Big fat tick for Maccas

[Mark Lapierre]

Big fat tick for Maccas

That article is about a small study undertaken in response to the movie Super Size Me to have a closer look at the effects of a "junk food" diet.

The Swedish experiment came about after an American colleague urged Nystrom, an endocrinologist, to watch Spurlock's film.

"My friend was intrigued by the film but said it raised a lot of questions that it didn't really answer, or at least not in a way that would satisfy scientists," Nystrom says. "So I watched it and then I wanted to know more. In the film his (Spurlock's) liver became so damaged, for instance, that his doctors told him to stop eating McDonald's immediately, but I wanted to know whether that would happen to everyone or maybe there was just something wrong with his liver.

"There has been very, very little research done like this. Obesity studies are normally conducted on people who are already obese rather than taking healthy subjects and asking them to deliberately eat an unhealthy diet."

The results were surprising:

"Given that we were deliberately increasing people's weight, you would expect both their insulin levels and cholesterol to get worse. The insulin did, suggesting that the danger of diabetes would increase, but the weird thing was their lipid (cholesterol) profiles went in the opposite direction and actually improved.

It just goes to show how resilient our bodies are if we keep them healthy. That said, it's no reason to go eating such an unhealthy diet, nor to consider it justification for an already unhealthy diet. Perhaps our liver can cope with the stress over a month, but after a few months? A year?

But I'm glad that Nystrom did this study, and will continue to do more in-depth studies; He may reveal that some of our beliefs about what food is 'bad' is really not the case. Some of us may be worrying, and unnecessarily avoiding, foods which are really not unhealthy. I'm not suggesting McDonalds' highly processed, sugar-rich foods would be on that list, but a good example is Coconut Oil, long considered bad because of it's high saturated fat content, though in reality it's quite healthful.

But in the end I think Steve is right, and ironically this study supports the idea that we're best off trialing different diets and seeing what works best, individually.

[escapee]

I wish the article makes a little comparison on total cholesterol Vs HDL, LDL and trygyceride. Most of the diabetic patients suffer on heart disease as per below article.

Type 2 Diabetes: Silent Heart Problems

[Mark Lapierre]

It does mention HDL vs. LDL:

"Spurlock's cholesterol deteriorated badly, but that is not what we found," Nystrom says. "Their overall level of cholesterol tended to rise, but not for all, and for some reason the balance of good cholesterol (or high density lipoproteins) to bad cholesterol actually improved. That is the intriguing thing and we don't understand it.

[cela]

Mark, when I saw the heading of this thread, I thought you might actually have been referring to this:

$330,000 buys Maccas the tick of approval - National - theage.com.au

VicHealth chief executive Rob Moodie questioned whether the program was a marketing ploy that would help McDonald's sell more Big Macs by simply getting more people through the golden arches. If that were the case, he said, the Heart Foundation should feel "duped".

"If, on the other hand, this actually led to changing of consumption patterns, then hooray!" he said. "If there's any sense that they're going to simply sell more junk food on the basis of improving their marketability and reputation and using it as a smokescreen, then I would be very concerned."

Not sure how I feel about it, really.

[escapee]

oh ok Then this is strange .. because assuming that the big mac is loaded with unhealthy fat (trans fat, damaged vege oil) . then it should raise the LDL level. or maybe it's due to the exclusion of trans fat laden French fries from the study.

Amazon.com: Saturated Fat May Save Your Life: Books: Bruce Fife

[Conan Stevens]

Statistics can be fiddled. They could have done the study with 20 different groups and taken the results that suited and published them.

Remember there are "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics"