Found this in an article that had nothing to do with food. Ay, they'll
make any excuse for a high fat diet! -Rosemary
<<Jay R. Kaplan, professor of comparative medicine and anthropology at
Wake
Forest University's School of Medicine, said Thursday low-fat,
low-cholesterol
diets may help people shuck unwanted pounds, but a nasty side effect can
be
impulsive, risk-taking behavior.
While examining the role of cholesterol and fat in nonhuman primates for
more
than a decade, Kaplan found a low-fat diet can increase aggressiveness.
Whether it could do the same for humans is currently being debated by
leading
experts in the field, he said in a telephone interview Thursday.
``Some people may be susceptible to these kinds of alterations in dietary
fat,'' he said. ``When serotonin levels get very low they are associated
with
suicidal behavior.''
In a paper published last year in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology,
Kaplan and associates Karen Potvin Klein and Steven B. Manuck explored
the
link between low serum cholesterol and increased risk of death from
suicide or
accidents.
``As a group, our studies provide preliminary support for the hypothesis
that
cholesterol-lowering diets potentiate aggressive or antisocial patterns
of
social expression and interaction,'' Kaplan wrote in his paper.
Kaplan acknowledges the hypothesis contradicts current thinking favoring
a
low-fat, low-cholesterol diet.
``Ironically, current recommendations to avoid cholesterol and fat as a
way to
prolong life may now lead some individuals into impulsive and risk-taking
behavior that is inappropriate in modern societies not characterized by
the
need for competitive foraging or hunting,'' he wrote. >>
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