Slashdot Mirror

1) You had a pretty good response going but you had to go and put a link. To an article copyright the "The American Society For Nutrition", whose sustaining partners include: The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Nestle Nutrition Institute, McDonalds, The Sugar Association Inc, Unilever North America, Kraft Food Groups, et al. https://www.nutrition.org/our-members/corporate-members/our-sustaining-members/
I'm thinking that the science produced by researchers which they sponsor is going to be just a tad bit biased, don't you?

2,3) I've seen all kinds of teeth on different breeds of modern dogs, are you saying that a chihuahua's teeth are the same as those of a pit bull or rottweiler?
Yes, they have molars ( I was mistaken in thinking they didn't), here's what they're for:
http://dogs.lovetoknow.com/wiki/A_Dog's_Teeth
Molars handle the heavy duty work of a dog's teeth, breaking down larger hard items like bones, large kibble or dog biscuits. Every adult dog has ten molars just behind the premolars; two on each side of the top jaw and three on each side of the lower jaw.

4) An animal dying of starvation, illness, or exposure is natural, similarly dying from parasites, that's the way life is supposed to work, generally that is referred to as nature. Wolves didn't "ate raw meat" wolves eat raw meat and they will continue to do so until we idiot humans finally exterminate the last of them.
I don't have a dog, I have a cat. I got and keep the cat because it kills and eats rats and mice and the odd bird now and again. I got it to protect the avocado and other fruit trees. It is extremely healthy, agile(thus its nice kill rate), and relaxed. I feed it of course because I think there aren't enough rodents to keep it full.

5.) I completely agree that supermarket meat is an abomination that is why I only typically buy soap there. Occasionally I'll buy the odd organic vegetable too but mostly I shop at farmers markets. My meat I buy online or from local sources which provide grass fed and finished animals, beef, pork, lamb...

  6.) Thanks, I did not know that.

A low carbohydrate, high fat diet can also help reduce, or eliminate, symptoms of not being obese.

Did you assume nobody would actually go to the link you provided? From the abstract, their "high fat" group still had a carb intake of 44%, which clearly does not qualify as "low carbohydrate" as stated in the GP's link: "...dietary regimen consisting of unlimited meats and eggs, 4 ounces of hard cheese, 2 cups of salad vegetables, and 1 cup of low-carbohydrate vegetables per day. This diet restricts carbohydrate intake to fewer than 20 grams per day."

The abstract also begins with "Consumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods has contributed to the rising incidence of obesity...", but GP did not advocate poor nutrition.

Try again.

- T

A low carbohydrate, high fat diet can also help reduce, or eliminate, symptoms of not being obese.

6000 mg vitamin C daily, not counting vitamin C in the food? That is a lot. Consult your physician and be very, very cautious about suggesting medical advice if you are not prepared to take moral and financial responsibility for it. Yes, vitamin C is important. Yes, increased intake of vitamin C has been show to have several health benefits, including reduced stroke and cardiovascular disease risks, especially in smokers. However, "increased intake" means "well below 1g/day".

6000 is 30-100 times the recommended daily dose. Although studies indicate that vitamin C intake at 2-4 g/day may not have large adverse effects (1), one has to be extremely cautious when recommending supplementing your diet by a 100x of a daily dose. The fact that you don't experience any adverse effects such as kidney stones (at least yet) does not mean that a person reading your comment will not suffer from that either.

Apart from the problems with the digestive tract, vitamin C can hamper endurance in physical exercises (2). Moreover, vitamin C not used by the organism (which requires as little as 100-200mg / day) is excreted (3). For that, it is metabolised to oxalic acid, which in turn can cause kidney stones (4 and the references therein). So yes, although problems with vit. C overdose do not seem to be common and are not comparable to overdoses of some other vitamins, at 6g/d saying that "C can't hurt" is very risky (especially as supplements can contain other vitamins as well, and the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K can cause severe adverse effects -- vitamine poisoning -- when overdosed).

The highest risk-free level of daily intake for vitamine C has been recently proposed to be 1000 mg (1g) (5, 6). People, before you install some shady software someone recommends at a biology-oriented website, ask your IT friend for advice. Before your follow medical advice from Slashdot, consult your physician.

"Rational by choice."

Prove it. Read the evidence based medical studies rather than trusting and spreading anecdotes.

(1) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-4887.1999.tb06926.x/abstract
(2) http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/1/142.short
(3) http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/69/6/1086.short
(4) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2362.1998.00349.x/full
(5) http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=189543
(6) http://www.pnas.org/content/93/8/3704.short

6000 mg vitamin C daily, not counting vitamin C in the food? That is a lot. Consult your physician and be very, very cautious about suggesting medical advice if you are not prepared to take moral and financial responsibility for it. Yes, vitamin C is important. Yes, increased intake of vitamin C has been show to have several health benefits, including reduced stroke and cardiovascular disease risks, especially in smokers. However, "increased intake" means "well below 1g/day".

6000 is 30-100 times the recommended daily dose. Although studies indicate that vitamin C intake at 2-4 g/day may not have large adverse effects (1), one has to be extremely cautious when recommending supplementing your diet by a 100x of a daily dose. The fact that you don't experience any adverse effects such as kidney stones (at least yet) does not mean that a person reading your comment will not suffer from that either.

Apart from the problems with the digestive tract, vitamin C can hamper endurance in physical exercises (2). Moreover, vitamin C not used by the organism (which requires as little as 100-200mg / day) is excreted (3). For that, it is metabolised to oxalic acid, which in turn can cause kidney stones (4 and the references therein). So yes, although problems with vit. C overdose do not seem to be common and are not comparable to overdoses of some other vitamins, at 6g/d saying that "C can't hurt" is very risky (especially as supplements can contain other vitamins as well, and the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K can cause severe adverse effects -- vitamine poisoning -- when overdosed).

The highest risk-free level of daily intake for vitamine C has been recently proposed to be 1000 mg (1g) (5, 6). People, before you install some shady software someone recommends at a biology-oriented website, ask your IT friend for advice. Before your follow medical advice from Slashdot, consult your physician.

"Rational by choice."

Prove it. Read the evidence based medical studies rather than trusting and spreading anecdotes.

(1) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-4887.1999.tb06926.x/abstract
(2) http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/1/142.short
(3) http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/69/6/1086.short
(4) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2362.1998.00349.x/full
(5) http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=189543
(6) http://www.pnas.org/content/93/8/3704.short

I would like to see a source for your claim that insects are 90% efficient. And cows produce milk, which per this source, is pretty damn good (magic??), so good i'm not sure how much to trust the source: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S/T3.expansion.html

Replacing HFCS with sugar isn't going to reduce consumption.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/116.full

here yeah go http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/4/537/F1.expansion.html

O.K. You apparently have spent enough time on /. to recognize me, but are too much of a coward to actually log in an run the risk of me recognizing you (very unlikely, BTW), because you are citing a post from February.

For the record, I'm both. I have a Ph.D. in animal nutrition. That makes me both an animal scientist and a nutritionist.

Most nutritional research is conducted in animals. A Prof at my old University is studying Phosphorus absorption using Ussing chambers and pig intestines with money from NIH because it has implications for treating people with problems absorbing minerals. When Dr. Dave Baker, a pioneer of nutrition from the University of Illinois, member of the National Academy of Sciences and Animal Nutrition professor died he was honored with a write-up in the Journal of Nutrition. (I was fortunate to have known the man. A friend of mine was his last graduate student. One of the truly great scientists). My current lab is in the process of figuring out the logistics for collaborating on a study with implications for diabetes research (we are trying to figure out the best diet to cause Islet Cells to proliferate in pigs).

And finally, just in case you missed what I was implying by pointing out the overlap between animal scientists nutritionists and human nutrition, Yes. I do believe that the nutritional concepts are the same, even if the goals of the average diet differ.

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/126/10/2494.full.pdf

Clinical studies have demonstrated that although
low fat diets decrease plasma HDL cholesterol concen
trations (Garg et al. 1992), increases in plasma TAG
have been observed only with concomitant intake of
simple carbohydrates (Grundy 1986).

Citations please? Someone has been watching too much Fidel Castro or something.

Really? You're not going to spend like thirty seconds on Google and consider your lack of familiarity with common knowledge to be a valid debating point? Your choice.

Food insecurity:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/101/1/e3
http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/opinion/18wed2.html
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/129/2/510S

Medical coverage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States
(Just follow the damned links.)

Education:

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnces.ed.gov%2Fpubs2005%2F2005021.pdf&rct=j&q=comparison%20of%20education%20in%20the%20united%20states%20to%20other%20countries&ei=9d-KTIjRBISdlgeC7KmsCQ&usg=AFQjCNHg2XP3uyuKjnED6uGl91FHXaS17g&cad=rja

I should also mention that the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration per capita on the planet, but I'll let you look that one up yourself.

-FL

• Effect of a phytoestrogen food supplement on reproductive health in normal males

Because changes in sex hormones have a much greater effect on infants because they are actively developing, there have been even more studies showing that soy forumula has no negative effect to sexual development:

• Soy protein formulas in children: no hormonal effects in long-term feeding.
• Exposure to Soy-Based Formula in Infancy and Endocrinological and Reproductive Outcomes in Young Adulthood
• Safety of Soy-Based Infant Formulas Containing Isoflavones: The Clinical Evidence

> It's not B12, it's B3 as stated by others.

So the guy I replied to isn't a chemical-knowledge-pinhead, he's a can't-remember-one-digit-number-pinhead? Thanks, that really cleared things up for me!

> And if you looked up "Hominy" you'd see that it's true.

Interesting. Yes, you are correct that treating corn with alkali generates Vitamin B3. However, it's true for reasons unconnected with the reaction of protein with the alkali. From LAGUNA J, CARPENTER KJ (September 1951). "Raw versus processed corn in niacin-deficient diets". J. Nutr. 45 (1): 21–8. PMID 14880960. http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=14880960. :

It seems more likely that the present results can be explained by the findings of Kodicek (Chanduri and Kodicek, '50; Kodicek, '51), reported during the course of these experiments. He demonstrated the presence in corn and other cereals of a "precursor" of niacinamide which is normally unavailable to the rat. It is liberated by alkaline but not acid hydrolysis, as shown by biological assay with rats.

I am, of course, assuming the poster I replied to was using the word "protein" to mean "generic polypeptide" and was not talking about a particular protein after post-translational modification (since such modification could theoretically produce the kind of niacin precursor which Kodicek talks about).

> I'm not actually a lawyer, I'm just THAT pedantic.

I am a mathematician, I get paid to be pedantic. :-)

Based on the human body and the fact that Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) is so utterly vital to our health and to our brains, the leading theory is that the early hominids who rapidly evolved much larger brains was due to an abundance of seafood in their diet, not savanna meat.

No where in the article is this mentioned. I'm almost inclined to think that this "article" is another one of these that has been surreptitiously sponsored by an industry - in this case not the pharmaceutical industry but the meat industry.

Anyhow, read for yourself the convincing data about why our ancestors were probably seafood eaters and not hunters as has traditionally believed. Furthermore, if you simply ask yourself how many restaurants there are in the world where meat is served raw - which for species which are truly carnivorous is the way it is consumed and to which their digestive tracks have adapted - vs. how many there are where seafood is served raw. Sashimi anyone?

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/4/641

This shows how reduced dietary intake decreased ageing.
This would be consistent to support the hypothesis of increased calories would equate to increase ageing.

Modded 'Informative' are you kidding me? This is just regurgitated libertarian political rhetoric

Yet it has been proven time and again that it is our governments that restrict our ability to make our lives better. Look at deathanol, which is being added to fuels against many consumers' wishes. The scientific proof that corn-ethanol is worthless is there, but still the corn lobby gets it done. Anti-consumer, anti-nourishment, anti-poverty and it exists. Why?

So in the 19th century, when there was little or no government interference in the economy, people didn't starve?

Actually, it was the market that provided decreased malnourishment in the 19th century. Look at the investors who bought more boats to ship food from the West to England. Soon it was discovered (1880?) that the meat had disease, which caused new investors and farmers and produce makers to find ways to make the meat safe for consumption. If you dig deep into England's malnourishment in the 1800s, you'll see WHY it happened, and it wasn't the free market that caused it. There were a great many food regulations at the time. Thankfully, the market wanted to sell food, and in order to do so they had to learn how to NOT kill those they were selling to. So they found ways to combat airborne bacteria before the USDA and FDA even came into being.

Then he, like you was wrong. The number of malnourished people in the world is increasing, has been constantly since the end of the cold war when pretty much the entire world subscribed to American-style capitalism, and you can check that fact for yourself.

Please provide a link to this blatant bold-faced lie. I did a simple Google search and came up with this link, which to paraphrase says the proportion of malnourished children in the world is on a decline, as I said. The actual number might be increasing in total, but this is do to the poor having kids when they shouldn't be. Duh. If overall the percentage of hungry is going down, but the number overall is going up, it is due to population booms, not due to the inability to feed them properly. Farming, transporting and storing food is a process that points to longevity of the market you'll sell to. Hungry people should be reducing their offspring during hardship, not increasing more hungry children.

The universe doesn't run on market forces. Speculators can't make your soil more fertile or you crops flourish. Your market rhetoric is both tiresome and misguided.

Again, lies. Speculators CAN make your soil more fertile. If you're a farmer, and you want a profitable crop, you will sell a future price for that crop to a speculator. By bringing in a stable selling price, YOU can invest in techniques needed to make your farm more fertile. If the price of your crop skyrockets, you still get your fixed price. If it plummets, you still get your fixed price.

Speculators are working to better mankind by stabilizing the price that farmers need to survive no matter the weather. If you look at the speculators, you'll see that they create an incredible incentive for farmers to continue to make their farms healthier and more efficient.

It is when speculation is restricted and regulated that we have problems. Floods, droughts, bacteria and other problems can not be handled by government intervention, but they can be handled by speculation of others to stabilize the crop pricing for those outputting the desired items.

The fallacy here is that the assumption that the government or science has any firm idea of how to force somebody else or even one's self to not be fat. There's just that fascist impulse to raise the hammer of punishment and expect the overweight to find a way.

Here's a set of links on various ties between obesity and infection, to get the pot boiling.

• TCS Daily - Eating Some Crow on Fat
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Lipid metabolic changes in experimentally induced ...[Indian J Exp Biol. 2001] - PubMed Result
• Obesity Virus?
• BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity 'may be linked to virus'
• Bacterial-Modulated Signaling Pathways in Gut Homeostasis -- Lee 1 (21): pe24 -- Science Signaling
• An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increase...[Nature. 2006] - PubMed Result
• Obesity alters gut microbial ecology. [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005] - PubMed Result
• Gut microbiota and its possible relationship with ...[Mayo Clin Proc. 2008] - PubMed Result
• Biology News: Fat people harbour 'fat' microbes
• Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
• Symposium: Emerging Role of Pathogens in Chronic Diseases ... Uses the term 'Infectobesity'.

Availability to Rats of Iron from Spinach: Effects of Oxalic Acid, which agrees that calcium oxalate is not readily bioavailable, but says that the iron in spinach is actually more bioavailable with the addition of oxalic acid. The only "spinach iron myths" I could find in half an hour of searching were basically bad paraphrases of the wikipedia page, which agrees with 20% RDA iron, but repeats that the iron is not bioavailable because of oxalate.
Furthermore, any reference to Dr. E. Von Wolf and his 1870 mistake are only repititions, with no name or anything about his study.
I am know going to wash my brain with bleach, for I know not how, after endless searching though blog after blog, mindlessly parroting one another, I would long for a simple citation.

Triple my bodymass in grams of protein is 726.75 grams of protein.

Sorry. 2.5x the "high protein" diet.

Back to your enumerated points (I'm focusing on your ridiculously-off-the-charts-high-protein/low carb/low fat diet)

Do you have Inuit genetics? Whoops.
Do you eat large amounts of seal blubber and other fats like the Inuit? Whoops.
Do you eat the mere ~100 grams of protein and ~200 grams of carbohydrate that the Inuit eat per day? Whoops.
Do you have Maasai genetics? Whoops.
Do you eat the very high-fat diet of the Maasai -- so high fat that a common treat for kids is fat boiled in water? Whoops.
Do you have Bantu genetics? Whoops.
"Northern" and "Southern" indians are not technical terms. Whoops. Did you mean to refer to a particular study or were you pulling that out of a hat?
Do you have any native american genetics from any group? Whoops.
Are you of the mistaken notion that people of different genetic makeups process foods the same? Big whoops. (ever heard of "lactose intolerance"? "Lactose tolerance" is an evolutionary adaptation developed in cultures whose diet included dairy. Cultures adapt to their native diets)
Have there been a ridiculously large number of studies on the negative effects of saturated fats? Whoops.

My average training week includes 30mins of weight lifting upon waking, 1hour of training for lunch, and 1 hour of weights/football/throwing everyday for 4 weeks.

That's it? You eat 600 grams of protein per day and that's all you do? For God's sake!

Look, you're free to destroy your body against the recommendations of all major medical organizations who've commented on high protein diets (and by "high protein", they're typically talking about 1g/lb, not 2.5g/lb). But don't try and pretend that it's somehow natural or good for you.

It's odd that the idea that a virus can contribute to, or even be a causation of obesity is so poorly received here. Bear in mind that these are experiments on test animals on a controlled diet, not some survey of McDonalds patrons.

Perhaps because the linked article was a blog...

Study on rhesus monkeys and marmosets.

"In study 1, we observed spontaneously occurring Ad-36 antibodies in 15 male rhesus monkeys, and a significant longitudinal association of positive antibody status with weight gain and plasma cholesterol lowering during the 18 mo after viral antibody appearance. In study 2, which was a randomized controlled experiment, three male marmosets inoculated with Ad-36 had a threefold body weight gain, a greater fat gain and lower serum cholesterol relative to baseline (P 0.05) than three uninfected controls at 28 wk postinoculation. These studies illustrate that the adiposity-promoting effect of Ad-36 occurs in two nonhuman primate species and demonstrates the usefulness of nonhuman primates for further evaluation of Ad-36-induced adiposity."