Re: Experiences with Atkins diet

From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Sun May 04 2003 - 11:59:00 MDT

  • Next message: Brian Atkins: "Re: Experiences with Atkins diet"

    BillK wrote:
    > Quote:
    > New evidence supports the theory that a high-fiber diet including
    > grains, cereals and fruits substantially lowers the risk of colon cancer.
    >
    > Two large studies show that people who eat an average of 35 grams of
    > fiber per day can have their risk of colorectal cancer reduced by a
    > quarter compared with people who eat an average of 15 grams per day.
    >
    > http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-05-02-2
    >
    > END Quote
    >
    >
    >
    > I think this is one example of what Lee and Eliezer are pointing out.
    > Colorectal cancer tends to be one of the diseases of old age and the
    > diet that helps to prevent it did not exist in paleolithic times. The
    > paleo-diet is for young, very active humans, with no consideration for
    > the over 30s, because pretty much nobody lived over 30 then.
    >
    > So if you aim to live life to the max and go out in a blaze of glory in
    > your 20s, then go for the paleo-diet. You know it makes sense - that's
    > what they did for over a million years.
    >

    I think many people are at the Foresight thing, but I will give my take:
    these studies appear to confirm, rather than disconfirm the paleo diet.
    At least one of them also seems to rule out vegetarianism as an ideal diet.

    First, I looked at the actual web pages of the studies, and found no
    reference to the idea that they found fiber from grains/cereals to be
    superior to other types. Since they released so little data and findings
    publicly so far, they may indeed have drawbacks. In general, all I saw
    was that fiber in general from any source is what reduced the cancer
    risk, and it actually wasn't a huge amount of it either... quite a bit
    less I think than the paleo diet recommends.

    Secondly, one of the key findings of the second study is that eating
    high nutritional quality meat _lowers_ your risk of cancer further.
    Specifically they found no link to cancer from red meat consumption (and
    remember, this is likely low quality meat, not the type recommended by
    the paleo diet), and reduced cancer risk from eating poultry and even
    more significantly from eating fish. The only meats shown to increase
    cancer risks are apparently highly processed meats, which again if you
    were eating the paleo way you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

    http://www.ism.uit.no/kk/e/key_findings.htm

     From these results, you have lowest risks for these cancers if you:

    1. Eat a decent amount of fiber from any source, although they generally
    are talking about fruits/veggies from what I see, not grains.

    2. Don't drink or smoke.

    3. Eat plenty of non-processed meat, especially fish. (my guess though
    again is that if it were possible to do a study of grain fed vs. grass
    fed meats there would be even further reduced cancer risks for the grass
    fed/natural fed meats).

    I hope these and other studies eventually make their raw data publicly
    available... I bet there are other interesting finds lurking in there.

    -- 
    Brian Atkins
    Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
    http://www.singinst.org/
    


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