Category Archives: Around the Web - Page 9

We have guests this weekend and so I’ll be brief.

Just a reminder: Our meet-up at the beach is next Saturday, July 23, 4:30 to 6:30 pm, at the Massachusetts state park on the south end of Plum Island, which you access through the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in Newburyport. I’ll have more detailed directions next week. We’ll picnic and will be delighted to chat, share food, play Frisbee, and just hang out with whoever cares to join us.

[1] Interesting posts this week: Emily Deans has been a rich source of information this week. She touched on an interesting topic – the ability of germs to produce human neurotransmitters:

Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species are known to produce GABA.  Escherichia, Bacillus, and Saccharomyces produce norepinephrine.  Candida, Streptococcus, Escherichia, and Enterococcus produce serotonin.  Bacillus and Serratia produce dopamine, and Lactobacillus species produce acetylcholine. That’s pretty much the entire hit parade of major neurotransmitters (there’s histamine and glutamate and a few others – and histamine is known to be produced by some bacteria that infect shellfish, for example, causing food poisoning).

It seems that many bugs may come pre-equipped with tools to modulate human moods and behaviors – if they can infect the central nervous system. No wonder the mechanisms of mental illness are so hard to understand.

Ned Kock explains why fasting might cause weight gain. Stan the Heretic thinks that statins and low-fat diets may cause osteoporosis.

The New York Times gave us evidence that maintaining immune function is the key to avoiding dementia (“Small Woes Increase Risk of Dementia”):

A runny nose, fallen arches and dentures aren’t risk factors typically associated with brain health. But new research suggests that small health problems can add up, and the combined effect can increase a person’s risk for dementia….

Taken alone, none of these health conditions are related to a person’s dementia risk. But when investigators combined these relatively minor physical ailments into a single “frailty index,’’ they found a significant cumulative effect on dementia risk.

Some economists find that food deserts only correlate with obesity, they don’t cause it.

Brian St Pierre finds papers showing that brown rice isn’t more nutritious than white rice. Doug McGuff reports that exercise reduces inflammation in diabetics. Lucas Tafur reports that ketogenic diets help clear environmental toxins.

I was intrigued by the headline “Nutritionists salute First Lady’s burger binge.” It turns out what the nutritionists like is Michelle Obama’s “balance and moderation,” which is to say, her unwillingness to consistently follow her own health advice. I’m inclined to agree: the burgers may improve her health!

Via John Durant, photographic evidence that standing desks used to be widespread.

[2] Music: I believe the musical term for this is “a cupola”:

Via The Brothers Judd.

[3] Good hair day:

Via Yves Smith.

[4] It’s smart to eat rice: Emily Deans, with a hat tip to Jamie Scott, offers more evidence for the superiority of rice to wheat. Apparently kids who eat rice have more brain matter and 5 more IQ points than kids who eat wheat:

Japanese researchers (funded by a national Young Scientists’ grant) studied 290 healthy children ages 5-18 years.  In Japan, apparently boiled white rice or white bread make up a typical breakfast.  (I remember eating a lot of this cereal plus sugar in skim milk when I was a kid. Kapow!)  The scientists were able to split the children into groups of habitual rice-eaters, habitual white bread eaters, and those who consumed both regularly.  Then they tested the IQs (using standard measures for kids <16 and a separate standard test for 16 and older), scanned the kids in a MRI, and collected their data.  Questionnaires were filled out by the kids or their parents with respect to morning eating habits, health, wealth, etc.

Using varying statistical techniques and a couple varieties of imaging data collection, the researchers found that the gray matter ratios (gray matter volume divided by intracranial volume) were significantly higher among the rice eaters vs. the white bread eaters, even after adjusting for age, gender, wealth, average weekly frequency of eating breakfast, and number of breakfast side dishes.  The Verbal IQ in the rice group averaged 104.7, in the bread group 100.3.  The Performance IQ was 102.1 in the rice group and 97.9 in the bread group. This difference was non-significant.

As the kids became older, the differences in gray matter ratio increased between bread and rice groups.

If only I hadn’t wasted my youth eating Wonder bread.

[5] Sitting is bad for you: Obesity Panacea cites a review of prospective studies on the effects of being sedentary. It turns out that time spent sitting affects mortality much more than it affects weight:

Based on inconsistency in findings among the studies and lack of high-quality prospective studies, insufficient evidence was concluded for body weight–related measures, CVD risk, and endometrial cancer. Further, moderate evidence for a positive relationship between the time spent sitting and the risk for type 2 diabetes was concluded. Based on three high-quality studies, there was no evidence for a relationship between sedentary behavior and mortality from cancer, but strong evidence for all-cause and CVD mortality.

So a standing desk may not cut your weight, but it will reduce your chance of dying. That’s pretty good.

If you want to lose weight too, try eating some kimchi at your standing desk.

[6] Thomas Edison anticipates the Perfect Health Diet approach?: Every once in a while someone asks if I know of health care providers in their area who are familiar with our ideas and recommend our diet. Chris Kresser, who is located in the Bay Area but can do Internet consultations, is one. I know some other doctors recommend our book – for instance, a woman in the UK wrote to say that her doctor suggested our diet as a treatment for PCOS – but I don’t know their identities.

Well, I can offer another name, because Dr. Jay Wrigley of The Art of Living Center in Charlotte, North Carolina tells me that he is recommending our diet to his patients. That caused me to look up their site and it features this excellent quotation:

Doctors of the future will have less use for medicines of any kind. Instead, they will instruct patients in the proper care of the human mind and body through correct ways of eating, proper care of the human frame and the right attitude that facilitates healing of both the mind and body.

— Thomas Edison

I suppose that this was a failed prophecy: Doctors today must be more dependent on medicines than ever before. Perhaps Edison over-estimated the intelligence of the future. But as prescription, I have to agree. Diet and a healthy lifestyle are keys to good health.

[7] Shou-Ching’s photo art:

[8] Weekly video: As a former physicist with artists in the family, I like to see the two subjects married:

[1] Summer Meet-up: We’ve chosen July 23 for the meet-up at Plum Island off Newburyport. We’ll be at the beach at the south end of the Island between 4:30 pm and 6:30 pm and will be happy to picnic and hang out with anyone who cares to join us.

[2] Interesting posts and news: A six year old cancer patient, Diamond Marshall, got a visit from the Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge. What struck me was that her mother had died of cancer at age 32, when Diamond was 18 months old. Coincidence? Or contagion?

Before you answer: a new paper reports that IL-8 and CRP – both markers of infection – predict future cancer.

Chris Kresser interviewed Emily Deans, a combination that is self-recommending. Among many noteworthy tidbits, Chris is working with an 83-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer who is doing well on a Perfect Health Diet-style ketogenic diet.

Evidence that nitrate-rich foods, such as spinach and beetroot juice, are beneficial for vascular health and athleticism came out recently. Julianne Taylor has a few links. I might add that nitrates are also beneficial for immune function. Another recent study showed that exercise upregulates nitric oxide which is then stored as nitrites with long-term benefits. Nitrates also lower triglyceride levels and help cure hypertension. So, eat your spinach and exercise!

Seth Roberts reminds us of a good quote (modified from Beveridge): “Everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter; no one believes a theory except the theorist.” In another post, Seth reports that health in the US as measured by age of disease onset has not improved since the 1960s, life expectancy in the US peaked in 2007 and is now declining, medical care has stagnated, and this should be a big story.

Seth is right. Deteriorating results with exploding costs is not a good combination. We believe a focus on diet, nutrition, and antimicrobial medicine would deliver far more benefits at much lower cost than the current approach.

Pål Jåbekk notes something I’ve been meaning to blog about for quite a while:

[Y]et another study finds that overweight people have higher life expectancy than their lean counterparts, albeit with greater risk of disabilities. Perhaps our focus should be on natural foods and exercise, rather than on the significance of some extra padding. (study here)

Pål also gave us a thoughtful response to Stephan’s series on food reward. Highly recommended.

Hans Keer added starch to his diet, felt better, and decided he needs a new name for his site: Goodbye CutTheCarb.

Giardia infections account for 6.5% of cases of IBS in Italy. If you have digestive problems, it’s probably due to some kind of infection.

Via Craig Newmark, epidemiologist Tara C Smith:

As I’ve laid out this week (part 1, part 2, part 3), the realization that a fairly simple, toxin-carrying bacterium could cause a “complex” and mysterious disease like hemolytic uremic syndrome came only with 30 years’ of scientific investigation and many false starts and misleading results.

Infections should be the first suspect in any disease, not the last.

We mentioned the Flynn effect in our book: intelligence rose steadily through most of the 20^th century. A group of economists offers a possible explanation: Lead poisoning caused depressed IQ in the 19^th and early 20^th century, and cessation of the use of lead in plumbing gradually returned IQs to normal.

Nothing to do with health, but very entertaining: Steve Sailer on Racehorse Haynes.

[2] Just to show how cultured we are, some classical music: Beethoven’s Fifth translated into sign language.

[3] The turtle doesn’t seem worried:

Via Yves Smith.

[4] It’s not so bad to be the smallest loser: If I do a blog post on why the overweight live longer, this might be a good place to start. In mice on calorie-restricted diets, those who lost weight quickly had shortened lifespans, those who lost little weight had lengthened lifespans:

[S]trains with the least reduction in fat were more likely to show life extension, and those with the greatest reduction were more likely to have shortened lifespan…. [F]actors associated with maintaining adiposity are important for survival and life extension under dietary restriction.

Having trouble losing weight? Maybe you’ll have a few extra years to figure it out.

[5] High serum cholesterol is healthy: In a paper reviewed by Dr Briffa, Japanese investigators provide further support to an idea that I believe we discussed in our book: serum cholesterol protects against stroke.

People with TC over 6.2 mmol/l (240 mg/dl) had a 77% lower risk of stroke (96% lower chance of hemorrhagic stroke) than those with TC below 4.1 mmol/l (159 mg/dl).

It looks like high serum cholesterol almost totally eliminates hemorrhage risk. Worried about stroke? Ask your doctor how you can raise your cholesterol.

[6] How do you do it? Dr. Walter Willett knows: In our book we quoted Dr. Walter Willett of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health disparaging coconut oil. Dr. Willett has become friendlier toward fat in recent years, and when we saw he was re-addressing coconut oil in the Harvard Health Letter, we hoped to find an endorsement. Alas, he still favors vegetable oils. The trouble with coconut oil is that it raises serum cholesterol:

I don’t think coconut oil is as healthful as vegetable oils like olive oil and soybean oil, which are mainly unsaturated fat and therefore both lower LDL and increase HDL. (http://pmid.us/21702109)

[7] Shou-Ching’s photo art:

[8] Not the weekly video: Evidence that nurture defeats nature:

Via The Anchoress.

[9] Weekly video: Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson:

A lot has happened since we last did a round-up. Here is a sampling of things we’ve found interesting:

[1] Interesting posts: Jamie Scott channeled his inner Staffan Lindeberg and performed the Vanuatu Study: “The Diet and Lifestyle of the People of Vanuatu: Paleo in Paradise”. It has a lot of pictures and descriptions of the Kitava-like Paleo diet and attractive good health of the natives. Unfortunately, fewer Melanesians are eating traditional diets, and we may not be able to observe traditional diets in native populations much longer.

Chris Masterjohn helps us understand Weston A. Price. He also did a fascinating podcast with Chris Kresser on LDL cholesterol: The Healthy Skeptic Podcast Episode 11. Speaking of cholesterol, Ned Kock reported that alcohol increases LDL cholesterol in people with the ApoE e4 allele, but decreases LDL cholesterol in people with the ApoE e2 allele.

In another post, Ned notes that a 6-foot man can be strong and healthy at 145 pounds. The moral: Be yourself; don’t think your body needs to look like someone else’s.

The opportunity to reverse Type 2 diabetes by diet was in the news, because of a UK study (Pubmed, Full text) in which 11 patients experienced normalization of beta cell function and reversal of Type 2 diabetes on a diet of 600 calories per day: 280 carb calories, 200 protein calories, and 120 fat calories per day (plus considerable fat released from adipose tissue). This is a starvation diet, below our safe minimum of 600 carb+protein calories and undoubtedly deficient in micronutrients and complex biological compounds, since it’s almost impossible to be well nourished on less than 1200 calories per day of real food. Indeed, people on the diet felt they were starving:

“It was very tough. I was hungry all the time. It was a starvation diet and food was on your mind all the time,” he said.

Many bloggers commented, including Peter Dobromylskyj, Jenny Ruhl, and Pål Jåbekk.

Melissa McEwen cured a skin condition by getting more vitamin A. Matt Stone offered a Paleo failure story, and linked to some pictures of hypothyroid faces. CarbSane found that selenium cured her insomnia; in the comments Mario argues that selenium may be protecting against metal and halogen toxicity.

Keith Woodford links to research showing that opioid peptides from cow’s milk drank by the mother can enter babies via breast milk and argues “the implications are huge”. Dr. Briffa notes that the artificial sweetener aspartame is converted to formaldehyde, a potent carcinogen, in the body. Chris Kresser discusses why it’s possible to have trouble with coconut milk. In the comments Tony Mach says the biggest BPA exposure comes from handling cash register receipts.

At Angelo Coppola’s “Latest in Paleo” blog, breastfeeding advice from a recovered boob nazi. (I may discuss this post a bit in an upcoming blog post.)

Via The Telegraph, many dishwashers are infected with fungi and deposit potentially dangerous fungal pathogens on plates and utensils. Via Craig Newmark, Top Ten Myths About Introverts.

Tom Naughton reveals that the government issued health warnings against cholesterol in the 1960s at the direction of Lyndon Johnson – who wanted to reduce the price of eggs to improve the inflation statistics!

NBA player Robert Horry leaves a poignant letter to his daughter, who died from a genetic disease.

Finally, for our academic readers, the oldest known journal rejection letter, written to Ptolemaeus in regard to his method for measuring the circumference of the earth.

[2] Don’t sleep on the sofa darling: Thursday’s post called to mind Petula Clark’s great hit:

In this video, recorded live in 2003 in Paris, Petula is 70 years old and looks great. At 78 she’s still performing. I wonder what diet she eats?

(The 1967 studio version can be heard here.)

[3] It’s safe to come out:

[4] Thank you, Pål – and thank you, readers: While we were on vacation, Pål Jåbekk of Ramblings of a Carnivore posted a very nice review of our book: “The As Good Health As Possible Diet”:

I would like there to be one diet book. One book that is constantly updated with new research. It would be The Diet Book. The book that made all other diet books superfluous. The go to place for everyone interested in achieving good health. The only book we would need….

The one book I’ve found that comes closest to being the diet book to end all other diet books is Perfect Health Diet. Had it replaced the official dietary guidelines we might actually be getting somewhere. The Perfect Health Diet book is not a perfect book, nor should it be. I think that some of the composition could be improved as well as the lay out and I would’ve liked to see some statements moderated, but content wise and information wise, Perfect Health Diet appears as a good first draft of a book with the potential to end the need for any more diet books.

I am excitedly looking forward to the second edition.

Pål is one of our favorite bloggers and a perspicacious writer on health, so this is high praise. As he says, our book is a work in progress. We are still learning, and that is why blogging is so much fun. The growth of knowledge is a cooperative process, and we continue to learn from other bloggers and from our readers.

We believe that diet should be a primary therapy for all diseases, and that with a good diet and appropriate antimicrobial therapies nearly all diseases can be cured. It’s exciting therefore to hear from readers, especially sick readers, who apply our ideas. We are grateful to readers who share their experiences with us, whether good or bad. Both successes and failures are educational.

Like Pål, we look forward to a second edition. We aim for the perfect diet, but we know that we have not yet written the perfect book. To achieve excellence, an evolutionary process is usually required. We’re most grateful to all those who apply our ideas and help us refine them.

[5] Another migraine success story: Speaking of reader feedback, it was great to hear from Rebecca Lachance on Facebook:

Just a note of thanks for helping me control migraines/headaches. Ketogenic diet has made an enormous difference in my life. Down from 24 days of headaches in February to only 4 days in June! My M.D. is suffering cognitive dissonance – thrilled with the decrease of headaches, but “suggests” a minimal dose of statins to prevent atherosclerosis – despite an HDL of 99 and TRG of 52. Obviously, I won’t be taking statins!… Thanks again.

We believe that ketogenic diets are probably therapeutic for nearly all neurological diseases, so we hope more people with brain or nerve disorders will try our version of the ketogenic diet.

[6] Don’t rush to your funeral: A Russian woman, wrongly declared dead, woke up at her own funeral and had a heart attack when she realized she was about to be buried alive.

[7] It’s good to supplement magnesium: A study in AJCN found that women in the highest quartile of dietary magnesium had a 37% lower risk of sudden cardiac death, and in the highest quartile of serum magnesium had a 77% lower risk of sudden cardiac death, than women in the top quartiles. In the same issue, a clinical trial found that supplementation of 500 mg/day magnesium was beneficial for obese people.

We recommend supplementing magnesium at 200 mg to 400 mg per day. 500 mg/day is more likely to produce an observable effect in a 4-week trial, but is more than we would recommend for long-term supplementation.

[8] My interview with Cary Nosler’s Wide World of Health: The podcast is available for download here.

[9] Getting Real at Whole Foods: This has been making the rounds, but it’s good enough for one more showing:

Via Melissa McEwen.

[10] O Primitivo on LDL, meat, and mortality: Ricardo (“O Primitivo”) of Canibais e Reis (“Cannibals and Kings” in Portuguese; inspired by Marvin Harris’s book), who was the source of the data discussed in Tuesday’s post, tried to leave a comment there but it had too many links for our spam filter and was lost. Fortunately, he emailed me with some fascinating information.

First, he has compiled a database specifically correlating LDL cholesterol levels to various health conditions. This is a very valuable database and I hope he’ll blog about it before long. LDL levels are highly correlated with total cholesterol, so the results are similar to those in his total cholesterol database, but still interesting.

O Primitivo also sent links to some of his blog posts:

• On a Korean study showing lowest mortality with TC between 211 and 250 mg/dl.
• On a Japanese study showing lowest mortality with TC between 240 and 259 mg/dl.
• A list of 48 studies showing that higher cholesterol levels in the elderly are associated with longevity and lower mortality. (Get the list in PDF.)
• Statistics on the ratio of animal to plant foods in the diet versus longevity. (In PDF)
• A list of letters and papers from the pioneering cholesterol scholar Dr. Uffe Ravnskov.

Plus a number of links to recent papers which I’ll leave for him to blog about.

Since he has so much good material, and many people will lack time to explore it all, let me give you one highlight. From his document on animal-vegetable ratios, the fraction of food intake from animals versus mortality:

Take that, vegetarians!

Thank you, Ricardo, for all the great information. You have a fantastic blog.

[11] The cat who didn’t bark:

[12] Quote of the week: From a comment by Chris Friederich on Chris Masterjohn’s blog:

“If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls of those who live under tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

[13] Who eats better, lab mice or humans?: Paleo bloggers frequently mock scientists for the “Western” diet fed to lab mice: usually some mix of sucrose, casein, and soybean oil. After watching this video, what strikes me about the ingredient lists is that the scientists are right. “Western” humans are eating an awful lot of artificially-colored animal chow:

[14] Race to the bottom continues: Via Bix at Fanatic Cook, a Japanese food scientist has learned how to make “turd burgers” – fake meat made of protein derived from bacteria in sewage, and “improved” by the addition of soy protein:

[15] Shou-Ching’s photo art: Belated Father’s Day edition:

[16] Weekly video: The United States has been losing family farms. One reason is aggressive enforcement of counter-intuitive and health-damaging farm regulations. The new movie “Farmageddon” documents how difficult it is for family farms to produce healthy food. Here is the trailer:

Farmageddon – Movie Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

Via Scott Kustes.

[1] Interesting posts this week:  Peter at Hyperlipid links to a new wonder drug that could rescue pharmaceutical company fortunes. In another post, Peter introduces a puzzle: The obese burn more calories at rest than the lean … but they don’t lose weight faster on calorie-restricted diets.

Via @DrEades, lack of sun exposure during childhood may be the cause of nearsightedness; 2 hours per day outdoors prevents myopia.

Mark’s Daily Apple had a nice post on oral hygiene which observes that rice farming did not introduce caries in Asia, whereas wheat farming did in Europe, and maize was the most tooth-destructive grain.

Via Fight Aging!, evidence from beetles that early life immune activity accelerates aging and shortens lifespan.

Art Ayers returned from a long hiatus with an endorsement of fecal transplants. Seth Roberts argues that personal science is becoming more productive than institutional science. Melissa McEwen declares chicken “the ultimate crap meat” and argues that “much of human history has been about the acquisition of starch and fat.” Wired discusses the mystery of the Canadian whiskey fungus.

Julianne Taylor offers “My Plate” alternatives. Dr. John Briffa writes that MSG can increase brain glutamate levels leading to neurotoxicity and promoting obesity. Beth Mazur gives us “Triggers”:

[2] Music to read by: I like the choreographed trombone throwing and handkerchief wiping. Best listened to from a standing desk:

[3] Food reward fascination: So many people have contributed intelligently to the food reward discussion that it’s impossible to link to all of them; I would say that roughly a dozen blog posts and well over a hundred comments were interesting to me.

Let me just mention a few posts:

• Stephan’s series deserves reading in its entirely, but here’s a few that speak to the issue of blandness in diets: from Thursday this week, “modern people would find [traditional diets] bland, and in some cases even unpalatable”; the first post in the series, listing “some of the qualities of food that are inherently rewarding”; and the second post, with the liquid food diet that cures obesity.
• Seth Roberts is a highly creative innovator and, via his Shangri-La Diet, pioneer of food reward therapy for obesity. He states: “At the heart of the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet is the idea that we learn to associate flavors (more precisely, smells) with calories.” The more closely a flavor is associated with calories in our mind, the more we want it. Dissociating flavor from calories leads to less wanting, lower food intake, and lower weight.
• JS Stanton has an outstanding post at Gnolls.org: Why Snack Food Is Addictive: The Grand Unified Theory of Snack Appeal.
• Emily Deans is sympathetic to tasty food.

A few comments that caught my eye:

• Todd Hargrove has set forth an interesting idea: “Even if eating bland food reduces your need for calories, it does not necessarily reduce your need for reward. Perhaps there is a reward set point just as there is a fat mass set point. If this is true, it would suggest that moving the weight set point down by eating less palatable food would fail unless it also reduced the reward set point. Perhaps this explains the emotional struggles that some people have with losing weight, and why people can tend to trade one addiction for another.”
• Andrea Reina notes that if the goal of the Shangri-La Diet is to dissociate flavor from calories, then eating tasty non-calories should be just as helpful as eating tasteless calories. R.K. replied with a link to a piece by Todd Becker quoting Seth Roberts endorsing that idea.
• ItsTheWooo2 has a fascinating story. She has shared her biography starting here, discusses the role of leptin and insulin starting here, and discusses exogenous leptin as a weight maintenance therapy here. Briefly, she believes that the obese develop extranormal numbers of adipose cells, do not lose fat cells when they lose weight, so that to achieve normal weight they have to shrink the fat cells to subnormal size, but that subnormal cell size eliminates leptin secretion. As a result, normal weight obese have subnormal leptin levels, which convinces the brain they are starving, which leads to weight regain. Therefore, the obese need small doses of exogenous leptin to maintain normal weight.
• Betty tells her story of becoming obese following an infection and then becoming slender again during a pregnancy. It sounds to me like the infection induced autoimmunity which caused her obesity, and pregnancy cured the autoimmunity which returned her fat mass setpoint to normal. Of course, Chris Kresser has previously discussed possible autoimmune origins of obesity.

[4] More insight into food reward: In an email Aaron Blaisdell introduced me to the work of psychologist Kate Wassum, who apparently has generated evidence that “the processes that control how much a reward is ‘liked’ are dissociable from those that control the ability of reward-paired cues to trigger reward ‘wanting’.”

This distinction can help resolve many of the puzzles in food reward:

• The optimal diet should be strongly liked (and thus healthy because our evolved biology likes what is good for us) but not wanted (since wanting drives appetite and addictive eating which tends to reduce the variety of the diet and induce malnutrition).
• The most obesity-inducing diet will be strongly wanted but not liked. A not-liked diet is probably unhealthy and promotes disorders such as obesity, while a wanted diet promotes overeating.

If liking and wanting are truly dissociable, then the strategy of eating bland food strikes me as a dubious one.

Bland food is food that is not liked. Eating bland food strives to reduce wanting by reducing liking. But if the two are dissociated, this strategy may not work. If Todd Hargrove is right and we need a certain amount of reward, the strategy might backfire as lack of healthy stimulation of the reward system may increase pathological wanting.

[5] Malnutrition and Obesity: JS Stanton’s snacking-and-food-reward post makes a number of interesting points, but I particularly liked his mention of the “nutritional leverage hypothesis” – basically, the idea that malnutrition causes obesity – put forward by Mike of Fat Fiction.

I have long believed that malnutrition is a major cause of obesity, but it is difficult to show that from published data, in part because the obesity often occurs long after malnourishment begins. (Possibly suggesting that methylation deficits leading to epigenetic changes are important.)

But I think that in the already metabolically damaged, it may be much easier to show that malnutrition is important, because malnutrition has a strong effect on appetite and interacts with the food reward system. So food reward research may help prove the importance of malnutrition in obesity.

In support of the nutritional leverage hypothesis, JS and Mike cite a Chinese trial in which taking multivitamins triggered weight loss.

[6] Cute animal photo:

Via Yves Smith.

[7] Kids like to splash:

[8] New US “Food Plate” to test the food reward theory: The US Department of Agriculture is replacing its “Food Pyramid” with a “Food Plate”:

One might think the USDA has adopted the food reward theory of obesity and has intentionally designed the “Food Plate” to create a bland, unrewarding, fat-less diet. But it gets worse.

They demonize some of the healthiest fats as “Empty Calories”:

Currently, many of the foods and beverages Americans eat and drink contain empty calories – calories from solid fats and/or added sugars. Solid fats and added sugars add calories to the food but few or no nutrients….

Solid fats are fats that are solid at room temperature, like butter, beef fat, and shortening.

Among the approved foods, “Dairy” includes calcium-fortified soymilk and soy beverages; and “Protein” features beans, nuts, and seeds including soy products such as tofu. Approved “Oils” include corn oil, cottonseed oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, and canola oil – but not butter or animal fats. They do count a few liquid fats among the demonized “solid fats”:

A few plant oils, however, including coconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel oil, are high in saturated fats and for nutritional purposes should be considered to be solid fats.

I’ve long believed that Department of Agriculture bureaucrats have entirely captured the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, and use it to promote support for agricultural subsidies by propagandizing in favor of the heavily subsidized crops: wheat, corn, and soybeans. This Food Plate is entirely consistent with that idea.

As I mentioned to Steve in the comments, we’ll be working on our own graphical representation of our diet this summer. It will be slightly more complex than the Food Plate – not quite as suitable for kindergarteners, but hopefully more appealing to the food reward system!

[9] I didn’t know that’s what Little Richard looked like:

[10] Meet Bill Lands: In our book, we devoted several pages to Dr. William E. Lands’s work on omega-6 and omega-3 fats. He could give some good advice to the USDA on which oils are healthy. Via O Primitivo, here is a video of Dr Bill Lands discussing polyunsaturated fats.

[11] XMRV link to chronic fatigue a false alarm?: We’ve previously discussed the possibility that a new human gamma retrovirus, known as XMRV, causes chronic fatigue syndrome (see Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Aug 24, 2010). This week, Science published two papers arguing that the claimed link was due to laboratory errors, and their editorial called the XMRV-chronic fatigue link “seriously in question’’. The Whittemore Peterson Institute, where the link was discovered, has written a detailed reply.

[12] More on mucin deficiency and GI tract cancers: One of our most popular posts, Dangers of Zero-Carb Diets, II: Mucus Deficiency and Gastrointestinal Cancers (Nov 15, 2010), discussed the possibility that a downregulation of mucin production in order to conserve glucose elevate risk of gastrointestinal cancers.

A new paper out this week (“Suppression of MUC2 enhances the proliferation and invasion of human colorectal cancer LS174T cells”) adds more evidence that a deficiency of mucus in the gut promotes cancer.

Meanwhile, yogurt consumption reduced colon cancer risk by 35%.

[13] Not the weekly video: Would you buy vegetables that were run over by a train?

[14] Shou-Ching’s photo art:

[15] Weekly video: A juggling otter: