Every vegetarian’s favourite “oh shite, what have they done ‘in our name’ now?” organisation PETA are running a campaign that asserts that milk makes autism worse. Based on a study of 20 people.

96.4%* of scientific studies use samples <= 20

*I may have made that number up …

but as someone else said 95% of XXX said this made hair hair feel silkier … wrinkles disappear etc.
(with small disclaimer that this was 20 people responding to a free sample)

However it’s still somewhat valid in that with no other bias it’s still a 50/50 …
As quite a few people posted there are definitely people who feel less snotty without dairy .. and of those most seem specifically bovine …

However as I am in a group of food intolerants (Coeliac) I also see a lot of cross over… and many in the autistic spectrum also say they have a harder time with both …

This might well be anecdotal but I haven’t seen a proper study dismissing it….
I know that I personally get much more mucus and crap with bovine dairy (but I have it in coffee anyway) … I’m not vegan or even close BTW…. but equally with my own diagnosis I have tested and noticed many things to myself that have simply been dismissed by a Dr. and then years later it turns out I was correct in observing myself.

The point is there are millions of people who react badly to all sorts of foods but 90% of their observations are just dismissed and never correlated.at some point someone finds 10-100 of them but then this is dismissed due to sample size .. on the other hand the dairy (or whichever other food) industry has essentially limitless cash to fund bad science and selective results…

I’ve got no axe to grind on this… I’m not even close to vegetarian, let alone vegan but don’t be so quick to view a sample of 20 as “it must be rubbish then” … it’s a long way from a proper study but I know a lot of people who do actually benefit from this (and most of them are not vegans)

I guess one of the most convincing things I saw on dairy was totally anecdotal (almost doubly so)….but it was an interview with a Chinese gymnast… and the interviewer was basically saying that Chinese and East Asian people were more flexible in general than westerners … the convincing anecdote was the gymnast just looked totally lost and dead pan and said “but you drink milk” …. as if this was (and perhaps is in her circles) so widely known that everyone would know it… it was almost as if she was surprised that people didn’t realise and it was like smoking causes lung cancer…

PETA do seem to like a row.

Only vaguely related but I had an amusing chat with my sister in law over the weekend. She has a “hardcore” vegan friend who is pregnant and had to “seriously think” about whether to breast feed their baby because, you know, breast milk comes from animals…

yeah, she’s an idiot.
i see it as being all about consent; non-human animals do not/are unable to offer their consent for us to take and use their milk. human breast milk is quite obviously meant to feed human babies. that’s the difference.

I guess one of the most convincing things I saw on dairy was totally anecdotal…

If that’s the most convincing thing, the rest must be total bollocks. See upthread for article about human ability to digest milk – the majority of SE Asians don’t have the required gene, so don’t produce the necessary enzyme. Clearly that isn’t the only genetic difference.

Correlation != causation

Peta; as a vegetarian non milk drinker…not in my name. They have a weird mindset of “rescuing” animals and then killing them.

i see it as being all about consent; non-human animals do not/are unable to offer their consent for us to take and use their milk. human breast milk is quite obviously meant to feed human babies. that’s the difference.

Exactly what everyone else said. I’d never considered there being a branch of veganism so strict that this would be an issue!

the convincing anecdote was the gymnast just looked totally lost and dead pan and said “but you drink milk” …. as if this was (and perhaps is in her circles) so widely known that everyone would know it.

If I were Asian and lacked the enzymes to digest milk as an adult and got cramps every time I drank a small amount of milk, I’d think that too.

This might well be anecdotal but I haven’t seen a proper study dismissing it….

but don’t be so quick to view a sample of 20 as “it must be rubbish then”

I’d dismiss a cohort of 20 in a human experiment as being not statistically sound. There are far to many variables to take into account.

I guess one of the most convincing things I saw on dairy was totally anecdotal (almost doubly so)….but it was an interview with a Chinese gymnast… and the interviewer was basically saying that Chinese and East Asian people were more flexible in general than westerners … the convincing anecdote was the gymnast just looked totally lost and dead pan and said “but you drink milk” …. as if this was (and perhaps is in her circles) so widely known that everyone would know it… it was almost as if she was surprised that people didn’t realise and it was like smoking causes lung cancer…

😆

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase_persistence

poah +1

I can find you a sample of 20 that think bikes belong on the road, 20 who don’t and 20 who find they have a magic allergy to strong beer…

I’d never considered there being a branch of veganism so strict that this would be an issue!

You think that is bad? I give you Breatharianism. 😯

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/17/peta-sorry-for-taking-girls-dog-putting-it-down

This about sums up PETA to me. a bunch of righteous hypocrits who really are so far up their own backsides.

There are issues about animal welfare, there are also ways of getting a message across.

Exactly what everyone else said. I’d never considered there being a branch of veganism so strict that this would be an issue!

there isn’t. some people are just idiots, basically.

I keep a Kakapo feather in my left pocket, I’ve never had bad Aids – I know this is anecdotal but…

<searches Ebay for Kakapo feathers>

If that’s the most convincing thing, the rest must be total bollocks. See upthread for article about human ability to digest milk – the majority of SE Asians don’t have the required gene, so don’t produce the necessary enzyme. Clearly that isn’t the only genetic difference.

Correlation != causation

Neither is causation correlation….
For this to be genetic the results must have pretty much either caused sterilisation or death below sexual maturity or offer some absolutely amazing competitive advantage. Although its possible this came from our pre/syn homo-sapien genetics which are different between the haplotypes it seems unlikely prior to domestication. As we are the only mammal adapted to use another mammals milk this seems unlikely.

It seems more likely this allowed survival

However just because our genetics have built up a tolerance for something doesn’t make it good for us.

I ate wheat right into sexual maturity … it’s screwed my body up now but genetically that doesn’t matter as I could still breed.. however there is very considerable evidence that eating the pre-cursors of wheat decreased life expectancy dramatically.

What it did do was allow permanent settlements, more advanced weapons and fortifications that then became a competitive advantage. Over the last 12,000 years or so we have developed an increasing tolerance and used our cities to build hospitals some increasing part of which is then used to treat people eating things humans were never designed to eat.

We live longer today (although that itself is now changing) despite there being huge numbers of couch potatoes eating things we were never designed to eat and breathing in toxins when we step outside… but that doesn’t mean that getting exercise, not breathing in toxins and eating foods our body is best adapted to isn’t “healthier”.

If we view this as huge populations then it’s more difficult but we can pick a relatively small population with genetic adaptations…

Most inuit are adapted to eat food that would kill you and I very quickly… get by on next to no Vit C and eat LD50 levels for the population as a whole of fat soluble vitamins however this isn’t healthy… it just means they can survive on a diet that would kill us.

I’d dismiss a cohort of 20 in a human experiment as being not statistically sound. There are far to many variables to take into account.

The question is then so what ….
We can dismiss this study and we can dismiss another 20 studies of 20… or if someone was willing to fund it and also then fight the dairy industry then they could fund a cohort of 2000 with 1000 placebo and 1000 taking part.

To take a separate example… originally there was a study of a sample size of 1… a single research doctor infected himself with heliobacter pylori and cured his resulting ulcer with cheap antibiotics
… against which literally hundreds of paid for studies said that ulcers could not be cured.
Elsevier were told in no uncertain terms that publishing anything supporting Warren and Marshall would result in ALL advertising being withdrawn whilst they then paid people to write studies that debunked the role orb h. pylori that they then pressured to be published.

Being active on coeliac issues and research I have seen numerous similar things happen and for many gluten intolerance goes hand in hand with casein. Of those there are some who are in the autistic spectrum who note differences due to ingestion of casein…

It’s not true to say this isn’t documented, it’s documented by thousands of individuals … however probably the important part is most of them have actually told their GP or specialists but this is never recorded as the GP or specialist doesn’t think its relevant. The internet can be both good and bad… it certainly introduces a subject bias but that is then possible to overcome if the money exists for creating a study. The use cases can be taken or not… but a huge amount of data exists in “what the doctor didn’t think was relevant enough to note down”

I’ve recently seen a lot of oncology research where thousands of patient interviews have been analysed using NLP and apparently hundreds of discoveries were made in days…. (I’m not sure how much i can share on this as its internal)

To make a point: I don’t agree with (almost) anything PETA stand for but dismissing a study just because they see fit to share it for their own agenda doesn’t invalidate the study.

Exactly what everyone else said. I’d never considered there being a branch of veganism so strict that this would be an issue!

The issue for Vegans is that in order to lactate the cow needs to give birth and that calf is then slaughtered for food.
As I find calves yummy and delicious I personally have no problem… but that is the strict vegan standpoint.

The question is then so what ….
We can dismiss this study and we can dismiss another 20 studies of 20… or if someone was willing to fund it and also then fight the dairy industry then they could fund a cohort of 2000 with 1000 placebo and 1000 taking part.

It’s possible to evaluate the results of a larger study in some way statistics says 20 people is just one enough no matter how rigorous you are.

This might well be anecdotal but I haven’t seen a proper study dismissing it….

That’s not how studies work. I haven’t seen a proper study dismissing the supposition that exposure to Katie Hopkins causes brain cancer, that doesn’t make it any more likely to be true (no matter how plausible it may sound).

don’t be so quick to view a sample of 20 as “it must be rubbish then”

You misunderstand. The conclusion from a sample of 20 isn’t that the results are rubbish necessarily, rather that the study is. You cannot reliably prove of disprove anything by asking 20 people.

I guess one of the most convincing things I saw on dairy was totally anecdotal

Just read that back and have a think about it.

By definition, yes it is – if there isn’t any correlation there isn’t going to be any causation.

For this to be genetic the results must have pretty much either caused sterilisation or death below sexual maturity or offer some absolutely amazing competitive advantage.
…
Most inuit are adapted to eat food that would kill you and I very quickly… get by on next to no Vit C and eat LD50 levels for the population as a whole of fat soluble vitamins however this isn’t healthy… it just means they can survive on a diet that would kill us.

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Read some of those links, there’s plenty of discussion on how the lactase gene came to spread because of the competitive advantages. Nobody is disputing that there may be some negatives to drinking milk as an adult – for some people, even those with the lactase gene. The point is that doesn’t mean there is any connection with autism (as PETA are suggesting) or flexibility (as you seem to be suggesting).

To make a point: I don’t agree with (almost) anything PETA stand for but dismissing a study just because they see fit to share it for their own agenda doesn’t invalidate the study.

No – the study is dodgy for other reasons, nothing to do with the use PETA are making of it. The low sample size is one issue, but there are other issues with the way that particular study was carried out. There are proper articles explaining what’s wrong with it…

The issue for Vegans is that in order to lactate the cow needs to give birth and that calf is then slaughtered for food.
As I find calves yummy and delicious I personally have no problem

If you drink milk/eat cheese, make sure sure you also eat veal. Properly sourced, UK veal.

However just because our genetics have built up a tolerance for something doesn’t make it good for us.

However just because our genetics have built up a tolerance for something doesn’t make it bad for us either.

there is very considerable evidence that eating the pre-cursors of wheat decreased life expectancy dramatically.

Where? Got a link?

We can dismiss this study and we can dismiss another 20 studies of 20…

Assuming that the studies were well performed, there’s possibly a potential for a meta-analysis.

Elsevier were told in no uncertain terms that publishing anything supporting Warren and Marshall would result in ALL advertising being withdrawn whilst they then paid people to write studies that debunked the role orb h. pylori that they then pressured to be published.

Told by whom?

In any case, isn’t this just whataboutery? “Big pharma” is hopelessly corrupt and has been for years, what that has to do with the nutritional benefits of cows’ milk I’ve no idea.

Being active on coeliac issues and research I have seen numerous similar things happen and for many gluten intolerance goes hand in hand with casein. Of those there are some who are in the autistic spectrum who note differences due to ingestion of casein…

Sure. And in a large enough group you’ll be able to find people of a demographic who align with people of another demographic. The question is whether it’s statistically relevant. For instance, from your experience there could we conclude that there’s a link between coeliac disease and ASD? How about being lactose-intolerant and having brown eyes?

Anecdotes are not evidence. They may well be sufficient to merit further investigation and proper study, but people’s feelings are unreliable testimony.

I’d dismiss a cohort of 20 in a human experiment as being not statistically sound. There are far to many variables to take into account.

Why?

A sample size of 10/arm would give 80% power to detect a statistically significant (95% confidence level) difference in proportion of 55%, assuming a placebo response rate of 20% and a treatment response rate of 75%.

That’s a BIG difference though. Typically treatments for most diseases evoke differences in response rate of only about 10-20% max.

Don’t just rule out small sample sizes because of inherent bias. Big effects reveal themselves in small numbers. 80% power means you’ll miss it 1/5 times, bit that is the experimenter’s risk. You might want 90 or even 95% power in a pivotal experiment.

And EVERYONE knows that cheese gives you bad dreams, hence the tangling!

Exactly what everyone else said. I’d never considered there being a branch of veganism so strict that this would be an issue!

The issue for Vegans is that in order to lactate the cow needs to give birth and that calf is then slaughtered for food.[/quote]

FWIW this was in the context of human breast milk, not cow milk.

Cougar: Richard Dawkins was on R4 this morning and cited this one:

However just because our genetics have built up a tolerance for something doesn’t make it bad for us either.

It is very close to being so though especially when used in excess.
Alcohol is a good example… most Westerners genetics involve built in resistance as a by product of contaminated water killing teetotallers. (or so one theory goes)

there is very considerable evidence that eating the pre-cursors of wheat decreased life expectancy dramatically.
Where? Got a link?

Literally hundreds… it’s one of those assumptions that has been recently over turned with the ability to determine age of skeletons…
Google pre-agriculture+life+expectancy

There are also other factors… such as people living together spreading disease not simply diet but the whole image of Western post-agricultural society living longer once they farmed the early wheat strains is pretty much debunked by the lack of remains of older people that are found in pre-agricultural and often parallel societies.

The whole Victorian idea was that it was agriculture and domestication that increased life expectancy. It wasn’t based on dating and ageing remains it was just that seemed sensible at the time.

By the time you roll on 8000-9000 years life expectancy increased in the west under Roman rule…
Again another myth was this was only for rich Romans but evidence suggests otherwise … if you managed to not die in childhood or from a violent death even poorer people we living into their 60’s.

Is this specific to Rome though? Was this due to an increased tolerance to diet and resistance to diseases spread by living in towns and cities? The surprise was that non Romans who’s bones and dental records point to them being born and brought up outside the empire were actually reaching a ripe old age in Rome.

Anyway, the point is agriculture and domestication certainly didn’t increase average life expectancy….
Quite how much and WHY they decreased it is fascinating but not really known… but it’s pretty well established it certainly didn’t increase life expectancy…

We can dismiss this study and we can dismiss another 20 studies of 20…

Assuming that the studies were well performed, there’s possibly a potential for a meta-analysis.

Even if studies were poorly performed there can still be good data in meta analysis…. (but I’ll get onto this later)

Elsevier were told in no uncertain terms that publishing anything supporting Warren and Marshall would result in ALL advertising being withdrawn whilst they then paid people to write studies that debunked the role orb h. pylori that they then pressured to be published.
Told by whom?

The internal Lancet investigation didn’t name any specific company as I remember – it was more internally focussed on dealing with pressure from advertisers than naming the advertisers… but the makers of Zantac were Glaxo…

In any case, isn’t this just whataboutery? “Big pharma” is hopelessly corrupt and has been for years, what that has to do with the nutritional benefits of cows’ milk I’ve no idea.

The food industry (as in industry) are every bit as corrupt as Big Pharma…. they lobby, advertise and threaten not to advertise if their cash-cow (pun half intended) products are threatened,

You’ll be to young to remember but you used to be able to buy traditional Wensleydale cheese .. both in Wensleydale itself and on Nelson Market… Wensleydale was actually a sheeps milk cheese. (It is also the very first place I ever rode an MTB over40 years ago) but according to their web site
https://www.wensleydale.co.uk/about/
In 1966 The creamery was sold to the Mil Marketing board who then passed it to Dairy Crest in 1979…
What the website doesn’t tell you is that the “Milk Marketing board” and Dairy Crest forced the sheep creameries out of business using nasty tactics like blocking the road (which was then pretty much a cart track until their milk spoiled…I know that because rather shamefully blocking the “road” was my uncles job for a while… 😳 because Dairy Crest wanted complete control and in their eyes I suppose they bought a brand but wanted to convert to cows milk as it was more profitable,

Being active on coeliac issues and research I have seen numerous similar things happen and for many gluten intolerance goes hand in hand with casein. Of those there are some who are in the autistic spectrum who note differences due to ingestion of casein…

Sure. And in a large enough group you’ll be able to find people of a demographic who align with people of another demographic. The question is whether it’s statistically relevant. For instance, from your experience there could we conclude that there’s a link between coeliac disease and ASD? How about being lactose-intolerant and having brown eyes?

Anecdotes are not evidence. They may well be sufficient to merit further investigation and proper study, but people’s feelings are unreliable testimony.

Yes they are … they are just less reliable evidence.

To give a concrete example take depression….
The patient presents feeling depressed… how do we test that?
We can have numerous root causes we can test for with serology… but just because we don’t have a positive serological test doesn’t over ride the patient actually FEELING depressed. Equally it’s possible to test positive to some tests and the patient doesn’t FEEL depressed…what the patient say’s is more relevant to them being depressed than having a specific test that says why…

However you can take that a step further .. you can have a 3rd party identify someone who gets altered behaviour. For example I have a couple of good friends who can tell if I’ve accidentally ingested gluten based on how I speak… it’s not because i sound ‘ill’ .. its because it completely changes my mood and makes me argumentative (disclosure presently in this state) 😉

Anyway the point is what patients actually say may not mesh with a diagnosable root cause but that doesn’t make it an incorrect observation, it just means the Dr. is unlikely to actually write it down.

There are currently trials taking place where an AI like entity actually uses NLP on what patients actually SAY…. the first thing is this doesn’t actually agree with what Dr’s record they say… the doctor has a huge bias to record what SEEMS relevant… whereas the NLP is able to build a corpus of what patients actually SAY and cross correlate these.

I’m actually doing something very similar myself but in a non medical application/use case where what is recorded as text bears little resemblance in granular detail as to what happens…

I can’t really say the details but I’ll use a parallel example….
I have some time sheets for some salespersons and they log where they travel etc. in a minimum 30 minute slot and maximum 8 hour slot.
I also have the entire ECU data from the cars and GPS data….

The log says travelled from client X at 12:00 to client Y at 13:00 and the GPS shows they did indeed set out from client X stating the engine at 11:44:23 and leaving the client car park at 11:52:24 then they filled up the car with 40.24L and paid with the business CC at 12:08:26 and drove down the motorway until they were stuck in traffic for 24 minutes and 18 seconds… and after pulling off the engine turned off for 8mins 18 seconds at another filling station and finally arrived a the client B car park at 11:58:21 and switched off the engine at 12:02:26

So on one side I can do a lot of analytics on the sensor data…. and on the other I could look at some optimisation of routes and client appointments…

In this case the granularity of reporting and sensor data don’t agree. It might be I look deeper and the sensor data shows that before pulling into the second service station they had a wiper fluid warning…or they may have just pulled over for a pee or coffee or a sneaky smoke…

So here we have the reverse problem in what people say isn’t actually quite what they do…..

My current interest is actually trying to marry the two… and use analytics to create automated reporting so the salesperson can just confirm it’s a filling station and then select an option…

If this was the actual example… the point of the analytics and cognitive isn’t to catch the employees having a crafty fag… its about why some cars have different problems in serves and trying to predict that so that the sales person doesn’t lose time because their car is broken down.
(That’s about as close as I can actually say)

This is (if your into that stuff) actually quite cool… we had analytics on structured data for a long time .. and more recently half decent NLP on unstructured data but the potential is actually to marry them…
Many companies are really starting to take sentiment data seriously… trawling through places like this to see what the sentiment is for either their new Boost only product or even what STWers think of log burners compared to people on say avforums or petrolheads

Just jumping back… lots of people are saying they react to cow milk and specifically with autistic spectrum people they are unlikely to be saying something they believe to be untrue…
There is a known biochemical mechanism for this…. both casein and gluten are exorphins meaning they can bind to the endorphin receptors only they do it less perfectly than opiates… then making their bodies endorphin efficiency low.

Anyway the point is often how people describe how they feel or how others interact with them is often as important as a biochemical test that goes red/blue… I’ve heard of parents for example having their autistic child come back from school distant only to find out they were given an ice cream or some other dairy…

As I said earlier and to use the cheese/bedsheets really its then to prove otherwise.
Much as it may have been meant otherwise I’m not sure that TiRed is wrong… i.e. there is a mechanism which is disturbed sleep that increases the incidents of strangling by them???

However it can also be a secondary effect …to take the skimmed milk thread, cheese production and prices are proportional to the amount of skimmed milk sold… when you take out the fat you need to sell it so cheese production goes up and prices come down and as someone remarked on that thread sales of semi-skimmed and skimmed correlate to use of corn syrup as the “low fat” fad has taken out flavour with fats and replaced it with corn syrup derivatives and made more cheese… so perhaps the tangling strangling is a secondary or territory effect of “low fat” food and corn syrup or more likely its simply two increasing trends scaled to look like there is some causality ???

I think I need to go and get a bedsheet.

I’m not going to respond to all of that right now as I need food. But I’ll just pick up on this for now:

Literally hundreds… it’s one of those assumptions that has been recently over turned with the ability to determine age of skeletons…
Google pre-agriculture+life+expectancy

So, I just did. This was the second hit:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2909026/

I’ve only skim-read it, but I’d suggest that “there is very considerable evidence that eating the pre-cursors of wheat decreased life expectancy dramatically” is over-egging it somewhat. There is some evidence that life expectancy decreased, but that’s not the same assertion at all.

We’re back to cause and effect again. Even if we assume that life expectancy did fall due to dietary changes, it could be because they weren’t eating meat rather than because they were eating grains.

From what I’ve read today, it seems like average life expectancy is highest in cultures that have been stable for millennia. When a major situational change occurs (like “agriculture”), life expectancy takes a hit and then builds back up over time.

I’ll leave you for now with this paragraph from their conclusion:

“Current models of the agricultural demographic transition are largely based on assumption. We do not reject the description of the agricultural demographic transition as generally outlined. Nor do we wish to declare a farewell to paleodemography. We do want to point out that this scenario is based on a series of assumptions that are all questionable (at best). “

That cheese/bedsheet corellation is terrifying! Bloody glad I use a duvet, I’d hate to give up cheese! 😀

Anyone that supports these extremists arent the brightest generally and tend to swallow this sensationalist garbage(something they are very savvy at).Also,doesnt this crowd support listed terrorist groups like a.l.f. etc?

these extremists arent the brightest generally and tend to swallow this sensationalist garbage

Well let’s begin by not swallowing sensationalist garbage ourselves then, shall we?

listed terrorist groups like a.l.f.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_groups

‘ve only skim-read it, but I’d suggest that “there is very considerable evidence that eating the pre-cursors of wheat decreased life expectancy dramatically” is over-egging it somewhat. There is some evidence that life expectancy decreased, but that’s not the same assertion at all.

We’re back to cause and effect again. Even if we assume that life expectancy did fall due to dietary changes, it could be because they weren’t eating meat rather than because they were eating grains.

From what I’ve read today, it seems like average life expectancy is highest in cultures that have been stable for millennia. When a major situational change occurs (like “agriculture”), life expectancy takes a hit and then builds back up over time.

The first step in this is actually to dismiss the prejudiced view that was taught which to summarise was that pre-agricultural peoples all died in their 20-30’s

This is something that has only recently been looked at … partly due to modern chemical analyses but also quite simply because the belief was ingrained.

Whilst anyone starts with a belief that agriculture and domestication were key to increased life expectancy noone will ever look at to what caused early agricultural peoples life expectancy to decrease over hunter gatherer cultures.

Our Western view is full of these prejudiced assumptions, often only taking a small bit of thought to work out… and evidence not to be ignored with others relying on more modern techniques.

The big difference is the difference between academic research and industry funded research. Food and Drugs being particularly corrupt.
The food industry can pay for huge studies that say what they want… especially if what they want to say is “that’s not conclusive proof”. The tobacco industry did this for 50 years! I mean… by the end EVERYONE knew… but the tobacco industry was able to cast enough doubt and uncertainty.

The most frequent way this is done is to create huge studies that can’t come to a conclusion… then point to the smaller studies as flawed … whereas the huge studies sole purpose was to not come to a conclusion…

I can give an example… the WHO has the FAO who publish the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS
The food industry has problems to produce anything with <200ppm gluten so an industry sponsored a huge study found “no significant increase in damage to villi over subjects on a gluten free diet” …

The conclusion was that no extra damage was seen therefore 200ppm was safe and manufacturers could call something gluten free.

Meanwhile there were lots of small studies saying 20ppm caused significant damage and the actual biological mechanism for it was understood.

The FAO study was designed to be flawed…
Firstly none actually tested what the test subjects were eating… they simply declared they were gluten free. Given the rules in place that was meaningless as they would be eating products with up to 200ppm and thinking that was gluten free…..

Secondly was the wording of “no significant damage over …” – what is this assumption that coeliacs should be suffering damage to the villi over a non-coeliac? Surely they should have had a control of non-coelaics .. but that doesn’t suit their purpose. (villi will always be damaged and repaired – they are after all in the intestine and subject to a pretty harsh environment not quite the same as the stomach but harsh all the same)

Thirdly was simply ignoring research that showed damage and dismissing it because the sample size was small. As I mentioned earlier if you create the correct test then sample size is not needed…

Forthly ignore any papers that show other damage occurs than directly to villi

and finally… and perhaps the biggest completely ignore those who observe they get sick eating 200ppm products.

This last group were just dismissed as “it’s all in their head”

Now if you take a different view of funded by industry…. pigs suffer a similar disease with Soya.
This prevents them getting big, fat and juicy… industry very quickly figured out testing and soya free diets… it didn’t mess about saying 200ppm is fine because “it’s difficult”

For all the links on lactose in this thread, lactose is not the problem for those who observe problems in the autistic spectrum NOR is it the mechanism that is understood.
Rather it is the bovine specific protein (casein) … which is an exorphin and a direct mood/behaviour modifier. Lactose is found in all milks… whereas casein is specific to bovines.

The food industry (as in industry) are every bit as corrupt as Big Pharma…. they lobby, advertise and threaten not to advertise if their cash-cow (pun half intended) products are threatened,
You’ll be to young to remember but you used to be able to buy traditional Wensleydale cheese .. both in Wensleydale itself and on Nelson Market… Wensleydale was actually a sheeps milk cheese. (It is also the very first place I ever rode an MTB over40 years ago) but according to their web site
https://www.wensleydale.co.uk/about/
In 1966 The creamery was sold to the Mil Marketing board who then passed it to Dairy Crest in 1979…
What the website doesn’t tell you is that the “Milk Marketing board” and Dairy Crest forced the sheep creameries out of business using nasty tactics like blocking the road (which was then pretty much a cart track until their milk spoiled…I know that because rather shamefully blocking the “road” was my uncles job for a while… because Dairy Crest wanted complete control and in their eyes I suppose they bought a brand but wanted to convert to cows milk as it was more profitable,

I shouldn’t defend Dairy Crest as they are a quite unpleasant company who made me redundant once and almost a second time, years later. They did some nasty things like buying sites, closing them down and stripping them.

But DC (and previously MMB) aren’t some sort of food mafia. There are other far more powerful companies who can do that.

I shouldn’t defend Dairy Crest as they are a quite unpleasant company who made me redundant once and almost a second time, years later. They did some nasty things like buying sites, closing them down and stripping them.

But DC (and previously MMB) aren’t some sort of food mafia. There are other far more powerful companies who can do that.

True. its a scale perspective … to a sheep farmer DC are humungous…. to Kraft/Nestle they are a small tick.

They are however part of the “industrial food model” simply by virtue of their products.

The industrial food model sounds rather virtuous in the grand scheme… it’s a zero wastage approach..
However it’s the practice that is my issue… develop stock limited foodstuffs that the waste products can be marketed … it doesn’t matter if the waste products are good or bad or even if its more bad in excess because the market has to be created to take the waste, even if its swinging something good to something bad and the whole chain is …. well a chain… that’s about how to use waste products…

You can jump into the chain at any point but … a part could look like this…

We can use corn for oil, food and feed cattle…. and cattle are a high $ density item… and we can also use them to eat themselves if we process their output… but the corn process ten creates waste (corn syrup) that then had a use created… and a whole story around how sugar isn’t bad but fat is… but how about dairy… no problem we will use low fat products and create a market for the waste fat… but making real cheese takes ages so we’ll make processed cheese… stick it on burgers using the other cash cows wheat and cows… and create low fat cow products that we add corn syrup to…

But … corn syrup is bad ? Irrelevant if you make the story around fats….
But its a sugar.. surely people will cotton on…. ? Not if you don’t label it as a sugar…

But industrial beef and dairy contribute more to greenhouse gasses than every car and power station in the world? – Leave it out we make food… someone else can just solve cold fusion…

people eating things humans were never designed to eat.

there’s almost no such thing as “humans” in this context that you can say with anything approaching certainty that weren’t suited to consume grains…It may be that you are descended from a group that have been consuming grains for 9000 years or more, and therefore have a tolerance to them, or you may be descended from a different group that haven’t got that adaption…There are foods (tubers and plants) that pre-agrarian humans ate that contained chemicals that caused side effects, or even disease. Milk and grains are just two of many foodstuffs that aren’t “great” for us to consume.

humans were never designed to eat

As the Angry Chef has pointed out (backed by Wallace and Darwin no less) we were not designed.

The poster is very misleading. to me it suggests on first glance that dairy is a cause of autism. On second glance however it’s not.

It’s fairly well regarded by autism research and support networks that gastrointestinal issues are reportedly higher with people with autism.
Here’s one papaer about it but there are more, some less peer reviewed than others though.

yes, reducing dairy can reduce symptoms in many cases (my own and my daughters too), but the method of presenting this information is really bad.

Most are startng to point toward the sensory overload model. Mild IBS exacerbated by stress response to sensory overload as a result of mild IBS.

Steve, you’ve mentioned corn syrup a couple of times at least now. You do know that HFCS is pretty much entirely a US fad, don’t you? There was a huge push for it in the 80s, corn production is subsidised and imported sugar is heavily taxed. It’s practically non-existent over here.

Most are startng to point toward the sensory overload model. Mild IBS exacerbated by stress response to sensory overload as a result of mild IBS.

Similar to what happens when my coeliac daughter gets ‘glutened’. Her behaviour changes within hours.

As the Angry Chef has pointed out (backed by Wallace and Darwin no less) we were not designed.

Not by some intelligent entity but by the process of natural selection…(or if you prefer Dawkins the selfish gene)

In many ways the design aspect is fascinating but merely shows how something can look like it has been designed with intelligent thought but is actually just a response to the environment… like a perfect sand dune or snowflake etc.

In this context I’m not inferring an intelligence behind design rather than a process.

there’s almost no such thing as “humans” in this context that you can say with anything approaching certainty that weren’t suited to consume grains…It may be that you are descended from a group that have been consuming grains for 9000 years or more, and therefore have a tolerance to them, or you may be descended from a different group that haven’t got that adaption…There are foods (tubers and plants) that pre-agrarian humans ate that contained chemicals that caused side effects, or even disease. Milk and grains are just two of many foodstuffs that aren’t “great” for us to consume.

Developing a tolerance over a mere 9000 years isn’t redesign (in the wide sense of design I said above) it is as you say adaptation…

In this sense of design a cat is designed to eat meat and deal with fur and feathers… and a cow is designed to eat grass

In this context: rabbits are not designed to eat grass but they have adapted … so they eat their poo.. they are in effect processing the food… (which I suppose cows also do but have changed design internally)….

Its perhaps imperfect as a definition (where do you draw a line) but to me there is a distinct difference in an ability to manage to eat your own poo and extract some nutrition and developing 4 stomachs.

Rabbits can survive eating grass only… it’s just not healthy…
In the same way I think there are a whole load of foods we are “designed” to eat… from 300,000 years of adaptation and even before… then going into redesign…

For example “we” redesigned our hips and spine to stand upright…. even before homo sapiens .. but we didn’t eat wheat or drink cow milk until very recent history… in fact neither existed as both are part of human design..

It may be that you are descended from a group that have been consuming grains for 9000 years or more, and therefore have a tolerance to them, or you may be descended from a different group that haven’t got that adaption.

Yes and at some point .. we could continue and that adaption might become design…
One of the group descended with the tolerance might have a freak gene that for them moves them from “not great” to “pretty good”…

Another way I see this is like “Wonder Foods” … there has been a constant stream of how this or that food is awesomely good for you…. but everything we eat is toxic to some extent… so any “wonder food” with some magical strong properties is pretty likely to have some fairly unpleasant consequences consumed in excess.

Steve, you’ve mentioned corn syrup a couple of times at least now. You do know that HFCS is pretty much entirely a US fad, don’t you? There was a huge push for it in the 80s, corn production is subsidised and imported sugar is heavily taxed. It’s practically non-existent over here.

Funny you should mention that with the B word and all but the HFCS in the UK is/was controlled by an EU quota that expires this month regardless of the B word.

Coca-Cola ingredients: High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) & sugar

However the companies that use the majority of HFCS are international….

In the same way the large majority of industrialised beef is in the US or for the US market… our UK idea of “factory farming” is small fry … but that doesn’t mean they are not part of the same push as the US/International “food push”.

The whole sugar’s are good and fats bad push was started in the US …. but it still affects the foods we get. Be it HFCS or other sugars the fat has been taken out and replaced with sugars (or flavour enhancers)

Similar to what happens when my coeliac daughter gets ‘glutened’. Her behaviour changes within hours.

Exactly … which is why for me this rings true…
You or I don’t care that the medical position is “no her behaviour doesn’t change” …. because we observe it… as I said in the earlier posts my best friends can even tell over the phone…

I’ve been glutened and known when and I’ve been glutened blind test… when I haven’t known about it until later…

The Coeliac UK stance is that’s it’s all in our heads and we get frustrated because of lack of choice …. they did a whole article on it in Crossed Grain a while ago…. so it hardly surprises me that the casein and autism spectrum change in behaviour is also dismissed as in their heads…