what's in season. In the fall, Honey Crisps are available for around $1.00 a pound. There's almost always something in season. When there isn't, pineapples travel well, so they're decent all year long. On the vegetable side, you can always fall back on broccoli and carrots when there's no other produce in season. Also, canned tomatoes are better than whole during the off season.
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Tip - blueberries are cheap twice a year in the US. Once when the US harvest comes in (exactly when depends on your latitude) and once when the South American harvest comes in (around now). They drop from $10 per pound to $3.25 per pound and the quality goes way up. Stop mold growth with a vinegar/water rinse and dry thoroughly and they'll keep for a week. Freeze them and they'll be good enough to use for cooking until the next season comes around - but don't expect them to be suitable for snacking.
Also, fo
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They don't live long enough to test. Stroke is very common when you live on that diet.
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it will be another ten years before Skye gets olive trees and bougainvillea.
It can't happen soon enough. Personally, I'm waiting for the reappearance of some good wine making grapes in Vinland.
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A No True Scotsman where the Scots aren't Mediterranean enough, it was pretty good before you added that blether at the end about aliens.
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Actually, vitamin pills do not improve health outcomes, they harm them.
Micronutrients is mostly stuff you have to get from plants. Some of it is known, much of it isn't, but you can't get it from a pill, sorry.
If you want to increase your micronutrient intake a lot, the method is to use a masticating juicer. That way you can eat the micronutrients from more vegetables than would fit in your stomach in just a small glass of liquid. Health outcomes improve if you just do that; eating vitamin pills reduces you
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