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posted by n1 on Sunday May 17 2015, @02:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the !soul-food dept.

The Center for American Progress reports:

African Americans, a group plagued by significantly high rates of obesity, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and other physical ailments. A recent study suggests the answer may lie in the diets of their counterparts across the Atlantic Ocean in the rural parts of the Motherland.

In a study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh, 20 African Americans and 20 South Africans switched diets for two weeks. In this time, the Africans consumed traditional American food--meat and cheese high in fat content--while African Americans took on a traditional African diet--high in fiber and low in fat, with plenty of vegetables, beans, and cornmeal, with little meat.

After the exchange, researchers performed colonoscopies on both groups and found that those in the African diet group increased the production of butyrate, a fatty acid proven to protect against colon cancer. Members of the American diet group, on the other hand, developed changes in their gut that scientists say precede the development of cancerous cells.

[...]"we used biomarkers and looked at the proliferation rate that has been tied to cancer," Dr. Stephen J. O'Keefe, the lead researcher, told ThinkProgress. "We were astounded by the gravity and the magnitude of the changes [which] happened within two weeks."

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:06PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:06PM (#184059) Journal

    Unless TFS is radically different from TFA (which I am proud to say that, in keeping with tradition, I have not read), I think you're utterly missing the point.

    Blacks living in the USA suffer disproportionately from different diseases, especially cancer. It would be very interesting if it turns out that non-blacks have some kind of difference that indicates a different diet. In other words, what was healthy for your (presumably non-black) grandmother may not be healthy for a black grandmother.

    Let's hope that Jessie Jackson et al don't turn this into some kind of racism SJW drama since even a passing look at how blacks' risk for different diseases is different from non-blacks indicates that skin color isn't the only difference.

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:18PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:18PM (#184067) Journal

    Personally, I'll just hope that Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, and a couple handsful of other verbose black activists have extremely poor dietary habits. And, I'll toss Shrillary Clinton in with that couple handsful . . .

  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday May 17 2015, @06:22PM

    by tftp (806) on Sunday May 17 2015, @06:22PM (#184126) Homepage

    In other words, what was healthy for your (presumably non-black) grandmother may not be healthy for a black grandmother.

    Perhaps; but both would know what is and what is not good for their own genes. Human diet varies wildly even within one race - take a tribe like Inuit who live on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and eat primarily fish and meat, and compare them to Greeks and Italians who have a wider choice, and who'd probably be unhappy with an all-meat diet.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday May 17 2015, @07:45PM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday May 17 2015, @07:45PM (#184164) Journal

    Sorry, but TWO WEEKS is just too short for the body to adapt.

    Its a nonsense study, they didn't wait long enough to actually see any change in cancers rates, or any long term change in gut chemistry or biota.

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    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday May 17 2015, @07:51PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday May 17 2015, @07:51PM (#184167) Homepage
      Agreed, and with 20 people, the error bars are so wide that even if everyone on one side died, and everyone on the other side became olympic athletes, statistically, you'd still only be able to say "maybe" (exageration for comic effect, but not far from the truth).
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      • (Score: 2) by Kell on Sunday May 17 2015, @11:16PM

        by Kell (292) on Sunday May 17 2015, @11:16PM (#184214)

        +1 common sense

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        Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday May 17 2015, @08:52PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 17 2015, @08:52PM (#184183) Journal

      Sorry, but TWO WEEKS is just too short for the body to adapt.

      Sure. But it's plenty of time for the guts flora to change - which is what this study seems to be about.

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      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 18 2015, @12:59PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 18 2015, @12:59PM (#184495)

        As a point of comparison I occasionally try a meal of "traditional American food" like Taco Bell or McDonalds and sometimes my bowels have reacted in as little as 6 hours. At most, Mt Saint Helens has begun its eruption as much as 12 hours later. Perhaps a better analogy would be that natural gas pipeline explosion that vaporized that CA subdivision a couple years back. How people survive a continuous diet of that stuff instead of real food mystifies me. Anyway this would theoretically point to 28+ "intervals" to blow out the remains of good food and replace it with the remains of "sorta food-like" so this seems a good engineering design.

        I always assumed most of the issue was food sanitation, a restaurant that doesn't care about some laws like citizenship laws almost certainly doesn't care about or enforce food safety regs either. Although it might be the food itself as per the article.

    • (Score: 2) by Balderdash on Monday May 18 2015, @06:10AM

      by Balderdash (693) on Monday May 18 2015, @06:10AM (#184368)

      Yes they did. It was really, really fast cancer.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday May 17 2015, @09:16PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 17 2015, @09:16PM (#184187) Journal

    what was healthy for your (presumably non-black) grandmother may not be healthy for a black grandmother.

    Yeah... it is well known that a diet "high in fiber and low in fat, with plenty of vegetables, beans, and cornmeal, with little meat." would be disastrously unhealthy for a black (or is it for a white) grandmother.

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