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Eggs or Flakes? Not 30% vs. 25% protein! A brief reminder of the fact that the stuff you eat is still food.

I am not quite sure when or why this happened, but I know that more and more people are thinking in terms of "macros" instead of foods. What I do know, though, is that the recent publication of studies from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at the Louisiana State University System (Bayham. 2014) and an ostensibly unrelated study that was conducted by researchers from the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, Biosciences Institute in Cork and scientists working at the local university and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Patterson. 2014) confirms - once again (!) - how futile this ignorant approach to nutrition actually is.

Eggs vs. cereals - not the best example, but...

In that, I am well aware that the "battle" between an egg- and a cereal-based breakfast in the Patterson study is not exactly a good model of whats currently going on in the health and fitness community. With cereals being labeled as "the devil" (its always nice to be "anti", isnt it?), no one would after all consider having ...

• One-and-a-half cup of Special K® RTE cereal, 200 ml Silk® original soymilk, one slice of Natural Grain “Wheat n’ Fiber”® bread, 13 g of butter, and 10 g of sugar-free strawberry jam (CG)

... for breakfast. In view of the fact that the same can be said for the calorie- and mocronutrient matched "high quality protein" breakfast, i.e.

• Two scrambled eggs, 120 mL skim milk, two slices of Holsum® thin white  bread, 5 g of butter, and 18 g of Smuckers® strawberry jam

... I still believe that the consequences of "breaking the fast" (learn why I am calling breakfast thus in "Breakfast or Breaking the Fast" | read more) with eggs vs. Special K are still relevant to the previously introduced context. And if you know that the acetylated form of ghrelin and PYY are "satiety hormones", it does not take a rocket scientists to interpret the data in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Level(s) of "satiety hormones" after the different breakfasts (Bayham. 2014)

What is difficult to tell, though, is whether the increased satiety after the egg breakfast would actually lead to a reduced intake at the subsequent meal.

• On an individual basis, i.e. on just one of the two eating occasions, the higher levels of acetylated ghrelin and PYY did not suppress the 20 healthy overweight or obese subjects energy intake during the subsequent lunch
• For day 1 and day 7, together, on the other hand, the 64kcal the egg eaters consumed less than the cereal eaters did reach statistical significance.

If we throw overboard all the things we (believe) we know about the fallacy of calorie counting, this would translate into a ~448kcal difference for one week and a whopping difference of 23,360kcal for a year, which should shed ~3.3kg of body fat a year.
Whether or not similar concrete weight loss vs. gain effects can be achieved with different types of fat is nothing study #2 in todays science mash-up here at the SuppVersity could answer. What it can tell you though, is that protein and obviously carbohydrates, where even Mr. Average Joe thinks in terms of "low GI" = good and "high GI" = bad carbs, these days, is by no means the only food component, where unspecifically counting macros is not going to cut it (or get you cut, if thats what you want to achieve).

This is not just about fish oil

"Of course, the bad omega-6s" ... I know that this is what youre thinking right now, but lets be honest, isnt that a bit narrow-minded?  It sure is and still, the results Ellaine Petterson and her Irish and American colleagues present in their most recent paper demonstrate quite clearly that the ingestion of fish and flax seed oil has pretty unique effects that go beyond its ability to increase the tissue concentrations of DHA to levels way beyond what youd see in low fat or high fat diets with palm, olive or safflower oil powered high fat diets.
In addition it lead to an increase in the relative abundance of bifidobacteria, a gut tenant that has been linked to all sorts of beneficial health effects, but has recently been outshadowed by various strains of lactobacilli (0.95% vs. more than 2% in all other groups), which - and this is an important information - were the lowest in the rodents who were kept on diets with 45% of the energy from fish and flaxseed oils.

Whether or not, the negative effects of fish oil on the lactobacillacea count in the guts of the lab animals is also partly responsible for the more or less disappointing effects the fish and flax seed diet had on the body composition (Figure 2) of the wild-type C57BL/6J male mice (21 d old) in the study at hand is questionable.

Figure 2: Body composition analysis at the end of the study (Patterson. 2014)

Its not impossible, though. A brief glance at the insulin levels and leptin levels in Figure 3 reveals that neither of them looks anyway close to what someone whos religiously taking his fish oil caps on a daily basis would be expecting. In the end, it is thus not really that surprising that only the palm oil diet group ended up with an inferior lean-to-fat mass ratio of 1.17 (vs. 1.33 in the omega-3 group).

Figure 3: Changes (%) in relevant metabolic markers in response to the different diets (Patterson. 2014)

The results of the study at hand, i.e. the effects on body composition (Figure 2), as well as blood glucose and lipid metabolism (Figure 3) are thus clearly not in line with the ubiquitously placated message that "fish oil is good for you" - a message, the indoctrinated average supplement junkie will still discern from the abstract of the study:

"[...] Ingestion of the HF-flaxseed/fish oil diet for 16 weeks led to significantly increased tissue concentrations of EPA, docosapentaenoic acid and DHA compared with ingestion of all the other diets (P< 0·05); furthermore, the diet significantly increased the intestinal population of Bifidobacterium at the genus level compared with the LF-high-maize starch diet (P< 0·05). These data indicate that both the quantity and quality of fat have an impact on host physiology with further downstream alterations to the intestinal microbiota population, with a HF diet supplemented with flaxseed/fish oil positively shaping the host microbial ecosystem." (Petterson. 2014).

Neither the "loss" of lactobacilli, nor the - if anything - negative effects of the high omega-3 diet on the lean-to-fat-mass ratio and the amount of insulin thats floating around in the rodents blood are mentioned in said abstract.

Fat = Diabetes - A FAT Mistake?

If you go take a look at the actual study data, we are thus left with the question, whether the purported benefits of having high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids in our cells (see red info box a couple of paragraphs above) are real enough (or really enough - whatever you prefer) to discard the fact that the study at hand would actually suggest that olive and not fish + flaxseed oil should be your go-to source of dietary fat on a high fat diet.

Moreover, if we abandon any paradigmatic believes, we would even have to concede that - within the current context, i.e. a rodent study and a diet with protein contents of only 19.2% (low fat) and 23% (high fat), the low fat mix of 1.25% of palm, 1.25% olive, 1.25% safflower oil, 0.625% fish and 0.625% flaxseed oil the rodents in the starch and sucrose groups received is superior to any of the high fat variants.

You may say that this is "rodent shit" (and it is, because this is what the scientists analyzed to access the SFCA metabolism of the mice) and a mere coincidence, but wouldnt you agree that this oil mix looks a little too much like the mixture youd get on a low-to-moderate fat diet with olive oil as a staple for everything, where you add oils, palm and safflower oil from processed foods on your cheat days and fish oil / omega-3s from your once or twice a week serving of salmon... ?
References: 

• Bayham, Brooke E., et al. "A Randomized Trial to Manipulate the Quality Instead of Quantity of Dietary Proteins to Influence the Markers of Satiety." Journal of Diabetes and its Complications (2014).
• Filaire, Edith, et al. "Effect of 6 Weeks of n-3 fatty-acid supplementation on oxidative stress in Judo athletes." International journal of sport nutrition 20.6 (2010): 496.
• Danthiir, Vanessa, et al. "Cognitive Performance in Older Adults Is Inversely Associated with Fish Consumption but Not Erythrocyte Membrane n–3 Fatty Acids." The Journal of nutrition (2014): jn-113.
• Patterson, E., et al. "Impact of dietary fatty acids on metabolic activity and host intestinal microbiota composition in C57BL/6J mice." The British journal of nutrition (2014): 1-13.

Pancakes al cacao & your gut: Bad grains and good cacao?

There is an increasing amount of interesting scientific publications on the role of the gut microbiome in health and disease. Unfortunately, the evidence on what exactly influences the number and types of bacteria in our gut in a beneficial way and even what exactly a "beneficial way" actually is, is yet largely unknown.

In todays installment of the SuppVersity Short News, I am going to take a closer look at a selection of recent studies that may shed at least some light at the previously mentioned questions.

• Cacao as a gut microbiome modulator - The first study were going to look at deals with cacao. Cacao and its effect on the gut microbiome. In said study, 3-week-old Wistar and Brown Norway rats were fed, for 4 weeks, either a standard diet or the following three isoenergetic diets containing increasing proportions of cocoa flavonoids from different sources: one with 0·2 % polyphenols (from conventional defatted cocoa), and two others with 0·4 and 0·8 % polyphenols (from non-fermented cocoa, very rich in polyphenols).
  
  

  Only the regular theobromine containing cacao did also reduce the weight gain in the three-week study (Massot-Cladera. 2014).

  What the scientist found, when they analyzed the serum Ig concentrations, faecal IgA levels, microbiota composition and IgA-coating bacterial proportion at the end of the study and compared them to those at the beginning was a significant beneficial effect on the mucosal IgA levels and microbiota composition from all supplements. The 0.2 % cacao diet which contained a higher proportion of theobromine and fibre, however, had a more profound impact on the aforementioned parameters - in spite of the fact that there was less cacao in the diet. Obviously, the caffeine-like bitter alkaloid from cacao is contributes to the beneficial effects of cacao in a similar way as the polyphenols.
  
  As the body weight data in Figure 1 shows, the theobromine containing conventional cacao was also the only one that was able to reduce the diet induced weight gain in the rats. This could, but does not necessarily have to be related to the higher levels of Bacteroides, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus bacteria in the gut of the rodents that received the "cheap" conventional cacao.
• Acidic water triggers type I diabetes - probably by modulating the gut microbiome - No, I am not trying to advertise bicarbonate, here. I am just reporting the results of a recent study from the Medical University of South Carolina which found that a stain of mice thats particularly susceptible to type I diabetes developed insulitis and hyperglycemia rapidly, only when the mice were maintained on acidic pH water (AW).
  
  

  Suggested Article: "High Dietary Acid Load Doubles Risk of Type II Diabetes in Lean Individuals! Causative or Corollary? Plus: Are Grains, not Meats the Main Offenders in Our Diet?" | read more.

  The scientists also observed that this effect could be countered by fecal transplants and was obviously triggered by changes in the diversity of the gut flora that occurred, when the pH of drinking water was in the acidic range and were probably related to the proinflammatory cytokine response in the intestinal mucosa.
  
  As you as a SuppVersity reader know previous studies in humans have already shown that a "High Dietary Acid Load Doubles Risk of Type II Diabetes in Lean Individuals!" (read more) - Who knows, this could also be related to the effect on the gut microbiome!?
• Gluten and whole grains as modulators of the gut microbome - In two recent randomized cross-over trials, researchers from the University of Copenhagen determined the impact of dietary gluten or whole grains on the gut microbiome and host metabolic health.
  
  What the researchers found was what the recent backlash against gluten and "healthy" whole grains on the internet would suggest the already overweight "[p]articipants had slightly elevated fasting glucose levels and increased waist circumference" (Ibrügger. 2014).
  

  Table 1: Overview of the products used in the randomized controlled cross-over trials (Ibrügger. 2014)

  Whether thats related to the effects on the gut microbome is unfortunately something I cant tell you, yet. Why? Well, the currently available paper refers to a future publication that would outline the detailed results. All I can tell you now is that the study used the products listed in Table 1 and, more importantly, that it is its high statistical power, which, due to the large sample size and the crossover design, "allows detecting even small diffrences in the outcome variables" (Ibrügger. 2014).

References:

• Ibrügger, S., et al. "Two Randomized Cross-Over Trials Assessing the Impact of Dietary Gluten or Wholegrain on the Gut Microbiome and Host Metabolic Health." J Clin Trials 4.178 (2014): 2167-0870.
• Massot-Cladera, Malen, et al. "Impact of cocoa polyphenol extracts on the immune system and microbiota in two strains of young rats." British Journal of Nutrition 112.12 (2014): 1944-1954.
• Sofi, M. Hanief, et al. "pH of drinking water influences the composition of gut microbiome and type 1 diabetes incidence." Diabetes 63.2 (2014): 632-644.