Jokes aside, you may be right that it's self correcting at the species level (though still bad at the individual level -- i.e., for those women who wanted to get pregnant).
The first time I heard of Fisher's principle it blew my mind: If the male to female ratio gets imbalanced, it'll return to 1:1 after about 2 generations. The reasoning can be understood by logic alone (see the "basic explanation" in Wikipedia[1]), but there's also experimental evidence[2]. I think that the same argument should hold if the genetic component that makes you avoid fast food is an inherited property.
a) Choosing to eat too much junk food causes hormone imbalances that increase the chance of infertility;
b) Hormone imbalances that increase the risk of infertility in women also tend to increase one's appetite for junk (AKA high-energy) foods.
Having witnessed these problems up close, I'm going with (b).
FWIW the actual substance of the article is this paragraph:
Roughly 1 in 10 women of childbearing age have difficulty getting pregnant. Most of the time, it’s caused by problems with ovulation, often related to a hormone imbalance known as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Some signs that a woman is not ovulating normally include irregular or absent menstrual periods.
PCOS and other fertility-related hormonal issues are much more complex and deeply rooted than food choices, though they're not unrelated.
The real issue is inflammation and auto-immunity, in which food intake is a factor but only one piece of the puzzle.
I wonder if fast food is to blame for hormone imbalances in men as well, especially the problem of lower testosterone for westerners.
Maybe not directly but due to the obesity excessive fast food calorie consumption causes?
I recommend 4chan for their advice, they are convinced it's soy and that eating raw onions is the solution. (Don't take that or anything else on 4chan too seriously though).
The hormone speculation seems to come from the article itself, rather than the authors of the paper. In fact, you could be forgiven for reading the article and not finding anything of interest - no causal link, no mention of controlling for weight (already known to have an effect and very likely correlated with fast food consumption).
However, the paper says:
"All models are adjusted for maternal BMI, maternal age, socioeconomic index, recruitment site, ethnicity, polycystic ovary syndrome, previous miscarriage, smoking status, alcohol intake, multivitamin use prior to conception, frequency of sexual intercourse, paternal BMI, paternal age."
Having controlled for BMI & alcohol at least makes it somewhat interesting, despite the need for patient recall.
I’m curious whether the study accounted for the confounding variable of wealth. Wealthier women eat fast food less and have more access to fresh fruit.
Wealthier women are more likely to exercise and be in general more healthy.
In other words, without taking care of the data, this might just be saying that wealthy people are more fertile.
I struggle to believe that wealth is what is missing. You can eat healthily for very little money. It does however require time to cook / prepare, which maybe be tricky if you have two jobs.
Earning $50k per year working 20 hrs a week may be better than earning $95k working 60 hrs a week.
I cook a lot, and love to cook at home, using fresh vegetables, lentils and legumes, constantly aware of the fact that it is such a luxury to be able to cook and eat at home. Fast food and pizzas are so cheap, for someone starved of time, it can be the only option, to make ends meet, in terms of time.
I have been in that situation of living on fast food for more than a year, and have been grateful to be out of such poverty of time, which has slowly yielded benefits in health, and monetary wealth.
If you have a freezer, you can save a lot of time substituting frozen vegetables for fresh. The texture is often inferior, but nutritionally they're just as good if not better, because they're picked in peak condition instead of early for longer shelf life. They're usually sold pre-chopped, and you can buy them infrequently in bulk.
You can also save a lot of time using an automatic electric pressure cooker. Frozen vegetables can be cooked at the same time as dried grains and legumes, and the timer won't start until the correct temperature is reached, so there's no need to defrost the vegetables first. The pressure cooker will cook things faster than a conventional cooker, but the biggest time saving is from the automation, allowing you to run it unattended.
People who are not wealthy often do not have the nutritional knowledge or easy access to grocery stores with good produce. The issue is deeper than time.
The vast majority of the people repeating the irrational meme are doing it to fit into the groupthink; its an irrational meme, the whole point is its not supposed to make sense, you only know and repeat it if you're one of the cool kids who've observed its part of the local groupthink. Consider almost any discussion of politics or urban lifestyle here on HN, same issue. Magic dirt exists, strange creationism theories, cars are evil, etc. Given that almost everything here thats non-tech is a groupthink meme, it makes you wonder if any of the tech discussions are real, or are also just people meme-ing at each other. I know at least some of the tech discussions are real, maybe nothing else here is...
The meme probably should be banned because its racist in the same sense that anti-weed laws were invented to be anti-mexican before they branched out. A white woman buying a $6 pre-made organic salad is the theoretical ideal whereas a black woman buying $4 of take out soul food or a $8 bucket of fast food fried chicken is gross and disgusting and the people initially promoting the meme were not talking about the food as the topic being gross. For another example, McDonalds for a variety of reasons marketed sharply downscale a generation ago to swap their white customers for minority customers, and now McD are almost entirely full of minority customers, therefore the same food that was yummy in the 80s is for no reason we can admit in polite conversation, now gross and disgusting, of course the change is because the people buying it are now non-white instead of white. Complaining about diet as a thinly disguised dog whistle is literally the polite politically correct left wing equivalent of /pol/ complaining about black crime and black music. To be as clear as possible about what I'm claiming, most "progressive" diet complaints originated as racist dog whistles complaining about non-whites. No one ever complains about the conformist young white girl eating avocado toast, huh. Obviously NOT everyone involved in the groupthink, especially dozens of generations later is a klansman brother; but the origin of the meme surely was racist, thus the meme probably deserves the banhammer.
To some extent the meme is tired because its so one sided. Yes yes we get the idea, ya all don't like soul food or fried chicken or McD because of the black people who eat it and we'll get endless rationalization about how black people eating chitlins are evil while old white guys eat pork rinds which are some kind of manna from heaven. But its so boring to see the same tired one sided memes thousands of times with essentially no response. If meme jokes about casserole eating, mayo smearing, cheese eating, Panera Bread shoppin white people were even a thousandth as popular as the anti-minority-food memes, it would at least be entertaining, despite the tasteless racism.
There's also a side dish of humblebrag along the lines of, I'm not saying I'm rich, which means I want to draw lots of attention that I'm rich, but the only healthy food humans can eat is multiple pounds at a time of $25/pound beef tenderloin which I sous vide in my $499 dedicated appliance and the poor rabble will just have to eat (corn syrup) cake and die young after laboring ceaselessly to make me rich (insert Simpsons laugh). The point being look at me I eat well because I'm rich and most are not rich, look at me, look at me, look at me. Ironically with sane portion control, its cheaper to serve my family home made beef tenderloin than to pay for decent fast-ish food as a total meal cost, and food cost of homemade grilled burgers are practically a rounding error compared to an equivalent or even somewhat substandard fast food meal. A similar humblebrag for "Everyone needs to know that I like to appear very busy, far too busy to open my own pre-made salad container or pour a bag of salad onto a plate, instead I'll spend a half hour traveling and sit around for an hour each meal i...
I disagree with you on almost every point. But I wish I could double upvote your effort and insanity.
I think your perspective has value, and things may appear this way from your point of view. But from another point of view that Rich White Girl with the Alvacodo Toast is getting slammed. She isn't immune from criticism, its just that different groups have a problem with her.
McDonalds didn't become disgusting because they marketed to minorities. Their food has mass appeal, and a great flavor per dollar ratio. McDonald's just didn't keep up with high end burger chains like IN N OUT, which charge more but offer a objectively different product. This is the consumer cycle in every product, it doesn't have to be racist.
Do you have an iPhone? Is it ok to say that old school flip phones aren't as good? Or are we being racist, because generally people in poverty can't afford the latest phone?
But I will say that your dog whistle argument has made me think. Food is almost impossible to separate from culture, so we should be careful how we criticize what we think are unhealthy eating habits. I'm a big advocate of the KETO diet, and I know when I traveled in Muslim countries the perception that pork is unhealthy is extremely pronounced. Also my family in India thinks that beef is the major cause of obesity, even though my diet is mostly beef and they can see I am 50 pounds lighter after giving up rice, and my favorite Indian foods.
Holy shit, I read through your comment and I actually agree with (what I believe is) its content, but seriously, what sort of drugs are you on? Another commenter suggested amphematines, and I’m strongly inclined to agree.
>Another limitation is that researchers relied on dietary questionnaires women completed during prenatal visits that asked them to recall how they ate in the month before they conceived - a method that isn’t always accurate.
Isn't always accurate? More like "Is always inaccurate" people are notoriously bad self reporters even when they're logging things day by day.
”All models are adjusted for maternal BMI, maternal age, socioeconomic index, recruitment site, ethnicity, polycystic ovary syndrome, previous miscarriage, smoking status, alcohol intake, multivitamin use prior to conception, frequency of sexual intercourse, paternal BMI, paternal age.”
It surprises me that, starting with only 5598 subjects, it is possible to control for 13 different factors and keep a signal, more so because a few of those have fairly strong correlation with fertility.
Because of that, I would want to know whether adjusting the yes/no threshold values for those variables would affect the conclusion.
31 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 69.9 ms ] threadThe first time I heard of Fisher's principle it blew my mind: If the male to female ratio gets imbalanced, it'll return to 1:1 after about 2 generations. The reasoning can be understood by logic alone (see the "basic explanation" in Wikipedia[1]), but there's also experimental evidence[2]. I think that the same argument should hold if the genetic component that makes you avoid fast food is an inherited property.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_principle
[2] http://www.genetics.org/content/148/2/719
a) Choosing to eat too much junk food causes hormone imbalances that increase the chance of infertility;
b) Hormone imbalances that increase the risk of infertility in women also tend to increase one's appetite for junk (AKA high-energy) foods.
Having witnessed these problems up close, I'm going with (b).
FWIW the actual substance of the article is this paragraph:
Roughly 1 in 10 women of childbearing age have difficulty getting pregnant. Most of the time, it’s caused by problems with ovulation, often related to a hormone imbalance known as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Some signs that a woman is not ovulating normally include irregular or absent menstrual periods.
PCOS and other fertility-related hormonal issues are much more complex and deeply rooted than food choices, though they're not unrelated.
The real issue is inflammation and auto-immunity, in which food intake is a factor but only one piece of the puzzle.
Ultimately, it is a runaway homeostasis, a vicious circle.
We have only moderate evidence that dietary advice to stop eating highly energy dense nutrient poor foods is effective...
However, the paper says:
"All models are adjusted for maternal BMI, maternal age, socioeconomic index, recruitment site, ethnicity, polycystic ovary syndrome, previous miscarriage, smoking status, alcohol intake, multivitamin use prior to conception, frequency of sexual intercourse, paternal BMI, paternal age."
Having controlled for BMI & alcohol at least makes it somewhat interesting, despite the need for patient recall.
Wealthier women are more likely to exercise and be in general more healthy.
In other words, without taking care of the data, this might just be saying that wealthy people are more fertile.
Earning $50k per year working 20 hrs a week may be better than earning $95k working 60 hrs a week.
I cook a lot, and love to cook at home, using fresh vegetables, lentils and legumes, constantly aware of the fact that it is such a luxury to be able to cook and eat at home. Fast food and pizzas are so cheap, for someone starved of time, it can be the only option, to make ends meet, in terms of time.
I have been in that situation of living on fast food for more than a year, and have been grateful to be out of such poverty of time, which has slowly yielded benefits in health, and monetary wealth.
You can also save a lot of time using an automatic electric pressure cooker. Frozen vegetables can be cooked at the same time as dried grains and legumes, and the timer won't start until the correct temperature is reached, so there's no need to defrost the vegetables first. The pressure cooker will cook things faster than a conventional cooker, but the biggest time saving is from the automation, allowing you to run it unattended.
The meme probably should be banned because its racist in the same sense that anti-weed laws were invented to be anti-mexican before they branched out. A white woman buying a $6 pre-made organic salad is the theoretical ideal whereas a black woman buying $4 of take out soul food or a $8 bucket of fast food fried chicken is gross and disgusting and the people initially promoting the meme were not talking about the food as the topic being gross. For another example, McDonalds for a variety of reasons marketed sharply downscale a generation ago to swap their white customers for minority customers, and now McD are almost entirely full of minority customers, therefore the same food that was yummy in the 80s is for no reason we can admit in polite conversation, now gross and disgusting, of course the change is because the people buying it are now non-white instead of white. Complaining about diet as a thinly disguised dog whistle is literally the polite politically correct left wing equivalent of /pol/ complaining about black crime and black music. To be as clear as possible about what I'm claiming, most "progressive" diet complaints originated as racist dog whistles complaining about non-whites. No one ever complains about the conformist young white girl eating avocado toast, huh. Obviously NOT everyone involved in the groupthink, especially dozens of generations later is a klansman brother; but the origin of the meme surely was racist, thus the meme probably deserves the banhammer.
To some extent the meme is tired because its so one sided. Yes yes we get the idea, ya all don't like soul food or fried chicken or McD because of the black people who eat it and we'll get endless rationalization about how black people eating chitlins are evil while old white guys eat pork rinds which are some kind of manna from heaven. But its so boring to see the same tired one sided memes thousands of times with essentially no response. If meme jokes about casserole eating, mayo smearing, cheese eating, Panera Bread shoppin white people were even a thousandth as popular as the anti-minority-food memes, it would at least be entertaining, despite the tasteless racism.
There's also a side dish of humblebrag along the lines of, I'm not saying I'm rich, which means I want to draw lots of attention that I'm rich, but the only healthy food humans can eat is multiple pounds at a time of $25/pound beef tenderloin which I sous vide in my $499 dedicated appliance and the poor rabble will just have to eat (corn syrup) cake and die young after laboring ceaselessly to make me rich (insert Simpsons laugh). The point being look at me I eat well because I'm rich and most are not rich, look at me, look at me, look at me. Ironically with sane portion control, its cheaper to serve my family home made beef tenderloin than to pay for decent fast-ish food as a total meal cost, and food cost of homemade grilled burgers are practically a rounding error compared to an equivalent or even somewhat substandard fast food meal. A similar humblebrag for "Everyone needs to know that I like to appear very busy, far too busy to open my own pre-made salad container or pour a bag of salad onto a plate, instead I'll spend a half hour traveling and sit around for an hour each meal i...
like your comment then? I am struggling to make sense of it. Even with your summary.
We are all conned into buying food that is overpriced because its healthy and somehow that is racist and its all HN's fault. Was that your point?
I think your perspective has value, and things may appear this way from your point of view. But from another point of view that Rich White Girl with the Alvacodo Toast is getting slammed. She isn't immune from criticism, its just that different groups have a problem with her.
McDonalds didn't become disgusting because they marketed to minorities. Their food has mass appeal, and a great flavor per dollar ratio. McDonald's just didn't keep up with high end burger chains like IN N OUT, which charge more but offer a objectively different product. This is the consumer cycle in every product, it doesn't have to be racist.
Do you have an iPhone? Is it ok to say that old school flip phones aren't as good? Or are we being racist, because generally people in poverty can't afford the latest phone?
But I will say that your dog whistle argument has made me think. Food is almost impossible to separate from culture, so we should be careful how we criticize what we think are unhealthy eating habits. I'm a big advocate of the KETO diet, and I know when I traveled in Muslim countries the perception that pork is unhealthy is extremely pronounced. Also my family in India thinks that beef is the major cause of obesity, even though my diet is mostly beef and they can see I am 50 pounds lighter after giving up rice, and my favorite Indian foods.
Isn't always accurate? More like "Is always inaccurate" people are notoriously bad self reporters even when they're logging things day by day.
It surprises me that, starting with only 5598 subjects, it is possible to control for 13 different factors and keep a signal, more so because a few of those have fairly strong correlation with fertility.
Because of that, I would want to know whether adjusting the yes/no threshold values for those variables would affect the conclusion.
If you don't take care of yourself, the body isn't going to let you attempt to care for two.