6 ms·

From the conclusion: "In conclusion, this review presents evidence that excess LA in the food supply might adversely affect the brain. The potential benefit of

From the conclusion: "In conclusion, this review presents evidence that excess LA in the food supply might adversely affect the brain. The potential benefit of LA lowering merits detailed evaluation in well-designed and adequately-powered clinical studies, to test whether this translates into tangible reductions in the risk of neurodegenerative disorders and neurodevelopmental abnormalities at a population level." So eat more Omega 3 and not too much Soy Bean Oil... maybe. I do wonder about diet just being another thing for people to argue about on the Internet, we know so little about the interplay between gut microbiome, food, genetics and health and doing proper clinical trials (in humans) to have some certainty is nearly impossible.

SubiculumCode 3y ago
I'm pretty sure there is no way to thread the needle. The center cannot hold. Nothing in excess is the best I can come up with for longer-lasting health.
- KarlKemp 3y ago
  “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t...)
  - giantbanana 3y ago
    [dead]
jschveibinz 3y ago
Here is something from Dr. M. Greger. He typically has good research to back his articles: https://nutritionfacts.org/question/what-would-you-suggest-as-an-ideal-omega-369/ https://nutritionfacts.org/question/what-would-you-suggest-a...
- pinko 3y ago
  broken link... I think you meant: https://nutritionfacts.org/questions/what-would-you-suggest-as-an-ideal-omega-369/ https://nutritionfacts.org/questions/what-would-you-suggest-...
  - jschveibinz 3y ago
    Thanks.
- didgeoridoo 3y ago
  Greger is a vegan fundamentalist who ignores any evidence to the contrary of his chosen vegan lifestyle. That’s not science. At all.
  - jschveibinz 3y ago
    I believe this is an exaggeration. I have no horse in this race, but perhaps you are judging the person’s work based on his vegan advocacy rather than on the merit of the research that he identifies.
ra 3y ago
Any food that is disproportionately represented in our post hunter-gatherer diet, especially processed food, must have an element of "bad for you" in it. Eat whole foods and maintain a level of exercise and don't sweat the small stuff.
- morelisp 3y ago
  Any medicine that is disproportionately represented in our post hunter-gatherer treatment plans, especially synthesized chemicals, must have an element of "bad for you" in it. Drink clean water and boil willow bark and don't sweat the small stuff.
  - darkerside 3y ago
    Well, yeah. There's a reason these drugs all have side effects, and that the first principle of medicine is, Do No Harm. We have a long history of interventions leading to worse outcomes. It's just sometimes those bad outcomes are worth it by evading worse outcomes.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
    Why should the general population increase their intact of salicin via Willow Bark? What kind of advice is that?
    - gruez 3y ago
      I think he's satirizing the parent poster, by copying his logic and saying that we should eat willow bark rather than taking aspirin pills.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  That doesn't make sense since we ate anything we could find and evolution only selected for procreation, not for long term health. The very things we ate for most of our history could very well be bad for us long term, like increase our cardiovascular disease risk. I don't see why I would accept appeals to nature in favor of the balance of our best evidence.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ericmcer 3y ago
Things like this are so nit picky and nuanced it really isn’t worth caring about unless you are already doing everything else right. People ignore low hanging fruit in their quest for health, like analyzing vegetable oils is pointless when you still eat tons of sugar, don’t sleep enough, don’t exercise, drink too much, etc.
- hammock 3y ago
  >analyzing vegetable oils is pointless On a personal scale perhaps. On a commercial scale though - similar to what happened to trans fats - and given how much vegetable oil is in processed food, a conclusive result could have a monumental impact on the food supply
- whalesalad 3y ago
  there is low hanging fruit, sure, but a substantial amount of our food - even things that you might assume are 'healthy' - are loaded with these terrible oils. autism/adhd/neurodivergence is skyrocketing, as-are late-stage health problems like alzheimers and parkinsons. all of this is pretty well correlated with the rise of our race-to-the-bottom agricultural practices involving pesticides like glyphosate and mass cultivation of crops for seed oils. this should not be ignored.
  - liminvorous 3y ago
    There have been some studies recently screening older people who grew up with more restrictive diagnostic criteria for autism that suggest that increasing rates of autism diagnosis are likely purely the result of changing diagnostic criteria and increased awareness rather than increased prevalence of austism.
    - explorer83 3y ago
      polio affected 8-37 out of 100000 people between 1940 and 1950 and everyone remembers it. CDC has identird 11 communities with 1 out of 36 8 year old children have been diagnosed with autism in 2020. Estimates place roughly 1/3 of those have less than 70 IQ. So let's say 1 out of 108 children.
whalesalad 3y ago
Sort this table by LA. Use/eat oils that have the lowest amount possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid#Dietary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid#Dietary_sources Coconut oil, Butter/Ghee, Olive Oil, Lard...
- gruez 3y ago
  >Coconut oil, Butter/Ghee, Olive Oil, Lard... The problem is that most of them (minus olive oil) are high in saturated fats, which are also bad. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    nah, saturated fats are not bad. that is the myth big ag wants you to believe. people will often look at old photos and wax poetic about how youthful and thin everyone was. why? they were eating saturated fats and not seed oils.
    - gruez 3y ago
      Are you confusing "fats" with "saturated fats"? Fats in general might have been vindicated, but the evidence for saturated fats being bad for you is still pretty strong[1]. Feel free to provide any sources to the contrary. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with_diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with...
      - whalesalad 3y ago
        Anything that I say will be misconstrued as conspiracy theory. Suffice to say this information is incorrect, and there is a growing snowball of evidence to suggest so. I for one do not trust the American Heart Association - they are a bunch of crooks funded by lobbyists, big agriculture and massive conglomerates. They got their start helping Proctor and Gamble market Crisco (poison in a tub) as being healthier than animal fats. In the 60s they got in bed with the tobacco industry to prove that cigarettes were not bad for you. A lot of the "studies" we have right now which paint saturated fats in a bad light are not true to the mission of science.
eyko 3y ago
Perhaps it's because English is not my first language, but I find it confusing to read "this is evidence that .... might ....". Isn't the purpose of evidence to prove a claim? If there is no conclusive evidence, I would expect it to be phrased along the lines of: "Preliminary evidence suggests that... might...".
- __blockcipher__ 3y ago
  The purpose of evidence is to provide support for a claim. However in colloquial speech we generally speak of someone having "evidence" of something when they have absolute proof.
BobbyJo 3y ago
100% agree. The more specific you get about a diet, the more specific you need to get about the person eating it. So long as most dietary advice is designed and tested at population scale, it's going to be fuzzy and inconclusive. Even the most basic advice we can give today comes with asterisks.
andy_ppp 3y ago
Nutritional studies, as stated above, always turn into people being massive certain about their positions (saturated fat vs omega 3 vs omega 6 fanboys!). I'd just assume that pretty much nothing in nutrition is proved beyond a reasonable doubt... For what it's worth my guess is that having the wrong stomach bacteria can make all nutrition better or worse for you. And your genetics, birth mechanism, and even epigenetics all play too big a part to make blanket statements about anything. Fibre for the bugs will be the biggest thing people are missing and blunt all the supposed bad health effects of things like linoleic acid.

SubiculumCode 3y ago

I'm pretty sure there is no way to thread the needle. The center cannot hold. Nothing in excess is the best I can come up with for longer-lasting health.

KarlKemp 3y ago
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t...)
- giantbanana 3y ago
  [dead]

jschveibinz 3y ago

Here is something from Dr. M. Greger. He typically has good research to back his articles: https://nutritionfacts.org/question/what-would-you-suggest-as-an-ideal-omega-369/ https://nutritionfacts.org/question/what-would-you-suggest-a...

pinko 3y ago
broken link... I think you meant: https://nutritionfacts.org/questions/what-would-you-suggest-as-an-ideal-omega-369/ https://nutritionfacts.org/questions/what-would-you-suggest-...
- jschveibinz 3y ago
  Thanks.
didgeoridoo 3y ago
Greger is a vegan fundamentalist who ignores any evidence to the contrary of his chosen vegan lifestyle. That’s not science. At all.
- jschveibinz 3y ago
  I believe this is an exaggeration. I have no horse in this race, but perhaps you are judging the person’s work based on his vegan advocacy rather than on the merit of the research that he identifies.

ra 3y ago

Any food that is disproportionately represented in our post hunter-gatherer diet, especially processed food, must have an element of "bad for you" in it. Eat whole foods and maintain a level of exercise and don't sweat the small stuff.

morelisp 3y ago
Any medicine that is disproportionately represented in our post hunter-gatherer treatment plans, especially synthesized chemicals, must have an element of "bad for you" in it. Drink clean water and boil willow bark and don't sweat the small stuff.
- darkerside 3y ago
  Well, yeah. There's a reason these drugs all have side effects, and that the first principle of medicine is, Do No Harm. We have a long history of interventions leading to worse outcomes. It's just sometimes those bad outcomes are worth it by evading worse outcomes.
- TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
  Why should the general population increase their intact of salicin via Willow Bark? What kind of advice is that?
  - gruez 3y ago
    I think he's satirizing the parent poster, by copying his logic and saying that we should eat willow bark rather than taking aspirin pills.
hombre_fatal 3y ago
That doesn't make sense since we ate anything we could find and evolution only selected for procreation, not for long term health. The very things we ate for most of our history could very well be bad for us long term, like increase our cardiovascular disease risk. I don't see why I would accept appeals to nature in favor of the balance of our best evidence.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ericmcer 3y ago

Things like this are so nit picky and nuanced it really isn’t worth caring about unless you are already doing everything else right. People ignore low hanging fruit in their quest for health, like analyzing vegetable oils is pointless when you still eat tons of sugar, don’t sleep enough, don’t exercise, drink too much, etc.

hammock 3y ago
>analyzing vegetable oils is pointless On a personal scale perhaps. On a commercial scale though - similar to what happened to trans fats - and given how much vegetable oil is in processed food, a conclusive result could have a monumental impact on the food supply
whalesalad 3y ago
there is low hanging fruit, sure, but a substantial amount of our food - even things that you might assume are 'healthy' - are loaded with these terrible oils. autism/adhd/neurodivergence is skyrocketing, as-are late-stage health problems like alzheimers and parkinsons. all of this is pretty well correlated with the rise of our race-to-the-bottom agricultural practices involving pesticides like glyphosate and mass cultivation of crops for seed oils. this should not be ignored.
- liminvorous 3y ago
  There have been some studies recently screening older people who grew up with more restrictive diagnostic criteria for autism that suggest that increasing rates of autism diagnosis are likely purely the result of changing diagnostic criteria and increased awareness rather than increased prevalence of austism.
  - explorer83 3y ago
    polio affected 8-37 out of 100000 people between 1940 and 1950 and everyone remembers it. CDC has identird 11 communities with 1 out of 36 8 year old children have been diagnosed with autism in 2020. Estimates place roughly 1/3 of those have less than 70 IQ. So let's say 1 out of 108 children.

whalesalad 3y ago

Sort this table by LA. Use/eat oils that have the lowest amount possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid#Dietary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid#Dietary_sources Coconut oil, Butter/Ghee, Olive Oil, Lard...

gruez 3y ago
>Coconut oil, Butter/Ghee, Olive Oil, Lard... The problem is that most of them (minus olive oil) are high in saturated fats, which are also bad. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  nah, saturated fats are not bad. that is the myth big ag wants you to believe. people will often look at old photos and wax poetic about how youthful and thin everyone was. why? they were eating saturated fats and not seed oils.
  - gruez 3y ago
    Are you confusing "fats" with "saturated fats"? Fats in general might have been vindicated, but the evidence for saturated fats being bad for you is still pretty strong[1]. Feel free to provide any sources to the contrary. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with_diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with...
    - whalesalad 3y ago
      Anything that I say will be misconstrued as conspiracy theory. Suffice to say this information is incorrect, and there is a growing snowball of evidence to suggest so. I for one do not trust the American Heart Association - they are a bunch of crooks funded by lobbyists, big agriculture and massive conglomerates. They got their start helping Proctor and Gamble market Crisco (poison in a tub) as being healthier than animal fats. In the 60s they got in bed with the tobacco industry to prove that cigarettes were not bad for you. A lot of the "studies" we have right now which paint saturated fats in a bad light are not true to the mission of science.

eyko 3y ago

Perhaps it's because English is not my first language, but I find it confusing to read "this is evidence that .... might ....". Isn't the purpose of evidence to prove a claim? If there is no conclusive evidence, I would expect it to be phrased along the lines of: "Preliminary evidence suggests that... might...".

__blockcipher__ 3y ago
The purpose of evidence is to provide support for a claim. However in colloquial speech we generally speak of someone having "evidence" of something when they have absolute proof.

BobbyJo 3y ago

100% agree. The more specific you get about a diet, the more specific you need to get about the person eating it. So long as most dietary advice is designed and tested at population scale, it's going to be fuzzy and inconclusive. Even the most basic advice we can give today comes with asterisks.

andy_ppp 3y ago

Nutritional studies, as stated above, always turn into people being massive certain about their positions (saturated fat vs omega 3 vs omega 6 fanboys!). I'd just assume that pretty much nothing in nutrition is proved beyond a reasonable doubt... For what it's worth my guess is that having the wrong stomach bacteria can make all nutrition better or worse for you. And your genetics, birth mechanism, and even epigenetics all play too big a part to make blanket statements about anything. Fibre for the bugs will be the biggest thing people are missing and blunt all the supposed bad health effects of things like linoleic acid.