Thursday, March 25, 2010

Interesting Articles in the AJCN

I just received an RSS alert for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition's latest articles. This upcoming issue is full of very interesting material:

1. Dr. Neil D. Barnard reviews food consumption patterns in the US from 1909 to 2007 (1). This is something I've written about a number of times. The most notable change is that industrial seed oil use has increased by more than 3-fold in the last 40 years, and even more in the last 100 although he doesn't provide those numbers. Butter and lard use declined sharply. Meat consumption is up, but the increase comes exclusively from poultry because we're eating the same amount of red meat we always have. Grain consumption is down, although it peaked around 1900 so it may not be a fair comparison with today:
In the late 1800s, wheat flours became more popular and available due to the introduction of new [high-gluten] wheat varieties, [low extraction] milling techniques, and transport methods, and during this time new breakfast cereals were introduced by John Harvey Kellogg, CW Post, and the Quaker Oats Company. Thereafter, however, per capita availability of flour and cereal products gradually dropped as increased prosperity, improved mechanization, and transport (eg, refrigerated railway cars) increased competition from other food groups. [Then they partially rebounded in the last 40 years]
2. Dr. S.C. Larsson published a paper showing that in Sweden, multivitamin use is associated with a slightly higher risk of breast cancer (2).

3. Soy protein and isoflavones, which have been proposed to do everything from increase bone mineral density to fight cancer, are slowly falling out of favor. Dr. Z.M. Liu and colleagues show that soy protein and/or isoflavone supplementation has no effect on insulin sensitivity or glucose tolerance in a 6 month trial (3). This follows a recent trial showing that isoflavones have no effect on bone mineral density.

4. Dr. Ines Birlouez-Aragon and colleagues showed that high-heat cooked (fried and sauteed) foods increase risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular disease (insulin resistance, cholesterol, triglycerides), compared to low-heat cooked foods (steamed, stewed) in a one-month trial (4). The high-heat diet also reduced serum levels of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins C and E.

5. Dr. Katharina Nimptsch and colleagues showed that higher menaquinone (vitamin K2) intake is associated with a lower cancer incidence and lower cancer mortality in Europeans (5). Most of their K2 came from cheese.

6. And finally, Dr. Zhaoping Li and colleagues showed that cooking meat with an herb and spice blend reduced the levels of oxidized fat during cooking, and reduced serum and urinary markers of lipid oxidation in people eating the meat (6).


53 comments:

Matt Stone said...

Barnard probably gave a similar assessment to dietary changes of that by Michael Murray in the Encyclopedia of healing Foods: "We eat more fat now, cantha see?! That's why we're dying. Cut out the saturated fat!"

Huh?

I also posted on the 1909 to 2009 dietary changes a few months back.


http://180degreehealth.blogspot.com/2009/12/1909-american-diet.html

Tucker Goodrich said...

Regarding No. 4: High-heat sounds like a chimera. Wouldn't it make a big difference what the food is fried in? (I note they don't specify in the abstract you linked to...)

My wife's parents moved from Colombia to the US and stopped frying their food in lard, and switched to corn oil on the advice of their doctor. Their health now looks similar to the rats you've discussed before.

Their relatives in Colombia appear much healthier...

L said...

i've commented on the issue of #4 a few times. frying at temperatures to brown meat will reach and/or exceed the smoke point of butter/ghee and coconut oil. i've measured with an infared thermometer. but no one wants to here that their cherished paleo cooking fat and meat may not be healthy depending on how its prepared. they still want to make french fries and "meatza". a sign that they still long to eat supersized fries from mcdonalds or the latest pizza hut 2 for one. i just eat the real thing when i want it.

John Rosevear said...

There is an argument that if you really need to deep-fry something and don't have proper paleo-approved grass-finished beef tallow, peanut oil is a reasonable alternative.

And really, there's little to complain about with french fries if you make 'em yourself and keep it to 1-2 servings a month.

Ned Kock said...

Pressure cooking seems like a healthy way of cooking, as for as I know, at least for meats. Put some meats (of almost any kind) and herbs in a pressure cooking pan, cook for about 45 minutes, and presto - delicious!

UsrLnx said...

What spices?

zach said...

Mmmmm. Increased poultry, and not just any poultry, I'm sure. Confinement chicken deep fried in industrial vegetable oil. Does wonders for your health!!

L said...

john,

peanut oil is high in omega 6. not good. it does have a relatively high smoke point that makes it superior to pure tallow for frying. but your recommended consumption frequency would probably not comprimise most peoples health. in fact, a significant number of people can chronically consume SAD all their life and never develop significant health problems. but i'd imagine most readers have health concerns and would like to know what the ideal is.

SAD isn't it. but neither is high temp cooking. i think it would be irresponsible to promote paleo as a healthier alternative without the caveat: stay well below the smoke point regardless of prep method. coconut and all pure animal fat have low smoke points.

for example coconut oil is 350. but some people think its ok to roast fries tossed in it in an oven at 400 after frying in a pan. no, that was not a jab at matt stone, even though he demonstrated the method in a video. service announcement: readers who are prediabetic/diabetic and/or looking to lose weight, please avoid stones blog because you might be stupid enough to follow his advice. that was a jab.

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Nigel Kinbrum said...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that smoking was caused by the evaporation of free fatty acids (FFAs) from an oil/fat. Cooking oils/fats with low FFA content have a high smoking temperature e.g. peanut oil. This doesn't mean that they're safe for high-temperature cooking.

Above 102°C, cis bonds turn into trans bonds. The higher the temperature, the faster this happens.

High-pufa oils slowly oxidise at room temperature without giving off any smoke. Flaxseed oil turns to varnish if left exposed to air. Even soya oil goes sticky if left exposed to air at room temperature for extended periods.

Sat fats For The Win.

John Rosevear said...

What I meant is that peanut oil is both suitable for frying and lower in bad stuff than many of the alternatives (corn or soybean oil, for instance).

I wouldn't drink a glass of it every morning, but there are worse things.

TedHutchinson said...

I presume this is the same
Neal D. Barnard

Barnard & Atkins?

Also very active PETA involvement

Mavis said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mavis said...

I think the issue is not just the oil and the heat of the oil (I don't find it has to reach the smoke point to brown meat) but the advanced-glycation end-products (AGEs), which occur with any browning reaction, and changes in proteins at high temperatures.

This is a good reminder to me - my family has recently formed a bacon habit and I've been feeling kind of wrong about it because of this and because it's smoked.

I also feel vindicated because usually don't have time to brown (or sometimes, even thaw) meat for stews. Now I know that rather than being lazy, I am being health-conscious.

Mavis said...

Another thought -

When I first heard about the downsides of AGEs (from browning), about a year ago, I had to wonder why we love the smell and taste of toasted, roasted things. I think because there was a huge evolutionary advantage to eating cooked food.

I haven't read "Catching Fire," but from the interviews I've heard with the author, he posits that cooked food is what allowed us to become human - with the big brains and kinds of social organization that we have.

So, despite the damaging effects of AGEs, cooking is such an advantage (allowing us to spend less time chewing! As well as eat a wider variety of things and get more nutrients out of them) it must of counterbalanced this overall.

Still, why overdo it, when you can cook with less browning?

Yesterday, smelling the pleasant aroma of a wood fire in the air outside, I wondered if other animals like that smell, or if it is only us.

Ed Terry said...

Found this study interesting, "Analysis of eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acid geometrical isomers formed during fish oil deodorization", by Fournier, et al. EPA and DHA subjected to distillation at low pressures and at various temperatures (180 to 220C) only showed significant isomerization at 220C.

Stanley said...

I'm not ready to abandon tofu until I data showing that the phytic acid and high manganese content do more harm than the isoflavones do good. In particular, while the results regarding bone density and insulin resistance are informative, what about isoflavones' anticarcinogenic properties? (Although, being phytoestrogens, one has to wonder whether they can also be carcinogenic.) Cheese is too high in omega 6 (usually), so I'd prefer to get my vitamin K2 from unsweetened cream, which is more 3/6 balanced. Finally, I've wondered lately whether tofu, high-calcium unsweetened soy milk, or neither ought to be in my diet.

Daniel said...

Studies showing K2 provides protections that K1 doesn't provide should be interpreted in the context of widespread vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D is instrumental in the conversion of K1 to K2. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19022954?.

Vitamin K1 prevented 90% of cancers in a (small) randomized placebo controlled trial when both groups (K1 group and placebo group) were "vitamin D replete" (defined as about 30ng/ml). See http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050196.

Moreover, K1 is widely distributed throughout the organs. See http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=877476.

We know that mk-4 activates gene transcription (but not mk-7 or K1). See http://jme.endocrinology-journals.org/cgi/content/full/39/4/239.

However, mk-4 has a very short half life in the human body, so, when taken in doses normally found in food, it likely disappears too quickly to do much.

But, in vitamin D sufficient people, I suspect that K1 is basically delayed-release mk-4, converting to mk-4 on a where-and-as-needed basis. I think this theory makes a lot of sense because (i) one of the roles of vitamin K is to protect against soft tissue calcification that can occur at very high vitamin D levels (so only useful when there is sun) and (ii) K1 is in green plants (so only available when there is sun).

Chasing mk-4 is a mistake in my opinion. Vitamin K1 plus D may provide the answer we are all looking for. Until confirmed by experiments, low dose mk-7 + K1 + D is a decent hedge in my opinion.

Stephan Guyenet said...

Hi Stanley,

What's the evidence that isoflavones are beneficial in humans? Are there controlled trials showing that they reduce cancer risk? I think isoflavones are best avoided because they mimic estrogen.

Hi Daniel,

Rodents have the ability to convert sufficient K1 to K2 at normal dietary amounts, but that has not been established in humans. The conversion efficiency varies by species. In humans, it's likely that we can do the conversion if we take megadoses of supplemental K1, but that's an unnatural dose that has unknown consequences. I feel it's plausible that we can convert at least a portion of K1 to K2, but keep in mind absorption of K1 from foods plateaus around 200 mcg/day in humans and only a fraction of that will be converted if any. That means dietary K2 MK-4 will be a substantial contribution to MK-4 status even if the conversion occurs.

You said that K2 MK-4 has a short half-life in the human body. I think what you mean is it has a short half-life in human serum. It actually has a long half-life once it's entered tissues.

The concentration of K2 MK-4 exceeds K1 in a number of tissues in rodents and humans, including pancreas, brain, salivary gland, and kidney as well I think. I haven't been able to access the controlled K1 trial you linked to because the PLoS site is down. But forgive me if I'm skeptical that K1 supplementation prevents 90% of cancers.

You may be right about the interactions between the fat-soluble vitamins, but it just hasn't been demonstrated in humans. Keep in mind that we evolved eating a substantial portion of animal foods including organs, whereas rodents didn't. So we would have been exposed to more dietary K2 MK-4 than rats and especially mice during evolution. You can't necessarily extrapolate from one to the other.

Stephan Guyenet said...

Hi Daniel,

I managed to access the study. It looks pretty solid from a design standpoint (randomized, placebo-controlled). However, the women were given vitamin D (800 IU) and calcium (1500 mg) along with a huge dose of K1 (5 mg).

K1 from supplements is more bioavailable than K1 from food. It's been shown that mega-doses of supplemental K1 are converted to menadione that ends up in the serum in humans, which is likely an intermediate on the way to becoming K2 MK-4. They've also shown that mega-doses of K1 supplement can increase MK-4 in human breast milk. The relevance of this to conversion from dietary sources is unclear, but it does suggest the possibility that a fraction of dietary K1 is converted to K2 MK-4 in humans.

Still, the result is remarkable. D3 plus calcium plus high-dose K1 reduced cancer incidence by quite a bit. If the result is due to K2 MK-4 being formed from megadoses of K1, why not just get the K2 MK-4 directly from food like they did in the EPIC study I posted on?

Keep in mind K1 isn't really stored in the body in proportion to dietary intake (as long as intake is sufficient), whereas K2 MK-4 is. You can increase tissue MK-4 concentration far more by administering MK-4 than you can by administering K1.

Mavis said...

Daniel,

Or could apparent (and real) widespread vitamin D deficiency be understood in the context of widespread vitamin K2 insufficiency?

L said...

nigel,

high smoke point seed and vegetable oils are safe for frying in the sense that they do not burn your battered chicken or funnel cake making them inedible as opposed to abosultely delicious. i did not mean to imply pufa is safe for consumption. pufa bad at any temperature (except for the small amount considered essential--whole other topic).

i agree sat fat wins, but not heat damaged sat fat.

helen,

for what its worth, hyperlipid peter doesn't worry about dietary ages/ales. he's pretty sharp (just ignore the cat on his shoulder) and worshipped by many. though he never really gave the usual nauseatingly scientific, not to the point explanation , so i'm still concerned.

Daniel said...

Stephen,

Thank you for your extremely thoughtful reply.

The k1/cancer study is pretty remarkable, right? By the way, I was wrong about the 90% reduction -- it's actually 75% reduction. But, there were no cancers in the vitamin K1 group at all after the first 2 years. (And, sometimes the first year or so is ignored in cancer interventions on the theory that cancer is a slow process and early cancers likely started before the trial).

If vitamin K does indeed prevent cancer, I wonder if it is due to its direct action or somehow due to it freeing up calcitriol from its role in calcium regulation for use in various other tissues. I've noticed that everything that aids bone mineralization seems to prevent cancer, so the vitamin D-helper theory may be more broadly applicable. (For example, boron, magnesium, calcium, omega 3/6 balance {PGEs promotes bone resorption}, and, of course, K all seem to prevent cancer).

I know that the mk-4 sticks around in the tissue for a while, but I assume that its transient existence in the serum meant that little dietary mk-4 makes it into tissue. I assume that what mk-4 is present in the tissue is due to convesion from K1 (or maybe mk-7). Do you have a different view?

For now, K2 (mk-7) has much better epidemiology than K1. And, K2 (mk-4) has better in vivo results than K1. On the ohter hand, K1 seems to have better clinical data in humans than K2 (for now).

Cooked K1 served with fat is much more easily absorbed. Creamed spinach for example...

Lastly, I agree that the theory that K1 converts much more readily in D replete people is somewhat speculative, so maybe I am jumping the gun on K1.

Thanks, Daniel

Daniel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Daniel said...

Stephen,

The PLOS study defined vitamin D replete as 30ng/ml. Also, they didn't give the women 800 IU of supplemental D but rather estimated they got 800 IU of supplemental and dietary D, leading me to suspect they got only 400-500 IU of supplemental D.

In people that are actually vitamin D replete -- say, enough vitamin D to start storing it (about 40 or 45ng/ml) -- much less K1 might be needed.

Richard Nikoley said...

@ Daniel & Stephan

Since Stephan brought up K2 Mk4 way back when on that Weston Price post I've been supplementing daily with K2. First I used the Green Pastures butter oil. Saw amazing improvement in skin, smoothness of teeth even without brushing, thickening of finger & toenails.

Then I went to the Thorne product for a while 1-2mg per day, then for many many months on the Carlson Mk4 product, 5mg per day.

However, the results on skin & teeth became sporadic and I'd even get slight plaque buildup at times.

A few months back I switched to Life Extension Super K Complex which has:

K1: 1mg
K2: 1mg (Mk4)
K2: 100mcg (Mk7)

It comes in a gelcap with 215mg MCT oil.

Since going on that my teeth have just been super amazing. I'm over 6 months since a cleaning and have not so much as a spec of calculus or plaque and they are always super smooth, like pearls.

I'm definitely sticking with this product.

Stephan Guyenet said...

Hi Daniel,

In the methods section, they say:

"They were also given calcium and vitamin D supplements that
approximated a total intake (diet plus supplements) of 1,500
mg of calcium and 800 IU of vitamin D per day."

So you're right that the 800 IU was the total from all sources. However, for most people dietary intake usually doesn't exceed 200 IU, so they must have been getting most of it from a supplement supplied by the investigators.

MK-4 does make it into tissue when given in the diet, as shown in rodent feeding studies. Some of it gets metabolized by the liver and excreted, and some gets into the tissue. Feeding MK-4 elevates tissue MK-4 in rodents more than feeding K1 at a given dose.

Daily K1 absorption from food plateaus around 200 mcg in humans. Check out fig 1 in this paper (free full text):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12042454

The more K1 you consume, the smaller the fraction the gut absorbs. There seems to be some kind of negative feedback mechanism on K1 whereas the gut will absorb almost unlimited K2.

It's also been show that the placenta has a vitamin K transport system that's specific for K2:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1627060

My opinion is that we're best off getting ample dietary K1 from green vegetables, as well as K2 from pastured butter and organs.

I don't support K2 MK-4 supplements because the manufacturer has not been able to assure me that they aren't contaminated with unnatural isomers created during synthesis. Natural MK-4 is in a trans configuration, but synthetic may include both cis and trans. I've contacted Thorne twice but they never got back to me.

chris said...

Dry-roasted spices a la indian cuisine seem like a better way to flavor things than browning meat (AGE, oxidized fats) or starches (AGEs, acrylamide).

I think 'smoke point' has more to do with decomposition than 'evaporation' which occurs at much higher temps

Daniel said...

Stephan,
I can help you with that! I emailed Throne a while ago after you first mentioned the concern in the comments to one of your posts. And, apparently, they didn't guess which one of us was the author of a widely read blog worth replying too... :) I got the following reply from Thorne:


Hello,

Thank you for your inquiry! This is the answer I received from the purchasing department –

E-isomer is trans form and Z-isomer is Cis form.

Content in the K2: E-isomer is 99.9% and Z-isomer is 0.1%





Kind Regards,

Anna

Thorne Research INC

PO Box 25

Dover ID 83825

208-263-1337 - phone

208-265-2488 - fax

info@thorne.com

Stephan Guyenet said...

Hi Daniel,

Thank you very much for that. I feel better about it now.

Daniel said...

Actually, disregard that email to Thorne -- we've discovered that my email was about mk-7, so we have no answer about their mk-4 product.

Michael said...

What's with the smoke point and saturated fats? I am able to brown my meats before hitting the smoke point of coconut oil, ghee or beef tallow.

I don't know about AGEs and acrylamides, but I do know that a study was done at the University of Washington which demonstrates that marinades (or adding berries like cherries) remove the problem with HCAs in grilled foods, assuming they are truly problematic in the first place.

Stephan, are you aware of anything that shows AGEs are problematic in humans that don't cook their food to death or use doses that in animals are a huge magnitude higher than anything a typical human would ever consume?

@L

for example coconut oil is 350. but some people think its ok to roast fries tossed in it in an oven at 400 after frying in a pan. no, that was not a jab at matt stone, even though he demonstrated the method in a video.

Since he used refined coconut oil, and refined coconut oil has a smoke point of 450 degrees (ghee is even higher at 485 degrees), doesn't appear that was a problem.

@Richard

Why did you stop the butter oil?

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Mavis said...

Michael,

I know you asked Stephan, but here's what I know (don't have the references, though):

* A small fraction of AGEs consumed are absorbed - I seem to remember about 10%. (Though I think this is open to dispute.)

* Healthy people's immune systems clear most of them out. (Again, to what extent is debatable.)

* People with diabetes have an impaired ability to clear them.

* People with diabetes also produce more of them - because they are a result of the carmelization process - heating sugars - which also happens internally. (Ick!)

Anecdotally, the AGE thing explained why certain things will tip me into a cold when I've been exposed, if I consume them - nuts, coffee, popcorn, and sugar. I've noticed this for a long time. I haven't tested whether raw, rather than roasted, nuts are any different (and the nuts could affect me through a different route - for instance, arginine, high in many nuts, encourages virus proliferation).

These items have in common having or producing a lot of AGEs - making sense of something I never understood, but have long experienced. When I am fighting a cold, my immune system is too overloaded to handle the AGEs and overburdening my system with them brings me down.

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Anonymous said...

Stephen, Daniel:

Further support of the fact that menaquinones reach tissue comes from the Rotterdam Study (pubmed 15514282) which states:

"in a recent trial in humans, phylloquinone was almost exclusively incorporated into the triacylglycerol-rich lipoprotein (TGRLP) fraction after intestinal absorption, whereas a substantial part of the menaquinones was recovered from the LDL fraction. The TGRLP fraction is mainly cleared by the liver, whereas LDL forms a transport system to extrahepatic tissues."

Reference: pubmed 11960685

The latter reference also stated that mk4 but not mk9 was found in the HDL fraction.

David said...

Didn't see the study that led to your conclusion about vegetable oil....

Richard Nikoley said...

@Michael

I stopped the butter oil because I had no idea how much K2 is actually in it.

Now that my results with the LEF product are so great I plan to just stick with it.

Andrew said...

Hi,

I agree with you that replacing 5% of calories as saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat would reduce the risk of having a heart attack by 10%.

Thanks,
Does Creatine Work

rps said...

I gather from this discussion that frying in unsaturated fat is a bad idea due to the trans fats created by the heat, but what about sat fat? Somebody mentioned AGEs - I know those are a problem when made inside your body, but are they a problem when you eat them? Can the gut destroy them before they do harm?

Unknown said...

Article in Slate dispelling LDL myths:

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Well, no. With this extrapolation, scientists and policymakers made a grave miscalculation: They assumed that all LDL cholesterol is the same and that all of it is bad. A spate of recent research is now overturning this fallacy and raising major questions about the wisdom of avoiding fat, especially considering that the food Americans have been replacing fat with—processed carbohydrates—could be far worse for heart health."

John Rosevear said...

@Richard, thank you for mentioning the LEF Super K. I've been taking the Thorne drops but the results have been up and down, and I've been meaning to hunt around for an alternative. The LEF looks like the right product.

Stanley said...

Hi Stephan,

Referring to your isoflavone question, Wikipedia cites this study as evidence of its benefits:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15377220

(I can only access the abstract, which at least sounds like isoflavones are worth further scrutiny.)

Plenty of elderly Asians eat tofu, which suggests that isoflavone consumption might be protective in some way.

They are also polyphenols, which suggests (but doesn't prove) benefits similar to other compounds in this class. (I've read that you're skeptical of polyphenols, and I am interested to read your explanation of this position if you post about it.)

So I'm not saying that I have a golden endorsement of isoflavones. My point is just that they appear to have epidemiological associations and chemical properties which suggest that they may be beneficial. If anyone has a "smoking gun" study one way or the other, I want to hear about it.

Meanwhile, I will confess that soy protein, whether in "milk" or soy burgers, always seems to cause short term memory problems for me within a day of consumption. Perhaps this is related to the manganese content. Still, it might be worth the benefits, if they exist.

Hi Daniel,

Really useful discussion about K1 vs. D vs. K2. Thanks for bringing this up. It benefits everyone to read about the details, whether your theory is correct or not.

Anonymous said...

I've recently read something about rosemary reducing the free radicals formed in grilling meat. Maybe this has something to do with the herbs rather than oil?

Robert Andrew Brown said...

Lignans are suggested to modulate hormones, so this class of plant products does affect function. A researcher looking into the potential benefits of flax in breast cancer said;

"firstly,flax oil does not contain any lignans as they do not dissolve in oil.
Lignans are present in every plant food that we eat only more
concentrated in flax and therefore commercially more viable to extract.
There is products available on the market that do deliver specific
quantities of flax lignans.

Lignans are phytoestrogens but they are very weak and only elicit a very weak estrogenic response. The current research suggests that the advantage of this is the body detects them as estrogens (which produce a strong estrogenic response) and therefore produces less harmful estrogens (homoeostatic process) though inhibition of the aromatase enzymes, more SHBG to bind estrogens (for elimination from the body) and increases the conversion of estrogens to the 2OHE metabolism pathway over the 16OHE (by increasing CYP1A1 enzymes). This whole process has a
cyclic effect with the end result being less bioavailable estrogen
(harmful), increased 2OHE (protective), and decreased 16OHE (harmful).

Only SHBG and bioavailable estrogen are being measured in the blood as (from above) it is believed that the lignans will decrease the circulating bioavailable estrogen partly by increasing the circulating
SHBG.

David said...

I'm sure you've seen it and choose to ignore it yet again, but yet another study suggestive of the benefits of vegetable oil in your favorite journal (when the results fit your preconceived notions):

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.28500v1

Adolfo David said...

David, your article about vegetable oils is not so favorable, only if you believe in cholesterol myth.

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Unknown said...

I have read the vitamins C and E feed cancer cells. Do you have any info on this? But I wonder if the people who are using the multivitamin are also the type A people who are using sunscreen and staying out of the sun trying to prevent cancer. And I wonder if the multivitamin use is really causing the increase of cancer or is it lower levels of vitamin d. This was just an idea that I had from observing some people I know who have gotten cancer who have been the type to do everything to stay healthy. I realize this is not a scientific theory at all--more of an observation of women I know who have gotten cancer. I am always talking to people about vitamin D.

3D Face Analysis said...

I'm too a bit vary of Thorne's vitamin K2 product. The mere possibility of that supplement of containing the cis-isomer of K2 scares the hell out of me.

We aren't designed to obtain the cis-isomer of vitamin K2. I'm afraid that my liver is going to fail if I take Thorne's K2 product.

Amy Alkon said...

To get vitamin K, after I eat my bacon in the morning, I fry a big clump of Italian parsley (a handful) in the bacon grease -- until it's shrunken and crunchy. Pretty good, and I prefer to eat dietary sources of vitamins. I'm no dietary expert, so feel free to chastise me if I could be taking a better approach.

Michael Green said...

Daniel: ~Actually, disregard that email to Thorne -- we've discovered that my email was about mk-7, so we have no answer about their mk-4 product.

What exactly are you talking about? Thorne doesn't even make a mk-7 product. Nor is it likely they would have been referring to a competitor's product, suggesting that their reassurances, as you previous recounted them in this thread, did in fact relate to the mk-4 product - putting an end, presumably to all this invidious speculation. If not, what exactly am I missing here??