Seth’s blog

• A skeptical look at Karl Popper by Martin Gardner
• Effects of food on the brain
• fat sensitivity correlates with BMI (less sensitive, greater BMI)
• Bill McKibben on Climategate: “If you managed to hack 3,000 emails from some scientist’s account, you might well find a few that showed them behaving badly, or at least talking about doing so.” This gives new meaning to the term denialist.
• if someone steals $2 million do you still trust their research?

Thanks to Vic Sarjoo, Anne Weiss, and Marian Lizzi.

• Paleohacks. Crowd-sourced Q & A.
• Cable cars are undervalued. No mention of elevators, which strengthen the case.
• Vancouver = world’s most livable city? Silly Economist!
• blood glucose self-experimentation

A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry, summarized in the Wall Street Journal:

Researchers in the new study identified 81 people, ages 13 to 25, with warning signs of psychosis, including sleeping much more or less than usual, growing suspicious of others, believing someone is putting thoughts in their head or believing they have magical powers. Forty-one were randomly assigned to take four fish oil pills a day for three months. The other patients took dummy pills.

After a year of monitoring, 2 of the 41 patients in the fish oil group, or about 5%, had become psychotic, or completely out of touch with reality. In the placebo group, 11 of 40 became psychotic, about 28%.

The study is impressive not only because it uses ordinary food (fish oil) rather than  dangerous drugs (such as Prozac) but also because it studies prevention. Just as the ketogenic diet suggests a widespread animal-fat deficiency, so this study suggests a widespread omega-3 deficiency, which won’t surprise any reader of this blog. Completing the picture — I believe most Americans eat far too little animal fat, omega-3, and fermented food — baker’s yeast is being studied as a cure for cancer.

Thanks to Oskar Pearson and Chris.

There isn’t even one fermented food on a list of “the 11 best foods you aren’t eating” compiled by Tara Parker-Pope, author of the world’s most visible health blog. Nor do any of the listed foods contain animal fat. One of them (sardines) is high in omega-3, so the list gets a D instead of an F. Fermented foods and animal fat (in sufficient quantity) have easily-noticed benefits, in contrast to every food on the list. Parker-Pope and the nutritionist she consulted (Jenny Bowden) have very large gaps in their understanding of nutrition.

John Mackey is the founder of Whole Foods, a business I greatly respect. But he’s not always right.

“You only love animal fat because you’re used to it,” he said. “You’re addicted.”

(From a profile of Mackey in The New Yorker.) I discovered that animal fat improved my sleep when I overcame my (learned) repulsion and ate a lot more than usual.I think it’s obvious that fat tastes good for unlearned reasons. For reasons not based on experience. (Babies like fat. Animals similar to us, who have never eaten fast food, like fat.) Mackey’s comment is an example of a larger disregard of this. Professional nutritionists, including nutrition professors, have ignored the general point that our food preferences must somehow be good for us. I’m not saying all fat must be good for us — just the fat we ate when our liking of fat evolved. The idea that evolution would shape us to like and eat a food component that’s bad for us makes no sense.