Diet of Fast Food and Candy May Cause Alzheimer's

lurking_giant sends along a Reuters report on research out of Sweden indicating that a diet rich in fat, sugar, and cholesterol could increase the risk of Alzheimer's, at least in mice. "'On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain,' [said] Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center... 'We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's.' ... These mice showed chemical changes in their brains, indicating an abnormal build-up of the protein tau as well as signs that cholesterol in food reduced levels of another protein called Arc involved in memory storage."

Comments

Obvious?

[Max Romantschuk]

I'm not surprised that generally mismanaging your body with bad nutrition would make it more likely to get some kind of degenerative disease... While it's nice to find hard evidence I think at least the geek population would be plain dumb so assume otherwise.

Now if we could only get governments to have some kind of taxes on the bad stuff, and subsidize the good stuff. I'd eat better if I could afford it, quite frankly.

Re:Obvious?

[kestasjk]

Yeah fast food and sugar causes alzheimers, how blindingly obvious is that?

Actually why is that obvious? Alzheimers is caused by the inability for neurons to clean up after themselves properly, it's not obvious at all and in fact this statistical link might not even be correct because we are currently only theorizing on the mechanism.

Why the first two replies are commenting on the obviousness of this I have no idea.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife will probably tell me she saw this story on Ophra...

Re:Obvious?

[Craevenwulfe]

Yeah, Coke is WAY cheaper than tap water and mcdonalds/pizza hut cost me so much less than a chicken salad.

Re:Obvious?

[wisty]

Not a great idea. A lot of US agriculture industries have a lot of "government relations" clout. See Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?. Then we can talk about McDonalds, KFC, and Coca Cola.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now if we could only get governments to have some kind of taxes on the bad stuff, and subsidize the good stuff. I'd eat better if I could afford it, quite frankly."

We all die regardless of our diet, it's simply the laws of physics and biology playing themselves out. If we take ancient lifespans into account, even disregarding "bad nutrition" a modern person who eats poorly is still often more healthy then many ancient people who ate "healthy". Not only that, no one really knows how much age is genetically determined and what other factors influence aging. Our aging science is in the beginning stages IMHO. There's too many factors to account for, the cellular environment and contingency on the ceullular level is something that can't easily be measured, but only measured 'grossly'.

Re:Obvious?

[JamesTRexx]

*tinfoil hat on*
Don't forget that it's easier to control the sheeple when they're not healthy and strong.
*tinfoil hat off*

Re:Obvious?

[foobsr]

Ever also thought about a relation of food and pharma industry?

CC.

Re:Obvious?

[vintagepc]

Stats tend to be quite useless when it comes to these things... Correlation is NOT causation!
e.g. if I eat an orange every day and my stress level goes down, does not mean the orange is reducing my stress!
Granted, it's possible, but it would be more reasonable to assume the brief break while I'm eating the orange is what is beneficial.

Re:Obvious?

[dgatwood]

It is somewhat naive to claim that those things are "really, really, really bad for you", though. While it is clear that these can have significant negative side effects on weight in some portion of the population if consumed in excess, the fact that this does not occur across the population universally, however, means that one could argue that the consumption of these foods by people who do not exhibit extreme weight gain from them might actually be helpful, and that not consuming energy-rich foods may be starving those people's cells. Everyone's body has different nutritional needs in terms of calories, etc., and painting with too broad a brush does more harm than good when it comes to understanding the issues involved.

For example, by some people's standards, caffeine is really, really bad for you. The same goes for alcohol. However, we now know that both of these substances decrease the risk of stroke and heart disease. Caffeine even decreases the risk of Alzheimer's and other neurological disorders. Following conventional wisdom and common sense to answer nutritional or medical questions frequently results in getting entirely the wrong answer.

Re:Obvious?

[gEvil (beta)]

I wouldn't say that it's 'obvious' that eating food that isn't really nutritious could be related to Alzheimer's. However, I would say that I wouldn't particularly be 'surprised' to learn that it might be. That said, at this point it appears that there may be a link between the two, but that there's nothing absolutely definitive.

Re:Obvious?

[six025]

It certainly is not "obvious'. Also, "fast food and candy" are attributes more likely associated with recent generations. Degenerative brain diseases typically affect older people who are much less likely to have lived that kind of lifestyle to a level that is impacting significantly on their health.

My aunty, at 72 years old, and slowly but surely is descending towards full Alzheimer's disease, yet her lifetime diet could hardly be considered "junk food". It was more like the typical diet of the working classes of her generation: "meat and three veg". Later in life (the last 15 years) she lived in the country (very clean air), took regular walks, and ate fresh vegetables from the garden every day.

Diet is very important for many reasons, but I don't think science will find a single smoking gun for these types of brain diseases. Rather there will be a number of highly complex interrelating factors that accumulate over a lifetime, some might even result from subtle behavioural issues, and some will be passed on in genetic code also.

Peace,
Andy.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

"one could argue that the consumption of these foods by people who do not exhibit extreme weight gain from them might actually be helpful, and that not consuming energy-rich foods may be starving those people's cells."

There are plenty of energy rich foods that aren't highly refined and stripped of important nutrients. Just because you have a high metabolism does not mean you need 40 oz of soda and some candy bars.

Re:Obvious?

[dgatwood]

Soda is debatable. It provides a significant amount of caffeine, so the question is which way the balance swings. That may well depend on quantity consumed and the specific soda in question.

Candy bars? Hardly. Chocolate (and particularly dark chocolate) is rich in antioxidants. Candy bars (within reason) can actually prolong your life in spite of the sugar in them.

Twinkies and corn syrup (with added high fructose corn syrup!?!?!), perhaps. Two pound quadruple cheeseburgers, sure. Chocolate and sodas? Not necessarily. Like I said, common sense is frequently wrong when it comes to your health....

Re:Obvious?

[Hatta]

Why the first two replies are commenting on the obviousness of this I have no idea.

Because people like to blame the victim.

Re:Obvious?

[gnud]

Why'd you take your tinfoil hat off?
Wait... they've gotten to you!

Re:Obvious?

[riggah]

I'm not sure about it being obvious. What they're talking about is a preliminary study upon which a loose hypothesis is based.

What people don't seem to be able to grasp is that "junk food" is called that because it's junk. Period. Candy really doesn't have any redeeming features, either. Common sense dictates that if you're eating candy and junk food in the levels that the mice were forced to ingest (much more than three meals every day, I'm sure) something adverse will eventually happen to your body.

Of course, they could've avoided spending money on this research if they'd all just listened to their mothers in the first place.

Re:Obvious?

[Hoi Polloi]

It is obvious? Really? Please tell that to my mother who is developing it after a lifetime of never eating sugar (genetic diabetes) and eating like a bird.

People love to jump to conclusions based on personal biases and zero evidence.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not surprised that generally mismanaging your body with bad nutrition would make it more likely to get some kind of degenerative disease... While it's nice to find hard evidence I think at least the geek population would be plain dumb so assume otherwise.

Now if we could only get governments to have some kind of taxes on the bad stuff, and subsidize the good stuff. I'd eat better if I could afford it, quite frankly.

That last statement shows ignorance. Fast food is much more expensive than home cooked healthy food. Even high-end, organic, hippy-store produce is cheap and fish is one of the cheapest and healthiest forms of protein. You don't eat poorly because of cost you eat poorly because of convenience as cooking for yourself is time consuming and doesn't fit well with our modern chaotic schedules.

Re:Obvious?

[vtcodger]

It's not really clear how "obvious" this is. Human bodies are, to a great extent, machines for turning stuff into the sugar glucose. Unlike ruminants, we can't handle cellulose, but most everything else that enters digestive track gets turned into glucose reasonably efficiently and is extracted into the blood stream in order to fuel the body. (OK, fats are handled a bit differently if you want to get picky)

There is a probably a valid issue with some chemicals and compounds like salt and caffiene that get into the blood. But despite the determined efforts of highly trained professionals to blame the stuff for a panapoly of serious problems, the evidence against them is thin (sodium) to nonexistent (caffiene).

If you ever plan a diet for a week in the wilderness -- lots of calories, sufficient vitamins and minerals, low mass (you are not going to be carrying 18 sweet potatoes, 6 heads of brocolli, etc on your back. At least not more than once.) -- you'll find that it is not that different from the stuff in the candy machine. Lots of chocolate, fats, proteins, dried fruits, nuts.

In short. We have not the slightest idea what a healthy or unhealthy diet is. I've gone through about five different eras of listening to people pontificate on what they think others should be eating -- starting with lots of red meat and dairy products and going on to see just about everything edible elevated and deprecated at one point or another. I'm not saying that there is no such thing as an optimum diet. Just that we have no clue what it is.

So, is it obvious that the crap in the candy machine is unhealthy? Well, if I were going to fund a life insurance policy with me as beneficiary, I'd certainly pick the candy addict over the dude who is living on salads, fish, and fresh fruit. But I wouldn't be all that surprised if the health food nut was floored by a heart attack at age 47 and the candy abuser attended the funerals of all the doctors that lectured him on his weight and diet when they died of old age.

Re:Obvious?

[Bearhouse]

I'd eat better if I could afford it, quite frankly.

Yes, fast/junk food can be astonishly cheap, but that does not make it good value, especially if it's loaded with stuff that's bad for your health, (typically far too much saturated fats, salt and sugar).

But you can eat well, and cheap. For example, if you have no time to cook, get a slow cooker. Throw some natural rice and whatever else you fancy into it, (fish, meat, veg.), turn on & go to work. Hot meal waiting for you when you get home in evening. Ingredients will cost less than a hamburger, and most importantly you know what you put into it...

Re:Obvious?

[an unsound mind]

McFood isn't exactly horribly bad for you. The biggest problem is the lack of fiber in it. Of course, too much McFood is bad for you, and it's a lot easier eating too much fast food.

Re:Obvious?

[my $anity 0]

Cost includes more than just the price on the package. Time investment has a cost to it.

Re:Obvious?

[flynt]

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Statistics are, to the contrary, one of the best ways to study things such as these. Your hypothetical experiment is of course ridiculous. However, imagine that we had many subjects *randomly* assigned to eating oranges, and many subjects assigned to eating placebo oranges. They did not know which one they were eating, nor did whoever was evaluating their "stress levels". Now, what if the group assigned to eating oranges had a statistically significant lower stress level? Then our conclusion would be that oranges cause lower stress levels. Now, I did not read this experiment, but if mice were *randomly* assigned to different treatments, a causal conclusion could certainly be warranted.

Re:Obvious?

[rawg]

My Nana has Alzheimer's, and she has been a vegetarian for most of her life. I've ate fast food all my life and I'm perfectly healthy. 5.9 and 140-160 pounds. I think it's the whole make fast food evil thing thats been going on for years.

Re:Obvious?

[morari]

I agree completely. I eat very well, and cheaply, as a vegetarian. All of my food is home-cooked and a large majority of it is even home-grown. I wouldn't be able to afford eating out two or three times a day because of the ridiculous price of processed foods. People aren't cheap, they're just lazy. Not being able to sit down and eat a proper meal with your family also says a lot about our culture in and of itself.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost includes more than just the price on the package. Time investment has a cost to it.

Time investment is only a cost if you were going to be doing something less costly or more profitable with the time if you weren't investing time in the pursuit in question. If you really want to talk total cost you'd have to add the depreciation of cooking equipment and the cost of future diet-related health care, or maybe even part of your gym membership.

Cost is a financial liability not just something you don't want to do. If you're going to play semantic games learn what the words mean in a given context first. Just claiming something doesn't make it so.

Re:Obvious?

[DarkOx]

I agree I don't see anything of than this statistical correlation between fastfood sugar and Alzheimers that makes it obvious they should be linked. I think the parent poster was makeing the more general statement that our bodies like any other machine if not properly maintained are more likely to fail and sooner. Those failures are also more likely to defy repair as well.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

GP was perfectly on target. What you are describing is a scientific experiment. Statistics requires no science; it's merely looking for signals in the data. The issue is the quality of the data. Without reading the paper, there's no way to know if they stuffed a bunch of rodents with bad food and reported on their demise or that there was a control group that ate normally.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what else is high in antioxidants? Fruits and vegetables. Chocolate -- especially the sugar-rich, cocoa-poor blends that the average person can occupy the bargain bin at your local supermarket -- is not a health food. To that extent, "common sense" is indeed correct.

Though, due to the absurdities of government packaging guidelines, chocolate bars may soon be putting health claims on their wrappers.

It also buggers common sense to say that a low-soda diet might be depriving anyone of beneficial caffeination. Find me a nutritionist who claims that the benefits of the caffeine in soda outweighs the negative of all those empty calories, and I'll drink a six pack of Mountain Dew, then eat the cans.

If caffeine does show itself to have enough nutritional value to be included in widely-accepted nutritional guidelines, then it would be far better to get it from coffee or tea, many of which have honest-to-Cthulhu anti-oxidants in them.

Common sense is a far better guide than you seem to suggest.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that slow cooker has a teflon or equivalent non-stick coating, then what are you really eating?

Re:Obvious?

[stu72]

While I agree with the suggestion we should tax/control/ban the shite food, where does the impression that fast food is cheaper come from?

I can't think of single comparison between meals made at home from groceries, where the per meal cost would come in below a fast food restaurant. You could certainly argue that healthy restaurants are more expensive than crap restaurants, but the real issue is eating in restaurants, not the cost of the food.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure all we need is more government intervention and some more regulation and a bureaucratic body in charge of everyone's eating habits.

Frankly the government can Fuck Off and stay the fuck out of my life it's not the government's job to control what I eat. I was taught nutrition in school it is up to me to eat or not eat good food.

I'm sure you are not too far from; well lets just have the government ban all bad foods and make the people eat good food ehh? WTF? Commie.

 

Re:Obvious?

[LrdDimwit]

Why is this flamebait? It's true. Blaming the victim is a huge part of anything like this, because it "means" that you'll never get (in this case) Alzheimer's, oh no. You'd never be that stupid -- it helps grant the illusion of control.

Re:Obvious?

[Larryish]

Does your mother eat sugar substitutes such as aspartame or sodium saccharine?

Re:Obvious?

[An Onerous Coward]

Are you saying that, among the three diets you're discussing (the standard American diet (SAD), the broad-stroke, nutritionally recommended diet (BSD), and the genetically individually-tailored, optimal diet (GIT)) that BSD is actually the worst?

Unless by "some portion of the population" you mean 90-95%. Anyhow, "energy rich" doesn't have to mean nutritionally poor. It doesn't even prevent a vegetarian or vegan diet. Look at the energy content of foods like peanut butter, avacadoes, honey, and olives, just to name a few. You can pudge out easily without resorting to junk food.

I have to ask, how can evolution account for these bizarre, junk-food-needing mutants, when true junk food has only been a significant force for a couple hundred years? If you're really insisting that "hey, this new-fangled low-junk food diet craze might not be healthy for everybody", I'll have to assume that you're getting kickbacks from McDonald's.

Re:Obvious?

[An Onerous Coward]

I think it would be sufficient to eliminate the existing subsidies for "the bad stuff". Current agricultural policy rewards vast overproduction of grain, especially corn. That grain has to go somewhere, because it represents way more calories than 300M people need. Grain can be converted into other foodstuffs, like meat, dairy, and alcohol, which are generally bad for us in the quantities we Americans consume. About half the corn we produce goes to feeding animals that will eventually feed us.

Since the demand for actual corn is still inadequate for consuming the amount of corn we produce, a lot of it gets turned into other products, like high fructose corn syrup, and ethanol for fuel. I don't see how either of those are doing us much good.

Eliminate the subsidies on corn, starting with the subsidies for the corporate mega-farms. Then require huge factory farms to abide by the same pollution regulations as any other industry. Finally, make the meat farms pay for their own water. Do these three things, and I can virtually guarantee that Americans will start getting slimmer and healthier. I would want to see all those things happen before we consider a junk food tax.

Re:Obvious?

[espressojim]

All of these studies should posit that their results are in a baysian framework. Doing increases your risk of by times. IE: eating a high sugar diet increases your risk of getting diabetes by 20%.

Just because you don't do something that makes you more likely to have some condition doesn't rule out the possibility of having that condition. There are many factors to getting some diseases, both genetic and enviornmental, and we don't yet have mappings of most contributors...often, we'll wave our hands and say "whatever I can't map as genetics must be the enviornment" or "whatever I can't map to the enviornment must be genetics" (see the problem there?)

This is comming from someone who's spending his life working in the medical genetics community. People publish papers, the media digests it, but while we know something new, the vast majority of the time we JUST DON'T KNOW.

Re:Obvious?

[An Onerous Coward]

Don't forget ill-educated, ill-informed, overworked, separated from their community, and fed a steady diet of self-centered consumerism.

How did they -- umm, you know, *they* -- convince us that these are the sorts of lives we want to lead?

Re:Obvious?

[Reziac]

In fact, when I read the summary, my next thought was, "Yeah, and sleep is a condition not unlike death".

"Not unlike" is not good enough in biochemistry.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying that there is no such thing as an optimum diet. Just that we have no clue what it is.

The optimum diet *must* vary from person to person anyway. e.g. irish and scots often can't digest wheat properly (coeliac disease i.e. gluten-intolerance) due to a known genetic difference, some asians don't digest milk well as adults (i.e. lactose-intolerance) due to a known genetic difference, etc.

Re:Obvious?

[Antlerbot]

No, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Statistical evidence is not the same thing as experimental data. Your analogy, therefore, is completely unwarranted.

Re:Obvious?

[Antlerbot]

Ah, see what I get for browsing too high? You were already right on it. Oh well, I suppose it won't hurt the guy to have two people give him the truth.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but you can determine causation in a controlled experiment. You need to worry about controls, etc but experiments can determine causation (as opposed to observational studies, which can only determine correlation).

Re:Obvious?

[Max Romantschuk]

Sadly, the price on vegetables in Finland where I live is such, that it's a hell of a lot more expensive to go on a healthy diet. In fact, a chicken salad does indeed cost more than a McMeal, at least for the same energy content.

Re:Obvious?

[Max Romantschuk]

That last statement shows ignorance. Fast food is much more expensive than home cooked healthy food. Even high-end, organic, hippy-store produce is cheap and fish is one of the cheapest and healthiest forms of protein. You don't eat poorly because of cost you eat poorly because of convenience as cooking for yourself is time consuming and doesn't fit well with our modern chaotic schedules.

Incorrect. In my local supermarket saturated fat -heavy minced meat costs about 6 Euros / kilo. Fish costs 15-20 Euros / kilo. We cook all our meals ourselves at home, but the ingredients could be better if we had the funds.

I guess I should point out that living in Finland also means that most vegetables need to be grown in greenhouses or shipped from abroad. This further increases the price of enjoying a healthy diet.

Re:Obvious?

[philspear]

Stats tend to be quite useless when it comes to these things... Correlation is NOT causation!

Where exactly would you have us start? Complete guesswork? "Hey, maybe carrots cause alzheimers? Here's what we're going to do: I'm going to have a kid, and he's never going to eat carrots, and we'll see if he get's alzheimers."

Identifying factors that increase your risk (IE those "useless" stats) of alzheimers is an essential step to understanding how the disease is caused, which is the first step towards preventing it and treating it. All we really know at this point is that nothing seems to be responsible for it 100% of the time, not even genetics.

Re:Obvious?

[Hurricane78]

How is healthy food more expensive than bad food?
Bad food is always processed food. Processing costs money. Always.

The only reasons you pay more, are that most products that are marketed as healthy actually aren't, and those that are healthy are not marketed,
and that healthy stuff is produced in smaller quantities and sold by smaller shops. Those companies can't afford dump prices like that.

There is an easy rule for healthy food: Healthy = unprocessed.
That's mostly it. And I mean really unprocessed. Like, raw plants, fruits, meats. The best conservation method for them is to (shock-)freeze them.
A bit worse, but mostly acceptable are fermented foods. Like pickles, salami, (real!) cheese/yogurt, (real!) beer, and so on. (Pay attention to processed fakes, like, the most you can buy in a supermarket.)
Then come cooked foods. Here the heat has destroyed and denaturalized much. But if it wasn't too hot and/or too long, much of it is still OK. For example (real) whole-grain bread (NOT pure starch like "Wonderbread") never reaches the temperature to destroy the b-vitamins at the inside, because it "sweats" and thereby cools itself in the oven.

Everything that's processed more should be avoided. Conserves, preparations and so on. Cake, cookies and so on mostly are conserves, because white flour is a (very unhealthy) conserve. Sugars are preparations (in the chemical sense) and are the worst of all.
Fat is completely OK. As long as it's not saturated. You can recognize non-saturated fats/oils, because they have a higher liquidity. (This is why even the most natural margarine is often even worse than butter. They chemically saturate it, and then use more chemistry to add non-saturated fat to it. This process creates very unhealthy trans-fats.)
The only problem with fat is the high energy density. So combine it with something with low energy density if your body does not need such a high energy level. (So if you're a hard working Eskimo, you can eat all the fat you want. ;)

The trick with the carbohydrates is: The longer, the better. The easiest way is to use the glycemic load, because that value goes mostly parallel to the length of the molecules in the food. There are tables for this value.
Glucose, sugar, starch and non-whole cereals are the worst. The sugar inside eats up all the b-vitamins and gives the body none. But they are essential for a working brain.
And then they flood the body with too much energy for a too short time to be of use, and go straight to your fat pads. So it's the sugar that makes you fat and stupid.
Don't let them fool you by telling you that the body converts any carbohydrates to sugar and sugar is the energy molecule of the body. They are right, but what they don't tell you is all the stuff above. Especially the part that it's too much for a too short time and about the missing b-vitamins wreaking havoc in your system.

For the rest: The more variations the better. That way you get all the vitamins, minerals, micronutrients, and even the non-researched/unknown stuff. (Yes, we still don't know everything, even if some people behave as if.)

You see. It's quite easy to eat healthy and cheap and tasty food. Just get your ass up and prepare it yourself from non-processed stuff.

Oh, and to all my fellow Slashdotters: If you're eating too much and move not enough, 99% of the time, this is a pure psychological problem. You replace food for sex, love or something different. Or you simply do is because you're used to it. You don't need a diet or sport. You need a therapy and then some time with something that can replace your replacement. And then a change in diet, some sport and a girlfriend. :)

P.S.: I know all this because I'm working on it right now... ;)

Re:Obvious?

[FormOfActionBanana]

What are you acting like a retard? TFS says this is the result of a controlled experiment, not a random survey of mice.

If you wanted to impress people who know anything about science you could at least point out that the diet affects on mice may have no relationship to the same affects for humans.

Re:Obvious?

[Chris Mattern]

Are you saying that, among the three diets you're discussing (the standard American diet (SAD), the broad-stroke, nutritionally recommended diet (BSD), and the genetically individually-tailored, optimal diet (GIT)) that BSD is actually the worst?

BSD is dying. Netcraft confirms it.

You SAD GIT.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sugars stimulate the brains, causing a wear on them. Not too hard to theorize.

A loss of concentration/memory is also a side effect of a sugar-rich diet.

Re:Obvious?

[Random Destruction]

why AC?

Re:Obvious?

[Random Destruction]

a cooked version of whatever you put into it in the first place?

Re:Obvious?

[penguin_dance]

Now if we could only get governments to have some kind of taxes on the bad stuff, and subsidize the good stuff. I'd eat better if I could afford it, quite frankly.

No, it's not the government's job to be your nanny. You know you should eat healthier, go forth and do so. It's not all that expensive; it's just usually more convenient to buy a McFatburger than make a healthy salad. Buy foods that are unprocessed. Yes, there is bagged salad, but it would be cheaper and healthier to buy a head of lettuce and a couple of carrots without the preservatives. Top with olive oil and vinegar and maybe some dried herbs instead of bottled dressing.

Buying food in it's most unprocessed state is usually best. I would except frozen vegetables (check for salt and other preservatives) which are usually flash frozen and so retain their vitamins potency longer and raw, unpasteurized milk. And this doesn't mean you have to become a vegetarian. But buying leaner meats, such as ground round instead of just ground beef, while they're more expensive, they have less waste as well as less fat. And you don't have to have red meat everyday. Chicken and some fish (baked, not fried) provide protein for less. Or combine non-meat products that form complete proteins. Like, peanut butter and whole wheat bread, beans and cornbread or corn tortilla, red beans and rice.

They raised taxes on cigarettes for years, yet change in people's habits did not come until there was massive peer pressure not to be around second hand smoke or to subject you child to it. Once it became both inconvenient and *uncool* to smoke, more people stopped smoking.

But junk food is not smoking and having a fast food burger or dining out isn't bad in moderation. The problem with these studies is it's all or nothing. They fed these mice nothing but fast food equivalent for NINE MONTHS. (Don't forget that research mice are not common mice but are bred to be more susceptible to disease.) Well of COURSE they're going to get sick. Who eats like this? But had they fed them healthy meals and then once or twice a week they got junk food, they probably wouldn't have the dramatic results to report.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up and drive your one block to McDonalds you fat cunt.

Re:Obvious?

[penguin_dance]

Now if we could only get governments to have some kind of taxes on the bad stuff, and subsidize the good stuff. I'd eat better if I could afford it, quite frankly.

No, it's not the government's job to be your nanny. You know you should eat healthier, go forth and do so. It's not all that expensive; it's just usually more convenient to buy a McFatburger than make a healthy salad. Buy foods that are unprocessed. Yes, there is bagged salad, but it would be cheaper and healthier to buy a head of lettuce and a couple of carrots without the preservatives. Top with olive oil and vinegar and maybe some dried herbs instead of bottled dressing.

Buying food in it's most unprocessed state is usually best. I would except frozen vegetables (check for salt and other preservatives) which are usually flash frozen and so retain their vitamins potency longer and raw, unpasteurized milk. And this doesn't mean you have to become a vegetarian. But buying leaner meats, such as ground round instead of just ground beef, while they're more expensive, they have less waste as well as less fat. And you don't have to have red meat everyday. Chicken and some fish (baked, not fried) provide protein for less. Or combine non-meat products that form complete proteins. Like, peanut butter and whole wheat bread, beans and cornbread or corn tortilla, red beans and rice.

They raised taxes on cigarettes for years, yet change in people's habits did not come until there was massive peer pressure not to be around second hand smoke or to subject you child to it. Once it became both inconvenient and *uncool* to smoke, more people stopped smoking.

But junk food is not smoking and having a fast food burger or dining out isn't bad in moderation. The problem with these studies is it's all or nothing. They fed these mice nothing but fast food equivalent for NINE MONTHS. (Don't forget that research mice are not common mice but are bred to be more susceptible to disease.) Well of COURSE they're going to get sick. Who eats like this? But had they fed them healthy meals and then once or twice a week they got junk food, they probably wouldn't have the dramatic results to report.

Re:Obvious?

[Repton]

You wouldn't be able to afford it, because you'd eat at a reasonably nice restaurant. What if you just hit the chippie?

For poor people, who might not have enough money to pay rent, power, telephone, and food, but who still need energy to live and work, the equation might not be the same. A guy in England looked at the price of food per calorie. 100 calories worth of broccoli? 51p. 100 calories worth of chips? 2p. The equation was similar for other foods: cheap, fatty sausages give you more energy for your pound than good quality ones. I couldn't find the original article I read (a few months ago), but there's some quotes and links here: http://povertyblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/the-habitual-food-of-the-working-man-varies-according-to-his-wages/ . Another website I read claimed that in the Seattle area, the price of junk food had gone down slightly over the same period that the price of healthy food had increased by 15% or so.

Sure, it would be nice to buy vegetables (if the price of power goes down), or even grow your own food (if you're lucky enough to have a garden), but it may not be an option for everyone.

Re:Obvious?

[xaxa]

Incorrect. In my local supermarket saturated fat -heavy minced meat costs about 6 Euros / kilo. Fish costs 15-20 Euros / kilo. We cook all our meals ourselves at home, but the ingredients could be better if we had the funds.

I guess I should point out that living in Finland also means that most vegetables need to be grown in greenhouses or shipped from abroad. This further increases the price of enjoying a healthy diet.

What did people living in Finland eat before they traded with countries with warmer climates? Lots of stuff people here in Britain like to eat has to be grown in greenhouses or comes from abroad (e.g. bell peppers/capsicum, oranges, tomatoes) but the 'native' veg is still cheap (carrots, potatoes, swede, parsnip, turnip, cabbage).

Normal beef mince is £3.50/kg here, a really cheap one is £2.40/kg (at Asda). £7/kg gets a super lean organic one.
A 400g 'Spaghetti Bolognese' ready meal is £1.70, and is 29% beef mince.
Allow £3/kg for the 0.29*400g beef = 34p
40% is spaghetti (about 10p/100g) = 16p
19% is tomatoes (about 10p/100g for chopped tomatoes from a can) = 8p
We also need mushrooms (5%), onion, garlic, seasoning. It's going to be less than half the cost of the ready meal. (Those prices are between the budget and normal ones, add a few pence to avoid budget stuff.)

Fresh fish is £8/kg for fresh, filleted haddock. A fresh, whole salmon is £5.28/kg. A 450g 'Fish Pie' ready meal is £1.70 and is 24% fish (pollock).

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow - you're just really, really wrong. I thought you should know that.

Re:Obvious?

[xaxa]

But Britain has a generous welfare system, so no one needs to eat only chips. They might choose to, spending the money saved on booze and fags. That's what most of the people living round here seem to do anyway. The mini-supermarket on this council estate in London doesn't even sell fruit and vegetables! They have potatoes and onions, everything else is tinned, or pre-prepared and frozen (pizza, pies etc). I asked the owner if he had any fruit, and he said no one ever bought it.

Re:Obvious?

[an unsound mind]

And he ate 5000 kcal per day.
If you eat double what you should according to nutritionists - and hey, last I checked McD also hands out the same info with every meal - it's no wonder your health starts failing.
You can eat yourself immobile with almost any food, and certainly any food including meat. No fault of McD's there.

Re:Obvious?

[t0rkm3]

Type 2 Diabetes has been linked to Alzheimer's in many ways. The question is, what is the link? If you have any sort of knowledge of diabetes, you will note that diabetes is often accompanied by arterial plaque and inhibited fat metabolism.

To take a note from the summary I would believe that the cause of the plaque on the neurons that cause Alzheimer's is related to the plaque found in the arteries. Possibly the irritation caused by high blood sugars? Maybe some other mechanism depleting essential enzymes or micronutrients that contribute to the body's ability to clean up said plaques? Similar to the frequent occurrence of melanomas that are cleaned up by the immune system until one day... the immune system cannot keep up?

Quoting from
Biochim Biophys Acta. 2008 Nov 5
Zhao WQ, Townsend M.

Characterized as a peripheral metabolic disorder and a degenerative disease of the central nervous system respectively, it is now widely recognized that type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) share several common abnormalities including impaired glucose metabolism, increased oxidative stress, insulin resistance and amyloidogenesis. Several recent studies suggest that this is not an epiphenomenon, but rather these two diseases disrupt common molecular pathways and each disease compounds the progression of the other. For instance, in AD the accumulation of the amyloid-beta peptide (Abeta), which characterizes the disease and is thought to participate in the neurodegenerative process, may also induce neuronal insulin resistance. Conversely, disrupting normal glucose metabolism in transgenic animal models of AD that over-express the human amyloid precursor protein (hAPP) promotes amyloid-peptide aggregation and accelerates the disease progression. Studying these processes at a cellular level suggests that insulin resistance and Abeta aggregation may not only be the consequence of excitotoxicity, aberrant Ca(2+) signals, and proinflammatory cytokines such as TNF-alpha, but may also promote these pathological effectors. At the molecular level, insulin resistance and Abeta disrupt common signal transduction cascades including the insulin receptor family/PI3 kinase/Akt/GSK3 pathway. Thus both disease processes contribute to overlapping pathology, thereby compounding disease symptoms and progression.

Biochim Biophys Acta. 2008 Nov 5
Zhao WQ, Townsend M.

Re:Obvious?

[Trixter]

That's a very easy thing to say when you are single and living alone. Get married, have children, have your wife go back to work to make ends meet... then get back to us on how eating pre-processed food or eating at different times makes the family "lazy".

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

That last statement shows ignorance. Fast food is much more expensive than home cooked healthy food. Even high-end, organic, hippy-store produce is cheap and fish is one of the cheapest and healthiest forms of protein. You don't eat poorly because of cost you eat poorly because of convenience as cooking for yourself is time consuming and doesn't fit well with our modern chaotic schedules.

Incorrect. In my local supermarket saturated fat -heavy minced meat costs about 6 Euros / kilo. Fish costs 15-20 Euros / kilo. We cook all our meals ourselves at home, but the ingredients could be better if we had the funds.

I guess I should point out that living in Finland also means that most vegetables need to be grown in greenhouses or shipped from abroad. This further increases the price of enjoying a healthy diet.

At least read the comment...it's about the cost of fast food (i.e. processed, cooked food) not about unhealthy food. But that said, here in the states fish is cheaper than chicken, pork, or beef, especially if you pick your fish (e.g. Talapia) with price in mind. Produce is also cheaper than fast food as it requires only farming and transportation costs. I'm not sure what fish costs where you live compared to beef, pork, mutton, etc. but if it's more expensive than fast food you're getting robbed because fishing is inherently cheaper than farming/husbandry mixed with processing, mixed with cooking. It's also inherently cheaper than raising livestock but various taxes, regulations, or other variables related to the local economy could change that.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't be able to afford it, because you'd eat at a reasonably nice restaurant. What if you just hit the chippie?

For poor people, who might not have enough money to pay rent, power, telephone, and food, but who still need energy to live and work, the equation might not be the same. A guy in England looked at the price of food per calorie. 100 calories worth of broccoli? 51p. 100 calories worth of chips? 2p. The equation was similar for other foods: cheap, fatty sausages give you more energy for your pound than good quality ones. I couldn't find the original article I read (a few months ago), but there's some quotes and links here: http://povertyblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/the-habitual-food-of-the-working-man-varies-according-to-his-wages/ . Another website I read claimed that in the Seattle area, the price of junk food had gone down slightly over the same period that the price of healthy food had increased by 15% or so.

Sure, it would be nice to buy vegetables (if the price of power goes down), or even grow your own food (if you're lucky enough to have a garden), but it may not be an option for everyone.

This is the typical junk analysis that makes for good stories but bad learning. You don't buy veggies for energy. You buy veggies for a balanced diet and to fill your mineral and vitamin requirements. For energy you buy various protein and grains. Energy is a measure of food but not the only one and comparing all foods based on energy content is misleading and as for energy that's why we have cheap staples based on the locally grown starches of a given region. You're not supposed to get all your energy from broccoli so analyzing cost based on energy is intellectually dishonest.

Re:Obvious?

[sydneyfong]

I'd mod you you if I had mod points.

Except for this tiny tidbit -

How is healthy food more expensive than bad food?
Bad food is always processed food. Processing costs money. Always.

Conspiracy theories aside, not even the evil corporations want you to eat crappy food if healthier food can be made as cheaply. A lot of the commercial processing is to make the food last longer for storage, so that storage and shipment costs can be lower. So that the food products can be produced in bulk. Which means less expensive.

Re:Obvious?

[witherstaff]

A calorie by calorie study of junk food versus 'good food' was done, finding junk food is indeed cheaper. It also found that junk food will remain cheap while healthy food costs keep rising. I'd consider it one of the reasons for America's obesity rate.

Re:Obvious?

[mccabem]

While you're somewhat correct on the technicality - different people do have somewhat different needs - it would be very wise, not naive, to consider fast food and food with a lot of sugar as bad for you.

Unless your intention is to take an apologetic stance toward those respective industries, a non-fast-food or non-sugary-food alternative would be more healthful for almost anyone you could be talking about in almost every case imaginable.

-Matt

Re:Obvious?

[Kharny]

bullshit, i can cook 3 perfectly healthy meals for 2 people for the price of 2 mcmeals or similar.

While exotic vegetables and out of season ones can be expensive, you can make a perfectly healthy meal for around 3-4 euro's per person, and even cheaper if you cook for several people

Re:Obvious?

[Fallingcow]

Large pizza from Little Caesars: $5. With breadsticks, add $2.

Dinner for 2 or 3 people, for $5-7, no waiting, no prep. It's pretty damn hard to beat that. Will it be good? Well, the one here is actually decent, for a chain pizza place, though I've certainly had inedible pizza from others. Will it be good for you? Oh, hell no.

Chinese takeout: notoriously cheap.

KFC: good luck making a chicken meal for significantly less. Worse, if you want chicken, a biscuit, and some mashed potatoes, and you want to make them so that they're actually different from the crap you buy at KFC (so, fresh) you'll be investing quite a bit of time, and spending even more money.

Why is this? We subsidize fast food with corn subsidies, transportation subsidies (you think the gas taxes are to pay for the damage your tiny little car does to the roads, or that truckers pay anywhere near the actual cost of the damage their trucks do in diesel taxes? HA!) etc. Shit food is cheap because our taxes have already paid for part of it.

That's to say nothing of the inconvenience of having to go to the store more frequently to buy small quantities (paying more in the process) so I don't have tons of produce go bad because my wife and I got sick of eating the same damn veggie every day, so we skip a couple days, and surprise, it's all gone bad now! Eating fresh food means frequent shopping, which is a huge pain in the ass since we don't have neighborhood produce/bakery stores any more. Supermarkets are inconvenient in my opinion, and I'd rather pay 15% more to buy my food every other day on the way home from work than have to make a special trip by car.

Re:Obvious?

[Fallingcow]

4 euro a person = a large pizza EACH (from a chain pizza joint) plus some change left over (depending on where you go) here in the US.

4 euro would get you an all-you-can-eat pizza or fried chicken buffet, possibly with an unlimited-refills drink, here in the 'States.

4 euro = what, like 6 things off the McDonalds dollar menu? Two burgers, 2 small fries, hash browns and a small soda? Something like that?

I take it your fast food is much more expensive in Europe. Here, it really is cheaper, and when it isn't, the difference doesn't justify the time spent at the store + time spent making the food. A really strong desire to eat healthy can overcome this, but the path of least resistance, in every way, is fast food.

Re:Obvious?

[Fallingcow]

Exactly.

If processed food cost more than fresh, McDonalds would use fresh ingredients.

Re:Obvious?

[fbjon]

In particular, cheap chocolate is not chocolate, it's "chocolate".

Re:Obvious?

[bobmarleypeople]

tl;dr: Fast food is bad for you.

Next old news please

Re:Obvious?

[russotto]

It also buggers common sense to say that a low-soda diet might be depriving anyone of beneficial caffeination. Find me a nutritionist who claims that the benefits of the caffeine in soda outweighs the negative of all those empty calories, and I'll drink a six pack of Mountain Dew, then eat the cans.

Nutritionists have an ascetic bias and will generally be against caffeine and alcohol despite the demostrated benefits of both (alcohol in moderation, caffeine in rather large quantities). And no one thinks that aluminum is good for you, so skip the can.

But "empty calories" is a misconception. Calories are calories and micronutrients are micronutrients. They are separate issues, and a calorie combined with various micronutrients is no different than a calorie not combined with them. There's no particularly negative effect to "empty calories". The 140 calories in a can of Coke is no worse for you than the same number of calories in a slightly smaller amount of orange juice.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

...because we are all helpless without big nanny government. Have you ever heard of a garden? How about canning and jarring your own food? How about hunting and fishing? How about moving out of the city and into the country? How about less government and more personal responsibility and liberty?

Re:Obvious?

[russotto]

What are you acting like a retard? TFS says this is the result of a controlled experiment, not a random survey of mice.

Good thing, because my survey of mice shows that eating peanut butter is strongly correlated with sudden death from a broken back.

Re:Obvious?

[russotto]

The trick with the carbohydrates is: The longer, the better. The easiest way is to use the glycemic load, because that value goes mostly parallel to the length of the molecules in the food. There are tables for this value.
Glucose, sugar, starch and non-whole cereals are the worst. The sugar inside eats up all the b-vitamins and gives the body none. But they are essential for a working brain.

Whole grain is not significantly different from white grain as far as glycemic index is concerned. And for sugar to "eat up" B vitamins would require a significantly more complex sugar molecule than the ones which exist in real life.

As for raw food... I'm not about to waste my great^Nth grandfather's invention, a method for containing and preserving fire, by not cooking my food.

(he's probably your great^Nth grandfather too; taming fire made him popular with the women. Alas, this also killed him, when the inventor of the rock-with-a-stick-attached caught him with his wife)

Re:Obvious?

[FormOfActionBanana]

I use cheese, you insensitive clod!

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Potatoes are not native to Britain, they're native to the Americas.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

one school of thought is that cellular level inflammation causes all sorts of chronic diseases, including alzheimer's.

when you look at population studies, you will start to see some trends.

the mediterranean diet is light on veggie oil and high in olive oil, yet their hell far exceeds the health of diets high in veggie oil.

the japanese are the longest lived people on the planet. they have highest longevity (life length - disability) on the planet. they have 2% the chance of developing post partum depression as new zealanders. the difference? the japanese eat lots of fish.

one study of a diet mostly comprised of fish, chicken, olive oil, fruits, veggies and some nuts revealed an 83% reduction in the incidents of diabetes.

that's about 5/6 people that didn't get diabetes that would likely have gotten it on another diet.

if you care about your health, look into harvard medical school's joslin diabetes center nutritional guidelines (google it). it is an excellent place to start.

follow their guidelines and you will feel better, lose excess fat, maintain lean muscle mass, improve immune function, feel less hunger and eat less.

the calorie in / calorie out mantra is over simplified in that calories don't run the body, ATP runs the body. a calorie of fat can generate 3x the ATP as a calorie of carbs. tune your body to burn fat and you simply need to eat fewer calories to generate an equivalent amount of ATP.

in addition, it is wrong to assume that the hormonal impact of food is negligable. in fact, the hormonal impact of food is profound. a high glycemic load diet will tend to elevate insulin (turn on fat storage mode) and lower blood sugar (drive hunger).

ps - a diet high in fruits and vegetables is well known to prevent cancer and all sorts of other nasty diseases. in the quest to find out why, they have been broken down into their components and fed to us in the form of vitamins and mineral. the latest data DO NOT reveal any big advantage - surely nothing that explains the incredible health benefits of eating fruits and veggies.

perhaps the health benefits aren't so much what these fruit and veggie eaters are eating, rather, it might be what they aren't eating - high glycemic load carbs that elevate insulin and put the body in fat storage mode.

i'm in my early 40s, i'm over 5'10" and i weigh 157 lbs. i'm leaner at 42 than i was at 17. i'm less hungry than i have ever been before and i'm slowly increasing my lean muscle mass as my flat abs slowly etch out a six pack. my doctor told me to not waste her time with a physical this year. my triglycerides are below 40 and my TG/HDL ratio is less than 1 (the lower the better - btw, this is a *much* better predictor of future health problems than is cholesterol levels).

a couple quick hints based on the population studies:

1. toss the veggie oil and substitute with olive oil. get a high quality oil - it will taste smooth and finish peppery on the back of the tongue.

2. eat more fruits, veggies and nuts and less bread, pasta, candy, etc...

3. eat enough daily lean protein to support your lean body mass.

4. eat lots of fish or supplement with high quality, high dose long chain omega 3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA). i supplement with 2.5g-5.0g EPA + DHA (2.5g-5.0g total).

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

you assume that excess weight is defines "bad health." newsflash - thin people die of heart attacks, too. they get alzheimer's, too.

i'd argue that excess cellular inflammation is what is to be avoided. this often ocrrelates with excess weight as excess insulin production tends to drive both.

but not always. genetics does play an important role.

eat a diet that reduces your cellular inflammation. following harvard medical center's joslin diabetes nutritional guidelines is a good starting point.

ps - and enough with this calorie in / calorie out over simplification. ATP runs your muscles, not calories. if you ingest a calorie that isn't easily converted to ATP... well, you have a problem there. your *dietary* hormonal response, coupled with your genetics, will dictate how easily it is for a given calorie to be converted into ATP.

take two twins, exercise them the exact same and feed them the exact same... but inject one with anabolic steroids. they will look very different over time, even though calories in and calories out are equal.

do the same test and inject one twin with insulin. they will also look very different over time, in spite of calories in and calories out being equal.

it is a known fact that some diets (high glycemic load diets) will significantly elevate insulin more than other diets (low glycemic load).

Re:Obvious?

[xaxa]

You'll probably get one standard sized pizza for €4 (well, £3.50) in the UK. The current Pizza Hut promotion is two regular pizzas for £6.99. For the same money you could get a kebab, or fish and chips.

I've never seen a dollar menu like the USA McDonalds has in Europe. A standard hamburger is about 90p here, a Big Mac meal is about £3.50.

£7 will feed a family of four easily if you're willing to put in some effort (e.g. buy a whole chicken for £3 plus some vegetables for another £1). If you're lazy it'll cover something like some fresh semi-prepared meat (e.g. chicken pieces), a prepared cooking sauce (from a jar) plus a couple of vegetables and some rice.

Of course, it will also cover a huge amount of frozen chips and breadcrumb-covered animal pieces.

Re:Obvious?

[an unsound mind]

And 5000 calories of fast food doesn't always cause liver damage. Admittedly, it often does.
2500 calories of fast food don't cause liver damage in a noticeable amount, though - as far as I know at least.
And the nutrient problem is quite the opposite. McFood is very much packed with all the core nutrients, meaning you don't need half as much McFood as normal food to get by. Unfortunately, it lacks dietary fiber and long carbohydrates, meaning you don't feel well fed until the leptin starts kicking in.

Re:Obvious?

[badkarmadayaccount]

It's colored butter, that's what it is.

Re:Obvious?

[Hurricane78]

Whole grain is not significantly different from white grain as far as glycemic index is concerned.

I was talking about the glycemic load , which is not the glycemic index . The index is a pretty bad indicator, because it ignores how much carbohydrates actually are in the food.

The glycemic load of white grain bread is 38.8, and that of whole grain bread is 18. And pure white flour has a value of 60.8, while whole grain flour is at 22.4. This is a huge difference.

And for sugar to "eat up" B vitamins would require a significantly more complex sugar molecule than the ones which exist in real life.

It was simplified. It works like this: The body needs B vitamins to process sugar/starch/carbohydrates. While healthy food provides those vitamins, this stuff does not. White bread and similar sugar/starch products lack any essential b-vitamins. So the body does not only not get new vitamins for other uses. It also needs to take some more out of the reserves to process the starch/sugar.

As for raw food... I'm not about to waste my great^Nth grandfather's invention, a method for containing and preserving fire, by not cooking my food.

I agree. But the point is that you only need a bit of raw stuff. Most importantly: A bit of fresh wheat, ground right before you eat it, and not processed any further. (It's even healthier when germinated, but that's a bit too much work for me.)
Then fresh fruits and plants (salad) should be no problem :)
And raw meat... Well, your steak is probably red on the inside. Good salami and real raw ham are not heated too.
There is more raw food than you may think.
So eating your daily dosage is no problem. If you do some weight lifting, you probably eat curd with oat and fruits for breakfast. Mix in a bit of ground wheat. Eat a steak. Or some salad. Maybe an apple in between. And you're good enough. :)

Re:Obvious?

[badkarmadayaccount]

The parent post said 5000 kcalories, you said 5000 calories - i.e. 1000 times difference - I'm confused.

Re:Obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is obvious? Really? Please tell that to my mother who is developing it after a lifetime of never eating sugar (genetic diabetes) and eating like a bird.

People love to jump to conclusions based on personal biases and zero evidence.

that isnt to say that you cannot get it if you dont eat sugar. it is merely stating that eating sugar and overall having poor eating habits increases risk of it occuring. this is all theory and should not be taken as absolute. i understand your grief made you say this, but the /. community doesnt know your mom. we know logic.

Re:Obvious?

[Bearhouse]

Right! Funny. AC has a point - I got a slow cooker with a ceramic lining...

Suddenoutbreakofcommonsense?

[Hellcom]

I know, I know, we need these studies, but duh.

Re:Suddenoutbreakofcommonsense?

[philspear]

Well, not really. You want to be sure something is actually correlated with an increase in risk before you assume it to be true and waste research money. "Oh, fast food and sugar don't actually have a statistical correlation with alzheimers? So all those billions of dollars and research time investigating how diet affects alzheimers onset were completely wasted and we probably could have come up with a good cure by now? Well, ain't that always the way."

"Everything in moderation"

[macraig]

That's an ancient cliche but very relevant. Eating too much rock dust would cause cancer. So too would anything else consumed in a quantity that creates an imbalance.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Nefarious Wheel]

Such as refined sugar. It's amazing how hard it is to find a decent lunch in some places that isn't full of sugar. This bothers me because it did lead to a degenerative disease in me -- I'm diabetic. Didn't know any better growing up. We know better now, but there's this amazing momentum to the food industry -- will they change now that everyone knows? Without regulation? I'm not sure.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[macraig]

Both my parents are Type II diabetic... meaning it wasn't hereditary. Been there, seen that, hoping it skips a generation.

That's not to say my dietary habits are perfect; I have an aggressive sweet tooth and love fatty junk like cookies, chips, and ice cream (Breyer's Natural Vanilla!), but I'm very conscious of it. I'm within 15 pounds of my ideal 150 weight, and never more than 40 past it. In my twenties I had 5% body fat and a 43 pulse (from cycling and hiking). Contrast that with my father who even in his early twenties, according to my uncle, would binge on pastries and crap, starve himself for a day or two, then go right back to eating more junk. I grew up watching him stand in the kitchen eating peanut butter mixed with honey! He was always obese, not surprisingly.

I think another cliche applies here, in my case: "sins of the father". Trying not to repeat them....

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[JaBob]

It's sad how many peoples' lives would be better by this little principal. I grew up with a fat parent and fat siblings. I would see the way that people would treat them and didn't want to be treated the same way. Looking for some advice, I ended up getting a subscription for a men's health magazine (also for the humor and the quality of the non-health articles) and over the course of about 10 years or so that I read it, the only thing that seemed to last was 'moderation.' It's funny that it not only works for food, but for exercise, work, hobbies, relationships, money, etc. Never too much or too little of anything. And everyone should have some vices, as long as you keep tabs on them and don't let them run amok, and they don't cause you to neglect any other aspect of your life. It's a dead simple rule to follow too.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[drinkypoo]

You should read What if it's all been a big fat lie - first, "we" the government knew better when you were growing up, but "we" the people didn't, because the USDA, operating on completely bullshit findings from the NIH, told us to eat a lot of carbs on purpose. They knew what it would do to us, but let's face it, there's money in processed foods. Second, there is basically no difference in your body between white bread and refined sugar. So it frankly does not matter one tenth of one shit whether the sugar is refined or not. You can get diabetes from living on bologna sandwiches.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[headbulb]

If you live in the usa. Try to find something without corn in it. It's almost impossible. The Corn industry is subsidized by the government. Then there are tariff's on sugar imported into the usa. So really how are we supposed to eat healthy when that's not really the focus?

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[RebelWithoutAClue]

You should consider supplementing Benfotiamine. It reduces formation of AGEs.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Hal_Porter]

Such as refined sugar. It's amazing how hard it is to find a decent lunch in some places that isn't full of sugar. This bothers me because it did lead to a degenerative disease in me -- I'm diabetic. Didn't know any better growing up. We know better now, but there's this amazing momentum to the food industry -- will they change now that everyone knows? Without regulation? I'm not sure.

Type 2 diabetes is caused by obesity. Obesity is caused by eating too much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus_type_2#Prevention

It's a free country. You can eat unhealthily and get sick, just like you can buy a gun and blow your brains out. Don't try to use the government to take away the choice from the rest of us just because you gambled and lost with your health.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Mr. Slippery]

because the USDA, operating on completely bullshit findings from the NIH, told us to eat a lot of carbs on purpose.

They told you to eat a diet based around complex carbs. They were right. They never told you to eat a lot.

Somehow "complex" was too complicated for the average American to comprehend (especially with agribusiness staticing up the channel), and some people (like you) heard "eat a lot", and loaded up on the starches and sugars rather than on whole grains and vegetables.

Linking to an article defending the quack Atkins diet would be merely funny if it weren't tragic. People on Atkins and similar diets put themselves at increased risk of many diseases, and do not lose any more weight than people on other diets of the same calorie level. They're about the worst diet possible - excepting only the aptly-named SAD, the Standard American Diet.

Aside from fads and misinterpretations, the basic message has been consistent and correct for decades: eat a varied and calorically-moderate diet based around vegetables and whole grains, rich in complex carbs and fiber, moderate in protein, and low in fat.

There is increasing understanding of the benefits of monounsaturated fats, but that doesn't mean you should drink fish or flaxseed oil by the cup. There's increased evidence of the benefits of traditional soy foods like miso or natto, but that doesn't mean you should eat a whole bunch of TSP or other processed soy foods.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[macraig]

Eh, get that Libertarian urge much? ;-)

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's vacuous and useless.

How is "moderation" defined? Not too much and not too little, right? Awesome, now all we need to know is how much is too much and how little is too little, i.e. the very information the cliche supposedly provides.

Or maybe it means average. I should be eating and behaving like the average American. Yeah, never mind.

(Then someone says "I'll show you what moderation means", *-1 Troll*)

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, susceptibility to type II diabetes is partially due to genetic and other heritable factors. There's also some evidence that an overly aggressive immune response to certain infectious diseases can be a factor in type II diabetes, as well as in weight gain (keep in mind that belly fat is an endocrine organ and will increase your appetite)

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[TadhgDagis]

Such as refined sugar. It's amazing how hard it is to find a decent lunch in some places that isn't full of sugar. This bothers me because it did lead to a degenerative disease in me -- I'm diabetic.

A little clarity here about symptoms and causes: eating sugar doesn't contribute to diabetes; getting fat off eating sugar does. Conceivably, if I ate enough of the stuff to gain 40 pounds, brussel sprouts could cause diabetes as well (not to mention increasing my risk of major depression by a few orders of magnitude).

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[macraig]

The cliche doesn't PROVIDE the answers... it merely HINTS at them. The trick is that you're supposed to be OBSERVANT and ANALYTICAL enough to then figure out what is "moderate". I guess you failed? Thanks for sharing that glass of sour grapes.

Troll, indeed.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[philspear]

Well, specific links tend to be better for research. And, were the study to find the opposite, that would be quite informative too. If diet and general health did NOT contribute at all to onset of alzheimers, that could be an indication that somethign suprisingly specific was to blame, rather than a huge list of fairly generic causes.

I'm not an expert specifically, but I'd wager that many people think/ thought there would be a genetic component in 100% of the cases of alzheimers. As far as I know, that's not been proven true, although it doesn't rule out extremely complicated genetics or something we've totally missed the boat on.

Anyway, if the study were to prove that diet could not increase your risk, that would simplify the search for causes dramatically.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Anonymous Coward]

I ended up getting a subscription for a men's health magazine (also for the humor and the quality of the non-health articles)

same reasons i read playboy!

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Anonymous Coward]

So you don't dispute my "less than too much, more than too little" definition? Because that equates with "within the range of amounts/degrees that are correct"*. So the cliche says you should do and have things to the correct degrees and amounts, or, roughly, "the right amounts are the correct amounts". A true statement to be sure, but not one that comes as news to people who are able to observe and analyze (skills which are harder to teach than the cliche, and much more useful).

I wasn't trying to say that the cliche isn't a panacea, I was trying to say it isn't useful at all, and doesn't hint at anything.

(*also implying that an extreme cannot be right, which I forgot to mention sometimes renders the cliche both meaningful and incorrect; for instance you should eat zero plutonium.)

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Anonymous Coward]

You are hoping it skips a generation, meaning you which Diabetes on your kids?
You are the kind of person that shouldn't have kids.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[macraig]

Literalist much? Sheesh.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Anonymous Coward]

Peanut butter and honey isn't that bad for you. Peanut butter is pretty healthy...

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[yo5oy]

Type II diabetes can be hereditary in that one with a family history is more likely to be predisposed to acquiring the disease. Twin studies show a 95% link that if one twin has diabetes type II the other will as well.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Fallingcow]

brussel sprouts could cause diabetes as well (not to mention increasing my risk of major depression by a few orders of magnitude).

I'd be depressed, too, if I'd eaten enough brussel sprouts to gain 40 lbs :(

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[drinkypoo]

They told you to eat a diet based around complex carbs. They were right. They never told you to eat a lot.

That is incorrect. Even the revised food pyramid puts too much emphasis on carbs, even if you eat mostly complex ones. In addition, your link tells you "Eat More Fiber-Filled Foods Like Fruits, Vegetables, and Whole Grains". Guess what? The previous food pyramid explicitly instructed citizens to consume more servings of carb-based food than anything else. Fruits and veggies are in a different category, with many fewer recommended servings. If anything, you have only helped to support my point.

Linking to an article defending the quack Atkins diet would be merely funny if it weren't tragic. People on Atkins and similar diets put themselves at increased risk of many diseases, and do not lose any more weight than people on other diets of the same calorie level. They're about the worst diet possible - excepting only the aptly-named SAD, the Standard American Diet.

You clearly lack an understanding of the Atkins diet, which employs a normal state of being for mankind on a limited basis in order to reduce weight, then shifts to a different regimen for lifetime maintenance, which is centered around eating more complex carbs, but still not more of them than your body needs - which turns out to actually be quite little. We're not talking about fiber here - Neither is the food pyramid. Since fiber is an indigestible carbohydrate which also scrubs your system, its importance should not be overlooked. Obviously you understand this, but it is not accounted for in the simplest initiative, and it should be.

Ketosis is a natural state for mankind to enter once a year during the "hunter" phase of the "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle. Most of us have a metabolism targeted to this lifestyle, because evolution slowed to a virtual standstill (obviously, it always continues) once we began living on agriculture, and destroying the planet's ability to support life with it.

Aside from fads and misinterpretations, the basic message has been consistent and correct for decades: eat a varied and calorically-moderate diet based around vegetables and whole grains, rich in complex carbs and fiber, moderate in protein, and low in fat.

This is most explicitly not what the Food Pyramid on which we have raised our children says. It explicitly instructed you to eat a minimally varied diet based primarily around carbohydrates, and today the situation is little better.

There is increasing understanding of the benefits of monounsaturated fats, but that doesn't mean you should drink fish or flaxseed oil by the cup. There's increased evidence of the benefits of traditional soy foods like miso or natto, but that doesn't mean you should eat a whole bunch of TSP or other processed soy foods.

TSP isn't sufficiently processed. Miso is a fermented food, it changes the characteristics substantially. There was a study at the U of H that indicated an increased Alzheimer's risk only in men from overconsumption of tofu, the speculation being that it is caused by the phytoestrogens in the soy bean. Also, there is ample evidence that drinking fish oil is something like a quarter as effective as eating fish with that much oil in it. Apparently your body evolved to eat whole foods, who'd have thunk it? Same is true of vitamin supplements, most of which seem to pass almost entirely through the body without being metabolized - although I'd sure rather have multivitamins and rice to live on than rice alone.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Anonymous Coward]

Both my parents are Type II diabetic... meaning it wasn't hereditary. Been there, seen that, hoping it skips a generation.

That's not to say my dietary habits are perfect; I have an aggressive sweet tooth and love fatty junk like cookies, chips, and ice cream (Breyer's Natural Vanilla!), but I'm very conscious of it. I'm within 15 pounds of my ideal 150 weight, and never more than 40 past it. In my twenties I had 5% body fat and a 43 pulse (from cycling and hiking). Contrast that with my father who even in his early twenties, according to my uncle, would binge on pastries and crap, starve himself for a day or two, then go right back to eating more junk. I grew up watching him stand in the kitchen eating peanut butter mixed with honey! He was always obese, not surprisingly.

I think another cliche applies here, in my case: "sins of the father". Trying not to repeat them....

If you eat sugary and fatty foods, you stress your liver and pancreas. Even if you only have a 5% body fat composition. Over a lifetime of higher demand, the organs that work harder with those sorts of diets are more likley to disfunction because of it. Then your doctor tells you you have diabetes, pancreatic cancer etc etc etc.

Re:"Everything in moderation"

[Mr. Slippery]

Even the revised food pyramid puts too much emphasis on carbs, even if you eat mostly complex ones.

Not at all. The majority of caloric intake should be from carbohydrates - at least 55% with 30% fat and 15% protein as maximums, probably more like 70-85% with 10-20% fat and 5-10% protein. (With perhaps slightly higher levels of fat and protein for children, who are building new tissue.)

With their emphasis on fatty and high-protein animal products, the USDA guidelines put too little emphasis on carbs. They're not the best guidelines, but they're a damn sight better than the Standard American Diet or the Low Carb Tragedies.

The reason that Americans have been getting fatter has little to do with the relative proportion of macronutrients in their calories, it's that we're eating more calories - and burning fewer. A perfectly balanced diet won't help you be healthy if you eat 500 calories a day more than you burn.

Americans' average caloric intake increased by 24.5 percent between 1970 and 2000, from about 2,170 to 2,700 a day. We sure as hell didn't increase our average activity level by one quarter over that time.

Fruits and veggies are in a different category, with many fewer recommended servings.

No, there are not "many fewer" recommended servings of fruits and vegetables in the food pyramid, 7 servings of fruits and vegetables versus 9 of grains at 2,200 calories.

Ketosis is a natural state for mankind to enter once a year during the "hunter" phase of the "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle.

The "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle is a hack on top of an ape metabolism based around foraging. Using it as a guide to optimum health is unwise.

Ketosis is great if you like kidney failure and brain damage. It also leads to fatigue, making exercise - the absolute best thing you can do for long-term weight loss and general health - more difficult.

This is most explicitly not what the Food Pyramid on which we have raised our children says. It explicitly instructed you to eat a minimally varied diet based primarily around carbohydrates, and today the situation is little better.

Yes, they rightly told you to get most of your calories from carbs, with a preference for complex carbs. No, they didn't tell you to eat a minimally varied diet - if you got that impression then I'm sorry but you need remedial training in reading comprehension.

1990 dietary guidelines:

• "Eat a variety of foods."
• "Choose a diet with plenty of vegetables, fruits, and grain products."
• "Vegetables, fruits, and grain products ...are emphasized in this guideline especially for their complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, and other food components linked to good health."

1995 dietary guidelines:

• "Eat a variety of foods."
• "Choose a diet with plenty of grain products, vegetables, and fruits."
• "Most of the calories in your diet should come from grain products, vegetables, and fruits. These include grain products high in complex carbohydrates -- breads, cereals, pasta, rice -- found at the base of the Food Guide Pyramid, as well as vegetables such as potatoes and corn."
• "Eat products made from a variety of whole grains...Eat several servings of whole-grain breads and cereals daily."

2000 dietary guidelines:

• "Build your eating pattern on a variety of grains, fruits, and vegetables."
• "Include several servings of whole grain foods daily -- such as whole wheat, brown rice, oa

Damn, I'm screwed...

[Anonymous Coward]

All this leftover halloween candy... Well... I guess I'm screwed then.
About what?... I forget

Hogwash

[vtcodger]

Sounds like absolute hogwash to me. Now I have to head for the candy machine and get me one of those ... you know ... what are they called? ... things.

Re:Hogwash

[Afecks]

Whatchamacallit, the official candy bar of Alzheimer's sufferers.

Re:Hogwash

[failedlogic]

Prevention is the best medicine! From now on my breakfast of deep fried bacon and sausage with a peanut butter and gummy bear topping will only be baked. I usually wash it down with a gallon of Mountain Dew since it compliments the bacon and sausage well. At least by not deep-frying it will remove 'fast food' from the equation, so I should be 50% safer.

Re:Hogwash

[Anonymous Coward]

That's GENIUS!!!!!! Funniest, most clever post on /. EVER!

speculation

[cuby]

"We now suspect that"
Yeah...I also can suspect that a giant skids are aliens incarnations from Frodo...

The world is already full of FUD, comeback with real prof please.

Re:speculation

[geekmux]

The world is already full of FUD, comeback with real prof please.

You know the difference between "we suspect" and "we conclude"? About 10 million dollars.

Still looking forward to funding this with your hard-earned tax money?

Meanline, a control group of mice ...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . fed on a diet of nicotine and alcohol, behaved in a way described by Dr. Akterin as "ladish", and taunted her with "tits out for the mice!"

This just in!

[forgoil]

Living will kill you.

Re:This just in!

[vintagepc]

You forgot to post the article to that... "The Latest research suggests that living in itself may in fact be inherently dangerous to everyone. Experts are currently working on a plan to reduce this danger, and research suggests that objects such as rope, razors and high-strenght drugs may be beneficial in eliminating the danger of being alive."

Re:This just in!

[Sponge Bath]

Living will kill you.

Are you sure? It hasn't so far.

Re:This just in!

[Anonymous Coward]

Living will kill you.

Are you sure? It hasn't so far.

You wait and see. I bet it will in the end.

Re:This just in!

[An Onerous Coward]

True enough. But don't you find it odd that living in the wealthiest nation on Earth* kills you just as fast as living in the desperate poverty of Cuba? Despite the fact that we spend a helluvalott more trying to extend our lives?

Previously I've argued that living in a shallow hierarchy is healthier and less stressful than living in a steep one. But to a first approximation, I think that the difference is, they don't have to eat the crap that we do.

* 1776-2009

Re:This just in!

[IchNiSan]

Of course, death is always in the last place you look.

I forgot what you just said

[fortapocalypse]

I'm eating a Twinkie

Re:I forgot what you just said

[Anonymous Coward]

Good god I love twinkies, and fried foods, and drinks with tons of caffeine and sugar.
I'm a caucasian male 6'2", weight 145 pounds and I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I'm in perfect health, albeit not top physical shape. (no I can't lift ten times my own weight, like an ant)
If I described my eating habits with one word, it'd be: deathalicious.

Muhahah! In your face, statistics!

More FUD

[tjstork]

I'm sick of all the vague and useless FUD coming out of the scientific community. There is not a single thing that they can discover or will discover that will change the fact that we will die.

Regardless of the novel intent, the underlying message, that we should be in constant fear, of what we eat, breath, and drink is really no improvement of where we were 200 years ago, before there were even scientists. What's the point! Get back to work on flying cars leave the mice alone.

I can hear already the trumpets of safety wailing away. Soon we'll have even more legislation about the sorts of food that we can eat, supposedly in our best interest, but really, a puritanical expression of clinging to life at every last grasp no matter what. We should only be puritans about things that matter.

Sometimes life is worth more than just extending it. Sometimes there is a choice between living free and well versus merely living longer.

Re:More FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand your anger. If you really think this is FUD you have to blame the media that transports these studies. A study finds that if you only eat crap your brain will melt and the medias report it like you will die as soon as you touch a burger.

Imo the key word here is "diet". You probably don't get alzheimer's because you eat fast food and candy, but because of all the healty and tasty stuff you don't eat.

Re:More FUD

[philspear]

I'm sick of all the vague and useless FUD coming out of the scientific community.

I too am sick of waiting around! Lets just skip right to the end where we cure alzheimers using MAGIC!

There is not a single thing that they can discover or will discover that will change the fact that we will die. Regardless of the novel intent, the underlying message, that we should be in constant fear, of what we eat, breath, and drink is really no improvement of where we were 200 years ago, before there were even scientists.

Look at life expectancy increases over the last few decades. Also realize that we've only been serious about biomedical research relatively recently. Evolution went on for much longer and is still far ahead of us.

Oh, before I forget, the Wright brothers just called and said you naysaying types were right, that man probably will never fly.

Remember when eggs were bad for you?

[localroger]

After years of telling people to avoid eggs suddenly it turns out that they're not bad for you after all. It's partly the media and partly scientists who want the limelight provided by the media, but it's really irresponsible how lifestyle changes are suggested (and in some cases demanded) based on one or two studies like this, while centuries of anecdotal evidence to the contrary are ignored.

Re:Remember when eggs were bad for you?

[value_added]

The "eggs are bad" example is recent history. A better example is margarine being touted as the healthy (and tasty) alternative to butter. Some of us knew better, of course, but the margarine evil lasted a few generations.

Re:Remember when eggs were bad for you?

[ravrazor]

Just to stop anybody on slashdot from switching from (or staying with) butter because this comment has been moderated "interesting"... margarine IS better...as long as you pick a decent one that's not 59 cents per 1 kg tub.
From the Mayo Clinic: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/butter-vs-margarine/AN00835
The American Heart Association: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=532

And if you're looking for more info, here's how a search engine works:
http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=butter+margarine

Re:Remember when eggs were bad for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

The American Heart Association tells me that red meat is bad for me.

Excuse my while I continue to eat butter.

Re:Remember when eggs were bad for you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Recipe for good life: Eat the absolute opposite of what AHA says.

Re:Remember when eggs were bad for you?

[permaculture]

I only ever used margerine on toast. One day I ran out, and had to spray olive oil on instead using a little spray bottle I got off Amazon.com. I can spray olive oil much more sparingly then spreading margerine.

I haven't bought any margerine since.

Common Sense (I would guess) ...

[foobsr]

... would suggest that it does not much good if you behave in an unbalanced manner, irrespective of the domain. If you are not balanced, you end up flat on your face, as easy as that (admittedly, it is quite hard to rediscover common sense after a treat of 'scientific values clarification').

CC.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

So go jump in front of a bus, we will thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

So go jump in front of a bus, we will thank you later for making our day.

If this makes you so "sick", stop reading it! Study after study has shown, with scientific accuracy, that reading stuff that makes you sick (tada) MAKES YOU SICK !! So STOP READING STUFF THAT MAKES YOU SICK!

Carry on

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, that explains Alzheimer's and cancer and diabetes and stuff over a hundred years ago; it was all the Big Macs and pizza slices and sodas... Oh, WAIT. They didn't have that stuff a hundred years ago. Wow, maybe the Government needs to fund a study on what caused say, Alzheimer's, one hundred years ago if it wasn't a Big Mac.

Re:Interesting

[Hal_Porter]

It was those Republican fuckers driving SUVs.

Re:Interesting

[lyml]

Damn, that explains Alzheimer's and cancer and diabetes and stuff over a hundred years ago; it was all the Big Macs and pizza slices and sodas... Oh, WAIT. They didn't have that stuff a hundred years ago. Wow, maybe the Government needs to fund a study on what caused say, Alzheimer's, one hundred years ago if it wasn't a Big Mac.

That a implies b doesn't mean that c cannot imply b.

I now hope to never hear this flawed argument again.

Re:Interesting

[westlake]

Damn, that explains Alzheimer's and cancer and diabetes and stuff over a hundred years ago

Thwaw are in many ways diseases traditionally associated with old age. If most of your population dies before age fifty, you are not likely to see them listed often as the cause of death.
The doctor in 1910 may not be able to advance his diagnosis beyond recording the symptoms and progress of a premature "senile dementia."

Re:Interesting

[An Onerous Coward]

I plugged your sig into my command line. A genie immediately sprang from my computer and granted me three wishes.

Were it not for you, I would not be enjoying this sabre-toothed tiger burger, the love of Kiera Knightly, or the prompt and loyal service of my new manservant, William H. Gates III.

No, really. What's it do?

Re:Interesting

[Hal_Porter]

Run it and see.

Re:Interesting

[Stoian Ivanov]

forkbomb in asm using syscall(int 80h) 2(move eax,02) fork and then loop. Next thime do it with DB for extra credit and EPIC WIN :-|

Re:Interesting

[Hal_Porter]

I don't have a Linux machine to test on anymore so I can't test it but I think

dd 0x02b8, 0xeb80cd00, 0xf7

should do the trick here's the original .lst file

1 global _start
    2 _start:
    3 00000000 B802000000 mov eax, 2
    4 00000005 CD80 int 80h
    5 00000007 EBF7 jmp short _start

Here's the one with the dd's

3 00000000 B802000000CD80EBF7- dd 0x02b8, 0xeb80cd00, 0xf7

So I think this will work

echo -e 'dd 0x02b8, 0xeb80cd00, 0xf7\n' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;

I worry a bit that dd's will end up in the data section unless I override though.

Alzheimer's is the new Cancer?

[SoapBox17]

Sounds like Alzheimer's is going to become the "new cancer" where everything causes Alzheimer's. Can we just fastforward to the part where they admit they don't have a clue what causes it, please?

Re:Alzheimer's is the new Cancer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, actually they do research on what causes Alzheimer's because they don't know what causes it. You see, the scheme here is, if you don't know something, you do research, and then eventually you can come to a conclusion that answers your question.

Re:Alzheimer's is the new Cancer?

[Anonymous Coward]

We know for certain that age causes it.

Re:Alzheimer's is the new Cancer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful my ass. Alzheimer's, like cancer, is a condition caused partly by genetic predisposition and partly by long-term assault upon cellular integrity (with things like this it's usually either DNA damage or oxidative damage or both). So there are about a gazillion things which are bad for you. Minimize them, and you minimize your risk. But eliminating one of them without addressing the others isn't going to be some magic shield.

FDA

[tepples]

Ever also thought about a relation of food and pharma industry?

The United States has a Food and Drug Administration. Think about it.

Re:FDA

[gEvil (beta)]

The United States has a Food and Drug Administration. Think about it.

Of course they're in it together. Ever wonder why the US has a 100% mortality rate?

Re:FDA

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever wonder why the US has a 100% mortality rate?

Wrong. Ever hear of Walt Disney on ice? Hint. It doesn't include Nancy Kerrigan.

Re:FDA

[LrdDimwit]

Shoot, if you factor in our military escapades, we're over a hundred percent. Extra credit, and all that.

Re:FDA

[foobsr]

The United States has a Food and Drug Administration. Think about it.

THNX. Obviously a case of not seeing the wood for the trees (not being located in the US is only a poor excuse ;) .

CC.

I thought MSG and Nutrasweet caused it...

[PRMan]

Before anybody runs to diet products because they shouldn't have sugar: There's plenty of anecdotal evidence...

Re:I thought MSG and Nutrasweet caused it...

[symbolic]

I wonder how many people realize that Nutrasweet (aspartame) started out as a neuro toxin being considered by the military as a candidate for chemical warfare.

What about the sugar

[benj_e]

The title states that a "Diet of Fast Food and Candy May Cause Alzheimers" and the link states that "diet rich in fat, sugar, and cholesterol could increase the risk of Alzheimer's".

Yet in the body of the article we get this little gem: "We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances...".

Seems they conveniently left out sugar in the summary.

Interesting

Re:What about the sugar

[t0rkm3]

Especially when you consider that many scientist's studying Alzheimer's consider Type II Diabetes the best link to understanding Alzheimer's.

Sugar is the devil.

Characterized as a peripheral metabolic disorder and a degenerative disease of the central nervous system respectively, it is now widely recognized that type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) share several common abnormalities including impaired glucose metabolism, increased oxidative stress, insulin resistance and amyloidogenesis. Several recent studies suggest that this is not an epiphenomenon, but rather these two diseases disrupt common molecular pathways and each disease compounds the progression of the other. For instance, in AD the accumulation of the amyloid-beta peptide (Abeta), which characterizes the disease and is thought to participate in the neurodegenerative process, may also induce neuronal insulin resistance. Conversely, disrupting normal glucose metabolism in transgenic animal models of AD that over-express the human amyloid precursor protein (hAPP) promotes amyloid-peptide aggregation and accelerates the disease progression. Studying these processes at a cellular level suggests that insulin resistance and Abeta aggregation may not only be the consequence of excitotoxicity, aberrant Ca(2+) signals, and proinflammatory cytokines such as TNF-alpha, but may also promote these pathological effectors. At the molecular level, insulin resistance and Abeta disrupt common signal transduction cascades including the insulin receptor family/PI3 kinase/Akt/GSK3 pathway. Thus both disease processes contribute to overlapping pathology, thereby compounding disease symptoms and progression.

Biochim Biophys Acta. 2008 Nov 5
Zhao WQ, Townsend M.

Missing pic

[jez9999]

a Reuters report on research out of Sweden indicating that a diet rich in fat, sugar, and cholesterol could increase the risk of Alzheimer's, at least in mice.

The poster neglected to link to the pic of the test subject.

It's the self promotion...

[tjstork]

The point here is that the study said nothing that was new or useful. What we have hear is some broad tortured a mouse and said that we need to eat more healthily. Like, what did she really do that was useful? Nothing. There's no guarantee that if you follow her conclusion, you won't get alzheimers. There's nothing to treat people that already have gotten it. There's nothing but a bunch of dead mice, a scientist with a flair for self promotion, saying that we need to eat better. Big deal.

Re:It's the self promotion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I am a programmer. The first thing you do when hunting a bug is trying to reproduce it. If you can't reproduce it in a controled environment your chances are low to find the cause.
So scienists doing research. Big deal.

It is not like some crazy doctor sits in his secret laboratory experimenting with different colored fluids until he finds a mixture that is glowing purple and then he opens the front door, green smoke emerging from behind, and he yells "I have found a cure for Alzheimer's!". You have to do basic research first. And some of it may seem irrelevant and most of it will seem boring and people will always claim they knew that already.

Re:It's the self promotion...

[Waffle Iron]

If you feel that you don't have the ability to learn anything from this data point, then fine. You go on and eat nothing but junk food. Please.

Mice?

[Bazman]

I thought the mice were experimenting on us?

</hhgttg>

Damn!

[SolitaryMan]

I forgot to order a pizza!

Bad scientist!

[durrr]

The study is quite flawed, she might as well feed them a diet "rich in rat poison" and conclude that it's quite fatal for the critters.

There are more studies needed, focusing on the separate compounds; is a diet rich in sugar bad? Is the sugar rich diet bad if the net caloric intake is low? Is the sugar rich diets bad when combined with nutritional supplements that cover the nutritional needs that sugar doesn't provide? Is a combination diet of sugar and fat worse or better than the single sugar or single fat ones? Is HDL cholesterol a equal factor as LDL cholesterol? In what manners do the mice metabolism change in the diets? Could these changes perhaps be blocked by medication, and if yes, will it prevent alzheimers?

The study tells us what we already know, a diet of junk food is bad for you. However, most likely a diet of junk food will kill you trough some other pathway before you develop alzheimers.

More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[brian0918]

As you'll find with almost all dietary research, the conclusions are baseless. They fed the mice junk food, and focused on only a couple measures of the contents of the junk food - "fat", cholesterol, sugar. What about the other crap in junk food? What about the nutrients you DON'T find in junk food but that are crucial to life? Do any of those components (or lack thereof) correlate better? Blank out. What types of fat are bad, and what types are good? Trans fat? polyunsaturated? monounsaturated? saturated? long chain, medium chain, or short chain? WHICH TYPES OF FAT?! Blank out.

Nope, you won't find that here. All fat is assumed to be bad. Other studies show all cholesterol to be bad, or all protein to be bad, or all carbs to be bad, without actually examining in detail the nutrient content of the food to find what component actually correlates the most with their definition of "bad".

Until a randomized, double blind study is done, the only thing you can conclude from this is that junk food correlates to a certain degree with Alzheimer's. Nothing can be said about "fat", nor about cholesterol, nor about sugar.

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[Neuronaut137]

"Correlation is not causation" is probably the most overused and misapplied tag on this site. If there is a control, and there was, then it's not just a correlation. Whether the cause is actually sugar/fat or some other difference between the "bad" diet and the control diet is subject to debate, but there is a cause here, not simply a correlation. And this is rodent research, so there is no such thing as a double blind study.

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[brian0918]

Sorry, I should have been more specific: double-blind study on humans. As far as "correlation/causation" - I'm not sure where you picked up that I made that claim. Correlation is fine, as long as you actually do a thorough examination and try to determine what components (or missing components) provide the best correlation. Otherwise you're just dangerously misinforming the public, as this study does.

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[An Onerous Coward]

Why is it that, whenever the media gets a hold of a single research paper, then draws wildly inaccurate or overly broad conclusions, people accuse the study of misinforming the public? From the story:

"All in all, the results give some indication of how Alzheimer's can be prevented, but more research in this field needs to be done before proper advice can be passed on to the general public," she said.

You wrongly claim that the researchers "fed the mice junk food." What they actually fed them was a high-fat, high-sugar diet that bears some
nutritional similarity to a junk food diet. Again, from the story:

She studied mice genetically engineered to mimic the effect of the variant gene in humans, and which were fed a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol for nine months -- meals representing the nutritional content of fast food.

Had they actually been feeding the critters junk food, including a hodge-podge of chemicals found nowhere in nature, then you could criticize the study for a lack of controls. I know that it's your inalienable right as a member of forum Slashdot to criticize the results of a study without

A) understanding how the study was conducted, or

B) understanding what the researchers are claiming, or

C) ever letting cross your mind the thought that maybe, just maybe, the people who make livings designing research experiments might have been smart enough to have accounted for the potentially confounding factors that you -- the untrained layman -- immediately spotted.

However, I still retain the right to find it annoying as hell.

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[FormOfActionBanana]

Everything Neuronaut says below, and also:

Don't you think contrasting different kinds of fats and nutrients would be the logical NEXT controlled mouse experiment?

I don't think we're ready as a species to start caging up humans and proscribing them diets just to confirm theories about eating and health. The current system: developing hunches based on observational correlation and then doing controlled experiments on little mice -- works out pretty well for now.

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[FormOfActionBanana]

Disclaimer: my blood pressure is rising reading these comments, and I haven't read TFA.

So brian0918, I guess I'm going at you twice now. I think research goes in this order:

1. Survey people about what they eat/do and how sick they get.
2. Correlate away. You have to guess at the parameters.
3. Publish your findings. CowboyNeal and kdawson write a misleading article summary that pisses you off. STEPS 1 2 AND 3 ARE ENTIRELY OPTIONAL.
4. Based on a) thorough examination from 1&2 b) sloppy partial examination from 1&2, c) sponsor's suggestion d) wild-ass guess or religious zeal, you set up a controlled experiment.
5. Treat some mice nice, and change ONE parameter for the other mice. See who gets sick.
6. Publish the results. "If mice hold an ohmmeter while I hurt their feelings, more of them have heart attacks." Or maybe the results is just "no change".

My point is you seem to volunteer that step 3 pisses you off. Well, me too sometimes. But I think by the time you get to step 6, EVEN if step 4 is based on NO GOOD reason at all, we still know something at the end of step 6. We either know something, or we know something ain't so. It doesn't seem like "dangerous misinformation" to me.

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[brian0918]

Don't you think contrasting different kinds of fats and nutrients would be the logical NEXT controlled mouse experiment?

Yes, I would think so, except that this sort of research has been done for decades now. That's why I don't get what's so interesting about this study. How can someone get grant money to do their doctoral thesis on such general, useless research as has already been done to death? Is it simply because they looked at specific genes? That seems to be the only unique thing about the research. But then all they did in the end was just connect it back to Alzheimer's without any new insight.

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[brian0918]

What they actually fed them was a high-fat, high-sugar diet that bears some nutritional similarity to a junk food diet.

What types of fat? What types of sugar? None of this is specified. This sort of research has been going on for decades. The only unique thing about this study is that they looked at certain genes. In the end, though, they just connected it back through correlation to the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's, without any new insight... so remind again what the point of the research was. It's not laying groundwork for future study. That groundwork has already been laid.

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[FormOfActionBanana]

Repeating research that's been done before is one way of sanity checking the latest findings. It may be a little wasteful of mice and resources, but the alternative is we get carried away with our beliefs and assumptions.

There must be many areas of research where the results tell A, then B, then A and B again. It would seem to me like a sign that we're not testing what we think we're testing. Other times I suppose there is fraud involved.

I think what is so cool about science is that nothing is strongly assumed; we humans always take the position that we don't really know the answer so we try to find out. My field was Mathematics, which has the opposite dynamic (declaring what's true, given some starting points and rules to work off of).

Re:More bad research and unsupported conclusions

[An Onerous Coward]

The story did lack some specifics, yes. How is that the fault of the researchers? Why would the Associated Press bore us with ratios of fructose to sucrose?

I'm not in the field, so I can't say that any particular bit is useful or novel. But it seems that knowing that this specific gene interacts with this specific diet to cause these specific brain structures that seem to promote Alzheimer's is well worth knowing.

It could lead to a genetic test that can gauge an individual's likelihood of getting the disease. That could lead to prescribing drugs or adopting lifestyles that combat the disease. It could show future researchers how to generate more brain tangles for study. Studying just how a junk food diet interacts with the gene could give us insight into the formation of tangles.

Maybe every bit of that was already known (I doubt it, but...). Even then, confirmation and repetition have their own utility. Every flash of insight has to be followed by years of grunt work.

bzzzzzzt

[Anonymous Coward]

The article points out, they were fed "fast food", which contains things other than fat and cholesterol. Fast food is also cooked differently than other foods. Just blindly saying "fast food" was the cause is misleading at best. It is a known fact that fast food contains chemicals not normally found in other foods. It is also a known fact that how food is cooked can change it's chemical composition dramatically, making normally healthy food toxic. Just another "study" where there is a poor control group and general assumption of "it's the fat" not taking into account other factors or combination of factors. It's a study which uses only that data they want to prove an EMOTION/POLITICAL MOTIVATION towards fast food in general. It really doesn't find the real cause.

As to the sugar comments, the real problem is not sugar in general. It is corn syrup, a chemically produced/altered sugar. It goes toward my first point. Just because it's similar doesn't make it the same.

We need to get corn syrup, melamine, and all the other nasty chemicals/chemically produced ingredients out of the food supply. "Small quantities" are not safe. We also need to quit using the "food pyramid" originally designed for the proper food intake of cattle not people. We need to quit being "sheeple".

No Way!

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean eating junk food is bad for you?

So for what ARE stats useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that correlation is not causation. This is an important principle of statistical analysis. Though this principle alone doesn't instantly render the enterprise of statistical data-gathering worthless, does it?

Whenever someone hears a conclusion that disagrees with their pre-existing biases, they say, "well stats can be made to say anything you want." So does that mean that we can never trust any statistical evidence ever, no matter how how rigorously the principles of good data-gathering were applied?

So I ask you, when ARE stats useful?

Doh

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one would like to welcome our new...eh what ...already?

Also,

[kevind23]

MSG.

Huh? Tax it?

[electrosoccertux]

Just wondering, who do you think you that you can run around getting government involved in everything? Seriously, tax it? Where did that come from? Because more government is all we need, right? If people want to put crap into their bodies, so be it.
Are you going to tax healthy restaurants too? Which menu items will you tax? I hope you won't tax the Salad+Vinegarett combos. I suppose if you support universal healthcare then you could make a case for taxing unhealthy foods. I love people that think we need the government to baby our citizens into behaving and eating well.

On a side note, I haven't RTA, but my guess is they correlate these two, and do not find the cause.
IANABiologist, but I've read some papers that make a fairly convincing case that Alzheimers is simply diabetes in the brain.
Fast foods (and candy of course) are terribly rich in starch. The starch/sugar-> glucose process takes very little effort on behalf of your body, and is very fast. Result is tons of glucose spikes in your blood, which over time decreases insulin sensitivity of your (muscles, brain). That's not even mentioning the free radicals (cancer agents) released when processing the starches.

So the answer is not a blanket "avoid fast food" (or, heaven forbid tax it) but when you go out to eat, choose what you eat carefully. Stay away from the simple carbs like fries, get proteins and fibers.

Re:Huh? Tax it?

[BluBrick]

...I've read some papers that make a fairly convincing case that Alzheimers is simply diabetes in the brain.

From that link:

(The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an ADDL for "amyloid derived diffusible ligand.")

Wait, WHAT? Are they saying that Alzheimer's patients are just ADDL-headed? (methinks the biochem and medico geeks might be having a lend of us with that acronym)

EVEN MORE OBVIOUS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

We've had Alzheimer's long before we had "fast food".

Re:EVEN MORE OBVIOUS!!!

[philspear]

So there remains nothing that is the absolute cause of altzheimers. Fast food joins genetics, aluminum, and all manners of early symptoms in that category.

It's already been blindingly clear for some time that alzheimers is a complex disease requiring many different factors to produce the disease. A little like cancer, in fact. Lung cancer almost certainly existed before smoking, and non-smokers can get it. Does that mean that smoking does not cause lung cancer? Only to complete simpletons.

It's important to identify risk factors for alzheimers to be able to prevent the disease and possibly even understand the mechanisms behind the cause.

Re:EVEN MORE OBVIOUS!!!

[srussia]

Lung cancer almost certainly existed before smoking, and non-smokers can get it. Does that mean that smoking does not cause lung cancer? Only to complete simpletons.

Depends on what you mean by "cause". If you mean "if A, then B", then it is quite obvious that smoking does not cause lung cancer.

Re:Obvious? NOT!

[p51d007]

Apparently you are not old enough to remember the saccharine scare of the 70's. Diet sodas were introduced, containing that chemical. Then, some nanny state idiots came along and said it causes cancer in lab rats or mice. After all the panic, people boycotting diet soda, someone did a little digging into the research. Come to find out that the lab rats were fed the equivalent amount which would require a human to consume 500 or more 12 oz diet sodas a day! Mice do NOT equal humans, as much as researcher would like you to think. If a study of humans, who have alzheimers, finds that their diet was rich in fast food & sugar, then you might have a case. As for getting the government to put a food tax on something, I say NO! The government runs enough of my life now, and in 09 will more than likely be running more of it, so no thank you for a food tax. I find the problem with nutrition in America like this. We eat too many preprocessed foods than we did when I was a kid. Most people "grew their own" food in gardens, which gave us minerals, enzymes, and antibodies that we no longer get now that everything comes prepackaged.

Basic research is useless.

[tjstork]

Occam's razor applies to science as well. If you are not doing the simplest possible thing to solve the problem at hand, you are dicking around at humanity's expense. I think this story falls into that category of self indulgence funded by human fear and I think that's terrible.

It's fine for you to wave the flag of basic research, but honestly, I'm questioning whether or not this is in fact the way to go. We've been onto this "basic research" approach for quite some time now and have very little to show for it. I think a Manhattan style approach would be far more efficient.

You could probably cut a lot of crap out with manhattan style project planning for all major dieseases. You go and establish prevention tracking databases as I described, and then open up lines of inquiries as prescribed towards several major approaches towards curing the disease in question. In cancer it might be elevating immune responses, killing the cells, starving the tumors, whatever, and just get those approaches down. If you have to do detailed research there, then obviously do it. You would assign scientists to each slot, and that's what their career is. If they can't get it done, then replace them... and the scientist can either be sent off to work another problem, off to teach, or just sent back to wawa, who cares.

Consider this approach for alzheimers and this article... you could take millions of dollars and pay people to torture mice and find out everything about them, then spend billions more trying out different things in people only to find out that it doesn't work because mice are not human..., or you could set up a data warehouse that tracks what people do.

Just take any number of family members of alzheimers patients, gather up as much data about their diets as possible, and create a public wiki with a data mining engine to let and go -any- researcher mine the stuff for statistical links.
Any sort of dietary culprit would stick out like a red flag and from there you could do genetic testing on the people involved to determine if the diet triggers an alzheimer's gene.

Because self reporting might not be accurate enough, going forward, you could add the support of supermarkets and restaurants to dump their data from participating credit card holders to this database and then you'd -know- exactly what those newer participants ate.

I would think the whole shebang, from soup to nuts, would cost less than a few million bucks to set up and we would be done already. Instead, we got this person waving around basic research, a pile of dead mice, and really nothing useful for it. You can call it science as much as you want, but I call it religion...

If I want a religion, I can pick one a lot more entertaining than some dike stuffing rodents into a torture pit to say that mcdonald's is bad for us. I like an angry judeo-christian god smiting everyone with flood and fire and brimstone, not even for any just reason, but, because, he's just a god and a dick and can do that. Sure, fire and brimstone god isn't going to cure alzheimers with some miracle, but then again, neither is some dike killing mice for the fuck of it.

Re:Basic research is useless.

[An Onerous Coward]

I don't believe that this data farm of yours would work out too well. Sure, the ideal is there, of knowing everything about what everyone eats, then mining for useful correlations. But how would you deal with the following problems:

1) How would data be collected? We can't assign someone to write down every bite that goes into every mouth. If we track grocery purchases, there's no understanding of who in a household is eating what. Any approach is fraught with privacy issues that would have to be taken very seriously.

2) What data would be collected? The type of data we're interested in changes as we learn more. Had this program been started in the fifties, would we have known at the time to make distinctions between saturated and unsaturated, omega-3 and omega-6, HDLs and LDLs? Would this tracking account for things we've learned recently, like the fact that organic produce generally has more nutrients than their conventional counterparts? Every time you change the uber-database, it makes it that much harder to draw broad conclusions from the overall dataset.

3) When can we start expecting results? Some effects are the result of decades of behavior. It would be irresponsible to say, "let's wait thirty years to see if this junk-food/Alzheimer's thing pans out" when a ... how did you put it? ... mouse-torturing broad can give us a tentative answer with a few months of research.

4) Given that other behaviors also have profound health implications, would you add all behavior to this database? I've heard that the music you listen to also has an effect on your health. Will this database integrate with iTunes?

Sure, there is great value to your approach. But I think you're naive to think it would be a replacement for the current system, rather than a complement to it.

Re:Basic research is useless.

[tjstork]

We can't assign someone to write down every bite that goes into every mouth. If we track grocery purchases, there's no understanding of who in a household is eating what

Yes, but, its a start and you should expect to see an increase in alzheimer's in a household that eats a certain ingredient, do you not? Participants in the study would perhaps be able to veto the things they did not eat and you could also develop metholodologies to predict their reporting compliance.

Any approach is fraught with privacy issues that would have to be taken very seriously.

There wouldn't be privacy issues. The people who participate would be volunteers and I would be willing to bet that thousands of volunteers would be able to see what they eat.

What data would be collected? The type of data we're interested in changes as we learn more. Had this program been started in the fifties, would we have known at the time to make distinctions between saturated and unsaturated, omega-3 and omega-6, HDLs and LDLs?

Well, as an open system, yes, you would think that researchers could conduct historical studies to associate chemical tags of interest to various SKUs in the system.

Would this tracking account for things we've learned recently, like the fact that organic produce generally has more nutrients than their conventional counterparts?

Why couldn't it? If you've got a unique id on each item there's no reason that it can't be annotated back with historical information, if it needs to be researched. Look, if diet causes alzheimers, then, there's only so many different kinds of food products out there that people will eat in a lifetime. And... a lot of people tend to settle down into eating the same sorts of things - get the cheerios for breakfast, some fruits, etc.

3) When can we start expecting results? Some effects are the result of decades of behavior.

It may take decades, but it is something that guarantees us the ability to find dietary links to -any- disease. I mean hell, we might find out that fruit loops increases the incidence of homosexuality and count chocola eaters tend to wind up republican. IT could make for some good stuff.

But in any case, we both know that, doing what we're doing, the mouse torturing broad won't have yielded anything. It will be the same story from now as it is today. We'll be losing the race against bacteriological illness, can't comprehend viral illness, and we won't have a real cure for cancer or any other illness.

Re:Basic research is useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

So we only need:
- some tracking database to store the data
- a large number of participants to effectively separate the factors
- support of supermarkets and restaurants that should give us their data
- some way to connect that data to the participants
- at least 50 years to have the data of a life-time until the disease appears
- hope that we cover all relevant factors because we don't really want to wait another centurie.

Yeah, Occam's all the way, it couldn't be more simple.

Re:Basic research is useless.

[sydneyfong]

You would assign scientists to each slot, and that's what their career is. If they can't get it done, then replace them...

You just don't know how laughable this statement is, do you?

Quit thinking like a baby. Wake up, this is real life, not the whatever fantasy land you're living in, where things happen as you say so.

Let me summarize your approach in 3 lines.

1. Record all data
2. ???
3. Cure!

Unfortunately

[The Creator]

By then you will no longer remember what the question was..

Food manufacturers

[Virtually Sane]

Food is an very emotional topic - witness what happens to sales of a product after a scare story

Nutritional studies are oftan exercises in advanced statistics, it can be very hard to remove the effects of other factors

Regarding diets - the ancient greeks got it right - eat in moderation. Having steak every day is a major imbalence, although a nice one (also applies to ice cream etc.)

The food industry will make what sells, they will make low sugar/fat whatever, if enough people buy it. These guys are here to make a profit and will not build a factory to make something that does not sell.

Want to know who is responsible for your diet? Look in the mirror.

Interesting...

[Antlerbot]

Alzheimer's has certain autoimmune-like tendencies. Autoimmune diseases are generally thought to have a genetic and an environmental component: Hashimoto's, for instance, is thought to spring at least in part from overconsumption of iodine (ironic, considering iodine was added to the US food supply to prevent goiter, another thyroid disorder) combined with a genetic predisposition.

With this article in mind, then, it is not ridiculous to think that dietary intake might play a large role in the development of a disorder like Alzheimer's.

Protestant Sickness Ethic?

[ClosedSource]

At least in America, if medical science can't figure out what causes a medical condition, they blame it on the patient's "bad" behavior.

For example, we were told for years that ulcers were caused by stress so the recommended treatment was to reduce stress. Then one day, oops, it was discovered that the most common cause was Helicobacter Pylori which can be treated with antibiotics.

Warning:

[SST-206]

Fast Food and candy will kill your brain...
...FAST!

But you can do a triple blind study

[ClosedSource]

"And this is rodent research, so there is no such thing as a double blind study."

Mister Peabody: "Surely, Neuronaut137, you've heard of the three blind mice."

Causation Causes Correlation

[Anonymous Coward]

I love (or rather, *don't* love), how whenever there's a story that might potentially affect the typical slashdot reader's lifestyle, that "correlation does not equal causation" tage pops up. Guess what people - sometimes it does.

The profit?

[Nailor]

But how much will you lose weight using this diet?

Errata

[Hurricane78]

Damnit. I meant "because that value goes mostly anti-parallel to the length of the molecules in the food".

The Tau

[TOGSolid]

Well, if there's one thing I've learned over the past few years is that the best way to deal with the Tau is by cleansing them via Exterminatus.

Joking aside:
I have a very simple diet that really doesn't involve a lot of cooking (see: none) but I eat a lot of basic fruits/vegetables, meats/cheeses, and things like that. It's not terribly expensive since the foods themselves are all easily purchased in bulk and I eat better and healthier than most everyone else I know. Too often people (especially we proud bachelors) equate eating at home to involve tons of annoying cooking, but it's pretty simple to eat well cheaply.

By keeping lots of simple items about like fruits, cheeses, sandwich style meats, etc. that are healthy but also require 0 preparation it becomes a simple matter to eat well. Even when you go digging for a snack, what you grab will be good for you. Thanks to having easy to eat food at home, you won't sit there going "what will I cook for dinner for myself" and just end up going "ah fuck it I'll go buy a burger." No more fast food = more money in your back pocket, and you'll find yourself feeling a whole lot better in a hurry.
Granted, if you have a family this entire idea goes to crap since it's cheaper to do meals for the whole family, so you'll have to figure that one out for yourself.

How soon we forget

[Jay L]

That's not even the worst of it! I saw a report this morning that a diet of fast food and candy may cause Alzheimer's.

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[account_deleted]

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Diet of Diet Foods Might Not Be So Good Either

[roguetrick]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy

I drink a ton of diet tea myself, and its all about weighing risks:

1) Eat a bunch of sugar and you get the terrible pains in old age that obesity and diabetes cause.

2) Eat a bunch of vegetables and you get viruses from the water used to irrigate them.

3) Eat a bunch of red meat and maybe get bowel problems.

4) Eat a bunch of chicken and contribute to the destruction of your environment due to a cavalcade of chicken shit.

5) Eat a bullet and dream without worry.

Guess What!

[Jeheto]

Obesity is the either the #1, #2, or #3 leading causes of just about any terrible disease in the US. And yet people still can't even make minor cut backs or improvements in their diets. I understand that you can't always put in exercise or eat right, but I think many people use that excuse too liberally (I apologize if I used the incorrect word there). I find it rather odd that one of the world's most prosperous and advanced countries should be felled by laziness and gluttony, two of the seven deadly sins that we've been warned about for quite a while.

Re:Guess What!

[russotto]

And yet people still can't even make minor cut backs or improvements in their diets.

Can't, or don't want to? Perhaps people would rather die fat than live while constantly denying themselves the foods they want.

Re:Guess What!

[Jeheto]

I've found that it is mostly strong habits and lack of funds that cause these eating addictions. Of course, the only person I've studied is myself, my family, and two close friends. Seeing as we have so much in common it's not exactly an open test group. But back to the point. What I've found is that if you drink a coke every lunch at 12:08 then you stick yourself in a rut. The constant urge to eat or drink fades rather quickly after two weeks for my test group. I stopped having a coke at 3:30 two months ago and very rarely do I feel a terrible urge to consume one.

It's a good thing my family doesn't have a history

[scourfish]

It's a good thing my family doesn't have a history of Alzheimer's. I should be good on the candy and fast food front, because all my family has is a history of diabe- oh shit

Forget Alzheimers!

[mmwithpeanuts]

Too bad for the ice cream industry, that's all the mix in one. Yet, instead of being so worried about future diseases, let's eat right today. Try to keep stress down. Fruits and veggies, salads, chicken, if you're not a veghead. Maybe even some organic beef from time to time. Good wine, or grape juice. Sea salt. Herbs and spices and everything nicess. Maybe even some snails, minus the puppy dog tails. Beans till your arses erupt with echos of laughter, so abrupt. Rice if your feeling real nice. Fish to your hearts wish. Good breads, tortillas and bagels, plus all of the other good staples! Soon your body will feel so majestically harmonized, you'll have Al's rhymers with ease (versus alzheimers' disease.

Coffee - Alzheimers !

[KreAture]

Most people with Alzheimers have drunk coffee (even though they may not remember it) and so:
coffee -> Alzheimers! (EOD)

I call bullsh*t

[RogueWarrior65]

Sounds to me it's more likely only genetic factors since most of the old people I know who are starting to lose it had parents with Alzheimers. Besides, there have been studies that prove that vegetarians are severely deprived of nutrients vital to brain function....as if we needed a study to prove this. I look at it this way. Cow spends its life eating grass. Cow absorbs nutrients from grass. Cow gets slaughtered. I buy cow. I eat cow for a few days. I get the nutrients. It's just a more efficient delivery medium.

Mouse in the maze

[Anonymous Coward]

Now where did I put that cheese...

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[account_deleted]

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I remember the title!

[A New Normalcy]

'Super Size Me'. (I've been cutting down on the Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs)