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Comment by dpq | Hacker News Reader

I can't quickly find the paper but I recall having read something along the following lines: there were several areas in Greece where people consumed meat and cheese heavily but the life expectancy was decent. A subsequent investigation showed that the villagers had a very common SNP (mutation) which reduced the efficiency of LDLR (essentially making their bodies ingest less of the "bad" cholesterol into the bloodstream). And the theory went that since these populations had the same diet for centuries, everybody who was not very adapted to it sort of died out / was outcompeted in a Darwinian way by folks who had this genetic adaptation. So yes, a Sardinian villager may live to 102 eating solely mutton; it doesn't mean that the outcome would be as good if you took a random sample of Californians (for instance) and had them use the same diet.

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Standard Darwinian competition wouldn't matter here - people generally finish breeding (ages <35) long before they have trouble from cholesterol (ages 40+) or other minor dietary issues.

You could consider in the same way as the explanation for altruism - that families and communities who can rely on helpful old people to raise the children perform better and out-compete families/communities without that resource.

We should also consider that any dietary pressure will have only existed for at most a few thousands of years which, in evolutionary terms, 1000 generations perhaps, is basically nothing.

> people generally finish breeding (ages <35) long before they have trouble from cholesterol (ages 40+) or other minor dietary issues

You’re speaking to modern times. Rebeccu, for instance, is a gorgeous town abandoned by Sardinians in the 14th century because of famine. Furthermore, the children of a famished mother are less likely to survive to reproductive age, and a family whose elderly died of famine will be less stable than one with multi-generational structures in place. These prenatal, neonatal and group selection dynamics bias the dice.

I'd suspect in the case of famine those who digest the cholesterol would have the highest survival rate. It still doesn't add up.

You don’t need famine; a wealthy societal elder is better positioned to marry his or her children and grandchildren into situations where they will have more children and their children will be better provided for. An elder male could continue reproducing by finding additional mates. There is good evidence that male genetic diversity is much lower than we would expect if most of our ancestors were monogamous.

Bugs might reproduce primarily constrained by their LDL uptake but humans are far more complex.

1000 generations is plenty of time for a new mutation to potentially achieve fixation in a relatively contained, small-ish (in human terms) population.

That is not true. One of the many factors that make human tribes competitive is grandparents. Grandparents can help in many ways especially with child rearing and retain knowledge not available to younger people. Having more healthier and longer lived grandparents enhances the relative fitness of those of breeding age. There is a similar effect with homosexuals tending to contribute to tribal fitness thus enhancing reproductive fitness of the tribe.

Are there any data to support this?

Not yet. My ex is a geneticist who studies the evolutionary basis of aging and this is one of the hypotheses for human longevity being what it is, but there isn't hard proof so far.

>studies the evolutionary basis of aging

This sounds like it would be fascinating in general.

>> similar effect with homosexuals tending to contribute to tribal fitness thus enhancing reproductive fitness of the tribe.

If they want to reproduce, don't they have to search outside their tribe for a sperm/egg donor and possibly surrogate? So at least 50% or more of their reproductive health comes from outside the tribe?

I'm talking about behaviors and you are talking about desires. These are very different contexts.

Attempts to characterize behavior show homosexuals more commonly staying with parents and supporting relatives. The usual explanation for this is that they are not interested or able to compete in the usual mating and paring rituals. It isn't that they want to reproduce so much as they want to contribute to the tribe and in doing so result in the reproductive capacity of the entire tribe being increased.

This hypothesis is still part of some anti-meat propaganda. They start from the idea that red meat is bad, and then they retroactively try to adjust their "science" with creative solutions. Research done in Italy about the Sardinians showed that the people who got to live longer where specifically the shepherds. They had a very peculiar life style which brought them to get much more exercise and to eat more animal sourced foods. The remaining townfolks had a more "average" lifespan even though they shared the same genes.

Oh yes, the big bad lettuce lobby :D

To be exact the ones putting money into meat replacements aren't produce farmers but the processed food giants.

You joke, but it has been going on for a while: The Global Influence of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church on Diet (https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/251/htm). And obviously as mentioned by another the processed food industry etc.

You think lettuce cant be big or bad? Look into the lettuce king of the southwest. Yes lettuce, and not the devil's.

I'm half joking, but the lobbying power and subsidies meat and dairy industries command is a complete other ballgame than vegetable farmers and plant-based food companies.

"[By 2030], you will eat less red meat." — World Economic Forum, an international organized crime network

It's kinda happening already:

Ireland https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/22/northern... Netherlands https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/15/netherla... Belgium https://www.brusselstimes.com/251313/government-advisors-pro...

Funny the agenda-laden downvotes I'm receiving as well, despite ample evidence. Only an artifact of folks perceiving a conspiratorial political bias before considering the damage the WEF is in fact doing to the world by installing unelected "young leaders" into any nation or corporation it can get its dirty hands on, determining policy and international direction without the consent of the governed, much less, not nearly enough consent if any exists at all, outside of the political elite who already endorse them for their obvious financial gain.

Cholesterol isn't "ingested" into the bloodstream.

To expand upon this, Cholesterol is wrapped in lipoprotein, and pathogenesis is caused by malfunction of lipoproteins due to proximal oxidative and inflammatory effects upon them.

So what’s the cause of high cholesterol and how do you lower it?

Buckle up

https://peterattiamd.com/why-there-is-no-bad-or-good-cholest...

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-ch...

> [...] due to proximal oxidative and inflammatory effects upon them.

No, this is not true.

It absolutely is true for many reasons; one of them is uptake of ox-LDL by macrophage and their conversion into foam cells.

More info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK326741/

Additionally, ApoB is an excellent biomarker of cardiovascular health risk.

I agree with ApoB being the marker for CVD risk. What I'm disagreeing with is the statement that pathogenesis is caused by inflammation and/or oxidization; instead I'd say it's the number of particles that's the primary cause, with the rest of the mechanism following.

Might just be semantic quibbling, though.

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