Nutritional Yeast contains variable amounts of B vitamins

Nutritional yeast is tasty and nutritious!  How nutritious is it?  Well, that depends on whether it is fortified or not, and how much information you find on the nutrition label.  

After looking at the labels of about a dozen brands, I found that nutritional yeast is consistently a good source of B2, B3, and B5, and with fortification is a great source of all major B vitamins except probably B7.

Fortified nutritional yeast contains extra B vitamins and sometimes iron. These extra nutrients are added during the processing of the product to make it more nutritional.  The vitamin content of fortified nutritional yeast depends on how much it is fortified.

For example, here are two popular brands, Braggs and Bob's Red Mill:

% Daily Value (DV) per 2 tablespoon serving. Data reported from nutritional labels.

Both brands add supplement B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, and B12, but they add different amounts.  In general, both seem to try to add more than 200% and less than 500% of the daily value.  Bragg adds more of most B vitamins, but Bob's Red Mill adds more Folate (B9).  Neither brand reports any B5 or B7, but that doesn't mean they don't have any.  According to my analysis of unfortified nutritional yeast, they probably just didn't bother to measure and/or report it.

Non Fortified or Unfortified Nutritional Yeast contains only the vitamins and minerals found in the yeast cells and has no added vitamins and minerals.  It contains variable amounts of B vitamins due to differences in yeast strain, growth substrate, growing conditions, and deactivation temperature.  

While some brands (like Anthony's) don't report any nutritional values, I was able to find 7 brands on Amazon that reported nutritional testing results for their products:

% Daily Value (DV) per 2 tablespoon serving, data reported from nutritional labels.

Note that unfortified nutritional yeast does not contain B12.  For other B vitamins, the percent daily values are generally less than 100% and usually less than 50% per 2 Tablespoon serving.  

Another way to visualize this information is by Brand:

% Daily Value (DV) per 2 tablespoon serving, data reported from nutritional labels.

Microingredients and Naturebell are the most consistent.  Sari reports the least number of vitamins.  Food Alive reports some very high levels but also some very low levels.  Revly is also missing several vitamins.  They also reported more than 400% B2 but I removed this outlier; it may have been due to testing fortified nutritional yeast by mistake.

The differences between brands are larger than the similarities.  Some brands reported zero or almost zero B1, B2, B6, and B7.  Conversely, other brands reported over 100% DVs of B1, B2, B5, and B6.  Only B3 and B5 were consistently reported with decent amounts across all brands.  

If we assume unreported values are not zero but were just not measured and look only at the vitamins reported by each brand, the mean vitamin content of unfortified nutritional yeast looks pretty good.  However, the standard deviations are as large as the reported values for 4 of the 7 B vitamins.  While some brands are good sources of B1 and B6, some were quite low for these nutrients.  It seems that unfortified nutritional yeast can only be relied on to supply more than 20% daily value per serving for B2, B3, and B5:

Note that all of these unfortified nutritional yeast brands contain B5, so it seems likely that fortified nutritional yeast brands also contain this important nutrient and simply fail to test and/or report it.  However, the percent daily value for B5 is much less than that of other B vitamins in fortified nutritional yeast.  

Four of the seven unfortified brands reported B7, so it is likely that the other unfortified and fortified brands also contain this nutrient, but fail to test and/or report it.  However, even the brands that report B7 report such a small and variable amount, nutritional yeast probably cannot be relied on as a good source of this important vitamin.

** Update **

I reached out to Sari Food to ask if their package listed nutritional values for all B vitamins, or if some were omitted.  They confirmed that some were omitted and provided me with a new nutritional analysis that differed significantly from the nutrition reported on the package.  

The new analysis reported 7 B vitamins, compared to the package that only lists 3.  Their analysis showed significant amounts of B1 and B7 that were not listed on the package.  Interestingly, the new analysis also differed from the package for the 3 listed on the package.  I think this shows the variability between different batches of the same product. 

% DV of B vitamins for Sari Nutritional Yeast

Revised Figure showing % DV by brand:

These results increased the average % DV of the 7 brands in my sample for B1 and B7, and decreased the % DV for B6.  This now shows that unfortified nutritional yeast are generally good sources of B1, B2, B3, B5 and B7.  B6 appears to be less common, and I'm not confident that the B9 data is accurate - Sari's new analysis still didn't report any Folate.  Unfortified nutritional yeast is not a good source of B12.

Updated with new analysis from Sari Foods.

The Problem with Nutrigenomics

"Personalized nutritional counseling is a burgeoning field. Several companies, including Vitagene, Nutrigenomix and DNAFit, are already offering individualized dietary counseling.  Their efforts are based mostly on genetic testing, but scientists have only just begun to explore the links between DNA and good nutrition. “I think companies offering personalized dietary advice are probably running ahead of the evidence,” said John Mathers, director of the Human Nutrition Research Center at Newcastle University in Britain." [NYTimes Blog]

Introduction

Science skeptics have recently reviewed these services, and found plenty of quackery. [Science Based Medicine] [Skeptical Raptor]

However, there is some research to back up the idea that genetic testing can provide insights into metabolic disorders.  There may be as many as 200 SNPs for which there are proven metabolic effects, and only a subset of these alter nutrient requirements in a significant portion of the population [e.g., the rs1801133 MTHFR SNP and folate requirement in 15–30% of the population (Solis et al., 2008) and the rs12325817 PEMT SNP and choline requirement in 20–45% of the population (da Costa et al., 2006)].

What do genetic testing services measure?

The human genome consists of about 3 billion nuceleotide bases, each of which is either A,C, T, or G.  A reference genome based on the similarities of all genotyped humans has been assembled, along with a corresponding reference database of all of the point "mutations" where individuals differ from that baseline.  So far, scientists have documented about 150 million of these single nucleotide polymorphisms, called SNPs.  The average person doesn't have all of these differences, however; most people have about 3 millions SNPs that differentiate them from the reference human genome.   Since 3 million is about 0.1% of the 3 billion base pairs, most humans differ from each other by about 0.1% of our DNA. Ancestry genomic testing services like 23andme test for a few hundred thousand SNPs for $100-$200.  For $1000-10,000 a complete genomic sequence can be obtained.  (there are about 3 billion bases total.  

Examples: MTHFR – metabolic pathways and nutrigenomics

In humans, SNPs in the gene MTHFD1 increase the demand for betaine as a methyl-donor, thereby increasing the dietary requirement for choline. Another SNP in the gene PEMT prevents the activation of this gene by estrogen, thereby decreasing endogenous production of phosphatidylcholine (a source of choline) in the liver and increasing the dietary requirement for choline. [Choline: Critical Role During Fetal Development and Dietary Requirements in Adults. Ziesel]

But note that it is not so simple.  There are several forms of the MTHFD1 gene, for example MTHFD1L and MTHFD2. If MTHFD1 is commonly mutated, it may be a pseudogene.

Complexities interpreting SNPs

No simple test can unravel the intricacies of the human genome, and consumers should be suspicious of anyone claiming to be able to interpret measurements of tens of thousands of genes, with millions of genetic variations, some of which have effects on hundreds or thousands of the small molecules of metabolism (and perhaps on thousands of peptides or proteins involved in metabolism).

[A grand challenge for nutrigenomics.  Steven Zeisel. 2010.]

Mistakes in genomics data

Note that 23andme data, like any large genome scan, can have mistakes in it.  For example, the Enlis genomics blog found more than 500 likely mistakes in a sample of 23andme raw data!  (Enlis)

Furthermore, many important nutritional SNPs are not testing by 23andme.

Solution: Metabolic Testing
There is a genetic test for MTHFR variations. But there’s also a cheaper and more accurate way to test for whetherMTHFR variations are causing disease. We simply check the levels of homocysteine in the blood...In other words, the homocysteine levels determine our actions, not the MTHFR test results.[Cleveland Clinic]

Food4me study tested Nutrigenomics...and found no benefits

Food4me is a large online study designed to test whether personalized nutrition advice based on analysis of phenotypes (waist cicrumference, blood markers: glucose, cholesterol, carotenes, n-3 index ) or genotypes (SNPs in genes such as MTHFR, FTO, TCF7L2, APOE E4, FADS1 ) could perform better than standard nutritional advice.  The study recruited more than 1,600 volunteers from across Europe to take part.  Participants performed quantified health self-analyses such as biometric measurements and movement counts. They also used a do-it-yourself blood sampling technique that involves drying blood from a finger prick on absorbent paper, which can then be analyzed for more than 92 metabolic biomarkers in a lab.  They also submitted saliva samples that were checked for more than 36 genetic variants that have been linked to nutritional needs and health outcomes.

"A scientific knowledge base was developed, capturing the current knowledge in the field of nutrition
with a particular focus on the interaction of food consumption, nutrient intakes, biomarkers,
genetic variation to health. SNP information comprises risk allele frequencies as well as gene
symbols and functions. The collected scientific knowledge represented in the data base covers
currently 35 food items, 92 biomarkers, 36 genetic variations, 16 different health outcomes, and
180 established interactions based on scientific publications and an expert assessment."

After one year, the results are in.  Although their internet-based nutritional intervention was associated with positive outcomes, a recent whitepaper concluded that, after testing various diets, there were no improved health outcomes from phenotypic or genetic information.

The researchers state that, "despite enormous efforts over the last decade to identify gene variants that define the susceptibility of an individual to a life-style dependent disease, the outcomes of the large-scale profiling studies are rather disappointing. Although a large number of genes and variants have
been found (there are for example around 60 genes that carry a susceptibility risk to develop
type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)), the effect sizes of each individual gene variant are generally
very low. In almost all cases, the risk-variant increases disease risks by only a very few percent..."

Trying to Expose Sham "Nutrigenomics Testing"

Denise Minger published a post about her genetic MTHFR status that convinced me to test mine, but now I'm writing to expose this for scam it is. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that there is simply no scientific evidence for the claims on geneticgenie.org, mthfrsupport.com, or any of the other websites that have sprung up around Dr. Yasko's unsupported claims about SNPs and the detox/methylation cycle.  I fell for, and many people are continuing to fall for it.

The idea of correlating individual genetic differences to different nutritional requirements seems scientifically plausible.  But searching Pubmed shows that the claims being made about specific SNPs are not backed up by published scientific research. This scam propagates on plausibility, confusion, and ultimately, apathy.  I was taken in and confused by the veneer of scientific credibility...and when it didn't make sense I assumed I just needed to spend more time on the research.

But there is no research backing up these claims. They can all be traced back to Amy Yasko, who runs a website promoting her personal interpretations and observations.  While she claims not to make any money from sharing her knowledge, she promotes products and testing sold by her husband's company.  Her bibliography appears to include extensive scientific work, but I was unable to locate any of the papers she claims to have published.  She states that she is now "too busy" to publish her results.  I also could not find any confirmation that she is a real doctor (JD or PhD).

The sad truth is that, whether she believes in her own theories or not, this is a classic snake oil supplement gimmick hiding behind a sheen of fake science.  Selling B vitamins as miracle drugs has a long history, because almost everyone feels better with a few B vitamins (that's why they put them in energy drinks).  If you try the more expensive supplements she promotes, you may or may not feel better.  If you do feel better, you're quite likely to promote the gimmick. Most of the people commenting write in to say that they are feeling better, or think that they will when they get their supplement combination dialed in.  If you don't fell better, you might be motivated to try a different high-priced supplement, or you might just give up and stop reading this (or other) blogs.  The result is a huge number of people who appear to have been helped by this approach, and a continuous supply of new customers.

While we all want personally-tailored miracle drugs, maybe the best we can say right now is to eat "whole foods, mostly plants, and not too much"...and skip the overpriced unscientific supplements.

More background on Amy Yasko's nutrigenomics scam.

A brief review of the state of the science for one of Yasko's claims.

My review of the complex problems involved in evaluating Yasko's incomplete metabolic diagrams.

Ideal Amount of Potassium and Sodium Consumption to Minimize Mortality.

In the spirit of the type of analyses presented in the Perfect Health Diet, I wanted to post some correlations that appear to imply causation.  These two graphs plot Potassium and Sodium Excretion (which is assumed to be a good proxy for intake, assuming people in the study were at steady-state) versus the Odds Ratio of mortality. The odds ratio is a normalized measure of the probability of death.

The first graph illustrates that in this sample, the more potassium consumed (and hence excreted), the lower the odds ratio of mortality.

The second graph illustrates that mortality is higher for those consuming both more than, and less than, 4 g of Sodium per day.  Interestingly, the increase in mortality risk increases more slowly above 4 g/day than it does below 4 g/ day, suggesting that consuming slightly more than 4 g/ day is healthier than consuming slightly less than 4 g/day.

I think these types of analyses could be used to set standards for a whole range of vitamins, minerals, and perhaps other "Goldilocks" substances.  Goldilocks substances are things which are healthy in moderation, but either too much or too little can be harmful or hazardous.  Obviously, some substances such as toxins and radiation are inherently harmful, even down to the smallest dose (but see hormesis theory).

Source.  Urinary Sodium and Potassium Excretion, Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events N Engl J Med 2014; 371:1267 September 25, 2014.  This study looked at over 100,000 people from dozens of countries.

H2S: A Toxic Gas, and an Important Metabolic Neurotransmitter!

Hydrogen sulfide, in addition to being a poisonous gas associated with oil and gas wells, plays a huge number of critical metabolic and neurotransmitting roles in the human body.

Source.  

Hydrogen sulfide-based therapeutics and gastrointestinal diseases: translating physiology to treatments

Melissa V. Chan , John L. Wallace

American Journal of Physiology - Gastrointestinal and Liver PhysiologyPublished 1 October 2013Vol. 305no. 7, G467-G473DOI: 10.1152/ajpgi.00169.2013

Source.

Source.  

Physiological Implications of Hydrogen Sulfide: A Whiff Exploration That Blossomed

Rui Wang

Physiological ReviewsPublished 1 April 2012Vol. 92no. 2, 791-896DOI: 10.1152/physrev.00017.2011

Different signaling pathways in cardiovascular system modulated by H2S. AC, adenylyl cyclase; sGC, soluble guanylyl cyclase; PDEs, phosphodiesterases. The inhibitory effect is denoted with (−), and the stimulatory effect is denoted with (+).  Source: 

To research about a specific enzyme, the Human Metabolome Database HMDB works well.  To view maps of enzyme reactions, I recommend this interface:

Ketosis!

Many people, even biologists, don't know about ketosis, the alternate method our bodies have for supplying energy.  Most people (especially in modern society!) utilize glucose as their cells' primary energy source.  But, in the absence of carbohydrates, our bodies are able to burn fat.  The fats that circulate throughout our body during fasting or very low-carb dieting are known as ketones:

Source.

The metabolic changes necessary to metabolize ketones instead of glucose depend on human physiology and activity:

These graphs describe Peter Attia's experiments with different exercises while in ketosis, and the results to his blood glucose, ketones (B-OHB) and lactate levels. 

Paleo Diet Reading List

Reading about human origins can be fascinating, and informative.  It has been said that nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution, and the same could be applied to diet. I originally wanted to understand the physiological biochemistry of digestion, but several textbooks later I had lots of facts but very little understanding.  While strolling at the zoo, I realized I needed textbooks that described the differences between animal digestion -- a comparative physiology textbook, perhaps.  But again, after reading all of the most popular titles, I had only scattered facts and no theory of the differences between human and animal digestion, or even between carnivore, omnivore, and vegetarian modes of sustenance.

Luckily, two Harvard professors have written books on human evolution with particular emphasis on how dietary changes made us human.  In the process, they provide the best, although somewhat contradictory, source of information on comparative dietary physiology.  Daniel Lieberman's The Story of the Human Body (2013) is a more traditional telling of human evolution, but it is written in an attempt to answer the question of how our paleo bodies have adapted (or not) to modern lifestyles.  Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (2009), is an extended argument concerning the importance of cooking to human evolution, but he does deal extensively with the comparative behavior and anatomy of humans, proto-humans, chimps, and other primates.  Only at the end of his book does he tackle the problem of modern dietary choices for humans, and then only as a parting shot.  John Hawkes, at the University of Wisconsin, is often mentioned as an authority on human evolution, and I would include his Great Courses lecture (2011) in this triumvirate of human evolutionary tales.

The above works often reference modern accounts of extant hunter-gatherer tribes to understand what life might have been like during the Paleolithic era.  The most notable of these books are Lee's account of the !Kung San, and I would also suggest Weston A. Price's classic Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diet and their Effects.  A modern synthesis and review of the same subject matter can be found in Lindeberg (2009).

It is interesting to compare the literature on human evolution with the diet book literature making use of ideas in human evolution.  The originator of the "Paleo Diet", Loren Cordain has several books specifying his interpretation of the evidence.  While his 2002 book specifies a diet that seems more restrictive than what I've read in Lieberman and Wrangham, I haven't had a chance to read his 2012 book yet.

1. Lieberman D. The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; 2013.
2. Wrangham R. Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Profile Books; 2009.
3. Price W. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects (Hardback). Benediction Classics; 2010.
4. Lindeberg S. Food and Western Disease: Health and Nutrition from an Evolutionary Perspective. Wiley; 2009.
5. Lee RB. The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge University Press; 1979.
6. Cordain L, Friel J. The Paleo Diet for Athletes: The Ancient Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance. Rodale; 2012.
7. Cordain L. The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat. J. Wiley; 2002.

Paleolithic Nutrition compared to Modern American Diet

From: Lieberman D. The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; 2013.

Excess or Insufficient Micronutrients?

Some authors have argued that excess micronutrients, specifically zinc, iron, and copper are a cause of a number of diseases, from atherosclerosis to Alzheimer's. (1) But other writers argue that most Americans are micro nutrient-deficient (very few Americans are macronutrient deficient!). (2)

Micronutrients are critical for human health, but many have relatively narrow ranges associated with optimal health.  Assuming that U.S. dietary guidelines are valid (debatable, but a good starting point), how many people really are receiving inadequate or overabundant micronutrients?

I searched journal articles featuring contemporary data from the U.S. NHANES which surveys a representative sample of the U.S. population.  

Large portions of the population had total usual intakes (food and supplement use) below the estimated average requirement for vitamins A (35%), C (31%), D (74%), and E (67%) as well as calcium (39%) and magnesium (46%). Only 0%, 8%, and 33% of the population had total usual intakes of potassium, choline, and vitamin K above the adequate intake when food and multivitamin use was considered. The percentage of the population with total intakes greater than the tolerable upper intake level (UL) was very low for all nutrients; excess intakes of zinc were the highest (3.5%) across the population of all of the nutrients assessed in NHANES.(3)

Population-based studies indicate that vegetarians have lower mean intakes of vitamin B-12 and zinc and higher intakes of fiber, magnesium, and vitamins A, C, and E than do nonvegetarians. Usual intake data suggest a similar prevalence of inadequacy between vegetarians and nonvegetarians for magnesium and vitamins A, C, and E, with both groups at high risk of inadequate intakes of these nutrients. These same data report that vegetarians have a higher prevalence of inadequacy for iron, vitamin B-12, protein, and zinc than do nonvegetarians. Vegetarians should optimize intakes of vitamin B-12, zinc, and protein; and both vegetarians and nonvegetarians need to increase intakes of calcium, magnesium, fiber, and vitamins A, C, and E. (4)

But these studies only analyze reported food intake, which is notoriously unreliable, even, possibly, in NHANES. Interestingly, NHANES also does actual blood tests, and the results from that research found very few physiologyical (as opposed to dietary) deficiencies.  CDC's National Report on Nutritional Indicators (2012, valid for the period 2003-2006,  only found deficiencies in B6 (11%), Iron (women: 10%), Vitamin D (8%), Vitamin C (6%).   This same report indicates that folate supplementation is responsible for lowering deficiency to less than 1% of the U.S. population.  They also note that many women have iodine levels "bordering on insufficiency".  They did not note any micronutrient excesses. (5)

Sources:

(1) Power Foods for the Brain.  Barnard, Neil.  2013

(2) see, for example, http://chriskresser.com/are-supplements-really-necessary and http://chriskresser.com/why-you-should-think-twice-about-vegetarian-and-vegan-diets

(3) J Am Coll Nutr. 2014;33(2):94-102. doi: 10.1080/07315724.2013.846806.

Multivitamin/mineral supplement contribution to micronutrient intakes in the United States, 2007-2010.

Wallace TC1, McBurney M, Fulgoni VL 3rd. (Affiliation: Council for Responsible Nutrition)

(4) Am J Clin Nutr. 2014 May 28;100(Supplement 1):365S-368S.

Nutritional adequacy of plant-based diets for weight management: observations from the NHANES.

Farmer B.PlantWise Nutrition Consulting LLC

(5) Second National Report on Biochemical Indicators of DIet and Nutrition in the U.S. Population. 2012

Antinutrient Resources

In general, plant secondary metabolites can have positive and negative effects (Weston A. Price). The reason I don't try to categorically avoid them, but treat them with caution, is that these effects are multiplicitious and biological: very hard to predict what they will do, good or bad...

However, unless we know about the problems with antinutrients, we won't know why eating raw flour or dough is dangerous, why green potatoes are toxic, or how many raw red kidney beans it takes to kill a man (not very many).

But on the whole, unless you are allergic, most antinutrients will be digested, and some are actually good for you. For example, this article mentions that inositol hexaphosphate is a break-down product of phytic acid. Most phytic acid is broken down by digestion, and there is evidence that it can have beneficial effects as well as deleterious effects.

This article points out that most sweet potato antinutrients are destroyed by baking, as opposed to boiling. This FAO article on all the major food crops and their antinutrients specifies that " Heating to 90°C for several minutes inactivates trypsin inhibitors", which explains why baked sweet potatoes are nontoxic. (But the article also points out that diseased or moldy sweet potatoes may have toxins that are not completely deactivated by cooking ....moldy vegetables should not be consumed. Apparently, toxins in normal potatoes are also not destroyed by normal cooking methods. Furthermore, sweet potatoes do not have lectins, but normal potatoes do. These compounds can have some antidigestive effects, but most should be destroyed by cooking.

Antinutrients are important, but I think methionine and nutrient density / glycemic index considerations are more important overall. A few potatoes or slices of bread shouldn't hurt most people, but if you have the luxury of chooses less toxic plant products, sweet potatoes and especially squash and pumpkins are some of the best sources of nutrients, with the least amount of antinutrients.

Soylent Formula and Macronutrient Ratios

I'm designing the perfect foodstuff. Inspired by Soylent (video), but they don't understand the basic truth that endurance exercise (and oh-so-much of life is endurance exercise) (or you can watch a video of Peter Attia's self experimentation) is powered by fats, not carbohydrates and sugars.

Just look at these hunter-gatherer-runners (video). In The Story of the Human Body, Dr. Daniel Lieberman concludes that “Like it or not, we are slightly fat, furless, bipedal primates who crave sugar, salt, fat, and

starch,” he writes, “but we are still adapted to eating a diverse diet of fibrous fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, tubers, and lean meat. We enjoy rest and relaxation, but our bodies are still those of endurance athletes evolved to walk many miles a day, often run, as well as dig, climb, and carry.”

Soylent Nutrition:
(Carbohydrate/Fat/Protein ratio of 50/30/20):

Ingredients	Quantity
Soylent Blend                                                                                                      166.2g
oat flour	36.67
Sweetener, maltodextrin	55.0
rice protein 80% ultra	40.0
vitamin and mineral premix	9.3
Oil, soybean lecithin	2.0
gum acacia rosa	3.5
Salt, sea	0.7
artificial vanilla flavor	0.6
Sweetener, sucralose, Splenda	0.2
Gum, xanthan, Ticaxan, pwd	0.2
Oil, canola	16
Oil, fish, sardine	2.2

Don't Spike Your Blood Sugar

There have been a number of scientific papers in the last couple years, and now a number of high-profile articles (like last week's Time Magazine article "Ending the War on Fat") that have found no correlation between fat -- even saturated fat -- and Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. The idea that cholesterol and saturated fat are the cause of heart disease is no longer supported by the best available science.

However, there is still broad consensus among health professionals that we need to avoid processed, sugary, and high-glycemic foods. High-glycemic foods are energizing for an hour or two but then cause sleepiness and craving for more (usually high-glycemic) snack foods. These foods are dangerous because they raise blood sugar, leading to a crash afterwards, a "roller-coaster" blood sugar dynamic that promotes over-eating and a variety of diseases.

Gary Taubes, in Good Caloreis Bad Calories, explains how sugar metabolism makes you fat:

"Glycerol phosphate is produced from glucose when it is used for fuel in the fat calls and the liver, and it, too, can be burned as fuel in the cells. But glycerol phosphate is also an essential component of the process that binds three fatty acids into a triglyceride. It provides the glycerol molecule that links the fatty acids together. In other words, a product of carbohydrate metabolism --i.e. burning glucose for fuel-- is an essential component in the regulation of fat metabolism: storing fat in the fat tissue. In fact, the rate at which fatty acids are assembled into triglycerides, and so the rate at which fat accumulates in the fat tissue, depend primarily on the availability of glycerol phosphate. The more glucose that is transported into the fat cells and used to generate energy, the more glycerol phosphate will be produced. The the more glycerol phosphate produced, the more fatty acids will be assembled into triglycerides. Thus, anything that works to transport more glucose in the fat cells -- insulin, for example or rising blood sugar, will lead to the conversion of more fatty acids into triglycerides, and the storage of more calories as fat."

"So yes, dietary fat is responsible for fat accumulation, but it is carbohydrates that mediate the accumulation, and the energy balance of the body as a whole. Don't spike your blood sugar, and your body will continue burning fat, not storing it."

Problems with Wheat

Discoveries in the last 15 years have implicated wheat in a range of autoimmune diseases.  Celiac disease affects a small (but increasing) segment of the population.  This disease is triggered by an allergy to gluten, a specific protein in wheat.  But there are at least two other important antinutrients in wheat that affect everyone, whether or not they are gluten-intollerant. 

The first, and possibly more benign, is WGA (Wheat Germ Agglutenin), a toxic component of wheat that is usually destroyed by cooking.  Importantly, it is much more sensitive to wet heat than dry heat(i.e. baking), which may not be 100% effective in denaturing WGA. This agluttinin, (a type of lectin) can bind to receptors in the small intestine, effectively "gumming them up" and preventing complete absorption of nutrients.  In addition to limiting the nutritional value of meals containing WGA, lectins can also cause gastrointestinal distress or dysbiosis by passing more undigested food to the large intestine, where it is fermented by the microbiota.

The second, and more worrisome component of wheat, is gliadin.  Sometimes referred to as a type of or component of gluten, in 2000 gliadin was found to mimic the ability of cholera toxin to open the tight junctions between intestinal epithelial cells.  By activating the "zonulin" receptor, gliadin (and cholera toxin) make the gut permeable to large particles of food, which enter the body undigested.  Until the early 1980's it was believed that the human digestive system was impermeable to larger particles of food and that only food that was completely broken down into its amino acid, sugar, and lipid components could be absorbed by the body.  This is mostly true, but gliadin can short-circuit the natural process.

Source: Fasano A. Zonulin and Its Regulation of Intestinal Barrier Function: The Biological Door to Inflammation, Autoimmunity, and Cancer. Physiological Reviews. 2011

The outcome of increased intestinal permeability is immune exposure to the entire gamut of ingested substances.  The resulting inflammatory response binds and removes the transgressive food particles, but not before 1) increasing systemic inflammation, and 2) teaching the immune system to recognize and react to a very large array of compounds ... some of which may look like compounds in the human body. 

Therefore, ingestion of wheat sets up the necessary and sufficient conditions for the generation of autoimmunity.

Sources:

Pusztai A, Ewen SWB, Grant G, Brown DS, Stewart JC, Peumans WJ, Van Damme EJM, Bardocz S. Antinutritive effects of wheat-germ agglutinin and other N-acetylglucosamine-specific lectins. British Journal of Nutrition. 1993 July;70(01):313–321.

Fasano A. Leaky Gut and Autoimmune Diseases. Clinical Reviews in Allergy & Immunology. 2012 February 1;42(1):71–78.

Fasano A. Zonulin and Its Regulation of Intestinal Barrier Function: The Biological Door to Inflammation, Autoimmunity, and Cancer. Physiological Reviews. 2011 January 1;91(1):151–175.

Drago S, El Asmar R, Di Pierro M, Grazia Clemente M, Tripathi A, Sapone A, Thakar M, Iacono G, Carroccio A, D’Agate C, et al. Gliadin, zonulin and gut permeability: Effects on celiac and non-celiac intestinal mucosa and intestinal cell lines. Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology. 2006 April;41(4):408–419.

Further Reading:

Gluten Freedom: The Nation's Leading Expert Offers the Essential Guide to a Healthy, Gluten-Free Lifestyle Hardcover – April 29, 2014
by Alessio Fasano and Susie Flaherty

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health Paperback – June 3, 2014
by William Davis

The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine Hardcover – March 13, 2014
by Terry Wahls M.D. and Eve Adamson 

Food Stamps in New Mexico: No Whole Milk,

Whole and 2% Milk is only allowed for infants age 1-2 years, all others can only buy 1% and skim milk.  No organic foods of course...what about meat?  Not covered!

Here are some resources describing the list of approved foods.

What if "Integrative Medicine" and "Alternative Therapies" Are Full of .... ?

What if the most valuable thing to come out of the vast torrents of nutrition bloggers and comments on those blogs and alternative medicine conferences, etc, is this chart of dookie? That's what the authors of the Science Based Medicine blog seem to think.

At least this chart presents an actual, observable, measurable observation of the world!

Contrast this chart with the endlessly proposed and promulgated (without testing) navel-gazing "syndromes" that could be any disease or no disease at all.  While I don't necessarily think alternative medical treatments are completely bogus, I have noticed that most alternative therapy information is heavy on the factoids, but very light on actual testable theories or metrics.

But maybe.... instead of criticizing scientifically-untested therapies, we should make an effort to test them!  When it comes to health the line between objective science and subjective experience blurs and I'm never sure which source of information to trust.  Maybe, in the end, after all the scientific and unscientific hypotheses, we just have to follow our gut-instincts!

If you do, this Bristol Stool Chart may be a helpful metric!

Accountability, Transparency, Scientists and Government

The FDA has promulgated a series of Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) based on the proprietary review of scientists in the National Academies. The justification for these RDA values are not even available at a large institution such as Ohio State University. Because of this opacity, a large number of people have gravitated to interesting or promising parascientific ideas about the role of vitamins in nutrition. For example, many question the food pyramid's focus on carbohydrates. (Westin A Price) Others argue that the RDA for Vitamin C should be increased by a factor of 10. (Linus Pauling) Or that many health problems can be explained by a deficiency in, for example, iodine. Other groups question whether too much cholesterol is bad, whether too much salt is unhealthy. Much of the creative critiques of establishment medicine is based on rigorous research and reasonably open communication, although usually not entirely peer-reviewed. This gray literature is, however, limited compared to scientific publications. Yet when the scientific process is not transparent, it looses the inherent advantage of demonstrative accountability.

In 1998 Congress broadened the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to specify that all government funded science should be shared and freely available to the public. Dr. Sheila Jasanoff, a professor of Science, Technology, and Policy at Harvard University, has recently written an excellent primer in the May 7 2010 issue of Science on her perspective of how climate science measures up; "Policy Forum: Science and Society: Testing Time for Climate Science."

She describes the "Three-Body Problem" as consisting of individuals, reliable bodies of knowledge, and procedures. The individual scientist or expert must be held to high standards of honesty and integrity. In science, peer review partly serves this purpose. Reliable bodies of knowledge create scientific knowledge. Scientific advisory committees translate scientific findings into policy-relevant forms: individual members' impartiality and sound judgment is critical. Under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) (Public Law 92–463), scientific advisory committees must be fairly balanced and, in the absence of special circumstances, committee meetings and records are presumed to be open to the public.

science policy blogs
http://bigthink.com/blogs/age-of-engagement
http://climateprogress.org/2010/04/28/im-speaking-at-harvard-friday-on-science-blogging/