Western diet and brain function
Replies
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Back in University and college I used to have a lot of candy and sugary snacks. My diet was pretty poor overall to be honest. But wow my grades were amazing, my ability to retain, process and apply information was unbelievable. Especially with the candy while studying.. I was so focused. I wasn't overweight, I probably weigh about the same as I do now, but because I wasn't exercising (aside from lots and lots of walking) I wasn't muscular, fit and defined. Now I'd like to think I eat a lot better... but wow I can't remember what I did yesterday. Mommy brain maybe!?3
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Back in University and college I used to have a lot of candy and sugary snacks. My diet was pretty poor overall to be honest. But wow my grades were amazing, my ability to retain, process and apply information was unbelievable. Especially with the candy while studying.. I was so focused. I wasn't overweight, I probably weigh about the same as I do now, but because I wasn't exercising (aside from lots and lots of walking) I wasn't muscular, fit and defined. Now I'd like to think I eat a lot better... but wow I can't remember what I did yesterday. Mommy brain maybe!?
I was just thinking about this too. When I was growing up in the 70s, we ate lots of what people would consider now "junk" - hot dogs, fish sticks, frozen waffles, breakfast cereal, Chips Ahoy, Hostess cupcakes, tater tots, pretzels, etc. My weeknight dinner before my after school job in high school was a frozen meal, and I'd get a soda and candy bar once I was there. I was a straight A student, and a healthy weight.
Once I was out on my own, I started trying to eat better, more fresh produce, lean protein, less junk. I also started office work. I gained 20 lbs. My diet's even better now, and I regularly get lost in parking lots, have to reread paragraphs because I wasn't focusing, and spend probably 15 minutes every day standing in a room trying to remember why I got up and walked in here. <shrug>
The Guardian is not above click bait article writing, one study does not "show" or "prove" anything, and the study in question was fairly limited. And there is no reason to resort to sweeping generalizations and vague diet categories - there's some good info out there on what might constitute a "brain healthy" diet, standard advice like more omega-3s, eating the rainbow, etc coupled with an active lifestyle and life-long learning. As with pretty much all of these articles trying to find the "one true way" and the opposite "bad way", I suspect it all comes down to approaching your diet mindfully and eating at an appropriate calorie level. Whether you're in Cleveland or Paris, when you do that and stay active, you can have your treats and your comfort foods along with good health. IMHO, of course.4 -
I thought it was obvious that I meant that the availability of the food was equal to what it is today.
One summer as a teen I accidentally lost a lot of weight. I ate worse that summer than in any period of my life before or since. I drank soda calories and other sugary drinks, I had snack food and ice cream multiple times a day, most of the food I was served was easily "Western" like hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers, french fries, high calorie cereal, etc.
The reason is that I was not home. I was a counselor at a camp. I had access to snacks both at camp and by walking about a mile to a local convenience store. I pretty much ate everything I wanted and then some.
However, I was very active all summer. I probably got 30 to 40k steps each day. Horseback riding, swimming, archery, baseball, and constantly moving had to have shot my TDEE up to an epic high number. As a result I dropped weight at a pace that could not have been entirely healthy because I was only slightly overweight to start.
I regained it all because I was a dumb kid and I didn't put it all together. I was so distracted (in love) I didn't even realize my clothes were getting more and more loose until my pants fell off me in the middle of the street while I was helping to carry a piece of furniture.1 -
The problem with these scare articles is they do not consider food in moderation they just label it "Western" or "Standard American" and then lead people to assume that if they are in this region they are poisoning themselves.
In reality I know of very few people that eat this way. Most people I know at least have a basic understanding that they need to include some things like vegetables and fruit in their diets and limit the food that has a less desirable nutrient to calorie ratio.
So to me the moral of the story is that you should not eat like an unsupervised teen too often and you will be fine.
Agreed, although I often do think -- in part from exposure on MFP and from some surveys -- that people in the US on average (and likely in the UK too) do eat quite a bit worse than those I talk to about such things and see eating most commonly, pretty much all of whom do eat vegetables and fruit and don't rely primarily on ultra processed foods and all the annoying stereotypes.
I also think "standard American diet" was bad enough as a term (I continue to think the real standard American diet is the one I grew up with, and it wasn't perfect but had nothing to do with filling the cart with ultraprocessed items or consuming loads of soda and fast food), but now it's the "western diet" or "western pattern diet"? Sigh.
I would also agree with you that it's basically just common sense. There's no nefarious "how did this happen to us"-- if you choose to eat mostly low nutrient foods and not eat your veg, that's a choice and everyone knows it's not a sensible one.
The odd thing to me is that the people that I do know personally that eat in way that is probably meant by whatever a Western or SAD is supposed to be have been more or less weight stable for decades. We are not talking obese either. We are talking healthy weight or slightly overweight. I can't say the same thing about people I know who eat Eastern/Southern/Northern, Up, Down, Left or Right Diets.
I wonder if the levels of obesity would change drastically if we took all of the food we have available now back in time 150 years.
I have a hard time imagining how you'd inject the modern food composition and unbiquity into 1870, given that most people (and things) stuck pretty close to one place. Mobility - for us and food - is a huge part of where we find ourselves now, and they didn't have it. It's complicated in other ways, too.
I'm old enough to remember when the ubiquity of ready-to-eat food was dramatically lower than it is now (and I was adult at the time). Because I had older parents, I also have some anecdata about how people lived going back into the 1920s. My father's family were largely subsistence farmers before WWII, and my dad was adult when the US got into WWII. I'd say that within that "mostly-subsistence" lifestyle, they were consuming calorie levels above what most of us would consume today (when they could get it, and they mostly needed to get it). The nutrition wasn't always great (my dad talked about going to school in later Winter at times with a lunch bucket full of just beans, because that was what they had). It was a big family, and they were slim, even skinny. They burned a boatload of calories every day - likely fewer in Winter, because not planting/cultivating/harvesting/preserving, but still lots of livestock care, laundry, cooking, hunting. etc., to be done.
If I can get past the logistics of getting modern food into their hands, I don't think the subsistence farmer side of the family would've gotten obese on a typical modern overweight-to-obese person's calorie intake of modern food. Would the nutrition have been worse on modern food? Not sure. In summer, probably yes. Overall, not sure.
My dad, b. 1917, had an active job until retirement (by the time I met him, he was 38, and worked as a carpenter/repair-maintenance person for the county park system. Lots of driving, but very active at the work locations. He was a good eater, of mostly nutritious food, as I was growing up. He was reasonably slim, probably normal BMI. He retired before age 65, and still had active hobby pursuits (gardening, carpentry, cutting trees, etc.), but got fat - certainly well up in the overweight BMI range, maybe lower obese. Seeing pictures of himself from one Christmas, he decided he was too fat, so he ate less (this would've been 1980s, calorie counting was not practical), lost weight back to what was probably the healthy BMI range, and stayed there for the rest of his life.
We read stories here all the time about people who were reasonably slim until they got a desk job (or variations on that theme). We talk about the food side of obesity all the time, not so much about the activity side.
I agree that many people don't understand how dramatically different the current culture of prepared-food ubiquity is from before (say) 1980. But, even though it's less talked about, I also think many people don't understand how different the routine daily activity level was before 1980, either. There have been huge changes in that realm many ways, certainly the automated-office/screen-based-entertainment being a fair fraction of the reason, but there's much more.
I kinda suspect the movement side affects the brain, too; and the obesity definitely does. Seems like I've read some research to support that (differences in cognitive capability among slim/active vs. overweight/inactive people; cognitive performance improvements from exercise regimens), but I don't have cites.
TL; DR: It's not just the food. It's the movement. All of it affects the brain.4 -
tinkerbellang83 wrote: »jenncornelsen wrote: »The problem with these scare articles is they do not consider food in moderation they just label it "Western" or "Standard American" and then lead people to assume that if they are in this region they are poisoning themselves.
In reality I know of very few people that eat this way. Most people I know at least have a basic understanding that they need to include some things like vegetables and fruit in their diets and limit the food that has a less desirable nutrient to calorie ratio.
So to me the moral of the story is that you should not eat like an unsupervised teen too often and you will be fine.
I would disagree, because if you look at statistics, over half of people following a western diet are either obese or overweight. I've met many grown adults with 0 concept of health. I personally can easily stick to 1 apple, but a bag of my favorite cookies? Not so much. The issue become more obvious to me after travelling europe. No obese people! The average person was in a healthy weight range. It was seriously mind blowing. The difference? Almost no fast food chains, stores not filled with sugar soaked everything! There's a huge difference in whats on offer, and the results are obvious
We've plenty of fast food chains (You will find McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, Dominos etc in almost all major European Cities & Large Towns amongst other international & national chains) and stores filled with sugar soaked everything. We also have plenty of obese people too.
^^Exactly
Obesity is a global epidemic problem.
As far as brain function goes, I’ll wait for more controlled studies. Was any alcohol consumption involved?🙄
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I thought it was obvious that I meant that the availability of the food was equal to what it is today.
One summer as a teen I accidentally lost a lot of weight. I ate worse that summer than in any period of my life before or since. I drank soda calories and other sugary drinks, I had snack food and ice cream multiple times a day, most of the food I was served was easily "Western" like hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers, french fries, high calorie cereal, etc.
The reason is that I was not home. I was a counselor at a camp. I had access to snacks both at camp and by walking about a mile to a local convenience store. I pretty much ate everything I wanted and then some.
However, I was very active all summer. I probably got 30 to 40k steps each day. Horseback riding, swimming, archery, baseball, and constantly moving had to have shot my TDEE up to an epic high number. As a result I dropped weight at a pace that could not have been entirely healthy because I was only slightly overweight to start.
I regained it all because I was a dumb kid and I didn't put it all together. I was so distracted (in love) I didn't even realize my clothes were getting more and more loose until my pants fell off me in the middle of the street while I was helping to carry a piece of furniture.
Are you sure we are not related? 🤔 My freshman year of college, I took a summer job at a YMCA camp as a senior counselor. Worked with 5-8 y.o. boys. Basically no one wanted them and they saw me as a giant jungle gym. 6'3" 300 at that time. Lifeguarded, swam, walked, chased around kids, taught a weight lifting class, flag football, ect. We also happened to have a father of one of the kids volunteer to be the camp cook that year. He was a trained chef! Ate better that summer than I ever had. I went to college 1200 miles from mama's cooking. Lol. When I came back to Iowa, my coach looked at me and basically said WTF. I had lost about 35lbs that summer and was now too light to play weak side tackle. We basically made me gain some back to play! Lol1 -
I'm old enough to remember when the ubiquity of ready-to-eat food was dramatically lower than it is now (and I was adult at the time). Because I had older parents, I also have some anecdata about how people lived going back into the 1920s. My father's family were largely subsistence farmers before WWII, and my dad was adult when the US got into WWII. I'd say that within that "mostly-subsistence" lifestyle, they were consuming calorie levels above what most of us would consume today (when they could get it, and they mostly needed to get it). The nutrition wasn't always great (my dad talked about going to school in later Winter at times with a lunch bucket full of just beans, because that was what they had). It was a big family, and they were slim, even skinny. They burned a boatload of calories every day - likely fewer in Winter, because not planting/cultivating/harvesting/preserving, but still lots of livestock care, laundry, cooking, hunting. etc., to be done.
If I can get past the logistics of getting modern food into their hands, I don't think the subsistence farmer side of the family would've gotten obese on a typical modern overweight-to-obese person's calorie intake of modern food. Would the nutrition have been worse on modern food? Not sure. In summer, probably yes. Overall, not sure.
I always think this is an interesting thought experiment. In 1870, nearly all of my ggg-grandparents or gg-grandparents who were old enough to be married were farmers in rural areas. Specifically, in Iowa, Nebraska (in 1871 they were among the first white settlers of one NE county), Illinois, Ohio (the ones still in OH in 1870 were badly off, eventually moved further west), Minnesota (born in rural Wales, had moved to MN from Wisconsin). In addition to these, I have one set of gg-grandparents who were poor farmers in Sweden, and would come to the US with their children (and become farmers in Nebraska) in the 1880s. Comparing these people's daily lives (and food availability) with my own provides numerous contrasts, and this is not at all changed by the fact that I am big on cooking from whole foods and local ingredients when available (and in February vegetables and fruit are not locally available, so I buy ones that are frozen or brought in from elsewhere).
The one exception to this pattern are my ggg-grandparents who lived near London. This ggg-grandfather was relatively well-off and lived in a place where food options would have been pretty high. He was also obese, based on photos -- looks like a prosperous Victorian merchant. I am still sure that this family was far more active than the average resident of the US today.2 -
The problem with these scare articles is they do not consider food in moderation they just label it "Western" or "Standard American" and then lead people to assume that if they are in this region they are poisoning themselves.
In reality I know of very few people that eat this way. Most people I know at least have a basic understanding that they need to include some things like vegetables and fruit in their diets and limit the food that has a less desirable nutrient to calorie ratio.
So to me the moral of the story is that you should not eat like an unsupervised teen too often and you will be fine.
Agreed, although I often do think -- in part from exposure on MFP and from some surveys -- that people in the US on average (and likely in the UK too) do eat quite a bit worse than those I talk to about such things and see eating most commonly, pretty much all of whom do eat vegetables and fruit and don't rely primarily on ultra processed foods and all the annoying stereotypes.
I also think "standard American diet" was bad enough as a term (I continue to think the real standard American diet is the one I grew up with, and it wasn't perfect but had nothing to do with filling the cart with ultraprocessed items or consuming loads of soda and fast food), but now it's the "western diet" or "western pattern diet"? Sigh.
I would also agree with you that it's basically just common sense. There's no nefarious "how did this happen to us"-- if you choose to eat mostly low nutrient foods and not eat your veg, that's a choice and everyone knows it's not a sensible one.
The odd thing to me is that the people that I do know personally that eat in way that is probably meant by whatever a Western or SAD is supposed to be have been more or less weight stable for decades. We are not talking obese either. We are talking healthy weight or slightly overweight. I can't say the same thing about people I know who eat Eastern/Southern/Northern, Up, Down, Left or Right Diets.
I wonder if the levels of obesity would change drastically if we took all of the food we have available now back in time 150 years.
I have a hard time imagining how you'd inject the modern food composition and unbiquity into 1870, given that most people (and things) stuck pretty close to one place. Mobility - for us and food - is a huge part of where we find ourselves now, and they didn't have it. It's complicated in other ways, too.
I'm old enough to remember when the ubiquity of ready-to-eat food was dramatically lower than it is now (and I was adult at the time). Because I had older parents, I also have some anecdata about how people lived going back into the 1920s. My father's family were largely subsistence farmers before WWII, and my dad was adult when the US got into WWII. I'd say that within that "mostly-subsistence" lifestyle, they were consuming calorie levels above what most of us would consume today (when they could get it, and they mostly needed to get it). The nutrition wasn't always great (my dad talked about going to school in later Winter at times with a lunch bucket full of just beans, because that was what they had). It was a big family, and they were slim, even skinny. They burned a boatload of calories every day - likely fewer in Winter, because not planting/cultivating/harvesting/preserving, but still lots of livestock care, laundry, cooking, hunting. etc., to be done.
If I can get past the logistics of getting modern food into their hands, I don't think the subsistence farmer side of the family would've gotten obese on a typical modern overweight-to-obese person's calorie intake of modern food. Would the nutrition have been worse on modern food? Not sure. In summer, probably yes. Overall, not sure.
My dad, b. 1917, had an active job until retirement (by the time I met him, he was 38, and worked as a carpenter/repair-maintenance person for the county park system. Lots of driving, but very active at the work locations. He was a good eater, of mostly nutritious food, as I was growing up. He was reasonably slim, probably normal BMI. He retired before age 65, and still had active hobby pursuits (gardening, carpentry, cutting trees, etc.), but got fat - certainly well up in the overweight BMI range, maybe lower obese. Seeing pictures of himself from one Christmas, he decided he was too fat, so he ate less (this would've been 1980s, calorie counting was not practical), lost weight back to what was probably the healthy BMI range, and stayed there for the rest of his life.
We read stories here all the time about people who were reasonably slim until they got a desk job (or variations on that theme). We talk about the food side of obesity all the time, not so much about the activity side.
I agree that many people don't understand how dramatically different the current culture of prepared-food ubiquity is from before (say) 1980. But, even though it's less talked about, I also think many people don't understand how different the routine daily activity level was before 1980, either. There have been huge changes in that realm many ways, certainly the automated-office/screen-based-entertainment being a fair fraction of the reason, but there's much more.
I kinda suspect the movement side affects the brain, too; and the obesity definitely does. Seems like I've read some research to support that (differences in cognitive capability among slim/active vs. overweight/inactive people; cognitive performance improvements from exercise regimens), but I don't have cites.
TL; DR: It's not just the food. It's the movement. All of it affects the brain.
It is funny how you spent an entire post agreeing with my premise but still managed to call me out on the logistics.2 -
Ann, I don't understand your comment about impulses, plus no one said it was the only thing affecting our impulses. Basically everything affects our impulses...so why wouldn't certain foods impact impulses like the article says? Maybe I'm confused or oversimplifying...
Isn't the article in general about impulses and what affects them? My hand and mouth don't make me eat, my brain does. For example, if I take a drug that impacts my brain and makes me hungry - isn't that basically what the article is talking about, but the "drug" would be certain types of food impact the brain?
If you're saying we have 100% control over ourselves at any given moment doesn't that mean there is no such thing as addictions, nature/nurture, etc.? I'm not talking about responsibility, we are 100% responsible for our actions even if we are <100% in control of ourselves.
If caffeine can cause us to be alert, why is it so difficult to believe that [x] can cause us to over eat?
I am saying that when you typed "Actually, something could be forcing stuff into your body." that was an overstatement, concerning parasites. There's not a little marching line of parasites that carry Snickers bars into my mouth, while others make me chew, hold me down so I can't struggle, etc.
I agree that many things (maybe even parasites) can affect us at the level of impulses, and I don't pretend to know what all of those may be. But some of those impulses are cultural (exaggerating here, "it's cute to be thin and cute people are more wonderful and happy"), some are about feeling good ("food is yummy" vs. "I feel great when I eat sensible amounts of nutritious food"), and so forth. All the impulses don't point in the "eat more" direction. Impulses compete; some win.
Do I think we have free will? In the strictest sense, I don't know and don't really care. It seems to me as if I do, and as if most of us do, when it comes to achieving calorie-appropriate food intake (among other things for which there are counter-impulses). I think that because I've changed in that way, and I've seen other people change in that way. Regain is more common than not, for sure. Why? I don't know that, either. But it's not universal. Some people succeed long term, suggesting there is a path.
Both nature and nurture are important. I think the - I don't know what else to call them - conspiracy theories undercut the contribution of both nature and nurture, when it comes to bodyweight, BTW. Natural selection has wired us for scarcity, not for plenty, with respect to food availability. Nuture - as relates to developing a sense of security, as well as internalizing models of what "normal eating" is - is a hugely important influences. The conspiracies externalize the causes (food companies, advertising, parasites, sugar, hyperpalatability, . . . .).
I'm not at all saying we all have 100% conscious control of every choice we make at every waking moment, lifelong. I don't think that at all. I'm saying that "I have no control", as I've seen it expressed by people in my real life (including me) seems to be more of an excuse, than an actual non-negotiable reason. Certainly, there are disordered conditions (medical, psychological, who knows, maybe parasitical) where that's not true - where people truly have no control at all - for certain individuals, some of the time. But that's not most of us, most of the time, IMO.
I'm saying many of us are able, if we choose, to exercise a great deal of food-intake (and body-movement) control, much of our time; and that for many, that will be enough. To me, focusing attention on how to do that is dramatically more productive than looking for reasons my weight isn't my fault, I'm helpless, I have no control, or anything of that nature. Burrowing into those things - at least beyond the "how can I bust this obstacle" level - is a complete waste of time and energy, IMO.
I'd also repeat my questions: Does the book posit different parasites before 1980? Different parasites between different countries with close ties, but different obesity rates?2 -
The problem with these scare articles is they do not consider food in moderation they just label it "Western" or "Standard American" and then lead people to assume that if they are in this region they are poisoning themselves.
In reality I know of very few people that eat this way. Most people I know at least have a basic understanding that they need to include some things like vegetables and fruit in their diets and limit the food that has a less desirable nutrient to calorie ratio.
So to me the moral of the story is that you should not eat like an unsupervised teen too often and you will be fine.
Agreed, although I often do think -- in part from exposure on MFP and from some surveys -- that people in the US on average (and likely in the UK too) do eat quite a bit worse than those I talk to about such things and see eating most commonly, pretty much all of whom do eat vegetables and fruit and don't rely primarily on ultra processed foods and all the annoying stereotypes.
I also think "standard American diet" was bad enough as a term (I continue to think the real standard American diet is the one I grew up with, and it wasn't perfect but had nothing to do with filling the cart with ultraprocessed items or consuming loads of soda and fast food), but now it's the "western diet" or "western pattern diet"? Sigh.
I would also agree with you that it's basically just common sense. There's no nefarious "how did this happen to us"-- if you choose to eat mostly low nutrient foods and not eat your veg, that's a choice and everyone knows it's not a sensible one.
The odd thing to me is that the people that I do know personally that eat in way that is probably meant by whatever a Western or SAD is supposed to be have been more or less weight stable for decades. We are not talking obese either. We are talking healthy weight or slightly overweight. I can't say the same thing about people I know who eat Eastern/Southern/Northern, Up, Down, Left or Right Diets.
I wonder if the levels of obesity would change drastically if we took all of the food we have available now back in time 150 years.
I have a hard time imagining how you'd inject the modern food composition and unbiquity into 1870, given that most people (and things) stuck pretty close to one place. Mobility - for us and food - is a huge part of where we find ourselves now, and they didn't have it. It's complicated in other ways, too.
I'm old enough to remember when the ubiquity of ready-to-eat food was dramatically lower than it is now (and I was adult at the time). Because I had older parents, I also have some anecdata about how people lived going back into the 1920s. My father's family were largely subsistence farmers before WWII, and my dad was adult when the US got into WWII. I'd say that within that "mostly-subsistence" lifestyle, they were consuming calorie levels above what most of us would consume today (when they could get it, and they mostly needed to get it). The nutrition wasn't always great (my dad talked about going to school in later Winter at times with a lunch bucket full of just beans, because that was what they had). It was a big family, and they were slim, even skinny. They burned a boatload of calories every day - likely fewer in Winter, because not planting/cultivating/harvesting/preserving, but still lots of livestock care, laundry, cooking, hunting. etc., to be done.
If I can get past the logistics of getting modern food into their hands, I don't think the subsistence farmer side of the family would've gotten obese on a typical modern overweight-to-obese person's calorie intake of modern food. Would the nutrition have been worse on modern food? Not sure. In summer, probably yes. Overall, not sure.
My dad, b. 1917, had an active job until retirement (by the time I met him, he was 38, and worked as a carpenter/repair-maintenance person for the county park system. Lots of driving, but very active at the work locations. He was a good eater, of mostly nutritious food, as I was growing up. He was reasonably slim, probably normal BMI. He retired before age 65, and still had active hobby pursuits (gardening, carpentry, cutting trees, etc.), but got fat - certainly well up in the overweight BMI range, maybe lower obese. Seeing pictures of himself from one Christmas, he decided he was too fat, so he ate less (this would've been 1980s, calorie counting was not practical), lost weight back to what was probably the healthy BMI range, and stayed there for the rest of his life.
We read stories here all the time about people who were reasonably slim until they got a desk job (or variations on that theme). We talk about the food side of obesity all the time, not so much about the activity side.
I agree that many people don't understand how dramatically different the current culture of prepared-food ubiquity is from before (say) 1980. But, even though it's less talked about, I also think many people don't understand how different the routine daily activity level was before 1980, either. There have been huge changes in that realm many ways, certainly the automated-office/screen-based-entertainment being a fair fraction of the reason, but there's much more.
I kinda suspect the movement side affects the brain, too; and the obesity definitely does. Seems like I've read some research to support that (differences in cognitive capability among slim/active vs. overweight/inactive people; cognitive performance improvements from exercise regimens), but I don't have cites.
TL; DR: It's not just the food. It's the movement. All of it affects the brain.
It is funny how you spent an entire post agreeing with my premise but still managed to call me out on the logistics.
To be fair, it was (IMO) not at all clear what your premise was, based solely on the post to which I replied. It could've been that our ancestors would've gotten fat eating all that fast food, too.
I called out the logistics, because they sort of made me blow a circuit breaker, until I did a reset and forced myself to contemplate it despite the implausibility.
Side history note: There's long been a tradition of huge serving bowls of stuff, especially for company, in my subculture that we always assumed grew out of the farm-culture neighbor-ladies competing over who best could feed the traveling threshing crews, in terms of both quantity and quality. It was a point of pride.2 -
That, "Do parasites make us like cats," video that was posted above was about toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is something that is cleared from the body, it isn't an ongoing parasitic infection, unless it's acquired through the placenta - as far as I can ascertain by a quick Google search.
Now, gut biome to me is more interesting and could be called a sybiotic relationship, right? IF we concede that the gut biome is responsible in part for the production of certain neurotransmitters (which, I'm thinking that HAS been established) then we could make the connection between depression/anxiety/compusion and food. It's not that big of a leap. I know the research is not there yet, but it is there for rats and pigs (addictive behavior/compulsion due to neurotransmitter deficiency)...just a matter of time, really, until the connection is made in humans. At least it seems plausible to me based on my past food compulsions and my past food choices compared to how much better I am now on a varied diet with lots of different plants and different protein selections.
If we ate a varied diet, with all the building blocks for good neurotransmitters in the brain, we'd all be better off. That isn't what's being disputed though. We're saying that a Western diet - high in processed foods, is bad for the brain. Potato, potahto. Sounds legit, seriously.1 -
cmriverside wrote: »That, "Do parasites make us like cats," video that was posted above was about toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is something that is cleared from the body, it isn't an ongoing parasitic infection, unless it's acquired through the placenta - as far as I can ascertain by a quick Google search.
Now, gut biome to me is more interesting and could be called a sybiotic relationship, right? IF we concede that the gut biome is responsible in part for the production of certain neurotransmitters (which, I'm thinking that HAS been established) then we could make the connection between depression/anxiety/compusion and food. It's not that big of a leap. I know the research is not there yet, but it is there for rats and pigs (addictive behavior/compulsion due to neurotransmitter deficiency)...just a matter of time, really, until the connection is made in humans. At least it seems plausible to me based on my past food compulsions and my past food choices compared to how much better I am now on a varied diet with lots of different plants and different protein selections.
If we ate a varied diet, with all the building blocks for good neurotransmitters in the brain, we'd all be better off. That isn't what's being disputed though. We're saying that a Western diet - high in processed foods, is bad for the brain. Potato, potahto. Sounds legit, seriously.
"MEOW." WTH!🤨0 -
psychod787 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »That, "Do parasites make us like cats," video that was posted above was about toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is something that is cleared from the body, it isn't an ongoing parasitic infection, unless it's acquired through the placenta - as far as I can ascertain by a quick Google search.
Now, gut biome to me is more interesting and could be called a sybiotic relationship, right? IF we concede that the gut biome is responsible in part for the production of certain neurotransmitters (which, I'm thinking that HAS been established) then we could make the connection between depression/anxiety/compusion and food. It's not that big of a leap. I know the research is not there yet, but it is there for rats and pigs (addictive behavior/compulsion due to neurotransmitter deficiency)...just a matter of time, really, until the connection is made in humans. At least it seems plausible to me based on my past food compulsions and my past food choices compared to how much better I am now on a varied diet with lots of different plants and different protein selections.
If we ate a varied diet, with all the building blocks for good neurotransmitters in the brain, we'd all be better off. That isn't what's being disputed though. We're saying that a Western diet - high in processed foods, is bad for the brain. Potato, potahto. Sounds legit, seriously.
"MEOW." WTH!🤨
Care to expand?
also, I didn't post that video, that was @jm_1234
AND I MEANT Symbiotic. ack1 -
cmriverside wrote: »psychod787 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »That, "Do parasites make us like cats," video that was posted above was about toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is something that is cleared from the body, it isn't an ongoing parasitic infection, unless it's acquired through the placenta - as far as I can ascertain by a quick Google search.
Now, gut biome to me is more interesting and could be called a sybiotic relationship, right? IF we concede that the gut biome is responsible in part for the production of certain neurotransmitters (which, I'm thinking that HAS been established) then we could make the connection between depression/anxiety/compusion and food. It's not that big of a leap. I know the research is not there yet, but it is there for rats and pigs (addictive behavior/compulsion due to neurotransmitter deficiency)...just a matter of time, really, until the connection is made in humans. At least it seems plausible to me based on my past food compulsions and my past food choices compared to how much better I am now on a varied diet with lots of different plants and different protein selections.
If we ate a varied diet, with all the building blocks for good neurotransmitters in the brain, we'd all be better off. That isn't what's being disputed though. We're saying that a Western diet - high in processed foods, is bad for the brain. Potato, potahto. Sounds legit, seriously.
"MEOW." WTH!🤨
Care to expand?
also, I didn't post that video, that was @jm_1234
AND I MEANT Symbiotic. ack
Bad joke. Oh, I know plenty about toxo. We have had cases in the immune suppressed. Never saw one act like a cat, but they did go kind of crazy.0 -
psychod787 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »psychod787 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »That, "Do parasites make us like cats," video that was posted above was about toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is something that is cleared from the body, it isn't an ongoing parasitic infection, unless it's acquired through the placenta - as far as I can ascertain by a quick Google search.
Now, gut biome to me is more interesting and could be called a sybiotic relationship, right? IF we concede that the gut biome is responsible in part for the production of certain neurotransmitters (which, I'm thinking that HAS been established) then we could make the connection between depression/anxiety/compusion and food. It's not that big of a leap. I know the research is not there yet, but it is there for rats and pigs (addictive behavior/compulsion due to neurotransmitter deficiency)...just a matter of time, really, until the connection is made in humans. At least it seems plausible to me based on my past food compulsions and my past food choices compared to how much better I am now on a varied diet with lots of different plants and different protein selections.
If we ate a varied diet, with all the building blocks for good neurotransmitters in the brain, we'd all be better off. That isn't what's being disputed though. We're saying that a Western diet - high in processed foods, is bad for the brain. Potato, potahto. Sounds legit, seriously.
"MEOW." WTH!🤨
Care to expand?
also, I didn't post that video, that was @jm_1234
AND I MEANT Symbiotic. ack
Bad joke. Oh, I know plenty about toxo. We have had cases in the immune suppressed. Never saw one act like a cat, but they did go kind of crazy.
Is is cleared by healthy people, though?
NM, side issue and I don't really care, I don't even know if jm was joking or serious by linking that.1 -
Ah ok. The book was just an example about control, not related to weight or obesity. My point was basically that things (including parasites) exert degrees of control over us and/or diminish our control over ourselves. I don't mean 100%, but even if it is .005% it is still control and I suspect it is a cumulative affect, not an individual one. But if something can control .005% of us then in theory we could be controlled 100%.
OK. But how likely that all those 0.005% factors all line up and point in the same direction?
Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", right? Maybe a corollary is "Any sufficiently complex combination of myriad tiny uncontrollable impulses is indistinguishable from free will".
I don't know whether free will is real, but I generally perceive myself as having free will (being able to make choices). So far, acting on that perception - whether it's true or not - has had beneficial results for me. Until I begin to have dramatic experiences to the contrary, I'm going to continue to act as if free will were a real thing, for much the same reason as I trust this table beside me to hold my coffee cup, even though physics suggests the table consists significantly of empty space. If I'm 100% controlled, but it's working out great to think I have choices, why change my mind? (Or maybe someone will say I can't change my mind, because 100% controlled. )
I'm feeling like this might be a good time to inject the many worlds interpretation, and the "Universe Splitter" app (a real thing, for iOS only). If you like, you can now ignore free will, and base your life choices on the quantum equivalent of the magic eight ball, feeling some confidence (?) that regardless of the outcome, your binary choice had the opposite outcome for you in some other universe.
2 -
Ah ok. The book was just an example about control, not related to weight or obesity. My point was basically that things (including parasites) exert degrees of control over us and/or diminish our control over ourselves. I don't mean 100%, but even if it is .005% it is still control and I suspect it is a cumulative affect, not an individual one. But if something can control .005% of us then in theory we could be controlled 100%.
OK. But how likely that all those 0.005% factors all line up and point in the same direction?
Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", right? Maybe a corollary is "Any sufficiently complex combination of myriad tiny uncontrollable impulses is indistinguishable from free will".
I don't know whether free will is real, but I generally perceive myself as having free will (being able to make choices). So far, acting on that perception - whether it's true or not - has had beneficial results for me. Until I begin to have dramatic experiences to the contrary, I'm going to continue to act as if free will were a real thing, for much the same reason as I trust this table beside me to hold my coffee cup, even though physics suggests the table consists significantly of empty space. If I'm 100% controlled, but it's working out great to think I have choices, why change my mind? (Or maybe someone will say I can't change my mind, because 100% controlled. )
I'm feeling like this might be a good time to inject the many worlds interpretation, and the "Universe Splitter" app (a real thing, for iOS only). If you like, you can now ignore free will, and base your life choices on the quantum equivalent of the magic eight ball, feeling some confidence (?) that regardless of the outcome, your binary choice had the opposite outcome for you in some other universe.
For me the "free will" question is a non-starter pragmatically because it would make my life untenable to act in a way that assumes I don't have free will.
It's purely an intellectual exercise (one that I find interesting), there's no way to actually *apply* a conclusion that I don't have free will and no clear template for how I would interact with others once I've concluded that they cannot control their actions.
Specifically for food: let's say I accept that I am not deciding what and how much I eat. What then? I don't understand the expected progression from there.1 -
Ah ok. The book was just an example about control, not related to weight or obesity. My point was basically that things (including parasites) exert degrees of control over us and/or diminish our control over ourselves. I don't mean 100%, but even if it is .005% it is still control and I suspect it is a cumulative affect, not an individual one. But if something can control .005% of us then in theory we could be controlled 100%.
OK. But how likely that all those 0.005% factors all line up and point in the same direction?
Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", right? Maybe a corollary is "Any sufficiently complex combination of myriad tiny uncontrollable impulses is indistinguishable from free will".
I don't know whether free will is real, but I generally perceive myself as having free will (being able to make choices). So far, acting on that perception - whether it's true or not - has had beneficial results for me. Until I begin to have dramatic experiences to the contrary, I'm going to continue to act as if free will were a real thing, for much the same reason as I trust this table beside me to hold my coffee cup, even though physics suggests the table consists significantly of empty space. If I'm 100% controlled, but it's working out great to think I have choices, why change my mind? (Or maybe someone will say I can't change my mind, because 100% controlled. )
I'm feeling like this might be a good time to inject the many worlds interpretation, and the "Universe Splitter" app (a real thing, for iOS only). If you like, you can now ignore free will, and base your life choices on the quantum equivalent of the magic eight ball, feeling some confidence (?) that regardless of the outcome, your binary choice had the opposite outcome for you in some other universe.
Mind blown Aunt Granny. How much of that Devil's Cabbage did you imbibe back in the 60's?🤟0 -
psychod787 wrote: »Ah ok. The book was just an example about control, not related to weight or obesity. My point was basically that things (including parasites) exert degrees of control over us and/or diminish our control over ourselves. I don't mean 100%, but even if it is .005% it is still control and I suspect it is a cumulative affect, not an individual one. But if something can control .005% of us then in theory we could be controlled 100%.
OK. But how likely that all those 0.005% factors all line up and point in the same direction?
Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", right? Maybe a corollary is "Any sufficiently complex combination of myriad tiny uncontrollable impulses is indistinguishable from free will".
I don't know whether free will is real, but I generally perceive myself as having free will (being able to make choices). So far, acting on that perception - whether it's true or not - has had beneficial results for me. Until I begin to have dramatic experiences to the contrary, I'm going to continue to act as if free will were a real thing, for much the same reason as I trust this table beside me to hold my coffee cup, even though physics suggests the table consists significantly of empty space. If I'm 100% controlled, but it's working out great to think I have choices, why change my mind? (Or maybe someone wthe aill say I can't change my mind, because 100% controlled. )
I'm feeling like this might be a good time to inject the many worlds interpretation, and the "Universe Splitter" app (a real thing, for iOS only). If you like, you can now free will, and base your life choices on the quantum equivalent of the magic eight ball, feeling some confidence (?) that regardless of the outcome, your binary choice had the opposite outcome for you in some other universe.
Mind blown Aunt Granny. How much of that Devil's Cabbage did you imbibe back in the 60's?🤟
I was only 14 at the end of the 60s, and a very innocent country girl. So, 70s and 80s, mostly. Maybe quite a lot.
Look up the app, really: I didn't make it up. It's amusing to contemplate.janejellyroll wrote: »Ah ok. The book was just an example about control, not related to weight or obesity. My point was basically that things (including parasites) exert degrees of control over us and/or diminish our control over ourselves. I don't mean 100%, but even if it is .005% it is still control and I suspect it is a cumulative affect, not an individual one. But if something can control .005% of us then in theory we could be controlled 100%.
OK. But how likely that all those 0.005% factors all line up and point in the same direction?
Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", right? Maybe a corollary is "Any sufficiently complex combination of myriad tiny uncontrollable impulses is indistinguishable from free will".
I don't know whether free will is real, but I generally perceive myself as having free will (being able to make choices). So far, acting on that perception - whether it's true or not - has had beneficial results for me. Until I begin to have dramatic experiences to the contrary, I'm going to continue to act as if free will were a real thing, for much the same reason as I trust this table beside me to hold my coffee cup, even though physics suggests the table consists significantly of empty space. If I'm 100% controlled, but it's working out great to think I have choices, why change my mind? (Or maybe someone will say I can't change my mind, because 100% controlled. )
I'm feeling like this might be a good time to inject the many worlds interpretation, and the "Universe Splitter" app (a real thing, for iOS only). If you like, you can now ignore free will, and base your life choices on the quantum equivalent of the magic eight ball, feeling some confidence (?) that regardless of the outcome, your binary choice had the opposite outcome for you in some other universe.
For me the "free will" question is a non-starter pragmatically because it would make my life untenable to act in a way that assumes I don't have free will.
It's purely an intellectual exercise (one that I find interesting), there's no way to actually *apply* a conclusion that I don't have free will and no clear template for how I would interact with others once I've concluded that they cannot control their actions.
Specifically for food: let's say I accept that I am not deciding what and how much I eat. What then? I don't understand the expected progression from there.
100%. Free will is a useful practical concept. Lack of free will . . . kinda isn't.1 -
The problem with these scare articles is they do not consider food in moderation they just label it "Western" or "Standard American" and then lead people to assume that if they are in this region they are poisoning themselves.
In reality I know of very few people that eat this way. Most people I know at least have a basic understanding that they need to include some things like vegetables and fruit in their diets and limit the food that has a less desirable nutrient to calorie ratio.
So to me the moral of the story is that you should not eat like an unsupervised teen too often and you will be fine.
Agreed, although I often do think -- in part from exposure on MFP and from some surveys -- that people in the US on average (and likely in the UK too) do eat quite a bit worse than those I talk to about such things and see eating most commonly, pretty much all of whom do eat vegetables and fruit and don't rely primarily on ultra processed foods and all the annoying stereotypes.
I also think "standard American diet" was bad enough as a term (I continue to think the real standard American diet is the one I grew up with, and it wasn't perfect but had nothing to do with filling the cart with ultraprocessed items or consuming loads of soda and fast food), but now it's the "western diet" or "western pattern diet"? Sigh.
I would also agree with you that it's basically just common sense. There's no nefarious "how did this happen to us"-- if you choose to eat mostly low nutrient foods and not eat your veg, that's a choice and everyone knows it's not a sensible one.
The odd thing to me is that the people that I do know personally that eat in way that is probably meant by whatever a Western or SAD is supposed to be have been more or less weight stable for decades. We are not talking obese either. We are talking healthy weight or slightly overweight. I can't say the same thing about people I know who eat Eastern/Southern/Northern, Up, Down, Left or Right Diets.
I wonder if the levels of obesity would change drastically if we took all of the food we have available now back in time 150 years.
I have a hard time imagining how you'd inject the modern food composition and unbiquity into 1870, given that most people (and things) stuck pretty close to one place. Mobility - for us and food - is a huge part of where we find ourselves now, and they didn't have it. It's complicated in other ways, too.
I'm old enough to remember when the ubiquity of ready-to-eat food was dramatically lower than it is now (and I was adult at the time). Because I had older parents, I also have some anecdata about how people lived going back into the 1920s. My father's family were largely subsistence farmers before WWII, and my dad was adult when the US got into WWII. I'd say that within that "mostly-subsistence" lifestyle, they were consuming calorie levels above what most of us would consume today (when they could get it, and they mostly needed to get it). The nutrition wasn't always great (my dad talked about going to school in later Winter at times with a lunch bucket full of just beans, because that was what they had). It was a big family, and they were slim, even skinny. They burned a boatload of calories every day - likely fewer in Winter, because not planting/cultivating/harvesting/preserving, but still lots of livestock care, laundry, cooking, hunting. etc., to be done.
If I can get past the logistics of getting modern food into their hands, I don't think the subsistence farmer side of the family would've gotten obese on a typical modern overweight-to-obese person's calorie intake of modern food. Would the nutrition have been worse on modern food? Not sure. In summer, probably yes. Overall, not sure.
My dad, b. 1917, had an active job until retirement (by the time I met him, he was 38, and worked as a carpenter/repair-maintenance person for the county park system. Lots of driving, but very active at the work locations. He was a good eater, of mostly nutritious food, as I was growing up. He was reasonably slim, probably normal BMI. He retired before age 65, and still had active hobby pursuits (gardening, carpentry, cutting trees, etc.), but got fat - certainly well up in the overweight BMI range, maybe lower obese. Seeing pictures of himself from one Christmas, he decided he was too fat, so he ate less (this would've been 1980s, calorie counting was not practical), lost weight back to what was probably the healthy BMI range, and stayed there for the rest of his life.
We read stories here all the time about people who were reasonably slim until they got a desk job (or variations on that theme). We talk about the food side of obesity all the time, not so much about the activity side.
I agree that many people don't understand how dramatically different the current culture of prepared-food ubiquity is from before (say) 1980. But, even though it's less talked about, I also think many people don't understand how different the routine daily activity level was before 1980, either. There have been huge changes in that realm many ways, certainly the automated-office/screen-based-entertainment being a fair fraction of the reason, but there's much more.
I kinda suspect the movement side affects the brain, too; and the obesity definitely does. Seems like I've read some research to support that (differences in cognitive capability among slim/active vs. overweight/inactive people; cognitive performance improvements from exercise regimens), but I don't have cites.
TL; DR: It's not just the food. It's the movement. All of it affects the brain.
It is funny how you spent an entire post agreeing with my premise but still managed to call me out on the logistics.
To be fair, it was (IMO) not at all clear what your premise was, based solely on the post to which I replied. It could've been that our ancestors would've gotten fat eating all that fast food, too.
I called out the logistics, because they sort of made me blow a circuit breaker, until I did a reset and forced myself to contemplate it despite the implausibility.
Side history note: There's long been a tradition of huge serving bowls of stuff, especially for company, in my subculture that we always assumed grew out of the farm-culture neighbor-ladies competing over who best could feed the traveling threshing crews, in terms of both quantity and quality. It was a point of pride.
Improve your brain function so you can read my mind better!2 -
Last post for the day and I'll get off of the control/free will side of this.
In the context of food, you can make the argument that free will does not exist or is severely impaired for people with Prader-Willi Syndrome where they can literally eat themselves to death. So if we are their parent, spouse... having this understanding would guide how we interact with them - hopefully in a more productive manner. Similarly with food or drugs that impair self control/free will, this understanding can guide interactions and legislation.
Practically, the view of an impaired free will/impaired self control can be used in society in many ways. To foster feelings of understanding, compassion, patience, to help us be less judgemental, help us be more humble, and to determine responsibility/punishment.
Our judicial system takes into account a lack of free will when determining responsibility/punishment for people with a mental disorders.
Personally, considering a lack of free will is useful when I direct it towards others and having free will when directed toward myself.
I think there's a big difference between recognizing when someone has a diagnosed condition that is clearly associated with reduced ability to control impulses and the blanket assumption that my husband (who has no conditions) doesn't have free will.
The first would be crucial to maintain a healthy relationship with that person. The second would erode my ability to form any kind of adult connection with my spouse. How can I have reasonable boundaries with someone who isn't accountable for any decision that they make? How do you build a home and financial life with someone when you've decided that no expectations or consequences are appropriate?2 -
Last post for the day and I'll get off of the control/free will side of this.
In the context of food, you can make the argument that free will does not exist or is severely impaired for people with Prader-Willi Syndrome where they can literally eat themselves to death. So if we are their parent, spouse... having this understanding would guide how we interact with them - hopefully in a more productive manner. Similarly with food or drugs that impair self control/free will, this understanding can guide interactions and legislation.
Practically, the view of an impaired free will/impaired self control can be used in society in many ways. To foster feelings of understanding, compassion, patience, to help us be less judgemental, help us be more humble, and to determine responsibility/punishment.
Our judicial system takes into account a lack of free will when determining responsibility/punishment for people with mental disorders.
Personally, considering a diminished free will is useful when I direct it towards others and having free will when directed toward myself.
I was trying to be very careful to carve out and acknowledge the idea that there are end-cases where so-called "free will" is impaired. (If I missed a spot where I should've reiterated that, I'm sorry for the unclarity.) Yes, it's good to recognize that. But, IMO and IME, it doesn't apply in a meaningful way for the majority of people.
Most of us have choices, and we make choices, and those choices have consequences. When the consequences are more distant from the choices; or when the consequences flow from aggregation of many tiny, not very mindful choices (like how big a handful of M&Ms to grab, when they taste good); we're probably less likely to perceive the "in the moment" importance of those choices, and may not experience them as choices at all.
Most of the people in my life don't have Prader-Willi, or anything close to that. It's much more common that they want to eat the whole basket of beer-battered onion rings with ranch dressing because they're yummy, and don't really connect (don't want to connect) the cumulative effect of consistent, repeated choices like that on health and body weight.
There are various realms where people choose the short-term pleasure over their own (more remote, theoretical) long-term good. I certainly do. Do parasites or gut microbiome or somesuch affect finances, for example? (I guess they maybe could, but I think the short-run happiness/long-run benefit tradeoff is a better fit for Occam's razor.)
Yes, we should make generous interpretations of other people's behavior. That can be taken overboard, too. If you think I'm haranguing my friends on the daily when they complain about their weight, and tell me they "can't lose" or "can't resist", I'm not doing that. Some of them posit magical reasons why I was able to lose weight, and they can't. If I dispute them, it's in mild terms, such as "that's not what I did, I just ate less": Just not letting false interpretations they make hang in the air. I'm not giving advice unless they ask for advice in very clear and specific terms. But inside my own head, I think that - in more cases than not - they are choosing their course, cumulatively, over time. I was. I'm not extra-special well adjusted or (heh) anti-hedonist. Far from it.3 -
So back to the article for a minute, they specifically chose high sugar and high fat options, which is relevant because of course "processed food" (which they keep referring to) is quite a bit more diverse. Plain old powdered peanuts, with nothing added, is one of the processed foods I've been eating a lot of lately, and as you are removing a significant part of the peanut (most of the fat), it fits any definition. Yet it's got no added sugar and is less high fat than peanuts themselves. I really wish more specific language would be used.
I found an earlier version of the study, over 4 days in 2016-17. Some aspects of it are quite similar: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5322971/
From the study (as well as the article about the more recent one), the foods being tested were chosen because they were high in sugar and sat fat (and the so called Western style diet was defined as being high in sugar and sat fat -- HFS diets.
Given the discussions about what precisely is being referred to in the processed food group, I think that's important -- they were testing the supposed effect of increasing sat fat and added sugar in the diet. (I think this is really important to understand as people immediately jump to "it's the additives; all those words I cannot pronounce!")
In the prior study, they focused on breakfast and the non Western style diet people were given similar cal food that was also processed and similar palatability and food type, but lower added sugar and sat fat. For example, they each had milkshakes and toasted sandwiches, but one group's options were much higher in sugar and sat fat than the other.
At the beginning of the study, the participants found the options equally tasty.
During the experiment, the chocolate milkshake group consumed more at breakfast (and did worse on one of the tests), but not more during the day as a whole. Carb and sugar remained the same (despite elevated sugar at breakfast), but sat fat was higher in the milkshake group.
The conclusions note that they cannot tell if the reason for the worse performance is: (1) the breakfast specifically, and the higher added sugar and sat fat; (2) the increased sat fat for the day; or (3) increased sat fat and added sugar for the day but the chocolate milkshake people weren't accurately reporting their sugar intake. They said option (1) was mostly likely but (2) was consistent with other studies showing negative cognitive effects on animals when given a higher sat fat diet.1 -
I think the point of the article is "Consuming a western diet for as little as one week can subtly impair brain function and encourage slim and otherwise healthy young people to overeat". I'm guessing a western diet is defined as what the majority of the population eats on average.
The western diet seems to be defined as high sugar and high sat fat.
The WS diet group got breakfasts of "a toasted sandwich and a milk shake, high in saturated fat and added sugar (total KJ = 4023; 33% fat [19% saturated], 51% carbohydrate [29% sugar] and 16% protein)" on days 1 and 8, and then were instructed to eat "two Belgian waffles for breakfast or dessert on 4 days" and "to obtain a main meal and drink/dessert from a set of options from a popular fast-food chain on the other 2 days" for days 5-7. Otherwise, "participants were instructed to otherwise try and maintain their normal diet."
The control group, on the other hand, got "breakfast consisting of a toasted sandwich and a milk shake, low in saturated fat and added sugar (total KJ = 2954; 13% fat [5% saturated], 29% carbohydrate [10% sugar] and 58% protein)" and "[o]n Days 2–7, they were asked to maintain their normal diet."
Interesting, here are some of the conclusions:
"In our previous study [discussed in my past post], we observed that increases in blood glucose were greater across breakfast in the WS-diet group relative to controls, but this was not observed here."
"The reduction in HDLM" (one of the test measurements) "in the WS-diet group was strongly associated with change in performance on the wanting and liking test" -- in other words, the people in the WSD group who did worse were also the people who seemed to have a greater increase in their liking for sugary cereals.
"One week's exposure to a WS-diet caused a measurable weakening of appetitive control, as measured by the two key ratings on the wanting and liking test. Prior to the intervention, participants viewed palatable breakfast foods and judged how much they wanted to eat them, and then how much they liked their actual taste. This test was repeated after participants had eaten to satiety. Across these pre- and post-meal tests, wanting ratings declined far more than ratings of taste liking. This manifestation of appetitive control—that is the expectation that food is less desirable than it actually tastes—changed in participants following the Western-style dietary intervention. When sated, the WS-diet group reported an equivalent decline in wanting and taste liking."
My note: exactly how this would work/affect people in real life seems unclear.Deli/ bakery/ street food on average tasted better so I ate more of it and lost weight on each two week trip. The food I ate was unhealthy and my activity level was walking around 10+ miles per day. My guess is, lean countries have a more active lifestyle, less food options/less western food (i.e., smaller grocery stores), and smaller portion sizes.
I suspect that it's a combination of food customs (which likely were stronger and so lasted to a greater extent than in the US), portion size, and mobility. There are differences within subgroups in the US which I think often have to do with more walking/active lifestyles in particular.0 -
psychod787 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »psychod787 wrote: »cmriverside wrote: »That, "Do parasites make us like cats," video that was posted above was about toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is something that is cleared from the body, it isn't an ongoing parasitic infection, unless it's acquired through the placenta - as far as I can ascertain by a quick Google search.
Now, gut biome to me is more interesting and could be called a sybiotic relationship, right? IF we concede that the gut biome is responsible in part for the production of certain neurotransmitters (which, I'm thinking that HAS been established) then we could make the connection between depression/anxiety/compusion and food. It's not that big of a leap. I know the research is not there yet, but it is there for rats and pigs (addictive behavior/compulsion due to neurotransmitter deficiency)...just a matter of time, really, until the connection is made in humans. At least it seems plausible to me based on my past food compulsions and my past food choices compared to how much better I am now on a varied diet with lots of different plants and different protein selections.
If we ate a varied diet, with all the building blocks for good neurotransmitters in the brain, we'd all be better off. That isn't what's being disputed though. We're saying that a Western diet - high in processed foods, is bad for the brain. Potato, potahto. Sounds legit, seriously.
"MEOW." WTH!🤨
Care to expand?
also, I didn't post that video, that was @jm_1234
AND I MEANT Symbiotic. ack
Bad joke. Oh, I know plenty about toxo. We have had cases in the immune suppressed. Never saw one act like a cat, but they did go kind of crazy.
Just to be clear, the claim isn't that toxo makes people act like cats, but causes people to become crazy cat ladies who really love cats.
(I read the article that YouTube seems to be based on.)1 -
There certainly must be something to it...I mean, just look at Trump 🤣4
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I think the point of the article is "Consuming a western diet for as little as one week can subtly impair brain function and encourage slim and otherwise healthy young people to overeat". I'm guessing a western diet is defined as what the majority of the population eats on average.
I personally encounter this when I have my monthly cheat day/weekend, oh man, I have some severe cravings the week after. Regarding Italian portion control, that is the point of the article, certain foods impair the brain's ability for portion control. It's possible that non-western foods do not impair the brain as much so people can control their portions.
Off topic but since we're talking about Europe. From my recent trips to Italy and France, IMO the restaurant food on average was not tasty so I ate less. Maybe if Europe's food was more delicious they would be heavier?
Deli/ bakery/ street food on average tasted better so I ate more of it and lost weight on each two week trip. The food I ate was unhealthy and my activity level was walking around 10+ miles per day. My guess is, lean countries have a more active lifestyle, less food options/less western food (i.e., smaller grocery stores), and smaller portion sizes.
Thank you for this--it was the best laugh I've had in a while.2
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