Organ meats, also called “orisirisi,” have been listed among foods that can lead to development of Alzheimer’s disease.
For avoidance of doubts, organ meats include liver, heart, kidneys, sweetbreads [pancreas of animals], brain, tongue and tripe.
According to researchers, the food we eat may be giving us Alzheimer’s disease, while they also emphasise that unhealthy food choices is the lead cause of obesity epidemic globally, earlier researchers had warned.
The team of scientists argue that those bad food choices may be behind the Alzheimer’s disease epidemic as well.
Sugars and other “high glycemic” carbs (meaning carbs that cause a quick spike in blood sugar), salty foods, alcohol, processed red meats, organ meats, shellfish and beer are among the foods named in a new paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and co-written by researchers from the Rocky Mountain VA Medical Center in Colorado, the University of Colorado, Boston University, the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Miami, and the National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico.
The paper links Alzheimer’s with excessive fructose, the sugar typically associated with fruits; but the real culprits are foods with “added sugars that contain fructose and glucose” such as table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, along with foods that stimulate the body to produce its own fructose: That means “high glycemic carbohydrates, alcohol, and salty foods.”
The reason? When we consume a lot of fructose or these foods, it tricks our bodies into thinking we are about to enter a famine.
These foods flip a “survival switch,” causing a complex set of reactions by different parts of the body designed to make the human prepare for the famine above anything else: “an orchestrated response to encourage food and water intake, reduce resting metabolism, stimulate fat and glycogen accumulation, and induce insulin resistances as a means to reduce metabolism and preserve glucose supply for the brain.”
The body also redirects energy to the parts of the brain specifically needed to survive a pending famine, such as those good for foraging. Other parts of the brain get less energy than they need as a result.
“Alzheimer’s disease results from a maladaptation to an evolutionary survival pathway that is used by many animals and was even essential to the survival of our distant ancestors millions of years ago,” they argue.
The latest paper isn’t the first to suggest a link between our toxic “Western” diet and Alzheimer’s.
Lab rats in the past given lots of fructose have developed tau proteins and amyloid plaques in the brain, markers of dementia.
Researchers also recently argued that switching from a Western diet to a healthier one could add a decade to the life expectancy of a young person in the U.S.
The good news is that we’re really adaptive. If you’re used to eating candy, an apple isn’t going to taste of much. But after a few weeks without candy—and salts, and so on—that apple will taste a lot better.
The researchers warn that, for now, there’s no cure in sight for Alzheimer’s, and they enjoin us to discontinue eating junk foods.
