Serendipity! Within days of finishing last week's article on fast foods, three headlines attracted my attention.The first should be of interest to any red-blooded Trini, male or female, especially in these curfew days. I understand town obstetricians are gearing up for plenty deliveries next year May and June. Carnival babies is joke. SoE (sex or else) babies are in.The first headline said, simply, "Better diet better sperm."Two studies presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Orlando, Florida, this week, suggest that better diets equal better sperm. One compared a Western diet high in red meat and refined grains to one high in fish, vegetables and whole grains and found the latter was linked to higher sperm motility. The second found that a diet high in trans fats was linked to lower sperm counts.The first study, done by an international team from the Harvard School of Public Health, University of Rochester and the University of Murcia in Spain, recruited men aged 18-22 to fill in questionnaires about their diet and have their semen tested for sperm concentration, motility (ability to move properly toward the egg) and morphology (having the right shape to penetrate the egg).
The results showed that the diet high in fish, vegetables and whole grains was linked to higher sperm motility, while sperm morphology showed no particular links with diet, and neither did sperm concentration.The second study done on young men attending the Fertility Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital showed that the higher the trans fats in the diet, the lower the sperm concentration.The birth rate in T&T has slowed dramatically over the last 20 years. One wonders.Trans fats are poisons made through a chemical process which solidifies liquid oils and increases the shelf life, the flavour and the stability of oils and foods that contain them. Trans fats are found in vegetable shortenings and in some margarines, crackers, cookies, snack foods and especially in "french fries" which have been fried in vegetable oil.The best place to smell vegetable oil in Trinidad, apart from tasting it in any fast food establishment, is just as you exit the shopping area in the entry lounge at Piarco and walk past the fast food area on your right (behind the wall, if you can call the piece of cardboard there a wall), into the customs section. Welcome to sweet smelling T&T.
The second headline was less impressive but potentially more important: "Changing child diet better for adult health." A long-term study of 290 women, about to be published in the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, shows that feeding children a diet low in fat and high in fibre, ie, basically a lot of fruit, vegetables and whole grains (every time I write this I think of all the vegetarians who must be laughing), resulted in adults with lower blood pressure, better fasting blood sugars and lower very low-density lipoproteins (one of the bad blood fats) than a similar group of adult females.This very important study suggests a childhood diet high in fibre from fruits, vegetables and whole grains and low in fat has the potential to influence the development of chronic disease in adult- hood.The final headline excitedly reported that the US Department of Agriculture, that bastion of nutritional sanity, wanted to limit potatoes in school lunch to make room for vegetables like broccoli. Why? Because potatoes have an effect on blood sugar similar to that of a sweet drink, and in large amounts, raise obesity and diabetes risks.
Apart from a bit of vitamin C, B6 and potassium, potatoes are too high in the kind of carbohydrate that the body digests very rapidly, causing high blood sugar and insulin blips followed by very low dips. This can cause irritability and poor attention span but, worse, in the long term, exhausts insulin stores and contributes to obesity onset diabetes.Of course the USDA has come under fire from politicians and potato lobbyists (potato lobbyists) for this proposal. They are on thin ground.The same Harvard School of Public Health tracked the diet and lifestyle habits of 120,000 men and women for up to 20 years and looked at how small food-choice changes contributed to weight gain over time. People who increased their consumption of french fries gained an extra 3.4 pounds every four years and those who ate more baked or mashed potatoes gained 1.3 pounds.Obesity and its health-related problems (diabetes, stroke, hypertension, heart attack etc) are epidemic in the States and cost a lot of money. It's become economically appropriate to do something about bad eating habits.So if you get through with your partner, despite eating lots of fast food, and are able to have a child, even though it's too late for you to do anything about the diabetes and high blood pressure coming down on you, you could still help your child by feeding him better than your parents fed you.
Dream Tantie, dream.