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Post by bazfaz on Mar 9, 2009 8:28:20 GMT
Everybody has been saying we must eat oily fish every week because it helps fight off dementia in old age. Today I saw the latest bit of research into old people's brain power. Apparently when you strip out misleading factors, eating oily fish makes no difference at all to the rate of dementia in old folk. Still good for the heart, though.
It seems every week there is a new bit of research boosting some food and later pooh-poohing it.
I'll stick by my general rule: a little of everything (up peu de tout, peasants in the Dordogne used to say). And red wine.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2009 8:32:41 GMT
I think about the only food claim that holds up is: everything causes cancer.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 9, 2009 8:34:43 GMT
I don't think water causes cancer. But I did read of a Japanese who drank so much water over a long period that he grew weak and died.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 9, 2009 18:24:39 GMT
If you drink too much water without replacing vital electrolytes, I imagine you could die.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2009 18:33:41 GMT
People have died from "water poisoning." It causes kidney failure from fatigue if you drink too much liquid. Another one of those things that doctors are now contradicting themselves about is the bit about "constantly rehydrating yourself" and drinking at least a liter of water if not 1.5 liters a day. Now they are saying that it is a bunch of baloney and that 75% of our daily liquid needs are already found in the food we eat. When you look at how desert cultures appear perfectly healthy as long as they are receiving proper nutruition, even though they drink next to nothing, this is clearly true.
Anybody who has made a trip to Egypt or other such country and has eaten with the local people never forgets the constant humiliation of "needing" to drink constantly all through the meal while the others eat placidly while drinking nothing. Then, at the end of the meal, they might have a glass of tea while you sit there bloated in a stupor.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 9, 2009 18:37:51 GMT
I've always been appalled by people needing something to "wash down" their food. The whole chewing process evolved just for dealing with eating and swallowing -- we don't need 16 ounce Coca-Colas to help us get through a meal.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 9, 2009 21:20:21 GMT
Bixa, I need something to wash down my food but I call it wine.
These folk who wander round cities, holding their bottles of water and taking the odd sip, appal me. Dobtless they say it is because they have to have 8 glasses (or 2 litres, whatever) a day and it has been scientifically proved and there is the American FDA (or something) to back them up. But they make a grave mistake. The actual American research (decades ago) said that we needed to have xxx amount of water a day - that is what has stuck in people's minds. The next part they skipped over. As Kerouac says, it then went on to say that most of this liquid is supplied in the foods we eat every day.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 9, 2009 23:32:45 GMT
I'm pretty sure you have the wine as an adjunct to the food -- something to enhance the meal, not to swill because you aren't chewing properly.
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Post by hwinpp on Mar 10, 2009 3:38:38 GMT
I liked the spinach myth. I liked even more when that one got busted!
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 10, 2009 8:00:56 GMT
Then there are all these diets that shoot up into our consciousness like a rocket and fizzle out. I remember the grapefruit diet. A client who worked for a brewery swore that he lost weight because he ate half a grapefruit before every meal. The meals he had in my presence were grapefruitless. The fibre diet. The hardboiled egg diet (hardboiled eggs consume more calories in digesting than they contain) The Montignac diet, an important part of which was that you must eat your fruit at the beginning and not the end of the meal. I think strawberries were an exception. The low carbohydrate diet. Damn it, an apple contained your daily permitted tally of carbs. My ex had a book titled: Eat fat, grow slim. That didn't seem to work for her. It was a precursor to... The Atkins Diet (which in my view is deeply unhealthy). Didn't Atkins die of a sudden heart attack?
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 10, 2009 13:56:23 GMT
I follow the Bacon, Pork Rinds and Beer Diet.
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Post by auntieannie on Mar 11, 2009 20:46:34 GMT
An acquaintance of my parents blocked his kidneys and ended in hospital quite a few years ago, when he foolishly decided to only eat cherries (from the tree in his garden) for several days in a row.
I agree with people from the Dordogne, MrFaz!
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Post by wibblywobblydo on Mar 11, 2009 20:51:47 GMT
As much as I will miss meat/fish, I guess there's only one way to go if I truly want to be healthy.....vegetarian!!
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 11, 2009 21:37:16 GMT
It is instructive to have a wander round out village cemetery. Nobody here is vegetarian - and I mean nobody. And the headstones in the cemetery regularly show people died in tjeir 80s and 90s.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 11, 2009 21:42:18 GMT
Maybe they weren't vegetarian, but I'd be willing to bet all of those oldsters ate local produce and fish not contaminated with pesticides or lead and meat and poultry innocent of growth hormones or fattening products. They may well have never ingested that wasn't prepared by them or by the local butcher, dairy, etc. Added to that, they probably spent their working and leisure lives in motion.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 11, 2009 22:00:10 GMT
Bixa, that may all be true. But that wasn't what Wibbles was on about.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 12, 2009 0:56:01 GMT
Really -- what was he on about.
Anyway, my reply was to you, not to him.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2009 5:51:08 GMT
A 1999 metastudy compared six major studies from western countries. The study found that the mortality ratio was the lowest in fish eaters (0.82) followed by vegetarians (0.84) and occasional meat eaters (0.84), and was then followed by regular meat eaters (1.0) and vegan (1.0). When the study made its best estimate of mortality ratio with confounding factors considered, the mortality ratio for vegetarians was found to be (0.94).
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Post by mockchoc on Mar 13, 2009 4:10:56 GMT
Wibbles, you've been eating meat? Nooooooo! I don't believe that.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 17, 2009 2:10:46 GMT
bazfaz, people in the south of France eat lots of veg and fruit, just naturally.
I think one finds more "vegetarians" in countries where people eat too much meat and not enough fruit and veg, such as the UK, Germany, parts of North America. Perhaps an "equal and opposite" reaction to an unbalanced diet?
Or is it a "Protestant" vs "Catholic" thing? We always see far more vegetarians from English-speaking Canada when they are attending global justice, alternative, radical youth things. Not many at all here in Québec.
And bazfaz, yes I am sipping a glass of red wine as I write. But that is the latest BBC cancer scare thing - not overindulgence, but one glass a day. Egads.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 17, 2009 2:47:27 GMT
Another food claim that bites the dust: a recent study revealed that breast-fed babies whose mothers did not take vitamins were prone to malnutrition. Can't remember what vitamin was deficient, D or E?
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 17, 2009 8:00:19 GMT
Vitamin D you get from being exposed to sunlight. So...should you risk a melanoma by topping up your vitamin D?
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Post by Kimby on Mar 17, 2009 17:54:28 GMT
I just read that in the temperate zones, even if you stood outside all day naked, you might not get enough vitamin D. But you'd probably get frostbitten, instead of melanoma....
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 17, 2009 21:33:48 GMT
Well, I got a melanoma - maybe it was instead of vitamin D.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 17, 2009 21:44:33 GMT
Well, I got a melanoma - maybe it was instead of vitamin D. Was it from standing naked in the snow? Perhaps frostbite makes one more susceptible to melanoma.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2009 21:46:33 GMT
My biological father died of melanoma at age 61, so I never stay out in the sun anymore.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 17, 2009 21:49:23 GMT
I lived for 6 months on a Greek island. I was so used to the sun I could spend the entire day in it and just got browner and browner. When I returned to England I put my arm next to an Indian friend's and I was much darker. And then 35 years later I got a malignant melanoma.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 17, 2009 23:44:17 GMT
I once met a couple of health food nuts who each drank a pint of freshly squeezed carrot juice a day. Within a week, their skin had turned yellow.
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Post by bazfaz on Mar 18, 2009 9:39:47 GMT
They were lucky. I read of a man who consumed large quantities of carrot juice and died of carrotene poisoning.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 18, 2009 14:15:06 GMT
Wow, really baz?
My niece loved sweet potatoes and carrots so much when she was a baby that she had the prettiest golden glow to her skin. I can always spot a sweet potato loving baby. Their moms are often quite surprised when I ask if the baby loves sweet potatoes - "how did you know?"
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