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Diet of Fast Food and Candy May Cause Alzheimer's

Posted by kdawson on from the you-are-what-you-eat dept.

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

11 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Obvious? by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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

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    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
    1. Re:Obvious? by kestasjk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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      // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
    2. Re:Obvious? by Craevenwulfe · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    3. Re:Obvious? by JamesTRexx · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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      home
    4. Re:Obvious? by flynt · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    5. Re:Obvious? by morari · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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      "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
  2. Re:"Everything in moderation" by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  3. Alzheimer's is the new Cancer? by SoapBox17 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  4. Re:"Everything in moderation" by JaBob · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. What about the sugar by benj_e · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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

    Seems they conveniently left out sugar in the summary.

    Interesting

    --
    The Tao that can be spoken is not the one eternal Tao
  6. Re:Interesting by lyml · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

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

    I now hope to never hear this flawed argument again.