Pistachio Phenols 90% Bioavailable. Phe, Leu, Glu & Trp - Four Satiating Aminos. Artificial Sweeteners Act as Anti- Convulsants. Dendrobium for Glucose, Lipids & Kidneys

Since I am a little pressed in time, I won't beat around the bush, but rather get to the meat of the matter of this Nutrition Quickie, right away... well, actually today's nutrition quickie has no item on meats, but is has one Dendrobium, which is actually rather a supplement - be that as it may, here you go:

• 

  Since you (hopefully ;-) haven't swallowed a bomb colorimeter, it's actually no wonder that your body can only access 75% and 95% of the energy this little oven can squeeze out of almonds and pistachios. If you went with the Atwood factor (which says fat = 9kcal/g) and simply added fats, proteins and carbs the discrepancy for almonds would even increase to ~35% (Nowotny. 2012)

  Almonds deliver 25% less calories that the nutritional label will tell you (Gebauer. 2012) -- At the FASEB meeting in April 2012, already, scientists from nowhere else than the mighty USDA, respectively the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center of the USDA presented the results of a human study that clearly shows that our tummies cannot squeeze out more than 75% of the nutrients a bomb calorimeter does. Nutrition Quickie: 25% Less Kcal in Almonds Than Label Says.
  
  The caloric value on both food labels and respective nutrient tables is thus off 25% too high. And the corrected energy content per 100g of almonds is 456kcal/100g not 575kcal/100g (nutritiondata.com), or even higher values you will find when you google  "almonds kcal" - I am curious if at least the nutrition labes will ever be updated.
  
  A similar but less pronounced mismatch has been found for pistachios by the same researchers earlier this year, already. According to a paper published in the January edition of the British Journal of Nutrition (Bear. 2012), the actual energy content of these heart healthy nuts 565kcal/100g, which is ~5% less than the currently established value. 

• Bioavailability of pistachio polyphenols, xanthophylls, and tocopherols is very high - until you put them into a muffin (Mandalari. 2013) -- Bioavailability, i.e. the ratio of the total amount of a certain molecule that's in the food we eat in intact or at least active form in our bloodstream, can be a real issue for many of the good things the spectral analyzer of brainy scientists detects in our foodstuff.
  
  

  

  Table 1: Phenol, lutein and tocopherol content of the raw, roasted and salted pistacchios and regular and pistaccio (17g/100g) muffins (Madalari. 2012)

  In the upcoming January issue of Nutrition a group of researchers from the UK and Italy report the results of an investigation into the bioavailability of polyphenols, xanthophylls (lutein), and tocopherols (among them the rare gamma-variety) from raw pistachios, roasted salted pistachios, and muffins made with raw pistachios. You can see the original polyphenol, xanthophyll and tocopherol (mind the 90% gamma-tocopherol content, which has better chemoprotective effects than alpha-tocopherol; see "Vitamin(S!) E" post from 2011) content in table 1.
  
  Interestingly enough the availability of the tocopherols was almost identical for all three tested forms (raw, roasted, in muffins) and even the muffin reduced only the bioaccessability of protocatechuic acid (78%) and luteolin (36%), the rest of the phenols achieved the same ~90% Madalari et al. observed for the raw and roasted + salted pistachios in their million dollar model of the human digestive tract (click here for an article about this "artificial gut")

• When the gut "tastes" phenylalanine (PHE), leucine (LEU), glutamate (GLUT) and tryptophane (TRP), satiety ensues (Daly. 2012) -- In their most recent paper Christin Daly et al. report on the cholecystokinin (CCK) release in the gut. According to the scientists from the University of Liverpool (UK) and the Kyushu University (Japan), the effect is mediated by interactions with the gastrointestinal bitter taste receptors. Since CCK inhibits food intake and reduces appetite, this provides another mechanistic explanation for the satiety promoting effects of high protein intakes. The effects was observed only for the L- and not the D-amino acids.
  
  Interestingly, the beneficial effects of  PHE, LEU and GLUT on CCK (but not the TRP-stimulated CCK secretion) were blunted in the presence of gurmarin. "Gurmarin?" Yeah, that's the rodent specific  sweet taste inhibitor in Gymnema sylvestre (note gurmarin does not work in humans; cf. Sigoillot. 2012), which is sold as an anti-diabetes supplement. Inosine, on the other hand increased the CCK release n response to all of the amino acids.
  
  How significant that is specifically for those who have a problem keeping their ravenous appetite in check is however questionable. After all the satiety response to CCK has been shown to be disturbed (at least in rodents; cf. Balaskó. 2012)

• 

  Table 2: Number of mice protected by the administered drug in the MES test (Talevi. 2012)

  Acesulfame potassium, cyclamate and saccharin are potential anti-convulsants (Talevi. 2012) -- It may sound counter-intuitive in view of all the bad stuff you have probably heard about artificial sweeteners, but it is their particular molecular structure and similarities between the T1R3 sweet taste receptor they are supposed to bind to ant several metabotropic glutamate receptors from different species that is probably behind the anticonvulsant effects a group of researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences at the Faculty of Exact Sciences of the National University of La Plata (UNLP) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
  
  The overall effect size the scientists observed in their rodent model (see table 2) is yet far from earth shattering and generally more pronounced if the sweeteners had been ingested 4h instead of just 20 min before a Maximal Electroshock Seizure (MES) test. Whether this makes them worth "supplementing" is however more than questionable.
  
  Suggested additional reads:
• Stevia - More Than Super Sweet: More Scientific Evidence, More Potential Implications for Weight Loss & -Maintenance, Anti-Diabetic & -Autoimmune and Even Pro-Anabolic Effects
• Fructose Epimer D-Psicose First Sweetener to Actively Promote Weight Loss? Reduced Weight Gain and Direct Inhibitory Effect on Adipocyte Maturation in Rodent + Reduced Postprandial Glucose & Insulin in Human Trial
• The Unsatiating Truth About Aspartame, Acesulfam K, Sucralose & Co: They Don't Induce Glucose or Insulin Spikes, But Do They Make You Hungry?
• other posts with the tag "artificial sweetener"

• Putting things into perspective: While the DPPH radical scavenging activity is not a really good measure of the in-vivo anti-oxidant potency of a given molecule it may yet still be worth mentioning that the one of Dendrobium (IC₅₀ = 29.6 μg/mL) is more than 80% lower than that Areca catechuvar. Cinnamon cassia, Paeonia suffruticosa and Alpinia officinarum extracts which share IC₅₀ values <6µg/mL (Lee. 2003). In other words, you need 80% more Dendrobium than cinnamon, for example, to neutralize the same amount H2O2 radicals.
  Dendrobium extract ameliorates renal fat accumulation, hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia in rodents on "high fat" diet (Lee. 20012) -- While I cannot say if this is the same Dendrobium extract that's used in a pre-workout supplement that's "all the craze", these days, I can tell you that a group of researchers just published a paper on the renoprotective, hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic effects of an extract from Dendrobium moniliforme (a cursory search revealed that even within this genus of orchids there are at least 90 sub-types ranging from Aochidori to Yuten).
  
  Lee et al. administered the methanolic extract at dosages of 200mg/kg (HED ~16mg/kg) for nine weeks and reduced the elevated serum glucose, total cholesterol concentration and renal lipid accumulation in the HFD-fed mice. It also ameliorated renal dysfunction biomarkers including serum creatinine and renal collagen IV deposition. So that the scientists conclude that methanolic extracts from Dendrobium moniliforme exhibit pleiotropic effects on obesity induced parameters and exert renoprotective effect in HFD-fed mice.

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That's it for today, unless you are are interested in one of the following facebook news:

• Crape ginger (Costus speciosus Koen) has significant anti-arthritic properties - at least in a rodent model (read more)
• Ayurvedic polyherbal Unani formulation shows promising results in Acne vulgaris patients - 45 days, 45 subjects, significant improvements on Cook's acne scale (read more)
• Endocannabinoids increase, leptin decreases a "sweet tooth" - And you can take this almost literally, since they do actually modulate sweet taste receptor sensitivity (read more)

There are actually a couple more and they will "proliferate" *rofl* even before the next official SuppVersity  post will be published. Reason enough to check by from time to time, or simply "like" the SuppVersity on Facebook in order to keep up with the news.


References:

• Baer DJ, Gebauer SK, Novotny JA. Measured energy value of pistachios in the human diet. Br J Nutr. 2012 Jan;107(1):120-5.
• Balaskó M, Soós S, Párniczky A, Koncsecskó-Gáspár M, Székely M, Pétervári E. Anorexic effect of peripheral cholecystokinin (CCK) varies with age and body composition (short communication). Acta Physiol Hung. 2012 Jun;99(2):166-72.
• Gebauer SK, Novotny JA, Baer DJ. Macronutrient absorption from almonds: the measured energy value of almonds in the human diet. FASEB Journal. 2012;26:820.25.
• Lee SE, Hwang HJ, Ha JS, Jeong HS, Kim JH. Screening of medicinal plant extracts for antioxidant activity. Life Sci. 2003 May 30;73(2):167-79.
• Lee W, Eom DW, Jung Y, Yamabe N, Lee S, Jeon Y, Hwang YR, Lee JH, Kim YK, Kang KS, Kim SN. Dendrobium moniliforme Attenuates High-Fat Diet-Induced Renal Damage in Mice through the Regulation of Lipid-Induced Oxidative Stress. Am J Chin Med. 2012;40(6):1217-28.
• Mandalari G, Bisignano C, Filocamo A, Chessa S, Sarò M, Torre G, Faulks RM, Dugo P. Bioaccessibility of pistachio polyphenols, xanthophylls, and tocopherols during simulated human digestion. Nutrition. 2013 Jan;29(1):338-44.
• Novotny JA, Gebauer SK, Baer DJ. Discrepancy between the Atwater factor predicted and empirically measured energy values of almonds in human diets. Am J Clin Nutr. 2012 Aug;96(2):296-301. 
• Sigoillot M, Brockhoff A, Meyerhof W, Briand L. Sweet-taste-suppressing compounds: current knowledge and perspectives of application. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2012 Nov;96(3):619-30.
• Talevi A, Enrique AV, Bruno-Blanch LE. Anticonvulsant activity of artificial sweeteners: a structural link between sweet-taste receptor T1R3 and brain glutamate receptors. Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2012 Jun 15;22(12):4072-4.

Exercise Performance - Another Reason to Go (Wal-)Nuts? Study Demonstrates Ergogenic Effects of the Literal Handful of Walnuts ☆ Heart, Brain, Prostate & Breast Benefit, Too!

The ergogenic effects are just the latest addition to the list of proven benefits of regular walnut consumption.

I don't have to tell you that I am real "nut nut". Despite the fact that I had to realize years ago that almonds, aren't, but strawberries are nuts and irrespective of the constant turmoil about their high energy content, nuts have and probably will always be on my meal plan (on a daily basis, by the way).

It goes without saying that the publication of Dae-Ik Kim's and Kil-Soo Kim' recent paper in the Journal of Laboratory Animal Research won't change this. Who would after all complain about the following possible side effects of regular walnut consumption?

Increased endurance & glutamine, glycogen, decreased lactate & ammonia levels

No one, would complain about theses - correct! What I do yet expect is that you will complain about this being a rodent study.... but honestly, we have hashed and rehashed time and again, so let's just content ourselves with what we have: A 4 week study in the course of which twenty-eight male ICR mice were randomly divided into four groups, a

• Walnut extract preparation - 1kg Walnuts were soaked in 10L of 70% ethanol for 24h, filtered, lyophilized and powdered. The results were 56 g of walnut extract - "the dosage (600 mg/kg/day) was based on the daily recommended intake as raw walnut (adult standard: 42 g/day)" (Kim. 2013)
  vehicle (control)
• walnut extract (WE300) at 300mg/kg per day
• walnut extract (WE600) at 600mg/kg per day
• walnut extract (WE900) at 900mg/kg per day

The extract (preparation see box) was administered to the mice once a day for 4 weeks. As the scientists point out, the mice were thus consuming the human equivalent of the recommended intake in raw walnuts, of which at least Kim et al. believe that it was 42g/day.

Forced swimming = endurance performance + stress test

Over the whole four week study period the mice were subjected to a weekly forced swimming test. Basically, that's like dropping you in a water tank where you can't stand or hold onto something and waiting. Needless to say that this is both, an endurance, as well as a stress test with which therodents "on" walnuts coped much better, than their peers in the vehicle control group.

Figure 1: Changes in in Lactate, Glucose, Glutamine, Ammonia and Triglyceride as well as the corresponding increases in time to exhaustion during forced swim test (Kim. 2013)

As Table 1 of Kim & Kim's paper tells us (not shown here), the changes in Lactate, Glucose, Glutamine, Ammonia and Triglyceride as well as the corresponding rapid (effects were visible after only 1 week) performance increases (see Figure 1) occurred in the absence of any differences in food or water intake. Moreover, "walnut intake did not cause weight gain, despite an increased energy intake".

I am honestly not sure about the energy content of the walnut extract, but in view of the fact that the mice consumed ~140g/kg of their chow (remember mice weigh only ~46g, so this leaves them at a total food intake of ~6.5g/day), it does not seem reasonable to assume that the walnut extract (~5.85mg at the highest dosage) would influence their body weight.

Apropos body weight

The questionable supposition that the mice in the walnut extract group should weigh significantly more than their peers because of a laughable 5.85mg of walnut extract in their diets, segues nicely into the promised brief review of the walnut studies that were published in 2013 - studies with pretty outstanding results:

• Improved lipid profiles, even in healthy individuals (Wu. 2013) -- Significant reductions in non-HDL cholesterol and Apo-B (reduction in heart disease risk, Alzheimer's etc.) levels of 40 subjects (mean ± SEM: age 60 ± 1 years, BMI 24.9 ± 0.6 kg/m2; 30 females) after consumption of 43g of walnuts per day for 8 weeks (Figure 2, left)

  

  Figure 2: Changes in serum lipids (left) and serum fatty acid composition (right) in Wu (2013)

  The improvements occurred despite / because higher total fat, polyunsaturated fat, omega-6 and omega-3 content, and lower protein, carbohydrate and saturated fat content of the diet and were accompanied by signifcant changes in the serum fatty acid compositoin (Figure 2, top) of the subjects.
• Acute beneficial effect on endothelial health and cholesterol efflux (Berryman.2013) -- Both changes, the walnut oil (51g) induced improvements in endothelial function and the increase in cholesterol efflux in response to the ingestion of 85g of walnuts contribute to increases in heart health. Interesting side note, separated nut skins (5.6 g), and de-fatted nutmeat (34 g) did not work the same magic.
• Impressive figures: According to Lloyd-Williams et al. (2009) replacing the "average snack" with walnuts (or other healthy snacks) could result in approximately 2400 fewer CHD deaths and 425 fewer stroke deaths per year.
  Reduced prostate cancer risk (Reiter. 2013) -- It's only a rodent study, but it confirms epidemiological evidence from human studies (Spaccarotella. 2008, Carvalho. 2010) and the effect size of -25% is quite impressive.
• Improved flow-mediated dilatation + improved systolic BP (Katz. 2013) -- Despite the additional 56g of walnuts in their diet the forty-six overweight adults (average age, 57.4 years; 28 women, 18 men) experienced no weight gain. What they did experience, though was a significant increase in FMD (1.4% ± 2.4% versus 0.3% ± 1.5%; p = 0.019) and beneficial effects on systolic blood pressure.
• Healthy brain aging and improved cognitive performance (Willis. 2009; Pribis. 2011) -- Willis et al. observed a significant and dose-dependent improvement in cognitive abilities in old rats on diets with 2%+ walnuts. Pribis et al. found that the inferential verbal reasoning of their young subjects increased significantly (11.2 %); and that inspite of the fact that the subjects ingested only minimal amounts of walnuts in banabreads.

I guess I could extend this list with at least 10 additional studies. What I could not find, by the way, was more than one study reporting weight gain in response to the addition of 35g walnuts to the diet (the researchers expected a weight gain of 5.3 kg, de facto the participants gained 0.4kg and saw improvements in body composition, see Figure 3) and the overall effect was an improvement in body composition (see Figure 3). Studies such as the one by Bes-Rastrollo et al. (2012), which showed that a frequent nut consumption is associated with a reduced risk of weight gain (5 kg or more) in 8865 adult men and women who participated in te Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra project. A brief look at Joan Sabaté's 2003 review of the literature confirms that this is not just an outlier, but in line with previous research on the effects of walnuts on body weight:

"In well-controlled nut-feeding trials, no changes in body weight were observed. Some studies on free-living subjects in which no constraints on body weight are imposed show a nonsignificant tendency to lower weight while subjects are on the nut diets. In another line of evidence, preliminary data indicate that subjects on nut-rich diets excrete more fat in stools. Further research is needed to study the effects of nut consumption on energy balance and body weight. In the meantime, the available cumulative data do not indicate that free-living people on self-selected diets including nuts frequently have a higher body mass index or a tendency to gain weight." (my emphases in Sabaté. 2003) 

For someone as active as yourself (*lol*) even the extra 277kcal from a the suggested 43g of walnuts shouldn't be a problem. If you look back at the Kim study, it would furthermore appear that significant ergogenic effects can be achieved with half of that, as well.

Figure 3: Changes in body comp. during 6 months of consuming addi- tional 35g (~12 % energy intake) of walnuts (Sabate. 2005)

Bottom line: Walnuts are more than ergogenics, but in view of the fact that people are still afraid they may make them fat (often people who add an extra spoon of virgin olive or coconut oil to their protein shakes *rofl*), the ergogenic effects Kim & Kim observed in the study at hand could actually be the incentive they needed to eventually go nuts. And you know what? Their hearts (reduced CVD risk; Banel. 2009; Li. 2009), their prostate / breasts (reduced cancer risk; cf. Hardman. 2008; Carvalho. 2010; Reiter. 2013) and even their brains (Willis. 2009; Pribis. 2011) will thank them. If that's not convincing enough, just take another look at the improvements in body composition in the Sabaté study from 20035 (Figure 3).

References:

• Berryman, Claire E., et al. "Acute Consumption of Walnuts and Walnut Components Differentially Affect Postprandial Lipemia, Endothelial Function, Oxidative Stress, and Cholesterol Efflux in Humans with Mild Hypercholesterolemia." The Journal of nutrition 143.6 (2013): 788-794.
• Carvalho, Márcia, et al. "Human cancer cell antiproliferative and antioxidant activities of Juglans regia L." Food and Chemical Toxicology 48.1 (2010): 441-447.
• Katz, David L., et al. "Effects of Walnuts on Endothelial Function in Overweight Adults with Visceral Obesity: A Randomized, Controlled, Crossover Trial." Journal of the American College of Nutrition 31.6 (2012): 415-423.
• Kim, Dae-Ik, and Kil-Soo Kim. "Walnut extract exhibits anti-fatigue action via improvement of exercise tolerance in mice." Laboratory Animal Research 29.4 (2013): 190-195.
• Li, Tricia Y., et al. "Regular consumption of nuts is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in women with type 2 diabetes." The Journal of nutrition 139.7 (2009): 1333-1338.
• Pribis, Peter, et al. "Effects of walnut consumption on cognitive performance in young adults." Br J Nutr 107 (2011): 1393-1401.
• Reiter, Russel J., et al. "A Walnut-Enriched Diet Reduces the Growth of LNCaP Human Prostate Cancer Xenografts in Nude Mice." Cancer investigation (2013).
• Sabaté, J. (2003). Nut consumption and body weight. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 78(3), 647S-650S.
• Sabaté, J., Cordero-MacIntyre, Z., Siapco, G., Torabian, S., & Haddad, E. (2005). Does regular walnut consumption lead to weight gain?. British Journal of Nutrition, 94(5), 859-864.
• Willis, Lauren M., et al. "Dose-dependent effects of walnuts on motor and cognitive function in aged rats." British journal of nutrition 101.08 (2009): 1140-1144.
• Wu, Liya, et al. "Walnut-enriched diet reduces fasting non-HDL-cholesterol and apolipoprotein B in healthy Caucasian subjects: a randomized controlled cross-over clinical trial." Metabolism (2013).