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Research on mice links fast food to Alzheimer's
I suspect this is a case of finding what you expect to find. Alzheimer's commonly appears in people around 70, with an incubation period of 10-15 years where the signs aren't visible. So we should see people who were born in 1938 or prior showing the signs, and people born 1948-1953 incubating, their brains steadily shrinking.
McDonalds opened their first store in 1955. Prior to that we had to make do with the Dairy Queen, Twin Kiss, the Dixie Diner, Hot Dog Frank's, Bill Jones' Diner, and probably thousands of other local or regional dispensers of burgers and dogs, fries and shakes. All of these prepared meals to order, rather than grabbing them out from radiation emitted by infrared lamps at a Frederick Taylor-measured productivity-maximized rate using 2.8 man minutes per customer order.
The regionals also sold a wider variety of foods: Illinois and Iowa and neighboring regions were big on pork cutlets. You could get fried brains in Missouri, though I'm not sure why. Nectar and ambrosia in Texas was referred to as a hamburger basket and an order of fried beans. And all across the south you could buy things that taste like chicken but weren't. All of these were delivered by young women named Madge or Trixie or Millie, sometimes on roller skates.
If you were born in 1938 or prior, the fast food phenom didn't hit until you were 17 if you were at the first McDonald's on opening day, with your DA haircut and your gaspers rolled up in the sleeve of your white tee shirt. You'd expect to find those of us who matured subsequent to fast food as an industry -- McDonald's, Burger King, Jack in the Box, and similar joints -- incubating at a much heavier rate, while those in their 80s would be relatively free of the disease. |
 Mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said on Friday.
The findings, which come from a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, show how a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of dementia.
"On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain," Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, who led the study, said in a statement.
"We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's."
Alzheimer's disease is incurable and is the most common form of dementia among older people. It affects the regions of the brain involving thought, memory and language.
Posted by: Fred 2008-12-02 |
