Functional Foods and Supplements

Amongst the odder things I read is the regular email from Food Navigator "Breaking news on food and beverage development". Functional Foods and Supplements get a lot of coverage because it is a food industry publication. Nevertheless I find it informative and interesting.

It's the end of the year and so they've just put out the top 5 stories, based on interest from their colleagues in Europe:

1. The most read article in 2008 was coverage of the second arm of the Glucosamine/Chondroitin Arthritis Intervention Trial (GAIT II). Researchers, led by Allen Sawitzke from the University of Utah, School of Medicine in Salt Lake City reported in September that supplements of chondroitin sulphate and glucosamine, alone or in combination, may not positively affect joint health.

Almost 400 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee participated in the 24-month, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. The findings were published in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.In summary the report said that taking glucosamine and/or chondroitin made no difference to knee arthritis.

I blog'd at the time.

However, the study’s findings were dismissed by the industry as meaningless. Limitations admitted by the researchers included a smaller than expected number of participants, large variations in measurements, and slower decline in the knee joint.

The Washington-DC-based dietary supplements trade groups the Natural Products Association (NPA) and the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) called the study’s findings irrelevant, as did a member of the study’s oversight committee.

“This study’s findings are useless and I am surprised it has been published at all,” said Jason Theodosakis, oversight committee member and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona. Theodosakis, the author of a book on glucosamine and chondroitin and sports medicine expert, said the study should have been binned because it was deeply flawed for three major reasons:

• the sample size was too small (less than 400)
• the study length was too short (two years)
• the x-ray methodology was not sensitive enough to deliver meaningful measurement

2. Anti-oxidants were questioned - did they have the benefits claimed, did anti-oxidants have any benefits at all ?

"The findings of our review show that if anything, people in trial groups given the antioxidants beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E showed increased rates of mortality. There was no indication that vitamin C and selenium may have positive or negative effects. The bottom line is that current evidence does not support the use of antioxidant supplements in the general healthy population or in patients with certain diseases. So regarding these antioxidants we need more data from randomised trials," said Goran Bjelakovic from the Copenhagen Trial Unit at the Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.

The dietary supplements industry has responded strongly to the review, with the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), an industry association, releasing a statement that read: "Although [the authors] have updated their meta-analysis, by handpicking additional studies and correcting a litany of minor mistakes made in previous versions, it is for all intents and purposes not a new study, nor is it truly new information.

"In fact, it appears to be a systematic attempt by the authors to publish work that supports their own pre-determined conclusions about antioxidants and the way they should be regulated."

John Hathcock, Ph.D., senior vice president, scientific and international affairs, CRN, was quick to draw attention to the exclusion criteria employed by the researchers "With nearly 750 studies to choose from, it's interesting that they chose to include only 67 studies - less than nine percent of the total clinical trials on antioxidants that are available," said Dr. Hancock. "Moreover, the possible 750 clinical trials do not even account for other sources of evidence, such as observational studies, which were not considered by the authors at all. It is their exclusions, not the inclusions, where the fault lies."

"The conclusions one can reach from this meta-analysis are very limited."

3. The third most popular science article was “Science: Is omega-3 omnipotent?”,

From heart health to better brain function, from reducing the risk of cancers to improving people’s moods, is there nothing omega-3 can’t do? In the first part of a four-part focus on omega-3 fatty acids, NutraIngredients reviews the science behind the headlines.

Different omega-3s, different benefits? The main omega-3 fatty acids present on the market consist of the marine sourced eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, C20:5 n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, C22:6 n-3) and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA, C18:3 n-3) from plants like flax.

The omega-3s are not created equal, and different fatty acids have been associated with different benefits.

Much attention has been paid to the conversion of ALA to the longer chain EPA, with many stating that this conversion is very small. Indeed, between 8 and 20 per cent of ALA is reportedly converted to EPA in humans, and between 0.5 and 9 per cent of ALA is converted to DHA.

In addition, the gender plays an important role with women of reproductive age reportedly converting ALA to EPA at a 2.5-fold greater rate than healthy men.

This conversion obviously contributes to the body's pool of EPA and DHA, which play a key role in, amongst other things, maintaining cardiovascular health.

There is still the question of how much Omega-3 to take every day - see this round-table discussion.

A previous Omega-3 blog.

4. Fourth on the top five list was taken by our coverage of how low levels of vitamin D may increase the risk of death.

A study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, reported that low levels of vitamin D may increase the risk of death by 26 per cent. Over 13,000 initially healthy men and women took part in the study. “This is the first study, to our knowledge, to explore the association between 25(OH)D levels and mortality in the general population,” wrote the authors, led by Michal Melamed from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

I blog'd at the time.

5. Bringing the top five to a close, was the article “Gut microflora and obesity - Nestle expands the possibilities”. Researchers from the Nestlé Research Center reported in May that modification of the population of bacteria in the gut may improve the regulation of glycemic control and reverse the insulin resistance that occurs with obesity.

Nestlé might have stumbled on the bacteria in the alimentary canal are different in obese as compared to non-obese people. If this is true then is it possible to change the composition of the gut flora and fauna so that anyone who is obese has a better chance of reducing weight ?

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You can see that the food industry is not shy about shooting down any report which might reduce sales.