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This is really cool. I know it's just mice but I find it really valuable more research is poured into how people can affect their health through simple choices like diet.

So, given this study is valid for humans... Atkins to lose weight, then dial back to carbs to stay healthy?

Unfortunately, diet is often not a simple choice. The price of calories has gone down significantly for mass-produced, less-healthy food, whereas healthy food (like fresh fruit and vegetables) are nowhere near as cheap.

Look at fast food restaurant menus and the processed/frozen food section of your supermarket and it is 50% cheaper to feed a family of four that way (and perceived to be faster) than it is to use fresh, healthy ingredients.

Then factor in less-developed countries, where access to food is a major issue (today, it was announced that ~85,000 have died in Yemen due to starvation) and it becomes clear - for a very large portion of the world, diet is not a simple choice.

Um, a discussion about nutritional science went suddenly really political.

Should I say next time that I cherish every living being, and wish that everyone could be well and happy, and that I'm grateful for my capacity to make life choices including my diet, and that I wish that everyone would have this capacity, while recognizing that the world is full of suffering and evil, that I strive with my every breath to increase the happiness of others and promote good?

It gets really repetetive, really fast. I don't see how it promotes an interesting discussion.

"However, the majority of people have a hard time restricting calories, especially in Western societies where food is so freely available."

Sorry what? Nobody is force feeding you. (FWIW, I've been eating once a day, except on weekends, for at least a year now).

> I've been eating once a day,

Completely irrelevant when talking about caloric intake. For all we know, you're gorging on deep fried butter once a day.

Sure, but the quoted part still does not make sense, I mean the claim for "the majority of people".
Sure it does. For most people, food improves their mood and removes discomfort. Sweets even go beyond improving mood and into creating something of a high.

A relatively inexpensive and broadly available product that makes you feel better and that your body naturally craves? It takes restraint to not consume it in excess.

Why don't you do 1000 squats and pushups each day? It's not hard, you just do it. As easy as writing this comment.

Reminds me of that Bill Burr joke where he compares "you ever try to get a six pack?" to "you ever try to get fat? of course not!"

My guess is that you don't have a six pack and you know exactly why staying trim is hard. But acting surprised let you plug your irrelevant lifestyle.

But if you're serious, then you must have a very hard time understanding people and the modern world if you live in such a bubble so opaque you can't even understand why people get fat. My first step would be to understand it, not trivialize it.

Who said anything about getting fat (projecting?), the article is about dementia.

> Why don't you do 1000 squats and pushups each day? It's not hard, you just do it. As easy as writing this comment.

Come on now.

Does this mean a low carb diet like keto is bad for brain aging?
It's nutrition science so it probably means nothing without large scale replication in humans.
It probably means, like in most complex systems, that extremes are bad and the proper answer is somewhere in the middle.
A high-carb low-protein diet probably is a good recipe for having a healthy brain when you tip over - you'll die of diabetes or heart disease well before you get a chance to get squishy.
Hight-carb here refers to carb-protein ratio, not high-calorie diet.
Statistically no one can stay on a high carb diet that isn't also high calorie.
I would like to see the statistics. I eat a high carb low protein low calorie diet because I like to fit my grocery bill in $15 a week. I would wager the opposite is true actually; if you're eating 1000 to 1400 calories a day and they're not mostly carbs, you're probably feeling terrible hunger pangs.

Most vegetables are carbs, milk and yogourt have tons of carbs (in the form of lactose), lentils are carbs, beans? still carbs, etc. I'm not sure how you can have a cheap low-carb diet (lots of eggs and ham? dissolving multivitamin and whey protein into avocado puree?).

Eat two eggs and three slices of bacon for breakfast, and I can go all day until supper without thinking about eating. Eat a big bowl of cereal or bagel, and I'm ready to murder somebody for a snack by 10 am.

That's the reality of most people's high-carb diets.

This:). I lost 25 pounds on Keto in over 9 months. Then relaxed my diet to gain about 7-9 pounds back. I went back to Keto Two weeks ago and down from 165 to 161.

I eat less than 20 carbs a day.

With 200 grams of protein and about 150 grams of fat. I feel great. Can go without food cravings all day. My CrossFit has improved and I have set 2 PRs in two weeks on weights.

I believe in low carb diets. And have seen them work for many folks at my CrossFit box.

Ymmv

the most nutritionally dense foods in the world are carbs. I know people love to oversimplify and demonize entire macronutrients, but not all carbs/proteins/fats are good/bad. Many carbs are bad due to heavy processing and added sugars/fats, many are good such as fruits and vegetables.
Refining is usually done to exclude other parts or to make a single issue product. Not bad on its own but bad if added in huge quantities. e.g. Refined sugar is usually the same a cane- or beet sugar only the source is different which generally makes it cheaper.

> "Many carbs are bad due to heavy processing and added sugars/fats, many are good such as fruits and vegetables."

Counter example: adding apple syrup is good? (Hint no to an extend: as it is mostly fructose and glucose, even if some nutrients remain)

In my opinion you fall into the oversimplification trap yourself.

And as with everything food related, moderation is good.

apple syrup is a processed and concentrated product, so no, I wouldn't say it's that "good". It has been shown[1] that whole fruits/vegetables are not the same as fruit juice/fruit sugar.

I didn't mean to imply that if it's processed that automatically = bad and if it isn't that automatically = good, although it's a pretty good rule of thumb. I was just using it to illustrate that there are vastly different types of carbs in terms of nutrition.

1. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/08/reduce-type-2...

Not to mention your muscles will also atrophy quickly with low-protein diet.
What's the glycemic index of the carbs?

The article says

> complex carbohydrates derived from starch, and casein protein

"Complex" probably means a pretty low glycemic index.

But what does that mean to me at the grocery store?

It's sad how we don't make glycemic index easier for people via nutrition facts.

For example, eating 100g of cauliflower carbs is a lot better than 100g of refined sugar. But, by looking at the nutrition facts I see "both are 100g of carbs."

Edit: fix high to low as pointed out by child comment.

The US-style marking would have "Sugar: 1.9g" for cauliflower.
Probably at least as important is that the starch is broken down to 100% glucose, with no fructose.
> "Complex" probably means a pretty high glycemic index.

AFAIK it is the opposite - complex carbs are the best carbs to consume, since they don't release energy all at once but slower. Complex -> Simple -> Absorb instead of just last 2 steps.

Even better is to consume them with plenty of fiber, slows down absorption even more, and spikes in glycemic index are much lower

Your right, that's correct. I need to edit that.
big surprise.....

known since the 90s

#plantpowered.

Probably carbs from veg and beans... Not wotsits
Native American ate 65-70% animal protein in their diet.

What was their life expectancy and brain health?

Checkout diet of diffent tribes: https://thepaleodiet.com/north-american-plains-indians-tall-...

Downvotes explain what's wrong with my statement?
My guess is it is impossible to say, mostly since this requires lots of older people and the main cause of death in those cases (as in non modern medicine cases) is generally not old-age related. Might also have to do with the limited set of data available.
I didn't downvote, but I'll make a guess:

Native Americans comprise a broad range of cultures that developed in a variety of geographies and climates. Making sweeping generalizations about their traditional lifestyles is both flagrantly poor anthropology and a known practice among peddlers of diet pseudoscience.

Death or insanity, diabetics. Choose!
Does that mean, taller people suffer more brain damage?

Tall = high protein generation after generation

At least that's what we find from Native American diet consisting of 65-75% animal protein and they were tallest at the time.

Genetically, they were Asians who moved out of Siberia into North America but Asians were and are still short.

The difference between them was their diet, environment not genes. Genes might have changed later.

Why on earth would eating more protein make your children taller? That's the weirdest reading of evolution I've ever heard.
Better muscle to support a growing skeleton? Better bone (marrow) growth? Or more iron, calcium, and vitamin b, d support immune and metabolism systems?
I've heard the complete opposite, so as usual, it's impossible to know what to actually believe outside of a few basics when it comes to nutrition. I figure I might as well just stick to believing higher fat and protein is good for you since you can find other articles saying so and it aligns more with what I like to eat and carbs seem to make me tired.
So basically, you can be overweight with great brain function or ripped and risk losing your marbles. You sort of can't win either way really can you!
This reminds me of the calorie restriction research done in fruit flies (e.g. [1]). They found that protein was toxic to fruit-flies, and then journalists foolishly extrapolated that to humans. Apparently, feeding fruit-flies yeast extract gives them a short life-span. Who would have thought?!

Now in mice, who primarily eat grains, researchers find that feeding them milk is bad for their brain health. How is this research even funded?! Extrapolating this to humans in any way is entirely foolish.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2017-11-protein-diet-early-life-lifesp...

As already discussed on Joe Rogan's show (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eefgRVi7Ko - 25 minute summary), most of these studies are epidemiological studies and are not suitable for the field of nutrition.
This study isn't epidemiological, it's randomly controlled. But it's on mice, and there's no reason to think that the macro nutrient ratios required by mice are the same as for humans.
From public health perspective these studies work only for people who are able to control their eating long term. That's minority of adults.

Put mice in high stress environment, let them choose when and how much they eat. Allow them to choose from large variety of diets. Then find out foods that are both healthy and something that mice choose to eat without becoming fat.

My guess is that oatmeal with trace amounts of cocaine would be close to optimal.