Eating things that say "hydrogenated" on the label may piss you off.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0032175

In short, trans fats -- which include anything that's been hydrogenated or fractionated -- make people irritable and aggressive. If you can avoid them, you may well be(come) a happier person.

 

WHATS IT TO YOU WHAT I EAT, PUNK?

 

OK, now put the gun down and slowly step away from the Bacon... Everything will be just okie dokie.

 

Fortunately, hydrogenation is a process applied to existing fats -- natural fats like those in bacon are always safe.

 

*applied to oils

 

Uhhh...ummm...all fats ARE oils! they just haven't been rendered yet!


Yeah, that's the ticket.


(thanks)

 

So would that make a bacon factory a pre-rendered cutscene?

 

Bacon is the only food group.

 

I like the use of the word "may".

So is there a reasonable explanation as to why this may be? Crap studies like this are the problem with science today. And I use the term science loosely here.

 

Obviously, you need several more studies before something like this becomes accepted by anyone except laymen who read studies.

Nothing is ever decided by a single study. You always need verification and peer review up the wazoo.

 

The problem with these studies is that they are often predicated on other bad studies and become accepted far sooner than they should. And even if the data in this study is accurate and can be replicated with additional testing, it wouldn't be enough to establish a causal relationship. You would never be able to rule out an unknown factor that causes individual to choose diets in processed foods AND be aggressive. Heck they even admitted to not using an objective method of testing so the data is all crap anyway.

Read the first paragraph of the abstract and consider that some grad student out there is writing the following line "studies have shown experimentally a link between hydrogenated fats and aggression" using this crap study as a reference.

People will believe anything that's in an abstract format and uses big words. Ill admit that paper is very sciencey lol. You can't argue with science! please, read the abstract. The study is a joke.

 

Wow, jhffmn...that was a pretty intensely negative reaction to this particular thread when we have several similar threads around here. Do you have some reason to want to disbelieve this particular study? Or is there something you can point out in this study that makes it particularly bad in your eyes?

 

I must have eaten some hydrogenated oils.

I mean, come on. Do you think that hydrogenated oils could have such an impact on human behaviour that administering a dietary survey to 1000 people along with some subjective aggression test could turn up results that have any meaning what so ever?

It's not the study that makes me mad. I get mad when I realize that people believe this stuff.

 

I do believe that they could. Yes. But then, my mother is a nutritionist and I've been her guinea pig for several years, and I've seen in my four-year-old the immediate changes in his behavior when, for example, he's hyperactive and unfocused and he eats 2 oz. of cheese. It's phenomenal -- in clearly less time than it takes him to digest the cheese, he calms down and starts paying attention. It's happened dozens of times, so its not a fluke thing.

Food absolutely can have fairly dramatic and even fairly immediate effects on our behavior. You only have to look at everyday examples like coffee, alcohol, sugar, Valerian root, and any of literally millions of other molecules that we can and do consume that have radical effects on our moods and bodies. It's downright silly to think that getting all up in the molecules you put in your body and tinkering with them in ways that evolution didn't naturally bring about wouldn't end up dicking you over in extremely unexpected ways.

In the case of hydrogenated fats in particular, they get into all kinds of places where normal everyday fats are supposed to be, but they don't quite act like normal everyday fats, and that can mess up all kinds of things from the creation of certain neurotransmitters to the porosity of your blood-brain barrier.

So, yes. I do in fact believe that the study has a reasonable basis. It's certainly not statistically significant on it's own, but it's also definitely not something that should be ignored out of hand.

 

He's eating hydrogenated stuff, bro. Its in the title.

Edit: Also, anyone who doubts how much a 'small' amount of something can do in the human body is welcome to have some bad sausage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin

13 ng/kg vs (for an 80kg male eating 10g of butter) 100 MILLION ng/kg is more than enough to make me expect its *possible* for there to be an effect.

In terms of study accuracy - accuracy is basically non-existent. We're all a little different, and food/social sciences have a looooong way until they can be truely accurate. It's always just a 'We are X% confident that Y% of the time, Z happens"

 

Well, I'm not going to bash your mother's profession and all the anecdotal evidence you've provided. But if you're ever near a Barnes and Nobles I recommend picking up the book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" it's a good read.

That's because they are mostly junk sciences. Pop Science is probably my #1 pet peeve.

 

Well, there's certainly benefit in testing - the huge huge huge issue is how academia works - funding comes from people with interests, if your report isn't what you wanted you're less likely to publish, etc. etc.

 

Funding comes from people and groups with a vested interest in research that supports their beliefs. I would be less interested in funding a group that wanted to research just how dumb I must be than in a group that wants to prove everyone else is dumb and I am an 'effing genius.

That does not mean all research is garbage, but lets face it, a lot of research is pure garbage and may actually be giving garbage a bad name by comparison.

 

Disagree strongly.

There's a difference between "I want to know about X" and "I want to know that X cures Y"

 

Interesting that you quote me then do not refute my choice of words. Read it again please. I do not disagree with your statements. I just recognize and explained how bad it can get.

When I was a child, I was prescribed Ritalin. (It may as well be methamphetamine.) I was on it for years. Then as the patent neared term, the company making it suddenly started pushing Doctors to prescribe Ritalin X. (No, that X is not a real thing, it is a placeholder.) Ritalin X had studies and research that demonstrated it was better in every way from Ritalin. Then as the term of the patent neared again, Ritalin Y was the new magic pill for your uncontrollable spoiled brats to take. Then Ritalin Z, then whatever else.

The differences in each case were so trivial that you could easily argue there was no real difference. But they had too many studies and research that showed dramatic improvements. So Doctors could either practice medicine in good faith and presume they were not being sheeple, or spend all day reading the studies and arguing with their colleges that were sheeple and no time treating patients or making a living.

Notice that I never once said all research is false. But evergreening is not a new concept, and pharmaceutical industries are just one of many industries that do this regularly. The research is largely exaggerated. Some of it is outright bad research. (In that the research methods are suggestive and bound to get the results desired by those who pay for it.)

Also, the DEA in America pays many millions every year along with the FDA to do research on substances that are illegal. They *DO NOT* publish the information that goes against the results they desire. But we cannot really discuss that side of things here. It will turn ugly and Daynab will have to nuke the topic from high orbit.

You are entitled to strongly disagree. But please, even if you never agree with me, read up on some of the corrupt research before defending all research blindly.

 

I agree that a lot of research is corrupt, but there's certainly ways to demonstrate that it is/is not corrupt overall - e.g. look at the [name escapes me] institute which collates research from numerous studies to form an overall opinion on both the quality of the studies and the overall outcome distributed over the studies.

http://www.badscience.net/