September 01, 2006

• I don't understand this hazard ratio thing. Somehow the journalist equated .24 with 76% reduction in risk. A quick check of the wiki article on hazard ratios exploded my brain.
• If it helps, think of it as a relative risk. The risk of AD in those who drink juice frequently is less than those who don't (ie the juice appears to be protective). Those who drink a little have decreased risk relative to those who don't, but not as dencreased as those who drink it frequently. If there was an increase in risk, the number would be above one instead of below; a hazard ratio/relative risk of one implies no effect.
• She knows whereof she speaks, folks.
• Does this mean we can all stop looking for the real killer?
• Can it be fermented first? Oh god, please?
• How about people drink more water and eat more fruit. I bet that would have better results.
• I'm with StoryBored, the issue is whether the "adjustment for potential confounders" is adequate, something I'm not in the least qualified to judge. To be honest, I don't really want fermented fruit juices though, since that suggests pruno. Apple cider or brandy would be more than OK though, and I'm happy to mix my fruit juice with a little rum. And maybe some bitters. And some spices. Mmmm, rum punch.
• Carrot, carrot juice, please make it qualify... I love carrot juice by the jugful. And I've recently been seriously reprimanded over commercial cranberry juice choices, i.e., the Ocenaspray and the like. Any one has recommendations over brands that are the 'real thing'?
• juice of spinaches and Californian apricot keeps me knowing what I otherwise would've clean forgot so I guzzle all the carrot juice and pureed pitted cherries knowing this will make the manufacturers of juicers merry
• juice of spinaches and Californian apricot keeps me knowing what I otherwise would've clean forgot so I guzzle all the carrot juice and pureed pitted cherries knowing this will make the manufacturers of juicers merry
• Odd. The timer on my machine says it's only eight minutes after the hour - wot is going on?
• You need to wind it.
• I'd just like to take this opportunity as an American to thank the English English community for your cadre of brilliant colloquisms, such as -- in every UK headline I've seen on this thus far -- "eat your veg". (We don't abbreviate this way; US headlines read "eat your vegetables".) I also like the use of "brilliant" to mean "superb" or "lovely" instead of being rigidly fixed -- as it is in the US -- to meaning associated with intelligence. (This is how it's intended in the first paragraph up there, not in some ironic way, as some USers may suspect.) While we're on the subject, let me ask: There's a phrase I've heard used in two UK comedy bits that I just can't figure out. It sounds like "ball stall". Basil Fawlty used it once: "This is a hotel. Not a [ball stall]." And whilst Carl Pilkinton was rambling once about monkey sanctuaries, Ricky Gervais pointed out that "it's not a [ball stall]." Usually I can pick these things up from inference. Not here! Help me, UK monkeys -- you're my only hope. Cheers for that!
• You're thinking of BORSTALS. Lovely places.
• And I've recently been seriously reprimanded over commercial cranberry juice choices, i.e., the Ocenaspray and the like. Any one has recommendations over brands that are the 'real thing'? Look for the stuff that says 100% fruit juice on the label. Stay away from anything that has the word "cocktail" in the name, and anything that has water and corn syrup as the first 2 ingredients. Juicy-juice I think is good. Dole makes a few different OJ-and-other-stuff juices that comes in cartons in the OJ section (orange-peach-mango is good). Try trader joes if you have one in your area. Or you could just get a juicer and make your own. I have a related question for any monkey(s) with juicing experience. I've been considering getting a juicer. Would the amount of fruits and vegetables it takes to fill a bottle of juice cost more or less than the juice itself?
• Funny, I don't remember this thread from yesterday... *wanders off with underpants on head
• From the wiki article on pruno: Pruno is an alcoholic beverage made from oranges, fruit cocktail, ketchup, sugar, and possibly other ingredients. It originated in (and remains largely confined to) prisons Sfred, explain yourself! :-)
• Add my name to Flagpole's list of carrot juice fans. Also blueberry juice! And pomegranate juice! (Gawd, they's expensive).
• If you don't spend all your money on pomegranate juice, then the free radicals have already won.
• Some of the things they don't mention in that BBC article are that this was done in 65 year old Japanese-Americans living in Washington state who were followed for 10 years. The biggest issues that jump out at me are whether this was the relevant exposure timeframe for the outcome (we can't exactly detect pre-clinical AD) and the generalizability of such information. Why the BBC chose to pick this one up, who knows? That POM stuff is massively overpriced, but if you have some Persians near you, check out the pomegranate juice in their stores.
• Pomegranacist!
• I've been considering getting a juicer. Would the amount of fruits and vegetables it takes to fill a bottle of juice cost more or less than the juice itself? At least in my case (here, fruit and vegetables are way cheaper than in most places) the cost-benefit is simple: I'll take natural, recently-squeezed, no additives or sugar-added product all the time. That's why the cranberry controversy arised: not easy to juice those.
• Hee hee StoryBored. I worked for the National Parole Board of Canada for a couple of years and heard some, well, interesting stories about the effects of pruno.
• You can't just dangle that piece of information without telling us a story about it, sfred.
• I suppose you're right, mandyman. When I first started working for the NPB, my boss arranged for me and some of the other staff to go attend some parole hearings in the field. So we rented a car and drove from Ottawa to Kingston which for historical reasons has a huge concentration of prisons, including the infamous Kingston Penitentiary (KP). All in all, an interesting and useful way to spend a couple of days instead of working and be paid a pretty generous per diem to boot. On the first day, we attended hearings at medium security and minimum security prisons, were taken on tours of them by the guards, and of course got the opportunity to hear a lot of war stories from them as well. Quite a few of these stories concerned the creation and hiding of pruno. All very interesting and by the second day when we scheduled to visit KP I felt myself a bit of an old hand. Entering KP even as a visitor is an experience in and of itself, quite different from a medium security prison. It was originally built in the 1830s and you enter through a 19th century style guard tower which is entirely intimidating. NPB credentials get you through a lot of hassles, but there was clearly some strain on the part of the guards that day, and there was a faint smell of smoke in the air as well. Still, I was really looking forward to a tour of the most notorious prison in Canada. We never got the tour, although I did attend the parole hearing of probably the scariest guy I've ever seen. It seems that in one of the wings some of the inmates had managed to brew up a batch of pruno and were burning papers and cardboard in the center of the range. It was a relatively minor incident as such things go, but coupled with the rest of the day it made quite the impression on me.
• Now I think I'll go out and get some juice. I'm thinking apple cider, since it is feeling a little fallish today.
• This thread is all well and good, but I think we need a thread on the proven fact that drinking juice can help prevent Alzheimer's.
• Wot proven fact?
• ... though I suppose that's a hair better than a disproven fact.
• It's the truth, it's actual, everything is Wikifactual. Incredibly, we seem live in an age where it's possible for people to speak of false facts and think it perfectly reasonable to do so. But I don't think it's reasonable at all, it's quite mad.
• So, will prune juice clean my head as well as my colon?
• I recommend a warm bran mash.
• I'm still not convinced that prune juice is juice, despite what my grandmother said. How do you get juice out of a prune? It's a lie, undoubtedly spread by communists seeking to pollute our precious bodily fluids.
• I've recently noticed commercials for plum juice... which I suspect is a sexier version of prune juice.
• I recommend a warm bran mash. See, in no way does that sound appetizing. Now, a warm sour mash, that I can get behind.
• I've recently noticed commercials for plum juice... which I suspect is a sexier version of prune juice. Somewhere around this Filter is a thread (or a comment?) about the prune marketers changing the name to dried plums. This place is a mess.
• Ach, haven't we been prunished enough?!
• Cool story, sfred. I was driving by Kingston Penn just this summer and wondered whether they had guided tours...but then set that aside as a morbid thought. Also it was weird it being so close to Queens University. Hopefully, no connection there.
• Observation on "100% juice" labels. "100% juice, grape" is not the same as "100% grape juice". The former is mostly apple juice. In addition, sleazy radio news readers who tout the advantages of grape juice refuse to acknowledge the difference.
• Dream on, StoryBoard, for they're both built of the same white limestone. ;]
• You certainly could have toured KP in the 19th century, StoryBored. It was normal and quite respectable to visit a prison or "go round and have a laugh at the loonies" as Ben Elton used to say before he went all establishment on us. Nowadays it's rather harder.
• As per my earlier query, it is clear that prune juice is in no way juice. Dictionary.com defines juice as: the natural fluid, fluid content, or liquid part that can be extracted from a plant or one of its parts, esp. of a fruit: orange juice. Now prune juice is apparently manufactured by cooking plums in water until they disintegrate and then filtering the resulting mess: Prune juice manufacturing process. Now that ain't juice, no matter what the fda happens to say. No doubt a communist plot.
• The biggest issues that jump out at me are whether this was the relevant exposure timeframe for the outcome (we can't exactly detect pre-clinical AD) and the generalizability of such information. That's a good point, mandyman. I found out our local university carries the American Journal of Medicine. So it didn't take long to find the article. Here's the detail on their findings: # of people who drank juice less than once a week: 547. Of these, 30 got Alzheimers. # of people who drank juice more than three times a week: 785. Of these only 22 got Alzheimers. Among the "confounders" they factored out were: years of education, gender, regular physical activity, obesity, total energy consumption, fat intake, smoking status, alcohol, vitamin supplementation, tea drinking.