Naked Medicine

I had no idea that September National Cholesterol Education Month, but it is, and I saw a press release about nonprofit nutrition education organization Weston A. Price Foundation on getting consumers to recognize the importance of cholesterol.

The press release made sense to me, but it seriously will meet lots of antagonism because of the prevalent trend of obese children in the USA these days. I bet these kids have ridiculously high cholesterol levels – and certainly not from eating too much “nutrient dense” foods. So while I as a scientist and also as mother of a toddler who needs lots of “good fats” can sympathize, I don’t think the argument here can stand up to even one voice saying “… then what about all this concern with childhood obesity?”

I sent my query off to the publicist, who got in touch with the Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation to respond to my challenge above. Sally’s response is here.

I followed the links given as references, including the one from the Foundation itself:
Dietary Recommendations for Children –A Recipe for Future Heart Disease?

“Just Say No!”
When it comes to feeding their children, parents should “just say no!” to the government’s dietary guidelines. Children need a diet rich in traditional fats in order to achieve optimum growth and development, as well as protection from heart disease later in life.

I wished it had addressed additionally the issue of fast foods – because this is the reality of “kids’ diets” these days… if saturated fat plays a role in children’s growth, at what point do parents draw the line in where that source of saturated fat comes from? (this question was answered by another link that Sally’s response included, but I wished the above information would address it immediately rather than me having to look at another (non-related to the foundation) link.

I also found the Swedish study findings interesting, mostly because I’ve been drinking more whole milk (full fat) since that’s what I give to my child, who is almost 2 at this writing. Our pediatrician had told us that at this point, we should cut back milk for him because it doesn’t really do much for him other than the calcium and vitamin D that he can be easily getting from other sources.

I don’t know how much this would convince you as a consumer about the benefits of cholesterol in children. On an objectivity scale, I would have preferred that the links I received were original source citations (i.e. links to the original scientific studies published – such as from PubMed) rather than what appears to be commercial pages or user-contributed pages.

In experiments conducted by the US Dept of Agriculture, volunteers were asked to ingest large quantities of fruits that have been identified as having high levels of antioxidants, and their blood were subsequently tested for antioxidant capacity. One important note is the large amount of fruit required per ingestion – for example – volunteers in the Kiwi fruit group must eat 4 kiwis. The cherry group? 45 cherries. This should give consumers an idea of the potential “starting” dose needed to gain an antioxidant benefit – and this is PER DOSE. (imagine eating 45 * 3 cherries a day – if you want to get the benefit of cherries’ antioxidant properties with every meal.)

This does make for an attractive commercial market to give consumers “concentrated” forms of antioxidants – except most of companies providing these types of nutrition products are not regulated by the FDA – that branch of the government regulating food and drugs to make sure that you as a consumer aren’t being ripped off or worse – physically harmed by ingesting unsafe products. Unfortunately, history has shown that the FDA only steps in when enough people get sick or if a few people begin to die from the so-called “nutraceutical” – just look at the ephedrine cases in the multi-billion dollar weight-loss industry.

Currently there is no agreed projection of antioxidant intake because this can fluctuate based on individual energy intake, caloric consumption, and especially environmental or confounding health related factors like exposure to cigarette smoke or disease (increasing body’s oxidation burden). There are researchers who are trying to determine what these individual needs may be, but for the most part, consumers have been inundated by commercial entities eager to profit on a perceived benefit of “high antioxidant intake”. For example, via Quackwatch:
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/acai.html

The verdict? If you like to drink exotic berries for the taste, there’s no problem with indulging yourself but if you’re looking for some of these commercial products for bona fide healthcare benefits, require the claims to be backed up by randomized, double-blind placebo controlled clinical trials, with full disclosure of side effect profiles experienced by the human subjects.

(…and if there is really some miracle plant bearing amazing therapeutic properties, the pharma companies would outrun anyone to isolate the agents, synthesize/mass produce, and submit it through the proper legal govt channels for commercialization! that was how we got cancer drugs from the pacific yew tree.)