Well unfortunately I don't notice a whole lot of things when I change what I eat. I think in the grand spectrum I'm much less sensitive to food than many of the people on this forum. One thing I notice though is dairy does tend to give me a stuffy nose, especially when I'm going to bed that night. That's the only thing I notice consistently other than the constipation.
One another topic I'm looking at schools to apply to for a biology or related PhD program. I found at UPenn in Philadelphia some interesting stuff, like paleobiology, but the staff I've been emailing are discouraging.
Here's how the conversation went. I said greetings, then this:
"More importantly I'm interested in applying to UPenn as a graduate student, I earned my B.S. in biology at Rowan University in Spring 2008, and could use advice on a program. My main interest in biology is diet/nutrition and it's effects on disease, how nutrition works with genetics, etc. My second interest is in ecology. I think I would be happy doing research in any topic related to those, but my main passion has to do with the effects of diet on health, looking at how different food processing techniques change the food at the molecular level and gene expression ala epigenetics. Do you have any staff working on anything like that? I'm at the seminal part of my grad school search so any advice would help."
and this was the first response:
"Thank you for your interest in the Biology Graduate Program at the University of Pennsylvania. I will be glad to answer your questions and assist you through the admissions process.
The University of Pennsylvania does have a Paleobiology Program and Ocean Biogeochemistry program, but they are in our Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, not in Biology. Here is a link to the website -
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/earth/research.htm. However, it is possible that you were also reviewing Penn State University's website. They have Paleoecology and Oceanography.
Penn State University is a different institution than the University of Pennsylvania, but sometimes, people do confuse the two schools. Penn State is a state-run school with campuses throughout the state of Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania is a private school with one campus located in Philadelphia, PA. Please note that our application process is not connected at all. There have been a few cases where someone is applying to our program and meant to apply to Penn State, and vice versa.
Penn State's website is
http://www.gradsch.psu.edu/prospective/.
The Biology Department does not have a program in diet and nutrition. There is a possibility that the Biomedical Graduate Studies Program in the Medical School may have something of interest to you. They have programs on diseases and genetics, but I am not sure about diet and nutrition. Their web page is
http://www.med.upenn.edu/bgs/index.shtml. The Cell and Molecular Biology Program has sub-divisions in Cancer Biology, Gene therapy, and Genetics.
Our School of Nursing does have a Nutrition minor for undergraduates. They also have a Doctoral Program which is one that develops an individualized plan of study. You may wish to contact this department to see if they can assist you with your goals of studying diet/nutrition and efforts on disease. Their web page is
http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/admissions/doctoral/Pages/about.aspx."
which was pretty ambiguous and not helpful, so I decided to give a little information about my interests, and this is what I got. this next message was from another staff member, the first one forwarded my second email and asked if they had any suggestions:
"It sounds like your interests mostly relate to human nutrition. This is not Penn's area of strength, but we do offer a minor in nutrition through the Nursing School. I think you should explore the programs at Penn State. But, don't tell them about your interest in the paleo diet. No one really knows what people ate before the invention of agriculture, and they will think you are a nut. In any case, this interest is not the sort of thing you build a career on."
I left out the greetings and sincerelys, but that's the body of my correspondences so far. Not very encouraging at all, that last one very discouraging, in a lightly put kind of way. The main reason I didn't go straight to grad school in the first place was the attitude of the biologists I'd come into contact with. I knew that I would have to keep my mouth shut about certain stuff and go along with the pack until I finish a program, but right off the bat I'm getting dismissive emails from staff. I'm not going to give up or anything, but it's very frustrating to see that biologists are mostly concerned with building their careers and don't seem to care about respecting nature and learning about it. These days biology is about fighting nature, dominating it, and the results as we've seen tend to blow up in faces. Science is great and all, but most of the journal articles I read seem weak science at best, and the attitude of the scientists is arrogant and like I've said dismissive of other viewpoints. There is more money to be made in genetic engineering and the production of pharmaceuticals, which is probably a big reason.
So it's an uphill battle, but I'm going to try and get into a program somewhere and eventually try and do some research towards the end of getting studies about raw/paleo foods/lifestyle in the mainstream of scientific journals. Wish me luck!
