SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Mediation analysis suggests: It's not the amount of Cantonese Roast Pork Belly ( recipe ) you eat that increases the level of inflammation in your body, but the belly you get if you eat too much of it or non-red/processed meat foods. You will be aware of the fact that even the best epidemiological study cannot account for all correlations; correlations that mess with the results of the studies; correlations like the one between generally healthier lifestyles and the consumption of a vegetarian diet, which have been thwarting the results of epidemiological studies on the effects of meat intake on our health for decades. To get to the bottom of one of these spurious correlations, scientists from the University of Hawaii Cancer Center (Chai 2017), examined the associations of dietary red and processed meat intake with serum levels of CRP, TNF-a, IL-6, leptin, and adiponectin among control participants in 2 nested case–control studies of cancer in the Multiethnic Cohort. Looki...

Three whole eggs deliver the most effec-tive "dose" of  egg yolk to improve your blood lipid levels - more specifically: triglycerides ↓ and LDL ↓ but HDL ↑ Because of their cholesterol content, eggs have long been touted as a driver of heart disease. As a SuppVersity  reader, you know that there are multiple reasons  why the notion that the consumption of eggs, or rather egg yolks, would increase your cardiovascular disease risk: (a) there's no mechanistic "if your cholesterol is high, your CVD risk is also high"-link; (b) a causative link between the consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol does not exist - at least not in the majority of people; (c) substances in egg yolks, in particular, have been shown to modulate the physical characteristics of your lipoproteins ( learn more ) and will thus lower, not increase your CVD risk. Since you know all that, it may seem less important for you than your doctor and other people who may stil...

It's often cited as the source of all nutritional (and environmental) evil and still: The experimental evidence informs us that the epidemiologically instigated politically subsidized meat hating is unreasonable. I wanted to start this article with the words "I actually don't know why" and follow it up with the statement "pork has gotten such a be rep," but that would be incorrect: After giving it a brief thought, I do know why pork has gotten such a bed rep as the unhealthiest meat source there is. It's not a religious question as some of you may believe. It's rather a matter of the end-consumer products that are made of pork. sausages & co are not good for your health, but that's not because they are made of pork, but rather because they consist of highly processed waste no one of you would eat, if it was served in its original form - and that in spite of the fact that the unprocessed garbage would probably be healthier than the fi...

What do you need for a high 25OHD picnic at the beach? Eggs! Regular SuppVersity readers know: The slowly abating vitamin D hype is driving me up the walls. Whenever you search a database for recent articles with the word "vitamin" in it, you are flooded with papers on vitamin D - many of them simplistic adulations without any new data or information. Others are totally irrelevant experiments on cell lines or non-significant epidemiological analyses, where no one can tell you whether the low vitamin D levels are mechanistically or corollarily involved in whatever the scientists are trying to tell you vitamin D was beneficial for. Among all this mess, you can still find a handful of interesting papers. You just have to look close enough to spot gems such as a review by Ovesen, Brot, and Jakobsen (2013). Are Eggs the Best Dietary Vitamin D Source We Have? "Eggs? The best vitamin D source?" I don't have the hubris to say that eggs are the absolute #1, ...

Image 1: Even if you find this disgusting, I would like to invite you at least read what the outspoken carnivor in me has to tell you. It appears to be an endless debate: Can you eat meat? May you eat meat? And even should you eat meat? I already mentioned in my post on the " Chinese meat supplement " study from last week that many of the accepted "truths" about real , unprocesed red meat are about as "true" as the hilarious statement that "going to the hospital causes pre-mature death"... After reading my friend Carl Lanore 's luckily very reasonable and not overtly "ranting" blogpost on " What to say to a Vegan ", a few days ago, I decided to sum up some of the research to scrutinize, which of the objections against and arguments for eating meat are actually rooted in science (I mean, my life as a meat eater could depend on it, right? ;-). Pork rules, but is that a good thing? If we take a look at the actual meat...

Image 1: Must be the red meat between those healthy grain based burger buns that makes this rodent fat, right? What? Yeah... of course epidemiologists count this as a "red meat meal" - it has "red meat" in it... wait, ah yeah: More likely pink slime, with some totally benign ammonia in it, you are right ;-) Those of you who have been around here at the SuppVersity for some time, may have remembered the " Additional(!) 200g of Pork a Day Build Lean Mass, Improve Blood Lipids & Glucose Levels " from September 2011, when a couple of weeks ago yet another "anti-meat study" hit mainstream media news. You will probably have read enough of the certainly accurate, but in a way pointless criticism of the study, elsewhere in the bloggosphere, so that I decided not to repeat the argumentation, which basically discards the value of all epidemiological data (as long as it is not interpreted in accordance with the respective blogger ;-)... now, not a...

Image 1: Now, that we know that meat is not bad for you. Let's get to the meat of the matter: Is raw meat better than cooked meat? "Eat Raw!" If its referring to peppers, tomatoes and salads, even the Vegan lobby won't disagree with this slogan, yet when it comes to eating raw meat, dairy and eggs, hell breaks lose. "Don't do that you will kill yourself!" is what you will hear even from respected scientists. Strangely, I am eating raw eggs and other raw stuff on a daily basis without noticing any detrimental health effects whatsoever. All bacteria-hysteria aside (this would be the topic for a whole new blogpost, cf. red info-box at the bottom), the idea that meat has to be cooked before it is eaten is actually counterintuitive . I do not want to bring up the "Look at the lion, does he cook his pray before savoring on his bloody prey?"-debate, but didn't you ever ask yourself, why the same pe...