SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

A dairy cow: Does her stomach hold the key to a leaner, healthier life or are CLA and vaccenic acid, the ruminant trans-fatty acids just as bad as their grainy cousins? There are supplements that work and supplements that don't work and then there are those supplements, where nobody can actually tell, whether they belong to the former or the latter category. Conjugated linoleic acid , the ruminant omega-6 trans-fat you will find at particularly high concentrations in milk and meat products from grassfed dairy, unquestionably belongs to the latter category. While we do actually have plenty of in parts almost unsettlingly impressive rodent data (e.g. " CLA Destroys Body Fat & Increases Endurance! But at Which Costs? " ), the outcomes of independent  controlled human studies are equivocal; with results ranging from "total failure", to "promising, but not half as impressive as we have expected based on previous rodent studies". That being said, I...

"Got milk" is not the question health conscious supermen and -women should pose. "Got full fat milk, fermented dairy and cheese" is the line to remember (the original image was part of the "Got Milk Campaign") While diet fads come and go, the advice the wise (not seldom obese or otherwise sick) experts on the boards and panels of our well-meaning governments is calling "dietary recommendations" is about as resistant to reform as the dreaded MSRA strains are to the antibiotics doctors are throwing at you whenever you sneeze. Against that background the recent trend we are seeing with respect to an increase in the recommended amount of dietary protein does almost amount to a quantum leap; a leap with a significant caveat, however. A fat caveat, so to say: " A healthy diet includes [...] lean meats, poultry, fish, beans and fat-free or low-fat dairy products " (NIH. 2012). Luckily, you as a SuppVersity reader do not have to rely ...

Image 1: Kids who drink more milk, tend to be leaner... and that despite (?) the fact that this stuff comes out of an animal and is full of bad cholesterol and fat - outrageous ;-) Plenty of interesting news, lately, so this one - just like the recently released hypertrophy / hormone correlation study by Stuart Phillips, about which I have been talking in yesterday's installments of the Intermittent Thoughts got somewhat delayed. With the Christmas holidays and the approaching and all those New Year's weight loss resolutions (I would prefer the term "fat loss resolution", though ;-) already on your mind, I do yet think that it is about time to break the news on the "fat" reason for the purported beneficial effects an increased consumption of dairy products during periods of caloric restriction appears to have on weight and more specifically body fat loss ( Linn. 2000 ; Peirara. 2002 ; Shahar. 2010 ). Dairy, calcium or simply the right macronutrient co...

 Image 1: Fatty fish and organ meats aside, whole eggs and full-fat dairy are your best food choices to raise vitamin D levels - I would even venture the guess that they (combined with fish and organ meats) would make supplementation obsolete, even in the Nothern hemisphere (if you "load up" on sun in the summer). Those of you who have been following my daily blogposts, here at the SuppVersity for more than the last couple of days will be aware that I am one of the few outspoken vitamin D (-supplementation) skeptics . I am by no means doubting the scientific data which clearly indicates that low vitamin D levels (low in medical, not in "Internet blogosphere" terms) are associated with all sorts of diseases. I do not question the hypothesis that, from a biomolecular perspective, vitamin D has more of a hormone than of a "vitamin" (=essential nutrient). And I do not challenge the use of vitamin D(3) supplements by people with low or even borderline lo...

Do you like your 0.1% yogurt? No? Well, what if I told you that it ain't even healthy? A recent study from Sweden ( Warensjö. 2011 ) shows that milk fat is heart healthy! Particularly in women. The study population comprised roughly 1000 Swedish men and women, whose anthropometric, biomarker fatty acid, physical activity, and dietary data were collected and comparisons were made between people with previous myocardial infarctions (cases) and healthy age-mates (controls). In women, proportions of milk fat biomarkers in plasma phospholipids were significantly higher ( P < 0.05) in controls [i.e. healthy individuals] than in cases and were, in general, negatively, albeit weakly, correlated with risk factors for metabolic syndrome. [...] After multivariable adjustment for confounders, the inverse association remained in both sexes and was significant in women. In agreement with biomarker data, quartiles of reported intake of chees...