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More silly shenanigans against saturated fat

October 15, 2009 in Fertility & Pregnancy, Food & Nutrition, Medical Industrial Complex | Leave a comment

t-shirt with writingI want to get some Juno-inspired T-shirts printed up for researchers that say “What other kind of shenanigans can I get into?” Seriously. I cannot believe the stuff that gets published in medical journals these days. I don’t know which is the scarier possibility: that the researchers are really so poorly trained that they consistently violate the most basic principles of medical research (that you probably learned in your 8th grade science class), or that they are so dishonest that they intentionally and blatantly lie about their results.

A prime example of this is an article that came across my newsfeed a couple of days ago. The headline read “High fat diet during pregnancy leads to severe liver disease“. I’m always very, very suspicious when I see articles like this because of my previous experience evaluating such studies. All too often researchers make basic (and frankly, inexcusable) mistakes like lumping all fat types together (i.e. combining saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat, although the two fatty acids have completely different effects on human physiology).

I didn’t have time to review the study and write about it, so I emailed Chris Masterjohn, a researcher pursuing a PhD in Nutritional Sciences with a concentration in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition at the University of Connecticut. Chris has a blog called The Daily Lipid where he writes about the benefits of saturated fat and the dangers of polyunsaturated fat. Turns out Chris had seen the article on ScienceDaily too and was planning to write a critique. Here’s what he wrote. I encourage you to check out his blog, and also his website, both of which have some great information about the health benefits of cholesterol and saturated fat.

According to a recent article on ScienceDaily, scientists have discovered that mothers who eat too much saturated fat during pregnancy will give their future child severe fatty liver disease once he or she becomes an adult.

The use of words in this article like “mother,” “child,” and “adulthood” suggests that the researchers performed some type of scientific research in humans. In fact, ScienceDaily goes so far as to claim that the researchers were studying the consumption of high-fat diets during “a woman’s pregnancy.”

Nowhere in the article do the authors inform the reader that the research was performed in mice. This is the first time I have ever read of a mouse referred to as a “woman.”

The most egregious distortion of the study, however, comes from one of the researchers himself:

Professor Christopher Byrne, with colleagues Dr Felino Cagampang and Dr Kim Bruce, of the University’s School of Medicine and researchers at King’s College London, conducted the study, funded by the BBSRC. Prof Byrne explained: “This research shows that too much saturated fat in a mother’s diet can affect the developing liver of a fetus, making it more susceptible to developing fatty liver disease later in life. An unhealthy saturated fat-enriched diet in the child and young adult compounds the problem further causing a severe form of the fatty liver disease later in adult life.”
Really, “saturated fat” causes liver disease? This stands in surprising contrast to other rodent studies showing that saturated fat prevents liver disease:

  • A 1995 paper in the journal Gastroenterology lauded “dietary saturated fatty acids” as “a novel treatment for alcoholic liver disease” after showing that substitution of saturated palm oil for polyunsaturated fish oil reduced alcohol-induced liver damage.
  • A more recent paper published in the Journal of Nutrition 2004 showed that saturated fat from MCT oil (medium-chain fats similar to those in coconut oil) and beef tallow reduced alcohol-induced liver damage when substituted for polyunsaturated corn oil. In fact, they replaced 20 percent, 45 percent, or two-thirds of the corn oil with saturated fat and found that the more saturated fat they used, the greater the protective effect.
  • An even more recent paper published in the journal Hepatology in 2005 found that rats fed corn oil readily developed liver damage when fed over a quarter of their calories as alcohol, but rats fed saturated cocoa butter were virtually immune to liver damage when consuming the same amount of alcohol.
  • A 2007 study published in the journal Nutrition and Metabolism found that although corn oil-based high-fat diets can induce non-alocholic fatty liver disease in rodents, long-term feeding of high-fat diets based on coconut oil or butter cannot.

So how is it that “saturated fat” wound up causing liver disease in the offspring of these mice?

If we look at “supplementary table 1,” we find that the “saturated fat” used in this study was mostly monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat. In fact, 22 percent of the fat on the low-fat diet was saturated, while only 15 percent of the fat on the high-fat diet was saturated!

That means that less than seven percent of the calories from the “unhealthy saturated-fat-enriched diet” actually came from saturated fat.

The “unhealthy saturated fat-enriched diet” actually contained 44 percent of its fat as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and almost twenty percent of its total calories as PUFA. This is in great excess of the PUFA consumption seen even in the Standard American Diet (SAD), loaded in processed PUFA-rich vegetable oils.

Apparently “saturated fat” consumed during a “woman’s pregnancy” leads to liver disease once the “child” reaches “adulthood” only when the “saturated fat” is the highly polyunsaturated kind one would find in corn oil and the “woman” is a light, fluffy critter no one would ever mistake for a human.

What can we learn from this study? Perhaps that we can never trust the news account of a research study. Unfortunately we cannot even trust the quotes in those news account taken from the researchers themselves.

Research alert: statins dangerous for pregnant women!

December 9, 2008 in Babies & Kids, Fertility & Pregnancy, Heart Disease | 4 comments

pregnant womanBack in July I posted an article called Statins For Pregnant Women and Kids? criticizing a research study that actually recommended statins for pregnant women.

Well, it appears that even mainstream scientists are beginning to acknowledge the very real risks that statins present for pregnant mothers and fetuses.

Current clinical guidelines already recommend that women who are pregnant should stop taking statins but the advice is based on the knowledge that cholesterol is essential for normal fetal development.

But new research from The University of Manchester has shown that even water-soluble or ‘hydrophilic’ statins, such as pravastatin, can affect placental development leading to worse pregnancy outcomes.

According to Dr. Melissa Westwood, a Senior Lecturer in Endocrinology based at the Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre at St. Mary’s Hospital, Manchester:

“Our study examined the effects that both lipophilic and hydrophilic statins had on a key biological system that is crucial for maintaining the normal function of the placenta, which acts as the nutrient-waste exchange barrier between mother and fetus.”

Fat-soluble statins like cerivastatin were already known to adversely affect the placenta, resulting in reducing growth. But the researchers also found that pravastatin – the water-soluble statin thought to be potentially compatible for use in pregnancy – had the same detrimental effect.

“These results clearly show that the effect of statins on the placenta is not dependent on their lipophilicity as had previously been suggested,” said Dr Westwood, whose findings are published in the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

“While hydrophilic statins have not been reported to increase the incidence of fetal malformations, our research suggests that they will have a detrimental effect on placental growth, which is likely to result in poor pregnancy outcome.

“Healthcare professionals should continue to advise women to avoid the use of any type of statin once they plan to start a family or when a pregnancy is suspected or confirmed.”

Soy foods associated with lower sperm counts

July 29, 2008 in Fertility & Pregnancy, Food & Nutrition | 4 comments

tofu mealA study recently published in Human Reproduction demonstrated that intake of soy foods significantly reduces sperm counts in men.

The study is especially significant because it is the largest study in humans to examine the relationship between semen quality and phytoestrogens (plant compounds that can mimic the physiological effects of the endogenous hormone, estrogen).

Dr. Jorge Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health and his colleagues found that men who ate the most soy food had 41 million sperm per milliliter less than men who did not consume soy products. The normal sperm concentrations for men ranges between 80 and 120 million/ml.

The association between soy food intake and sperm concentrations was even stronger in men who were overweight or obese, and 72% of study participants were. They also found the relationship between soy foods and sperm concentration was strongest in men with “normal or high” sperm counts.

Animal studies have linked the high consumption of isoflavones with infertility, but until now there has been little evidence of this effect in humans. Isoflavones are plant compounds with estrogen like effects and are found mainly in soybeans and soy-derived products.

What is particularly revealing is that the men in the highest intake group (who had the largest sperm count reduction) had a mean soy food intake of only half a serving per day. This is equivalent to having one cup of soy milk or one serving of tofu, tempeh or soy burgers every other day!

I don’t know about you, but I happen to know quite a few people who consume a lot more soy than than that on a regular basis. Sadly, many of them are children whose parents innocently believe that soy products are “healthy”. This is not their fault, of course; this erroneous and dangerous message has been aggressively promoted in the mainstream media for decades.

If the effect of such moderate servings of soy on adult males is so significant, what effect might soy foods have on developing boys who have not yet reached sexual maturity?

“Early puberty (caused by consuming soy products) may increase a boy’s chances of developing testicular cancer later in life, because it means longer exposure to sex hormones,” said University of North Carolina researcher Marcia Herman-Giddens. Congenital abnormalities of male genital tracts are also increasing. Recent studies found a higher incidence of birth defects in male offspring of vegetarian, soy-consuming mothers.

What about babies? Preliminary studies indicate that children given soy formula go through puberty much earlier than children who were not fed soy products. A 1994 study done in New Zealand revealed that, depending on age, potency of the product, and feeding methods, infants on soy formula might be consuming the equivalent of up to 10 contraceptive pills a day. By exposing your baby to such large amounts of hormonal-like substance, you are risking permanent endocrine system damage (pituitary gland, pineal gland, hypothalamus, thyroid, thymus gland, pancreas, ovary, testis, adrenal glands).

Dr Chavarro speculates that the increased estrogenic activity caused by consumption of soy foods may have an adverse effect on the production of sperm by interfering with other hormonal signals. This effect could be strengthened further in overweight and obese men because men with high levels of body fat produce more oestrogen than slimmer men, leading to high overall levels of oestrogen in the body and reproductive organs.

If you’re wondering how soy continues to be so widely accepted and aggressively promoted as a “health food” in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I recommend reading The Whole Soy Story by Kaayla Daniel, PhD, CCN. You can read introduction to this eye-opening book here.

The history of soy products and their designation as a “health food” is particularly revealing, as Daniel points out:

Early soy food promotion in America aimed at two specific markets—vegetarians and the poor—soy milk and soy cereals for Seventh Day Adventists, Bac-O-Bits and meat extenders for the budget conscious. But there was a lot of soy to sell and these markets were limited. There was so much to sell because the market for processed foods had experienced explosive growth since the 1950s—and most processed foods contain soy oil. The industry found itself saddled with a waste problem, the leftover sludge from soy-oil manufacture which it could either dump or promote. The exigencies of corporate life naturally chose profit-seeking over disposal and that meant expanding the market, finding more ways to use soy ingredients in processing and convincing more people to pay money for soy-based imitation foods.

“The quickest way to gain product acceptability in the less affluent society,” said a soy-industry spokesperson back in 1975, “. . . is to have the product consumed on its own merit in a more affluent society.” Thus began the campaign to sell soy products to the upscale consumer, not as a cheap poverty food, but as a miracle substance that would prevent heart disease and cancer, whisk away hot flashes, build strong bones and keep us forever young. Soy funds for research enlisted the voices of university professors who haplessly demonized the competition—meat, milk, cheese, butter and eggs.

Soy is one of the “Big Four” cash crops in the U.S. and the funds for its marketing are enormous:

“Farmers pay a fee for every bushel of soybeans they sell and a portion of every dollar spent on Twinkies, TV dinners and the thousands of other processed foods that contain soy in one form or another, ultimately go towards the promotion of the most highly processed foods of all—imitation meat, milk, cream, cheese, yogurt, ice cream, candy bars and smoothies made from soy.

All soybean producers pay a mandatory assessment of one-half to one percent of the net market price of soybeans. The total—something like eighty million dollars annually—supports United Soybean’s program to “strengthen the position of soybeans in the market place and maintain and expand domestic and foreign markets for uses for soybeans and soybean products.”

And of course, these advertising dollars are largely responsible for creating the erroneous notion that highly processed soy foods are “healthy”:

“A survey of March 2004 health magazines reveals five-and-one-half pages of ads for products containing soy in Alternative Medicine (two of which promote soy as a solution to the problems of menopause); five-and-one-half pages in Vegetarian Times; and five pages in Yoga Journal. The ads that keep today’s health-oriented publications afloat aim at mainstream, not alternative, culture: soy milk ads feature faces of smiling children; high-protein bars create expressions of ecstacy on upside-down models; and a hostess who serves chocolate-covered soy nuts is the toast of her party.”

However, in spite of advertising and popular belief, processed soy products are not health foods. Because of their estrogenic effects, they act more like drugs in the body than foods. And as we all know, drugs can be extremely dangerous when taken irresponsibly and without indication. Millions of men, women and children around the world are “drugging” themselves daily with soy products, and the tragic irony is that this is done in the name of “health”.

Keep in mind that tofu, tempeh and soy milk are not the only sources of soy. In fact, almost all processed food has soy in it, in the form of soy oil, soy lecithin, soy flour or soy protein. Everything from your favorite corn chips to hamburger buns to mayonnaise is likely to contain a substantial amount of soy.

The most sensible approach, then, is to eliminate processed soy products from your diet and dramatically reduce or eliminate your consumption of processed food (of course there are many other reasons to do this – soy is just one).

A small amount of miso or natto or other fermented soy product as a condiment every now and then is probably not harmful. But those are not the soy products Americans tend to eat.

For more information about the dangers of soy products, please see my recent article called The Soy Ploy.

Nourishing a growing baby

April 29, 2008 in Fertility & Pregnancy, Food & Nutrition | Leave a comment

pregnant woman

THS reader Roselle sent in this question:

Is vitamin/mineral supplementation truly beneficial before & during pregnancy for women with a healthy diet?

The first thing I’d like to emphasize is the importance of this question. Adequate maternal nutrition prior to conception and during pregnancy can protect the baby from diabetes, stroke, heart disease, kidney disease and memory loss later in life.

Intuitively, most mothers know that what they eat will have a significant impact on the developing fetus. And traditional cultures have been aware of this for millennia. Special preconception and pregnancy diets have always emphasized foods that are particularly rich in certain nutrients known to promote healthy growth and development. In some cases, these groups provided special nutrients for fathers preparing to conceive as well.

Traditional cultures with access to the sea used fish eggs. Those that consumed dairy products used high-quality milk from the spring and fall when grass was green and rapidly growing. African groups whose water was low in iodine used the ashes of certain plant foods to supply this important element. These foods were always added to a foundational diet rich in liver and other organ meats, bones and skin, fats, seafood and whatever local plant foods were available.

In the Winter of 2007, Chris Masterjohn published a fantastic article called “Vitamins for Fetal Development: Conception to Birth” in the Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts Journal. Masterjohn remarks:

“Although modern science still has much research to accomplish in order to fully elucidate the value of traditional wisdom, it has already confirmed the fact that many of the nutritional factors that we now recognize as the most important to embryonic and fetal development are the same ones emphasized in traditional pregnancy and preconception diets.” (p.26)

What are these nutrients that both modern science and traditional wisdom recognize as essential? Briefly, they include:

  • Vitamin E: originally named “Fertility Factor X” in 1922 because rats could not reproduce without it. Recent research indicates it is almost certainly required for human reproduction.
  • Vitamin A: vitamin A is necessary for the differentiation and patterning of all the cells, tissues, and organs within the developing body. It is especially important for the development of the communication systems between the sense organs and the brain. Vitamin A deficiency during pregnancy has been shown to produce spontaneous abortion in several different species of animals.
  • Vitamin D: Vitamin D plays a role in lung development, and protects the newborn from tetany, convulsions and heart failure. Vitamin D probably plays a much larger role in fetal development than currently understood due to its interaction with vitamin A.
  • Vitamin K: relatively little is known about vitamin K’s role in embryonic and fetal development compared to vitamins A & D. However, cases of birth defects that occurred with mothers taking Wafarin (which depletes the body of vitamin K) suggest that vitamin K plays an essential role in the development of proper facial proportions and the fundamental development of the nervous system.
  • DHA: DHA may be necessary for the formation of neurons and for the synthesis of the important brain lipid phosphatidylserine. It is also the precursor to an important compound that protects the neurons from oxidative stress. The fetus hoards DHA from the mother and incorporates it into its brain at ten times the rate at which it can synthesize it.
  • Biotin: biotin is a B vitamin that has also been called “vitamin H”. Researchers have recently discovered that marginal biotin deficiency during pregnancy is extremely common. Biotin deficiency has been shown to cause birth defects in rats. Whether this extends to humans is currently unknown, but there is little reason not to increase biotin intake during pregnancy as a precaution.
  • Folate: the importance of folate during pregnancy is widely known. It is necessary for the production of new DNA, and new DNA is needed for new cells. Adequate folate intake prevents spinal cord and brain defects and increases birth weight. It may also prevent spontaneous abortion, mental retardation and deformities of the mouth, face and heart.
  • Choline: a low intake of choline during pregnancy is associated with a four-fold increased risk of spinal cord and brain defects. Choline plays a direct role in the development of the brain; in particular, for the formation of neurons and synapses.
  • Glycine: the amino acid glycine is “conditionally essential” during pregnancy. This means that while we can normally make enough of it ourselves to meet our needs, during pregnancy women must obtain it from the diet. It is required for protein synthesis in the fetus, and is almost certainly a limiting factor for fetal growth.

Based on the established role of the nutrients listed above, Masterjohn makes the following recommendations:

Nutritional recommendations for preconception and pregnancy

  • Take a daily dose of high-vitamin cod liver oil (available online from Radiant Life and Green Pasture) to obtain 20,000 IU of vitamin A and 2,000 IU of vitamin D, and 2 grams of omega-3 fatty acids (roughly 1 3/4 teaspoons per day).
  • Grass-fed animal fats supply vitamins E and K2; palm oil, fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and freshly ground grains are also sources of vitamin E; fermented foods (cheese, yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, etc.) are also good sources of vitamin K.
  • Biotin can be obtained from liver and egg yolks. Cooked egg whites can be obtained in moderation, and raw egg yolks (from organic, pastured chickens of course) can be added to smoothies and cream to boost biotin status.
  • Folate can be obtained from liver, legumes, beets and greens. Choline can be obtained from grass-fed dairy, egg yolks, liver, meat, cruciferous vegetables, nuts and legumes.
  • Muscle meats and eggs should be used along with skin, bones and gelatin-rich broths to obtain glycine.

The answer to Roselle’s original question largely depends upon what is meant by “a healthy diet”. The low-fat, nutrient-depleted diet that is currently considered to be “healthy” by the medical establishment is likely to be deficient in several key nutrients, particularly the fat-soluble vitamins A, D & K and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA. However, even a nutrient-dense, whole foods diet may need to be supplemented with additional foods or additional servings of foods already in the diet.

Most of these can and should be obtained from local and organic foods. The exception is cod liver oil, which one of nature’s highest sources of vitamins A & D and a rich source of DHA as well. Not all cod liver oil is created alike, however. Most commercial brands contain synthetic vitamin A & D, which are known to be toxic at high doses. Unfortunately, this means you will have to order high-vitamin cod liver oil from a reputable company online. The brands I recommend are Green Pasture High-Vitamin Fermented Cod Liver Oil or High-Vitamin Cod Liver Oil, and Radiant Life Cod Liver Oil.

Finally, I highly recommend obtaining the Winter 2007 “Wise Traditions” journal and reading the full article by Chris Masterjohn. It will eventually be available on the Weston A. Price Foundation website, but it can take up to one year from the original publication time for an article to be posted to the website.

Whole fat milk: benefits for moms & kids

April 11, 2008 in Babies & Kids, Fertility & Pregnancy, Food & Nutrition | 7 comments

(Excerpted from the Weston A. Price foundation Journal: Caustic Commentary – Summer 2007)

Full-fat milk has pretty much disappeared from the public schools—not just in the US, but also in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. In most schools, children have a choice of watery reduced-fat milk or sugar-laden chocolate milk, based on the misconception that the butterfat in whole milk will cause heart disease later in life. So it’s a bit embarrassing when a study comes along showing that whole-fat milk products may help women conceive. Over a period of eight years, Jorge E Chavarro of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston assessed the diets of 18,555 married women without a history of infertility who attempted to get pregnant or became pregnant. During the study, 2165 women were examined medically for infertility and 438 were found to be infertile due to lack of ovulation. The researchers found that women who ate two or more servings of lowfat dairy foods per day, particularly skim milk and yogurt, increased their risk of ovulation-related infertility by more than 85 percent compared with women who ate less than one serving of lowfat dairy food per week (Human Reproduction, online February 28, 2007). Chavarro advises women wanting to conceive to consume high-fat dairy foods like whole milk and ice cream, “while at the same time maintaining their normal calorie intake and limiting their overall intake of saturated fats in order to maintain good general health.” Once a woman becomes pregnant, says Chavarro, “she should probably switch back to lowfat dairy foods.” No one has looked at the effect on fertility of lowfat dairy for the developing fetus and for growing school children. Odds are that infertility due to life-long fat starvation will not be so easily reversed by a temporary return to high-fat dairy foods.

THS COMMENTARY:

This is a perfect example of how mainstream dogma gets in the way of clear thinking. The study unambiguously showed the superiority of whole fat milk products for helping a woman to become pregnant. Yet the author of the study advises women to “switch back to low fat dairy foods” once she becomes pregnant! So, according to this twisted logic, the nutrients in whole fat milk that helped the woman to conceive in the first place will somehow suddenly be harmful to her and her fetus during pregnancy? Isn’t it far more reasonable to assume that those same nutrients that increased the women’s fertility will also support the growth and development of the fetus? In fact, there is plenty of research that supports this common-sense view (stay tuned for a future post on this.)

And Fatter?

Will lowfat milk served in schools not only make our children infertile, but also fatter? That’s the conclusion from a 2006 Swedish study which looked at 230 families in Goteborg, Sweden. Almost all of the children were breastfed until five months and 85 percent had parents who were university educated. Seventeen percent were classified as overweight, and a higher body mass index (BMI) was associated with a lower fat intake—and those on lower fat diets consumed more sugar. A lower fat intake was also associated with high insulin resistance (www.ub.gu.se/sok/dissdatabas/detaljvy.xml?id=6979).

Whole Fat Milk, Lower Weight Gain

In yet another defeat for the lowfat, you-must-suffer-to-lose-weight school of thought, a Swedish study has found that women who regularly consume at least one serving of full-fat dairy every day gained about 30 percent less weight than women who didn’t. The researchers, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, looked at the intake of whole, sour, medium- and lowfat milk, as well as cheese and butter for 19,352 Swedish women aged 40-55 years at the start of the study. The researchers report that a regular and constant intake of whole milk, sour milk and cheese was significantly and inversely associated with weight gain (that is, those consuming whole-milk products did not gain weight), while the other intake groups were not. A constant intake of at least one daily serving of whole and sour milk was associated with 15 percent less weight gain, while cheese was associated with 30 percent less weight gain (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2007;84(6):1481-1488). This wonderful scientific news has not inspired WebMD to remove their guidelines to eating “fabulous foreign foods.” The trick, they say, is to avoid dishes made with coconut milk in Thai restaurants; ghee, beef and lamb in Indian restaurants; and cream soups, cream sauces, béarnaise, creamy dressings, pâté, fatty meats, duck and sausages in French restaurants (onhealth.webmd.com). In other words, enjoy your meal out but not too much.

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