28 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
How Scammers Distort Science
So why should you care? People who are desperate for reliable information face a bewildering array of diet guidance—salt is bad, salt is good, protein is good, protein is bad, fat is bad, fat is good—that changes like the weather. But science will figure it out, right? Now that we’re calling obesity an epidemic, funding will flow to the best scientists and all of this noise will die down, leaving us with clear answers to the causes and treatments.
Or maybe not. Even the well-funded... 1 
notes
notesA case study where a scientist fooled the media, muddying the waters of nutritional information.
07 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Sugar Impacts Learning
The DHA-deprived rats also developed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates synaptic function in the brain. A closer look at the rats' brain tissue suggested that insulin had lost much of its power to influence the brain cells.
"Because insulin can penetrate the blood–brain barrier, the hormone may signal neurons to trigger reactions that disrupt learning and cause memory loss," Gomez-Pinilla said.
He suspects that fructose is the culprit behi...
1 07 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Dementia Linked to Carbohydrates
High caloric intake has been associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment. Total caloric intake is determined by the calories derived from macronutrients. The objective of the study was to investigate the association between percent of daily energy (calories) from macronutrients and incident mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia. Participants were a population-based prospective cohort of elderly persons who were followed over a median 3.7 years (interquartile range, 2.5-3.9...12 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
Calories as Currency
When the world went on a single currency, they'd tried to coordinate it with the food rationing in some way, hoping to eventually eliminate the ration books, so they'd made the new currency K's, kilocalories, because that's the unit for measuring the energy equivalent of food. But a person who eats 2,000 kilocalories of steak a day obviously has to pay more than a person eating the same amount of bread. So they instituted a sliding "ration factor," so complicated that nobody could understand ... 1 notes
notes13 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Eating for a Healthy Brain
So, the first priority for getting the highest brain j performance is to consume sufficient amounts of protein each day. Insights are cognitively taxing to the human brain, so it makes sense that fueling our neurotransmitters with high-octane fuel —protein —is essential for high-powered thinking.
Next come antioxidants from foods like blueberries, Matcha green tea, and walnuts, which stave off cognitive cell damage. We need healthy cells in order to burn new circuitry, and as we establ... 1 notes
notesIncludes a list of foods associated with improved brain functions
04 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Ecological Approach to Nutrition
The interactions of man with his environment are so complex that only an ecological approach to nutrition permits an understanding of the whole spectrum of factors determining the nutritional problems that exist in human societies. 1 notes
notesBecause our interactions with our environments are so complex. Reminds me of Polan's comment that we have to stop looking at vitamins and nutrition in isolation from their foods.
14 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Denuciation of the Paleodiet
One of the commonest dietary superstitions of the day is a belief in instinct as a guide to dietary excellence ... with a corollary that the diets of primitive people are superior to diets approved by science ... [and even] that light might be thrown on the problems of human nutrition by study of what chimpanzees eat in their native forests. ... Such notions are derivative of the eighteenth-century fiction of the happy and noble savage. 1 notes
notesWallace Ruddell (W.R.) Aykroyd compares it to the idea of the noble savage in this 1835 quote.
18 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Intelligence and Nutrition
Ann Druyan and I come from families that knew grinding
poverty. But our parents were passionate readers. One of our
grandmothers learned to read because her father, a subsistence
farmer, traded a sack of onions to an itinerant teacher. She read
for the next hundred years. Our parents had personal hygiene and
the germ theory of disease drummed into them by the New York
Public Schools. They followed prescriptions on childhood nutrition
recommended by the US Department of Agriculture as if they ... 1 notes
notesWhen confronted with malnutrition, the body deprives the brain of development.
