3 ms·

I was thinking of a scientific study I read a couple years ago, the citation for which escapes me at the moment. How I long for the day when I can install the G

by bfe 15y ago

I was thinking of a scientific study I read a couple years ago, the citation for which escapes me at the moment. How I long for the day when I can install the Google brain history page implant beta. But five seconds on the present-day Google uncovered both: (1) a Wikipedia page on Finnish cuisine that shows a picture of a butter-slathered pastry and mentions stuff about hunting, red meat, buttermilk, and fruits and vegetables being unavailable nine months out of the year until recently; and, also on the first page of results, (2) a scientific review paper in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons by an M.D.-Ph.D. Yale professor indicating that Finland has both the world's highest consumption of saturated fatty acids and the world's highest ischemic heart disease mortality rate, and the highest rate of myocardial infarction of any of the countries surveyed in another study; and that "it is generally established that the Finnish diet of fatty red meats, butter, and bread, is highly conducive to heart disease." The best part is, it's a review article that cites 64 other scientific articles, so you can follow up with those to learn more. Here you go, with my bonus url cruft: http://nutrilearning.com.ar/docs/articulos/interes/alimentos/AcOliva_saludcardiovascular.pdf http://nutrilearning.com.ar/docs/articulos/interes/alimentos... The study I had remembered reading, which I'll track down this weekend sometime when I'm not on Hacker News while getting ready to go to work, was more recent and shows new improvements in Finnish health metrics as they have moved away from their traditional diet and begun eating a lot more food from the rest of Europe. And I share your agreement with this particular post on Kristen's blog.

bmj 15y ago
Thanks. My sense, from following Kristen's blog, is that she might be a bit appalled by the traditional Finnish diet, too. She pushes a lot of grass-fed beef and butter produced from the milk of grass-fed cattle, but she also pushes lots of vegetables, among other things.
- bfe 15y ago
  The red meat, butter, and buttermilk that abounds in the traditional Finnish diet are from moose and reindeer whose own diet in the Finnish woods is at least as all-natural, wholesome, and organic as the grass grazed by Kristen's cattle, but that didn't stop the Finns from being the world leaders in heart attacks. The LDL cholesterol in your bloodstream doesn't care what the cows you ate were eating when they were alive. Kristen's brand of feeling good for rebelling against the food-industrial complex and folksy pattern-matching of traditional must mean good are no substitute for the scientific method, and in this case it's (on average and over the long term) a life-or-death distinction.
  - scythe 15y ago
    At the same time, moose and reindeer are not cattle, and they are cold-weather animals, which means they have a lot of extra body fat. Extrapolating conclusions about moose and reindeer to cattle is not necessarily correct and there are reasons to believe it isn't.
    - bfe 15y ago
      There is a significant difference, but it works the opposite way, so that beef is worse for you. Cattle have been bred under ten thousand years of domestication to have fattier meat, whereas undomesticated sources of red meat are much leaner. Off the top of my head I can point you to the index of Guns, Germs and Steel for citations.
      - scythe 15y ago
        >Cattle have been bred under ten thousand years of domestication to have fattier meat, whereas undomesticated sources of red meat are much leaner. I can see that applying to deer, elk, rabbit, etc -- but moose? Furthermore, there's a considerable market for lean beef especially in the modern era, and I know that pigs have rather recently been selected for leanness. My current knowledge of the health effects of red meat as a whole is that the data are conflicting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health The fact that Finland's diet was confounded with lots of butter and other fatty things makes the whole thing rather unconvincing as a data point saying that red meat is any more unhealthy than ordinary nutrition labeling (x grams of fat, y grams of carb, z grams of protein) would lead you to believe. I can buy a pound of 90/10 beef at the store with 12 grams of fat, ~3 grams of carbohydrate, and 23 grams of protein "per serving", which really doesn't sound terribly unhealthy next to e.g. a bag of potato chips.
        bfe 15y ago
        Breeding for leaner red meat is a phenomenon of the last few decades, compared with breeding for fattier red meat which has been going on among domesticated cattle and swine for the last 10,000 years. Relatively leaner and relatively less processed red meat are relatively better for you, and there are various data about how relatively healthier the relatively better red meats are. But there are also clear and unconflicted data that vegetarians have far better health outcomes than omnivores, and that pescetarians, like Steve Jobs, who eat seafood and plant-based foods but no other meat, have still significantly better health outcomes than vegetarians.

by bfe 15y ago

bmj 15y ago

Thanks. My sense, from following Kristen's blog, is that she might be a bit appalled by the traditional Finnish diet, too. She pushes a lot of grass-fed beef and butter produced from the milk of grass-fed cattle, but she also pushes lots of vegetables, among other things.

bfe 15y ago
The red meat, butter, and buttermilk that abounds in the traditional Finnish diet are from moose and reindeer whose own diet in the Finnish woods is at least as all-natural, wholesome, and organic as the grass grazed by Kristen's cattle, but that didn't stop the Finns from being the world leaders in heart attacks. The LDL cholesterol in your bloodstream doesn't care what the cows you ate were eating when they were alive. Kristen's brand of feeling good for rebelling against the food-industrial complex and folksy pattern-matching of traditional must mean good are no substitute for the scientific method, and in this case it's (on average and over the long term) a life-or-death distinction.
- scythe 15y ago
  At the same time, moose and reindeer are not cattle, and they are cold-weather animals, which means they have a lot of extra body fat. Extrapolating conclusions about moose and reindeer to cattle is not necessarily correct and there are reasons to believe it isn't.
  - bfe 15y ago
    There is a significant difference, but it works the opposite way, so that beef is worse for you. Cattle have been bred under ten thousand years of domestication to have fattier meat, whereas undomesticated sources of red meat are much leaner. Off the top of my head I can point you to the index of Guns, Germs and Steel for citations.
    - scythe 15y ago
      >Cattle have been bred under ten thousand years of domestication to have fattier meat, whereas undomesticated sources of red meat are much leaner. I can see that applying to deer, elk, rabbit, etc -- but moose? Furthermore, there's a considerable market for lean beef especially in the modern era, and I know that pigs have rather recently been selected for leanness. My current knowledge of the health effects of red meat as a whole is that the data are conflicting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat#Health The fact that Finland's diet was confounded with lots of butter and other fatty things makes the whole thing rather unconvincing as a data point saying that red meat is any more unhealthy than ordinary nutrition labeling (x grams of fat, y grams of carb, z grams of protein) would lead you to believe. I can buy a pound of 90/10 beef at the store with 12 grams of fat, ~3 grams of carbohydrate, and 23 grams of protein "per serving", which really doesn't sound terribly unhealthy next to e.g. a bag of potato chips.
      - bfe 15y ago
        Breeding for leaner red meat is a phenomenon of the last few decades, compared with breeding for fattier red meat which has been going on among domesticated cattle and swine for the last 10,000 years. Relatively leaner and relatively less processed red meat are relatively better for you, and there are various data about how relatively healthier the relatively better red meats are. But there are also clear and unconflicted data that vegetarians have far better health outcomes than omnivores, and that pescetarians, like Steve Jobs, who eat seafood and plant-based foods but no other meat, have still significantly better health outcomes than vegetarians.