After a lengthy run of wonderful publicity from the media, Dan Buettner and his blue zones run into a storm of criticism. A good thing? Yes, but it misses the point.
I read the Blue Zones book a couple years ago. I found it quite obvious that the author's conclusions do not actually follow from what he just observed throughout the book.
Italians eating vegan?! Are you kidding me? These people inhale fatty pork like nobody's business.
I get that having a sense of purpose & a community is nice, and maybe prolong your life. But none of the dietary choices seemed to be founded in anything but vegan ideology.
"Once a proposition becomes a money-making venture, can we trust the proponents to do rigorous science, which might, as a result, kill their money-making venture?"
I hope you won't think it rude if I reply, "Hell, no!" The key phrase is "money-making". If that is even as important to the participants as seeking the truth, then we can immediately reject their results.
I tend to agree but eventually these things become a money-making venture for all of us, even if we're just academics and the money is funding that goes to our research. And, yes, this gets into serious issues about how funding policy corrupts science and understanding. I'll get into that in later posts.
Anybody recall those yogurt commercials (Yoplait was it?) from the late 70's claiming people from Soviet Georgia had extreme longevity because they ate yogurt? The ages of those folks were found to be manufactured as well.
Yes, I do and I remember the claims being debunked. As I said, Newman's critique of longevity hotspots is not new to demographers. It was going after blue zones that made it so newsworthy.
This blue zone malarkey is yet another example of how we--audiences, consumers, readers, listeners--seek and are seduced by seductively elegant explanations. We want an explanation to feel almost obvious when we find it, and logical and consistent with basic observation. It makes us feel smart. But these pop science explanations are rarely more than skin deep. Their proponents run away from complexity like it's the plague. They don't even broach method. It's like everything Malcolm Gladwell has ever written. We love a good story, a simple and elegant story, more than messy science, which is to say, science.
I mostly agree here, too, although I'm also arguing that the obesity story is relatively simple, only that the research community has managed to ignore it entirely.
Your write: "So maybe the key is the absence of western foods and the mostly-plants are just a coincidence. Had these populations eaten more animal products, they might have been even healthier than they are. There’s no way to know."
That's a pretty negative view of nutritional and cellular biochemical research, past and future. I'm betting that it is actually possible to know such things, and it'll be better figured out eventually -- science just hasn't stumbled onto and followed that "way to know" quite yet. These things take time in any event, and -- as you have repeatedly illustrated -- effectiveness of human observation and reasoning is subject to a whole lot of interfering factors.
Speaking more generally, it's really interesting that 'blue zone' Sardinians and rather insular people of the Spanish Basque Country represent more or less the same early Neolithic genetic island remnant and both appear to -- at least in their pre-WWII generations -- evidence anomalously ,long longevity. Is also odd that hardly anyone ever remarks upon the reported Basque longevity. Maybe nobody at "National Geographic" told Buettner about them?
There are so many nutritional windmills to tilt, but so little power in reason's charger to tumble "fountain of youth" beliefs of people hungry for more years of "life" while nestled on a couch, binge watching Netflix till 03:00 am, drinking Coke & munching Pringles!
«It is terrifying to think how much research is needed to determine the truth of even the most unimportant fact.» —Stendhal [As quoted in: The New York Times Book Review, Volume 1 (Arno Press, 1961)]
Forgive the shotgun blast:
● “The food intake pattern in Okinawa has been different from that in other regions of Japan. The people there have never been influenced by Buddhism. Hence, there has been no taboo regarding eating habits. Eating meat was not stigmatized, and consumption of pork and goat was historically high. ... The intake of meat was higher in Okinawa … "𝚄𝚗𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚍𝚕𝚢, 𝚠𝚎 𝚍𝚒𝚍 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚟𝚎𝚐𝚎𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚗𝚜 𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚗𝚜.”
—Sally Fallon Morell (1992) Nourishing Traditions—The Blog That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, True Blue Zones: Okinawa, https://tinyurl.com/y2hvsn2za quoting Shibata H, et al, Nutrition for the Japanese Elderly, Nutritional Health, 8(2-3): 165-75, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1407826
● The there's the Turkana: “We realized that we had the opportunity to study the effect of transitioning away from a traditional lifestyle, relying on almost 80% animal byproducts — a diet extremely protein-rich and rich in fats, with very little to no carbohydrates — to a mostly carbohydrate diet,” said Julien Ayroles, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and LSI who is the senior researcher on the new paper. “This presented an unprecedented opportunity: genetically homogenous populations whose diets stretch across a lifestyle gradient from relatively ‘matched’ to extremely ‘mismatched’ with their recent evolutionary history.”
Dr Weston A Price's observations from nearly a century ago!
“Urbanization and market integration have strong, nonlinear effects on cardiometabolic health in the Turkana,” by Amanda J. Lea, Dino Martins, Joseph Kamau, Michael Gurven, Julien F. Ayroles appears in the Oct. 21 issue of Science Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb1430
● But adding sugar to bodies lacking natural animal fats is also IMHO problemstic as seen in the morbid obesity in Iberia. (5 Feb 3024 observations)—We entered the sterile supermaket to get nata (cream) & again (as in northern Spain & Portugal) had to ask where it was to be found. "Past the fruits and cookies on the left," was the stock lady's reply. Not next to the milk & butter, where we had fruitlessly searched, because Spanish nata is UHT¹ cream intended for baking. And besides, the cooler with a few milk bottles & butter was filled with ultra-processed "milk" based "healthy" yogurt-like "low-fat" stuff, margarines & other synthetics.
"The displacing foods of western commerce," dominate the available selection in this Spanish supermarket with its vast offerings of kibble.
In summary, IMHO, if you have a vegetable oil (seed oil) based diet [yes, EVOO ], observe vegan low-fat strictures & ingest ultra-processed foods, you can achieve morbid obesity & death in a few decades.
¹ Altered protein structure.
5.02.2024 To compound the heavy reliance on delicious EVOO, there's the issue of delicious Iberian hams, if these monogastric beasties are being raised on a "healthy, balanced diet of soya pellets." ²
Thanks, Mani. You're providing some of the research here that I didn't have the time to do, and would have made the post, well, once again prohibitively long.
In a perverse «Hygiene Hypothesis» ("Nature abhors a vacuum" or perhaps expressed affirmatively, "Nature creates holistically with bottom-up scaffolds"), by eliminating animal fats, the "metabolic vacuum" was increased in a population increasingly eating ultraprocessed doods (kibble) & seed oil toxic byproducts more readily absorbed into cellular mechanisms. I know, awkward metaphor, but I hope it captures the synergystic onslaught on metabolism of 1980's "low fat" & "PUFA" & HFCS. The deletion & additions are our current obesity epidemic.
The advice to stay close to friends and family, to be physically active and such is probably good advice, even if it doesn’t make you live to be 110. And I’m fine with vegetables, in moderation.
Wish they hadn’t adopted the neo-Prohibitionist position on the red wine.
Hi Pete, I was planning on writing a post on the revisionist thinking on moderate alcohol consumption when I got distracted by the blue zones. That post may still be coming.
“The absence of what Newman calls “a broad reckoning” in longevity research is a recurring theme in all research having to do with chronic disease”…this quote happens to describe all of what is happening in “aging and longevity research”. It is shifting toward wealthy industrialists who are fully immersed in yeti-hunting without much data to support things like “partial rejuvenation” and “epigenetic aging clocks.” Basically everything Brian Johnson is doing which he calls “research.” So many of the aging experts have now tainted themselves with the wealthy industrialists that are not operating within a sphere of solid science…more within solid science fiction. It’s ok to dream, but u less the data supports it. Take for instance the epigenetic aging clocks that are unvalidated…no one knows if they are aging more rapid or whether it predicts their day of death etc because the models have not been truly validated and have been built on a wide range of healthy and unhealthy people. In fact, the clocks are now geared toward “biological aging” which just adjust for disease covariates and the models are more confusing than ever. Instead we have jumped into commercializing all of it and pretend like we understand it…when the data isn’t clear.
I agree. A subject I'll get into in future posts is what drives a broad reckoning. In the past, it's usually been the work of a few, or even one, scientist that the major players in the field recognize as being someone who has to be taken seriously. This, in turn, requires a field in which experimental tests of hypotheses still dominate. The further away from experiment the theories get, and the larger the field--the more researchers, the more publications--the less influence any one researcher can have. Even when broad reckoning are proposed, the great majority of researchers in the field will ignore them, because their research and its implications depend on the pre-reckoning thinking. And, yes, if this perspective is correct, then modern science has a serious problem and much of what we hear or are told cannot be trusted (whether or not it's right). That's also not a particularly popular position in modern science...
Fascinating. Thank you. Perhaps more attention also needs to be paid to whether or not longevity is what we should be aiming for, or even if it is a reasonable proxy for good "health".
Agreed. Longevity research seems to be a new spin on the old discussion of the prevention and treatment of chronic: healthspan, for instance, instead of lifespan. It sounds good and it certainly sells, but it still requires testing in clinical trials, which are now even more prohibitively expensive and even less likely to ever get done.
Once again, thank you Gary. You lay it out step by step with skepticism at each step. Doubt everything. Don't trust and verify. Many unknowns and other possibilities, variables. Connection is not causality. And, there is always that big dose of "show me the money". My evolving mantra for my own hanging around the planet and enjoying life is; Lean, Clean, and Serene. My neuroscience reading has hammered it into my head that our human nature craves certainty; pretty sure it has been wired into our survival instincts over thousands of generations; BUT theories are best guesses, predictions only and what is thought to be proven today is subjection to change tomorrow. Keep up the erudite and well researched writing please Gary.
Thanks, Skip. And, yes, I agree with your take. About 20-odd years ago I decided I had to read up on the philosophy of science to understand these issues and, well, whether or not I was crazy. I went all the way back to Francis Bacon's "Novum Organum," which was published 400 years ago and more or less introduced the experimental method to science. Bacon said, in more archaic language, exactly what you say you gleaned from your neuroscience reading.
"... something about western, industrialized diets is bad for our health." Believe it or not, AI Overviews furnish clues as to where the problem lies. (web search - Aracidonic acid intake depression AI) "Cross-sectional studies have found that an elevated ratio of arachidonic acid to omega-3 fatty acid is associated with depression, and controlled intervention studies have found that decreasing this ratio through administration of omega-3 fatty acids can alleviate depressive symptoms."
(web search - Mediterranean diet depression AI) "According to current research, a Mediterranean diet is strongly linked to a reduced risk of depression, with studies showing that people who closely follow this dietary pattern tend to have lower rates of depressive symptoms compared to those who don't; this is likely due to the high intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and antioxidants found in the Mediterranean diet, which can positively impact brain health and overall well-being."
(web search - Arachidonic acid intake Omega-3/6 ratio) "A healthy arachidonic acid (AA) to omega-3 ratio is generally considered to be between 2.5:1 and 11:1, with lower ratios being better for health; this means for every unit of omega-3 fatty acid, you should ideally have between 2.5 and 11 units of arachidonic acid in your diet, with the goal being to keep this ratio as low as possible by increasing omega-3 intake and potentially reducing omega-6 intake."
Re the Mediterranean diet and depression, that "strongly linked" is another way of saying "associated", which is another way of saying we have no idea if it's cause and effect. As I've written in other posts, eating a Mediterranean diet in the U.S. would be a marker for health conscious behavior and that health conscious behavior might associate with a whole host of other diet, lifestyle and socioeconomic factors that could be responsible for the association with brain health.
A post I'll write about in the future is about the role of keto and carnivore diets in the science here: i.e., diets that lack the fruits and whole grains and maybe even the vegetables that are providing the supposedly brain-health inducing antioxidants.
Point taken. Here's the thing though. "Cross-sectional studies have found that an elevated ratio of arachidonic acid to omega-3 fatty acid is associated with depression, and controlled intervention studies have found that decreasing this ratio through administration of omega-3 fatty acids can alleviate depressive symptoms."
Thus far I have not found an instance in depression research where arachidonic acid intake was decreased. Note, however that shifting food intake to a Mediterranean style diet inadvertently lowers arachidonic acid intake with typically favorable results. "The Mediterranean diet is low in arachidonic acid and rich in healthy fats such as monounsaturated fats found in extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO), nuts and omega-3 fatty acids from fish, which has been shown to lower the risk of inflammation, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity, and other degenerative diseases." https://advancedmolecularlabs.com/blogs/news/new-red-meat-study-controversy
There was a recent Netflix series on blue zones, I think it was the episode on Greece, the cameras are quick, but you can see a flash of a big roasted goat on the table. Looked like that blue zone eats meat to me.
I love when Gary weighs-in on a topic. Excellent work as always.
I read the Blue Zones book a couple years ago. I found it quite obvious that the author's conclusions do not actually follow from what he just observed throughout the book.
Italians eating vegan?! Are you kidding me? These people inhale fatty pork like nobody's business.
I get that having a sense of purpose & a community is nice, and maybe prolong your life. But none of the dietary choices seemed to be founded in anything but vegan ideology.
Thoughtful, thorough, objective reasoning...as always. Taubes is a national treasure.
"Once a proposition becomes a money-making venture, can we trust the proponents to do rigorous science, which might, as a result, kill their money-making venture?"
I hope you won't think it rude if I reply, "Hell, no!" The key phrase is "money-making". If that is even as important to the participants as seeking the truth, then we can immediately reject their results.
Hi Tom,
I tend to agree but eventually these things become a money-making venture for all of us, even if we're just academics and the money is funding that goes to our research. And, yes, this gets into serious issues about how funding policy corrupts science and understanding. I'll get into that in later posts.
gt
"...the media has started doing its job of critiquing the research".
And after only 19 years! Wow, that is alert journalism.
Anybody recall those yogurt commercials (Yoplait was it?) from the late 70's claiming people from Soviet Georgia had extreme longevity because they ate yogurt? The ages of those folks were found to be manufactured as well.
It was Dannon. I found the ad! https://youtu.be/stsXKIUKh-E
Yes, I do and I remember the claims being debunked. As I said, Newman's critique of longevity hotspots is not new to demographers. It was going after blue zones that made it so newsworthy.
That was due to Stalin coming from Georgia. No researcher would dare contradict that claim!
This blue zone malarkey is yet another example of how we--audiences, consumers, readers, listeners--seek and are seduced by seductively elegant explanations. We want an explanation to feel almost obvious when we find it, and logical and consistent with basic observation. It makes us feel smart. But these pop science explanations are rarely more than skin deep. Their proponents run away from complexity like it's the plague. They don't even broach method. It's like everything Malcolm Gladwell has ever written. We love a good story, a simple and elegant story, more than messy science, which is to say, science.
I mostly agree here, too, although I'm also arguing that the obesity story is relatively simple, only that the research community has managed to ignore it entirely.
Your write: "So maybe the key is the absence of western foods and the mostly-plants are just a coincidence. Had these populations eaten more animal products, they might have been even healthier than they are. There’s no way to know."
That's a pretty negative view of nutritional and cellular biochemical research, past and future. I'm betting that it is actually possible to know such things, and it'll be better figured out eventually -- science just hasn't stumbled onto and followed that "way to know" quite yet. These things take time in any event, and -- as you have repeatedly illustrated -- effectiveness of human observation and reasoning is subject to a whole lot of interfering factors.
Speaking more generally, it's really interesting that 'blue zone' Sardinians and rather insular people of the Spanish Basque Country represent more or less the same early Neolithic genetic island remnant and both appear to -- at least in their pre-WWII generations -- evidence anomalously ,long longevity. Is also odd that hardly anyone ever remarks upon the reported Basque longevity. Maybe nobody at "National Geographic" told Buettner about them?
Excellent, in-depth investigating. Thank you!
I've updated my article on Blue Zones so I could link to your post:
https://drmick.substack.com/p/the-blue-zone-longevity-hype
Great piece!
There are so many nutritional windmills to tilt, but so little power in reason's charger to tumble "fountain of youth" beliefs of people hungry for more years of "life" while nestled on a couch, binge watching Netflix till 03:00 am, drinking Coke & munching Pringles!
«It is terrifying to think how much research is needed to determine the truth of even the most unimportant fact.» —Stendhal [As quoted in: The New York Times Book Review, Volume 1 (Arno Press, 1961)]
Forgive the shotgun blast:
● “The food intake pattern in Okinawa has been different from that in other regions of Japan. The people there have never been influenced by Buddhism. Hence, there has been no taboo regarding eating habits. Eating meat was not stigmatized, and consumption of pork and goat was historically high. ... The intake of meat was higher in Okinawa … "𝚄𝚗𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚍𝚕𝚢, 𝚠𝚎 𝚍𝚒𝚍 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚟𝚎𝚐𝚎𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚗𝚜 𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚗𝚜.”
—Sally Fallon Morell (1992) Nourishing Traditions—The Blog That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, True Blue Zones: Okinawa, https://tinyurl.com/y2hvsn2za quoting Shibata H, et al, Nutrition for the Japanese Elderly, Nutritional Health, 8(2-3): 165-75, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1407826
● The there's the Turkana: “We realized that we had the opportunity to study the effect of transitioning away from a traditional lifestyle, relying on almost 80% animal byproducts — a diet extremely protein-rich and rich in fats, with very little to no carbohydrates — to a mostly carbohydrate diet,” said Julien Ayroles, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and LSI who is the senior researcher on the new paper. “This presented an unprecedented opportunity: genetically homogenous populations whose diets stretch across a lifestyle gradient from relatively ‘matched’ to extremely ‘mismatched’ with their recent evolutionary history.”
Dr Weston A Price's observations from nearly a century ago!
#MismatchHypothesis #LCHF #keto #HygieneHypothesis
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/10/21/princeton-and-mpala-scholars-link-obesity-and-disease-dramatic-dietary-changes
“Urbanization and market integration have strong, nonlinear effects on cardiometabolic health in the Turkana,” by Amanda J. Lea, Dino Martins, Joseph Kamau, Michael Gurven, Julien F. Ayroles appears in the Oct. 21 issue of Science Advances DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb1430
●《𝘏𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘰𝘮 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘺 𝘱𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘱𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦-𝘳𝘺𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥, 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬.
𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚜 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚣𝚎𝚍 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚜 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚝𝚘𝚘𝚝𝚑 𝚍𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚢. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑 𝚍𝚎𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚜𝚞𝚜𝚌𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚋𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚜. 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚌𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜, 𝚊 𝚑𝚒𝚐𝚑 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚝𝚜, 𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍𝚜, 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚛𝚞𝚒𝚝𝚜, 𝚌𝚑𝚘𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚎; 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚊 𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚕𝚢 𝚛𝚎𝚍𝚞𝚌𝚎𝚍 𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚍𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚢 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚍𝚞𝚌𝚝𝚜.》—(1939) Weston A Price
● But adding sugar to bodies lacking natural animal fats is also IMHO problemstic as seen in the morbid obesity in Iberia. (5 Feb 3024 observations)—We entered the sterile supermaket to get nata (cream) & again (as in northern Spain & Portugal) had to ask where it was to be found. "Past the fruits and cookies on the left," was the stock lady's reply. Not next to the milk & butter, where we had fruitlessly searched, because Spanish nata is UHT¹ cream intended for baking. And besides, the cooler with a few milk bottles & butter was filled with ultra-processed "milk" based "healthy" yogurt-like "low-fat" stuff, margarines & other synthetics.
"The displacing foods of western commerce," dominate the available selection in this Spanish supermarket with its vast offerings of kibble.
In summary, IMHO, if you have a vegetable oil (seed oil) based diet [yes, EVOO ], observe vegan low-fat strictures & ingest ultra-processed foods, you can achieve morbid obesity & death in a few decades.
¹ Altered protein structure.
5.02.2024 To compound the heavy reliance on delicious EVOO, there's the issue of delicious Iberian hams, if these monogastric beasties are being raised on a "healthy, balanced diet of soya pellets." ²
² El Productor (17 Enero 2018) La alimentación de los cerdos: dietas y raciones, https://elproductor.com/2018/01/la-alimentacion-de-los-cerdos-dietas-y-raciones/#
"Formulación de alimento balanceado y concentrado para cerdos." (Formulation of balanced & concentrated hog feed.)
Thanks, Mani. You're providing some of the research here that I didn't have the time to do, and would have made the post, well, once again prohibitively long.
In a perverse «Hygiene Hypothesis» ("Nature abhors a vacuum" or perhaps expressed affirmatively, "Nature creates holistically with bottom-up scaffolds"), by eliminating animal fats, the "metabolic vacuum" was increased in a population increasingly eating ultraprocessed doods (kibble) & seed oil toxic byproducts more readily absorbed into cellular mechanisms. I know, awkward metaphor, but I hope it captures the synergystic onslaught on metabolism of 1980's "low fat" & "PUFA" & HFCS. The deletion & additions are our current obesity epidemic.
The advice to stay close to friends and family, to be physically active and such is probably good advice, even if it doesn’t make you live to be 110. And I’m fine with vegetables, in moderation.
Wish they hadn’t adopted the neo-Prohibitionist position on the red wine.
Hi Pete, I was planning on writing a post on the revisionist thinking on moderate alcohol consumption when I got distracted by the blue zones. That post may still be coming.
I’ll drink to that!
“The absence of what Newman calls “a broad reckoning” in longevity research is a recurring theme in all research having to do with chronic disease”…this quote happens to describe all of what is happening in “aging and longevity research”. It is shifting toward wealthy industrialists who are fully immersed in yeti-hunting without much data to support things like “partial rejuvenation” and “epigenetic aging clocks.” Basically everything Brian Johnson is doing which he calls “research.” So many of the aging experts have now tainted themselves with the wealthy industrialists that are not operating within a sphere of solid science…more within solid science fiction. It’s ok to dream, but u less the data supports it. Take for instance the epigenetic aging clocks that are unvalidated…no one knows if they are aging more rapid or whether it predicts their day of death etc because the models have not been truly validated and have been built on a wide range of healthy and unhealthy people. In fact, the clocks are now geared toward “biological aging” which just adjust for disease covariates and the models are more confusing than ever. Instead we have jumped into commercializing all of it and pretend like we understand it…when the data isn’t clear.
I agree. A subject I'll get into in future posts is what drives a broad reckoning. In the past, it's usually been the work of a few, or even one, scientist that the major players in the field recognize as being someone who has to be taken seriously. This, in turn, requires a field in which experimental tests of hypotheses still dominate. The further away from experiment the theories get, and the larger the field--the more researchers, the more publications--the less influence any one researcher can have. Even when broad reckoning are proposed, the great majority of researchers in the field will ignore them, because their research and its implications depend on the pre-reckoning thinking. And, yes, if this perspective is correct, then modern science has a serious problem and much of what we hear or are told cannot be trusted (whether or not it's right). That's also not a particularly popular position in modern science...
Fascinating. Thank you. Perhaps more attention also needs to be paid to whether or not longevity is what we should be aiming for, or even if it is a reasonable proxy for good "health".
The root of the word health, as Wendell Berry eloquently reminded us of in in his Essay "Health Is Membership" (https://www1.villanova.edu/dam/villanova/mission/faith/Readings/fall-2020/Health%20is%20Membership%20by%20Wendell%20Berry.pdf), is wholeness.
Agreed. Longevity research seems to be a new spin on the old discussion of the prevention and treatment of chronic: healthspan, for instance, instead of lifespan. It sounds good and it certainly sells, but it still requires testing in clinical trials, which are now even more prohibitively expensive and even less likely to ever get done.
Once again, thank you Gary. You lay it out step by step with skepticism at each step. Doubt everything. Don't trust and verify. Many unknowns and other possibilities, variables. Connection is not causality. And, there is always that big dose of "show me the money". My evolving mantra for my own hanging around the planet and enjoying life is; Lean, Clean, and Serene. My neuroscience reading has hammered it into my head that our human nature craves certainty; pretty sure it has been wired into our survival instincts over thousands of generations; BUT theories are best guesses, predictions only and what is thought to be proven today is subjection to change tomorrow. Keep up the erudite and well researched writing please Gary.
You are a beacon in an age of confusion.
Thanks, Skip. And, yes, I agree with your take. About 20-odd years ago I decided I had to read up on the philosophy of science to understand these issues and, well, whether or not I was crazy. I went all the way back to Francis Bacon's "Novum Organum," which was published 400 years ago and more or less introduced the experimental method to science. Bacon said, in more archaic language, exactly what you say you gleaned from your neuroscience reading.
"... something about western, industrialized diets is bad for our health." Believe it or not, AI Overviews furnish clues as to where the problem lies. (web search - Aracidonic acid intake depression AI) "Cross-sectional studies have found that an elevated ratio of arachidonic acid to omega-3 fatty acid is associated with depression, and controlled intervention studies have found that decreasing this ratio through administration of omega-3 fatty acids can alleviate depressive symptoms."
(web search - Mediterranean diet depression AI) "According to current research, a Mediterranean diet is strongly linked to a reduced risk of depression, with studies showing that people who closely follow this dietary pattern tend to have lower rates of depressive symptoms compared to those who don't; this is likely due to the high intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and antioxidants found in the Mediterranean diet, which can positively impact brain health and overall well-being."
(web search - Arachidonic acid intake Omega-3/6 ratio) "A healthy arachidonic acid (AA) to omega-3 ratio is generally considered to be between 2.5:1 and 11:1, with lower ratios being better for health; this means for every unit of omega-3 fatty acid, you should ideally have between 2.5 and 11 units of arachidonic acid in your diet, with the goal being to keep this ratio as low as possible by increasing omega-3 intake and potentially reducing omega-6 intake."
Re the Mediterranean diet and depression, that "strongly linked" is another way of saying "associated", which is another way of saying we have no idea if it's cause and effect. As I've written in other posts, eating a Mediterranean diet in the U.S. would be a marker for health conscious behavior and that health conscious behavior might associate with a whole host of other diet, lifestyle and socioeconomic factors that could be responsible for the association with brain health.
A post I'll write about in the future is about the role of keto and carnivore diets in the science here: i.e., diets that lack the fruits and whole grains and maybe even the vegetables that are providing the supposedly brain-health inducing antioxidants.
Point taken. Here's the thing though. "Cross-sectional studies have found that an elevated ratio of arachidonic acid to omega-3 fatty acid is associated with depression, and controlled intervention studies have found that decreasing this ratio through administration of omega-3 fatty acids can alleviate depressive symptoms."
Thus far I have not found an instance in depression research where arachidonic acid intake was decreased. Note, however that shifting food intake to a Mediterranean style diet inadvertently lowers arachidonic acid intake with typically favorable results. "The Mediterranean diet is low in arachidonic acid and rich in healthy fats such as monounsaturated fats found in extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO), nuts and omega-3 fatty acids from fish, which has been shown to lower the risk of inflammation, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity, and other degenerative diseases." https://advancedmolecularlabs.com/blogs/news/new-red-meat-study-controversy
lol - baffled, I Googled "IA Overviews" - Internal Affairs? Iowa? Intelligent Automation? Ah, clearly Merriam-Webster has it right: "dialectal present tense first-person and third-person singular of be"!
I meant to write AI. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. I corrected the error.
There was a recent Netflix series on blue zones, I think it was the episode on Greece, the cameras are quick, but you can see a flash of a big roasted goat on the table. Looked like that blue zone eats meat to me.