The title states "western-style diet", but the article is about obesity. What is the purpose of changing words around like this? Not everybody who lives in western society is fat. Plenty of people living in non-western societies are fat, some more so.
And there is no unique "western-style" diet, but various "western-style" diets. Italy is a western country, for instance, as well as France and thy both have different diets, and different from the one that is depicted in the photo in the article that looks like there is a burger with French fries (which maybe could quality as an "American-style" diet -- at least seen from Europe -- but people certainly eat more various food in the US...).
Rightly or wrongly, I equate the SAD with subsidies for Big Ag (soya, corn/HFCS, dairy, etc). Which is our de facto food, and therefore public health, policy.
It is about a western diet being related to obesity, see the first paragraph for example:
> Researchers at Macquarie University have now shown that memory inhibition — the useful ability to ‘block out’ memories that are no longer useful, which depends on a brain area called the hippocampus — is linked to dietary excess.
The amount we over eat in the US is pretty unique in the world. This research is suggesting that what we eat is creating a feedback loop; our diet inhibits our ability to block out irrelevant memories which means we can't stop thinking about eating, which means we eat more of the food which makes it harder to stop thinking about eating.
Of course, if this research is true and our diet is inhibiting our ability to block out irrelevant memories that seems like it will have a lot more implications than just creating a dietary feedback loop. It could be influencing all kinds of mental disorders as well, including depression, anxiety, etc.
The amount we over eat in the US is pretty unique in the world.
Not so much, anymore. Saudi Arabia and Mexico surpassed us a few years ago. Most of Polynesia and good chunks of the Middle East have been more obese than the US as long as I can remember. Even the UK is hot on our heels.
I never hear any specifics about how other cultures consume low amounts of fat. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that western diets are actually the lowest in fat.
Interesting. May be they should just call it high fast high sugar diet though considering that it has spread across the world (thanks to McDs/DunkinDonuts/StarBucks)
I wonder if this is also due to the constant stream of food-related advertisements in popular media. Those are usually for high fat, high calorie food. Most of the time, those ads repulse me because that does not look appetizing to me (I'm picky like that). But I've witnessed friends see the same ad and start craving that particular food item.
Rumination could be the reason for the success of Westerners. Negative emotions exist for reasons linked to survival or they would not exist at all.
It is difficult not to notice that those countries which have prospered the most over time are also those places where the inhabitants can be stereotypically withdrawn, introspective, morose.
It is for this reason I do not trust sunny Californian optimism. It is more than plausible that the opposite, a dim view of the future and humanity, will lead to ultimate long lasting successes.
In countries where the inhabitants are exuberant, joyful, extroverted, their economy is invariably en route back to a war torn hellscape from which it came.
Don't ask me to have a universal theory of why this should be so. It is just hard not to notice the pattern. I believe that holding a dystopian view of the future is counterintuitively key to the development of new technology that arrests the probability of that view becoming a reality. Prepare for war if you want peace. Perhaps the same is true of humanity and technology.
that sounds a lot more like correlation than causation to me.
if you're brain constantly signals 'i need food' you're going to eat more and get fatter. personally, i've not eaten any burgers or alike for years and still had to fight that urge every day.
couldn't really find the mentioned source, as the linked URL doesn't point to a study or paper and the homepage only shows their event schedule and similar.
Just curious why you decided to stay away from burgers? I don't really consider that to be a bad choice. The fries and soft drink/shake that come with it certainly can be.
It sounds like this was a conference presentation, which are usually not peer-reviewed in biological sciences, so I would be very careful about drawing any conclusions from it.
I read about this anecdotally regarding specifically foreign language teachers who go abroad and practice a foreign tongue almost exclusively when unwinding with the help of the cheap local ferment, on their return they find the fluid conversation ability really only surfaces when intoxicated, and speaking fluent Spanish while drunk at a party is impressive to no one.
Like with any observational study, it's worthwhile to think of other things people who eat a Western-style diet might do differently from the control population before accepting the implication that the observed difference in memory performance is because of the food.
For example, perhaps affinity for snack food has something to do with how much time people spend engaging in sedentary activities like watching TV. There's already plenty of existing evidence (mostly also observational, mind) suggesting that lack of physical activity is associated with poorer cognitive outcomes.
The "citation" goes to the front page of a conference, rather than to a publication at that conference. I am unable to find any paper matching the description on the conference web site or with google scholar and, quite frankly, I have no trust whatsoever in sciencebulletin.org to summarize these things correctly. This doesn't deserve a front page slot because it's extremely likely to be untrue.
Western diet is associated with poorer inhibition of wanting for palatable snack foods when sated
T.N. ATTUQUAYEFIO1, R.J. STEVENSON1, R.A. BOAKES2, M.J. OATEN3, M.R. YEOMANS4, M MAHMUT1, H.M. FRANCIS1
1Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia/2University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia/3Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia/4University of Sussex, Sussex, United Kingdom
Animal data indicate that hippocampal function is impaired by the increased consumption of a Western-style diet, with potential consequences for energy regulation. Based on such data, it has been argued that consumption of a Western-style diet impairs the ability of the hippocampus to inhibit retrieval of pleasant-food related memories in the presence of food cues, when sated. We tested this in healthy human participants (N = 94, Mage = 20.3, MBMI = 22.3) who varied in their habitual consumption of a Western-style diet .Verbal paired associate (VPA) learning, a known hippocampal-dependent process, liking and wanting ratings of snack foods were assessed first when participants were hungry, then when sated. Stepwise multiple regression analyses evaluated found that Western-style diet was associated with a slower VPA learning rate and a smaller reduction in wanting for snacks from before to after lunch. The latter was also strongly related to VPA learning rate, suggesting that wanting for foods has a memory-related component and would therefore likely involve the hippocampus. Further, it shows that greater consumption of a Western-style diet is associated with poorer inhibition of memories for highly palatable food when sated. This is the one of the first translational pieces of evidence from animal data showing the impact of a Western-style diet on both hippocampal-related memory and inhibition in humans.
Supported By: Macquarie University
---
Above is what I found on the conference site. I was also unable to find the paper. I agree that sciencebulletin didn't do a good job reporting on this.
On the other hand, this is not novel in any way, and there is already substantial literature on this topic that suggests the same thing. If the topic is of interest to others, perhaps the older papers, or a list of them, should be posted instead.
There is no paper. This was a 15 minute oral presentation. It may or may not be interesting work, but it's not at the point where the popular press should be reporting on it.
Study: ['Metabolic syndrome' in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signalling and cognition.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22473784)
31 comments
[ 12.7 ms ] story [ 1245 ms ] threadhttp://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=00437...
It doesn't seem very descriptive of the phenomenon.
> Researchers at Macquarie University have now shown that memory inhibition — the useful ability to ‘block out’ memories that are no longer useful, which depends on a brain area called the hippocampus — is linked to dietary excess.
The amount we over eat in the US is pretty unique in the world. This research is suggesting that what we eat is creating a feedback loop; our diet inhibits our ability to block out irrelevant memories which means we can't stop thinking about eating, which means we eat more of the food which makes it harder to stop thinking about eating.
Of course, if this research is true and our diet is inhibiting our ability to block out irrelevant memories that seems like it will have a lot more implications than just creating a dietary feedback loop. It could be influencing all kinds of mental disorders as well, including depression, anxiety, etc.
Not so much, anymore. Saudi Arabia and Mexico surpassed us a few years ago. Most of Polynesia and good chunks of the Middle East have been more obese than the US as long as I can remember. Even the UK is hot on our heels.
"The study […] looked at healthy young people, some of whom ate a Western-style diet."
I never hear any specifics about how other cultures consume low amounts of fat. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that western diets are actually the lowest in fat.
It is difficult not to notice that those countries which have prospered the most over time are also those places where the inhabitants can be stereotypically withdrawn, introspective, morose.
It is for this reason I do not trust sunny Californian optimism. It is more than plausible that the opposite, a dim view of the future and humanity, will lead to ultimate long lasting successes.
In countries where the inhabitants are exuberant, joyful, extroverted, their economy is invariably en route back to a war torn hellscape from which it came.
Don't ask me to have a universal theory of why this should be so. It is just hard not to notice the pattern. I believe that holding a dystopian view of the future is counterintuitively key to the development of new technology that arrests the probability of that view becoming a reality. Prepare for war if you want peace. Perhaps the same is true of humanity and technology.
if you're brain constantly signals 'i need food' you're going to eat more and get fatter. personally, i've not eaten any burgers or alike for years and still had to fight that urge every day.
couldn't really find the mentioned source, as the linked URL doesn't point to a study or paper and the homepage only shows their event schedule and similar.
And let's hope the burger is pure beef, and fried in healthy fats (preferably its own beef fat), not canola or other garbage oils.
I read about this anecdotally regarding specifically foreign language teachers who go abroad and practice a foreign tongue almost exclusively when unwinding with the help of the cheap local ferment, on their return they find the fluid conversation ability really only surfaces when intoxicated, and speaking fluent Spanish while drunk at a party is impressive to no one.
For example, perhaps affinity for snack food has something to do with how much time people spend engaging in sedentary activities like watching TV. There's already plenty of existing evidence (mostly also observational, mind) suggesting that lack of physical activity is associated with poorer cognitive outcomes.
Western diet is associated with poorer inhibition of wanting for palatable snack foods when sated T.N. ATTUQUAYEFIO1, R.J. STEVENSON1, R.A. BOAKES2, M.J. OATEN3, M.R. YEOMANS4, M MAHMUT1, H.M. FRANCIS1 1Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia/2University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia/3Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia/4University of Sussex, Sussex, United Kingdom Animal data indicate that hippocampal function is impaired by the increased consumption of a Western-style diet, with potential consequences for energy regulation. Based on such data, it has been argued that consumption of a Western-style diet impairs the ability of the hippocampus to inhibit retrieval of pleasant-food related memories in the presence of food cues, when sated. We tested this in healthy human participants (N = 94, Mage = 20.3, MBMI = 22.3) who varied in their habitual consumption of a Western-style diet .Verbal paired associate (VPA) learning, a known hippocampal-dependent process, liking and wanting ratings of snack foods were assessed first when participants were hungry, then when sated. Stepwise multiple regression analyses evaluated found that Western-style diet was associated with a slower VPA learning rate and a smaller reduction in wanting for snacks from before to after lunch. The latter was also strongly related to VPA learning rate, suggesting that wanting for foods has a memory-related component and would therefore likely involve the hippocampus. Further, it shows that greater consumption of a Western-style diet is associated with poorer inhibition of memories for highly palatable food when sated. This is the one of the first translational pieces of evidence from animal data showing the impact of a Western-style diet on both hippocampal-related memory and inhibition in humans.
Supported By: Macquarie University
---
Above is what I found on the conference site. I was also unable to find the paper. I agree that sciencebulletin didn't do a good job reporting on this.
On the other hand, this is not novel in any way, and there is already substantial literature on this topic that suggests the same thing. If the topic is of interest to others, perhaps the older papers, or a list of them, should be posted instead.
HN is fantastic for increasing signal:noise on technical topics, but I don't feel like we do as good of a job with medical topics.
There are so many of these "oh wow; cool!" psychology "studies" that just don't have much substance to them.
The fact that it gets upvoted here speaks to how hard it is for less educated individuals to focus on the important parts of science news.
Article: [Fat, sugar cause bacterial changes that may relate to loss of cognitive function](http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/jun/fat-sugar-ca...)
Study: [Relationships between diet-related changes in the gut microbiome and cognitive flexibility](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452215...)
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Article: [This is your brain on sugar: UCLA study shows high-fructose diet sabotages learning, memory](http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/this-is-your-brain-on-suga...)
Study: ['Metabolic syndrome' in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signalling and cognition.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22473784)
-----
Also: [Systems Nutrigenomics Reveals Brain Gene Networks Linking Metabolic and Brain Disorders](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352396416...)