Sat fat affects concentration
 

Hoping there's something wrong with this Ohio State Uni study.

Link to paper abstract (I don't have access).

Saw the abstract. Haven't got the full paper yet (will post it somehow if I get it).

So my first general impression is that this is pretty bogus. For example, they gave a clinicaltrials.gov number for their protocol. So, you can go see the 5 primary outcomes they had planned for their study here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04247763

Huh, waddya know. None of those five outcomes are mentioned in the abstract. And none of the outcomes in the abstract were declared in an a priori fashion on clinicaltrials.gov. Did they not follow their protocol? I mean they are experimenting on human beings, so going off protocol seems kindof hitlerish. I'm guessing that their original protocol did not produce any significant results, and so they went through a whole bunch of non-declared, secondary outcomes until they found one that gave a result they liked. This is called p-hacking, and reflects the pressure put on scientists to publish publish publish significant results. It's also a red-flag for a form of bias called "cherry picking". Their study was obviously not designed for comparing afternoon distraction/performance between groups.

Something else that is weird is the one effect (the saturated fat versus non-saturated fat effect) with a coefficient at 4.44 and other coefficients at like 0.002. That is a huge relative difference with how variables contribute to their model, with the fat-type effect (at 4.44) vastly outweighing the other effects. Despite this vast difference they conclude that via interactions, the weak endotoxemic effects end up canceling the whopping fat-type effect.

Just by comparing the abstract to clinicaltrials.gov and logically thinking through their model, I place a great deal of doubt on the validity of these results. I'm curious to get my hands on the full article.

-Tara

Personally, I don't need to see the "study" . From the OSU article .. IMO, the conclusion statement should state "Sat Fat + High Refined Carbohydrates = Bad News" .. which is hardly news :rolleyes:

.

^^^^^What Doreen said ^^^^^^

Yuuuuppppp !!!

My last issue of DANDR was Printed in 2002.... and that edition repeated all earlier editions from 1990's..... fat plus refined carbs was bad news.

I was able to look at the article online through my uni log in.

Not low carb/LCHF at all:

"Both research meals were 930 kcal with 60 g fat, 60 g
carbohydrate, and 37 g protein, with 60% of total calories
from fat"

You guys are totally right.

So it looks like they compared "palmitic-acid based oil" mixed with carbs to sunflower oil mixed with carbs? Is that right?

Their motives must be quite strange, especially since they are trying to conclude that a bacterial endotoxin signal trumps the fat effect. They set out wanting to compare fats, and they have a HUGE fat effect, and then try to turn the message towards "endotoxins" trump fat. Even within their very own mislead paradigm (i.e. silly hypotheses), they're just behaving weird.

Why didn't they say "palm oil" or "coconut oil" or "lard" instead of palmitic-acid based oil?

I think what bothers me is that, yes, both test meals were high carb, but only the high saturated fat one had negative results. Thoughts? Thanks!

Also, I agree with Tara about the specific oil not being mentioned. Maybe coconut oil has different effects on the brain than lard, for example. But we don’t know what they even used. Too many variables.

They played with statistics to make sat fat look bad.



And since the study seemed to be about comparing different fast food meals, I'm guessing no one was a brainiac during the testing :lol:

Thanks WereBear!

I always look at studies like this and think, "If this were true, would we have survived and thrived as a species?"

I'm not sure not caring about some silly cognitive test they want to give you after a meal constitutes dysfunction. Or that it's wrong to feel a little sleepier after consuming a meal with saturated fat versus mono or polyunsaturated fat. Maybe the fat choice made a difference to ability to concentrate.

A fasted animal in certain circumstances might be more alert--ancestrally, a useful thing if you still need to do something to feed yourself. Mice and rats are more active and alert coming into a usual meal time. The difference between the fasted and the fed state varies depending on the meal, include fat choices. This gets into all that stuff about physiological insulin resistance Peter at Hyperlipid and Michael Eades of Protein Power have written a bit about

The tie in to endotoxins--well, maybe. But there you get into what will be worst long-term. In the short term, saturated fat does seem to facilitate an increase of endotoxins in the blood stream, but in the long term, with those subjects mentioned with high baseline endotoxemia, that's not an acute effect of eating this or that fat, but a chronic one, a diet that leads to leaky gut etc. is maybe more important to the long term.

Teaser, you have some great thoughts, and indeed there is lots of science that needs to be done.

I am still extremely skeptical of these results because science was not performed. Science is more of a method, and not necessarily just a production of results. This article didn't even follow it's own protocol. It's got all kinds of red flags saying that this is part of what makes 2/3s of current scientific papers non-reproducible.

What annoys me is that I really STRUGGLE to get my papers published. Peer review regularly wipes me on the pavement like sh** stuck on the bottom of their shoes. I would never be able to get a paper like this published. I've been told in the past that two (or more) sets of scales are being used in peer review. I didn't want to believe it (cuz like previously stated, I get the hard end of peer review, but it's consistent across time... I'm really good friends with pavement.), but I have to start believing now (especially after the behaviour of NEJM and Lancet in relation to COVID.... utter nonsense).

Currently, most peer review is single-blinded. I.e. the authors of the papers are visible to the reviewers, who remain anonymous. I think it should be the other way around. For the purposes of the review process, author information should be removed from the manuscript, resulting in an anonymous manuscript. And reviewers, faced with an anonymous manuscript, work under the knowledge that their names, corrections and what they impose on the paper will be fully disclosed at the time of publication.

Anyway blah blah. rant rant rant. Science is broken.

I see no reason why a good nap after a dose of saturated fat wouldn't help repair a brain and keep it younger. Something to look into.

I agree. Or we wouldn't be in such a sad state with nutritional science.