According to that “study,” soundly questioned at by Petro at Hyperlipid here , by Tom Naughton here, and by Mark Sisson here, if you don’t remember it, we should blame your “fatty” diet.
But according to a study ignored by the low-fat propaganda machine, if you don’t remember it, we can lay the blame on your low-fat diet.
You see, when you eat fats, your small intestine produces a hormone called oleoylethanolamide (OEA). When Campolongo et al administered this hormone to rats, the rats displayed better memory retention in two different tasks. When they blocked the receptors for OEA, the rat’s performance decreased.
They published their results in the March 19, 2009 issue of PNAS under the title “Fat-induced satiety factor oleoylethanolamide enhances memory consolidation.”
Interesting to notice how little attention this one got in the media, compared to that poorly done anti-fat study. Also interesting to see how people did report on it. Ker Than reported on the research in an article titled “Fatty Foods May Boost Memory” posted on the National Geographic News (NGN) site.
According to Than,
“The team suspects OEA's memory-enhancing activity likely evolved to help animals remember where and when they ate a fatty meal, so they could return to that spot later.”
“Fats are crucial for a variety of biological functions and structures. While the modern human diet is now rich in fats, such foods are actually rare in nature.”
As I read this claim that foods rich in fat rarely occur in nature, I wondered if people who think this way have ever seen a bison, with its big hump of back fat? A beaver? A duck? How about a salmon? Mackerel? A seal? A whale? A dugong (sea cow)?
Fats may not abound in plants, but much of the year you can find them in animals. Even in lean times, when animals have low body stores of fat, animals provide the main source of fats in nature. Of course, getting hold of an animal, hence some fat, requires a good bit more brain than grasping the next leaf. But then this might lead us down the road toward eating animal fat, and the gods will get mad at us….
If they think fat doesn’t just grow on trees—maybe they forgot about palm trees, coconut trees, pecan trees, walnut trees, etc.?
Funny how such statements about the scarcity of fats in nature get repeated frequently, but I don’t recall ever seeing any popular pundit pen the following parallel statement: “While the modern human diet supplies lots of refined sugar and grains, such foods actually don’t occur in nature.” Did I miss it?
Than reports that one of the study authors, Daniele Piomelli, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, said:
“It makes sense that nature evolved a system for strengthening memories associated with the places and context where fats are gathered."
I’ll say. Fat provides more than twice the energy of carbohydrate, making it THE high energy fuel of choice. Any animal that could learn how to get a hold of fat would have a huge selective advantage over those that did not.
I don’t recall the folks who reported that eating fat makes you stupid and lazy having plausible biological--i.e. evolutionary--explanation for their “finding.” Looked at from an evolutionary standpoint, their claim makes no sense. Since in nature getting a hold of dietary fat definitely presents more challenges than getting a hold of cellulose and other carbohydrates, we should expect fat-eating animals to have more intelligence and more efficient action than others.
Hey, could fat-seeking account for human intelligence? Wait, we can’t go there, that would mean meat is good for us…..that eating it even makes us smart….can’t be true, Dr. Kellogg proved corn flakes are better for us….
By the way, I consider that the word “lazy” belongs to a mindset and world-view of the slave-owner. The slave-driver uses this term to give himself the right to punish someone who he holds hostage who doesn’t do his bidding. “You are lazy, therefore I have the right to kick your ass, to make you ‘productive’ for my benefit.” Hunter-gatherers spend a lot of time in languid relaxation, hence appear “lazy” to the slave-driver looking to profit from the labor of others. I work on avoiding the use of this agricultural language in my interactions with others, using the technology of Nonviolent Communication developed by Marshall Rosenberg.
According to Than, Piomelli doesn't “recommend that people “binge on fast food to improve memory,” but “believes his team's findings could explain why kids who eat breakfast and mid-morning snacks generally perform better in school.”
I wonder why these people can’t imagine anything other than “binging” or fast food when they think of fatty food. Can't a person just eat fat without “binging” on it? Or do these people believe that “eating fat” and “binging” mean the same thing? The NGN article even has this photo embedded, presumably to illustrate “fatty” foods:
Call me an oddball, but I don’t see a fatty meal. I see two sodas, a pile of fries, and two refined flour buns, with only two relatively small pieces of meat. That meal consists primarily of sugar, not fat or protein. How could they imagine the opposite? Do these people have a grasp of reality? I think they have had their minds so twisted by modern nutrition ideology that they can’t see reality.
Also, I don’t see how this research could possibly explain why kids who eat typical breakfast foods and midmorning snacks perform better in school. Most modern breakfasts and snack foods have little or no fat. Moreover, the research on breakfast does not unequivocally support the idea that breakfast eaters perform better. This research could support eating eggs for breakfast, but it won’t support corn flakes.
Referring to the kids, Piomelli apparently said "Studies show that it's not because they learn better, but because they remember better."
Huh? I don’t quite understand what he means by that comment. Call me crazy, but I thought remembering better meant learning better. If I want to say that I learned that a fast food meal consists primarily of sugar, not fat, don’t I have to remember that a fast food meal consists primarily of sugar, not fat? If I don’t remember, how can I say that I learned it?
So how does Piomelli plan to apply this finding?
"One idea would be to [use drugs] to activate the same receptor that OEA activates, or perhaps give nutrition that produces enough OEA to cause the same [memory] effect," Piomelli said.
“Perhaps give nutrition….” Perhaps?
Folks, why wait for their drugs? Get smart now: feed your self and your kids plenty of natural fat, including plenty of animal fat.
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