
Western-style diet linked to state-dependent memory inhibition - upen
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/3270.html
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Kequc
The title states "western-style diet", but the article is about obesity. What
is the purpose of changing words around like this? Not everybody who lives in
western society is fat. Plenty of people living in non-western societies are
fat, some more so.

[http://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=00437...](http://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004371)

It doesn't seem very descriptive of the phenomenon.

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upen
Research was done on "Western diet — one high in fats and sugars and low in
fruit, vegetable and fiber"

~~~
skylan_q
"high in fats"

I never hear any specifics about how other cultures consume low amounts of
fat. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that western diets are actually
the lowest in fat.

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jimrandomh
The "citation" goes to the front page of a conference, rather than to a
publication at that conference. I am unable to find any paper matching the
description on the conference web site or with google scholar and, quite
frankly, I have no trust whatsoever in sciencebulletin.org to summarize these
things correctly. This doesn't deserve a front page slot because it's
extremely likely to be untrue.

~~~
dingfeng_quek
\---

Western diet is associated with poorer inhibition of wanting for palatable
snack foods when sated T.N. ATTUQUAYEFIO1, R.J. STEVENSON1, R.A. BOAKES2, M.J.
OATEN3, M.R. YEOMANS4, M MAHMUT1, H.M. FRANCIS1 1Macquarie University, Sydney,
Australia/2University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia/3Griffith University, Gold
Coast, Australia/4University of Sussex, Sussex, United Kingdom Animal data
indicate that hippocampal function is impaired by the increased consumption of
a Western-style diet, with potential consequences for energy regulation. Based
on such data, it has been argued that consumption of a Western-style diet
impairs the ability of the hippocampus to inhibit retrieval of pleasant-food
related memories in the presence of food cues, when sated. We tested this in
healthy human participants (N = 94, Mage = 20.3, MBMI = 22.3) who varied in
their habitual consumption of a Western-style diet .Verbal paired associate
(VPA) learning, a known hippocampal-dependent process, liking and wanting
ratings of snack foods were assessed first when participants were hungry, then
when sated. Stepwise multiple regression analyses evaluated found that
Western-style diet was associated with a slower VPA learning rate and a
smaller reduction in wanting for snacks from before to after lunch. The latter
was also strongly related to VPA learning rate, suggesting that wanting for
foods has a memory-related component and would therefore likely involve the
hippocampus. Further, it shows that greater consumption of a Western-style
diet is associated with poorer inhibition of memories for highly palatable
food when sated. This is the one of the first translational pieces of evidence
from animal data showing the impact of a Western-style diet on both
hippocampal-related memory and inhibition in humans.

Supported By: Macquarie University

\---

Above is what I found on the conference site. I was also unable to find the
paper. I agree that sciencebulletin didn't do a good job reporting on this.

On the other hand, this is not novel in any way, and there is already
substantial literature on this topic that suggests the same thing. If the
topic is of interest to others, perhaps the older papers, or a list of them,
should be posted instead.

~~~
simonster
There is no paper. This was a 15 minute oral presentation. It may or may not
be interesting work, but it's not at the point where the popular press should
be reporting on it.

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appleflaxen
[meta warning]

HN is fantastic for increasing signal:noise on technical topics, but I don't
feel like we do as good of a job with medical topics.

There are so many of these "oh wow; cool!" psychology "studies" that just
don't have much substance to them.

The fact that it gets upvoted here speaks to how hard it is for less educated
individuals to focus on the important parts of science news.

~~~
stephengillie
Too often, medical and psychology discussions turn into anecdata repositories.

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athenot
I wonder if this is also due to the constant stream of food-related
advertisements in popular media. Those are usually for high fat, high calorie
food. Most of the time, those ads repulse me because that does not look
appetizing to me (I'm picky like that). But I've witnessed friends see the
same ad and start craving that particular food item.

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tudorw
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6670052](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6670052)

I read about this anecdotally regarding specifically foreign language teachers
who go abroad and practice a foreign tongue almost exclusively when unwinding
with the help of the cheap local ferment, on their return they find the fluid
conversation ability really only surfaces when intoxicated, and speaking
fluent Spanish while drunk at a party is impressive to no one.

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simonster
It sounds like this was a conference presentation, which are usually not peer-
reviewed in biological sciences, so I would be very careful about drawing any
conclusions from it.

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bunderbunder
Like with any observational study, it's worthwhile to think of other things
people who eat a Western-style diet might do differently from the control
population before accepting the implication that the observed difference in
memory performance is because of the food.

For example, perhaps affinity for snack food has something to do with how much
time people spend engaging in sedentary activities like watching TV. There's
already plenty of existing evidence (mostly also observational, mind)
suggesting that lack of physical activity is associated with poorer cognitive
outcomes.

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option_greek
Interesting. May be they should just call it high fast high sugar diet though
considering that it has spread across the world (thanks to
McDs/DunkinDonuts/StarBucks)

~~~
WalterSear
Articles on pre-journal publication science don't belong in any general public
discussion groups.

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h4pless
I have no idea what publications they're referring to in this article, but
here's what you probably came to read:

Article: [Fat, sugar cause bacterial changes that may relate to loss of
cognitive function]([http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/jun/fat-
sugar-ca...](http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/jun/fat-sugar-cause-
bacterial-changes-may-relate-loss-cognitive-function))

Study: [Relationships between diet-related changes in the gut microbiome and
cognitive
flexibility]([http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452215...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452215004480))

\-----

Article: [This is your brain on sugar: UCLA study shows high-fructose diet
sabotages learning, memory]([http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/this-is-your-
brain-on-suga...](http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/this-is-your-brain-on-
sugar-ucla-233992))

Study: ['Metabolic syndrome' in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid
exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signalling and
cognition.]([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22473784](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22473784))

\-----

Also: [Systems Nutrigenomics Reveals Brain Gene Networks Linking Metabolic and
Brain
Disorders]([http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352396416...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352396416301438))

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y4mi
that sounds a lot more like correlation than causation to me.

if you're brain constantly signals 'i need food' you're going to eat more and
get fatter. personally, i've not eaten any burgers or alike for years and
still had to fight that urge every day.

couldn't really find the mentioned source, as the linked URL doesn't point to
a study or paper and the homepage only shows their event schedule and similar.

~~~
mrits
Just curious why you decided to stay away from burgers? I don't really
consider that to be a bad choice. The fries and soft drink/shake that come
with it certainly can be.

~~~
DiabloD3
The bun, fries, drink, sugar laden sauces, and the cheese.

And let's hope the burger is pure beef, and fried in healthy fats (preferably
its own beef fat), not canola or other garbage oils.

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mpg33
I'm going to go out on a limb and say this has many more implications than
just food related memories..

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colanderman
Depression/rumination for one I would think.

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internaut
Rumination could be the reason for the success of Westerners. Negative
emotions exist for reasons linked to survival or they would not exist at all.

It is difficult not to notice that those countries which have prospered the
most over time are also those places where the inhabitants can be
stereotypically withdrawn, introspective, morose.

It is for this reason I do not trust sunny Californian optimism. It is more
than plausible that the opposite, a dim view of the future and humanity, will
lead to ultimate long lasting successes.

In countries where the inhabitants are exuberant, joyful, extroverted, their
economy is invariably en route back to a war torn hellscape from which it
came.

Don't ask me to have a universal theory of why this should be so. It is just
hard not to notice the pattern. I believe that holding a dystopian view of the
future is counterintuitively key to the development of new technology that
arrests the probability of that view becoming a reality. Prepare for war if
you want peace. Perhaps the same is true of humanity and technology.

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dingfeng_quek
While there are other plausibilities, this agrees with a food addiction model
of overeating.

