Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Mediterranean Diet has Varied Effects on Cognitive Decline among Different Races

posted by azrael on Sunday July 20 2014, @07:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the used-to-know-what-this-meant dept.

cafebabe writes:

ScienceDaily reports that:

In a population of initially well-functioning older adults, we found a significant correlation between strong adherence to the Mediterranean diet and a slower rate of cognitive decline among African American, but not white, older adults. Our study is the first to show a possible race-specific association between the Mediterranean diet and cognitive decline.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Mediterranean Diet has Varied Effects on Cognitive Decline among Different Races | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 11 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 20 2014, @01:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 20 2014, @01:40PM (#71500)

    Lol....troll.

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 20 2014, @07:34PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday July 20 2014, @07:34PM (#71596) Homepage

    This thread is racist and this whole discussion and submission are racist.

    Race is only a social construct.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Sunday July 20 2014, @08:10PM

      by HiThere (866) on Sunday July 20 2014, @08:10PM (#71611) Journal

      Sorry, but it's not *only* a social construct, it's also a surrogate observable for a multitude of non-observable characteristics. It's not a particularly reliable surrogate, but it's one that easy to observe. Very few people could offer their geneotype to a study like this, and fewer would be willing to do so. (Even then you need to test fro epigenetic markers to complete the physical outline.) And, of course, culture is often divided along readily observable cleavage planes, and for that purpose race is used.

      How about this one: Were use heavily exposed to DDT before you were 13? That's a known agent that affects epigenetic markers. How important isn't certain. It seems to lead to various physical problems. But the kicker is: Were your parents heavily exposed to DDT before or during their early teens? It's a partially inheritable change. Epigenetic changes aren't totally cleaned away between generations. They decay over generations, but there is still argument going on over how rapidly, and whether they all decay at the same rate and .... In rats some epigenetic changes seem to heal over around 5 generations. The particular change (a kink in the tail) didn't seem to confer any advantage under any circumstances. If I recall the test correctly it was imposed via a starvation diet. (See also studies about human families from the Netherlands during WWII. Also something about some place in scandanavia that I can't place at the moment.)

      Now it's quite probable that families with black skin have experienced various environmental insults that families with other skin colors were spared. This could easily have caused epigenetic changes, though to my knowledge no studies have been done. (I'm *NOT* an expert in this area.)

      But because of the preceeding arguments, race is not solely a social construct.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.