Food News 2

Start: 95.4 Last week: 93.6 This week: 92.0

Thursday 6 July: Seth Roberts, onlie begetter of the Shangri-La diet, has been marvelling about the “side effects” enjoyed by some people using different kinds of oil in their diet, particularly effects on the brain. This is my comment on Seth's blog:

Oh dear. I’m all for scientific iconoclasm, one reason I like the whole approach of SLD and the BBS paper, but I worry that you seem to have espoused Morgan, Hardy and Aquatic Apes so thoroughly. This is not the place for a detailed rebuttal of the ideas -- which had to be considerably changed after new fossils brought the human-African ape split so much closer. I do think, however, that this is going to help mainstream, blinkered scientists to ignore some of your ideas.

Maybe we do need an explanation of why omega-3 does seem to have so many cognitive benefits. Maybe we don’t. And I’m all for speculation. But I do not think Aquatic Ape holds enough water to make it worth using for this purpose.

I’m not here going to go through the reasons why I think the aquatic ape theory (now merely a hypothesis) is probably wrong. This site, by Jim Moore, does a very thorough job. As Moore points out:

The argument, in short, is as follows (and contains a classic logical flaw):
DHA is a requirement for normal human brain development
DHA is abundant in fish
hominids needed to eat fish for normal brain development

That seems to be why Seth Roberts dips his toes in the aquatic ape water, and as Moore goes on to show, he is simply wrong to do so. I’ll leave it at that, saddened at the potential consequences for the wider acceptance and investigation of Shangri-La.

Friday 7 July: Down through another whole number; gratifying and rewarding. Particularly so because yesterday I actually felt a teeny bit hungry on returning from work. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be eating till quite late I grabbed four tarallini, total weight about 35 grams. I ate three of them. Didn’t discover the fourth until half an hour later. That’s absurd. Days past I would have had a major handful of nuts and still have felt hungry. Four tarallini, which admittedly contained fennel seeds, a “known” appetite suppressant, could not possibly have fed my hunger.

Sunday 9 July: I knew I’d pay for yesterday’s excess, so the fact that today I’m 1.3 kg up on yesterday is no surprise. The amount is, I confess. But I guess sitting by the lake eating half a kilo of cherries (in addition to lunch) is bound to take its toll. So too is dining with friends at a local spot near the river where, over the course of three hours of good conversation, I downed 4 courses. Not quite soup to nuts, more like antipasto to dolce. I wonder how long it will take to lose all that? The conclusion, of course, is that actually neither my desire to eat under certain circumstances nor my ability to do so have been touched. But my desire to eat under other circumstances is well under control. And I like to think I could have eaten less last night, but just chose not to.

Tuesday 11 July: This is going pretty well.