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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."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday May 17 2015, @08:52PM
Sure. But it's plenty of time for the guts flora to change - which is what this study seems to be about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 18 2015, @12:59PM
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.