Milk, a Glucose Uptake Promoter That's More Than the Sum of Its Parts. Plus: HICA & HMB in Yogurt. How Much EAA in Your Protein? Raw Milk Does not Cure Lactose Intolerance

Milk is one of the few foods that are advertized by celebrities that could actually be good for you (photo from the "Got Milk" campaign)

I hope you are not fed up with milk and dairy, yet, because today's SuppVersity short news have a ton of it. What exactly?

Well, after taking a closer look at the surprisingly high amount of HICA and the comparatively small amount of HMB in yogurt and reviewing the EAA content of six common protein sources, we are going to delve deeper into the latest evidence that shows that milk is much more than the sum of its parts, i.e. milk protein, lactose and fat and conclude on a note on another widely known Internet myth that says that people with lactose intolerance could drink raw milk without a problem.

You can learn more about dairy at the SuppVersity

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Dairy, Diabetes, Estrogen, IGF-1, Cancer & More

• 

  Figure 1: Amount of HICA & HMB (in µg/L) in commercial whole milk and yogurt (Ehling. 2014)

  Significant amounts of HMB and specifically HICA in yogurt. We all know that yogurt is among the dairy products with the most evidence of significant health benefits. That yogurt could be a decent muscle builder, on the other hand, would be news.
  
  With ~5 mg of β-hydroxy-β-methylbutyric acid (HMB) and up to 12.5 mg of α-hydroxyisocaproic acid (HICA) yogurt would have what it takes if the values of HMB and HICA Stefan Ehling and Todime M. Reddy measured in regular yogurt were on a per gram, not a per liter basis (Ehling. 2014).
• How much EAA in my protein? Since I have been repeatedly questioned about the essential amino acid content in whey, milk, soy, and egg protein. I have published Table 1 which originally appeared in a 2010 study by Hulmi et al. on Facebook, already.

  

  Table 1: Approximate amino acid composition of popular protein powders (Hulmi. 2010)

  For those of you who are missing out on the daily 12+ SuppVersity Facebook News, because they haven't liked www.facebook.com/SuppVersity, yet. I will now publish it again - as a reference source, if you will.
• Milk a glucose uptake promoter that's more than the sum of its parts. In view of the fact that we have already two dairy related news in today's SuppVersity article, I decided to have another "milky news" in today's SuppVersity short news item. One all the milk-drinkers among the SuppVersity readers will cherish.
  
  Recently, Shirin Panahi and colleagues from the University of Toronto, the Mount Saint Vincent University and the University of Guelph published the results of a randomized, cross-over study that was conducted to prove / disprove the hypothesis that

  "[T]hat regulation of postprandial glycemia after milk consumption occurs through both insulin and insulin-independent actions due to interactions among its macronutrient components and energy content. The objective was to compare the effects of isovolumetric (500ml) beverages of whole milk (3.25% M.F.), each of its macronutrient components (protein, lactose and fat) and their combination (a simulated milk beverage) on postprandial glycemia, glucoregulatory and gastrointestinal hormones and gastric emptying in healthy young men" (Panahi. 2014).

  In the course of the study, the 12 young, male subjects consumed beverages containing 500 ml of whole milk (3.25% M.F.) (control), a simulated milk beverage based on milk macronutrients or milk protein (16g), lactose (24g) and milk fat (16g) in isolation.

  

  Table 2: Nutritional composition of the test meals | ^a Composition of each beverage as provided by
  the manufacturer; ^b amounts given are per 500ml serving. Paracetamol (1.5g), vanilla extract (1.2ml)
  and sucralose (0.02g) were added to all beverages (Panahi. 2014).

  What the researchers found was that both the whole and simulated milk had similar beneficial effects on blood glucose rise after their "meal" (drink), but as it turned out the simulated milk resulted in a significantly higher (41%) glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) production and lower (43%) ghrelin areas under the curve (AUC) than whole milk (P=.01 and P=.04, respectively).

  

  Figure 2: Glucose, insulin, c-peptite, rate of insulin secretion, GLP-1, PYY, CKK
  and ghrelin levels after the test "meals" expressed relative to the sum of the effects
  of the same amount of milk protein, lactose and fat (Panahi. 2014)

  Now, all that would hardly be newsworthy (at least not for regular SuppVersity readers, if the two samples, i.e. both the whole and simulated milk, didn't lower the glucose (P=.0005) levels more than predicted by the sum of AUCs for their components (see Figure 2)!

  "Adjusted for energy content, milks produced lower glucose and hormone responses than predicted from the sum of their components. The effect of protein/kcal on the AUCs was higher than fat/kcal for insulin, C-peptide, insulin secretion rate, GLP-1, CCK and paracetamol (P < .0001), but similar to lactose except for CCK and paracetamol, which were lower. The response in PYY and ghrelin was similar per unit of energy for each macronutrient" (Panahi. 2014).

  In other words: Milk is way more than the sum of it's parts. In that, the "regulation of postprandial glycemia after milk consumption occurs through both insulin and insulin-independent actions due to interactions among its macronutrient components and energy content to achieve lower postprandial glycemia than predicted from the sum of its components" (Panahi. 2014).

If you haven't read it, already, take a look at my rebuttal to the latest assault on milk | read more

Bottom line: Quite the "milky" short news, right? Well, I guess it may be worth topping off all these good news about dairy products with a bad one. The common "Internet wisdom" that raw milk could offset the problems of people with lactose intolerance is a myth.

According to a 2014 paper by Sarah Mummah et al. who tested this myth in 16 adults with self-reported lactose intolerance and lactose malabsorption confirmed by hydrogen (H2) breath testing, "raw milk fail[s] to reduce lactose malabsorption or lactose intolerance symptoms compared with pasteurized milk among adults positive for lactose malabsorption." (Mummah. 2014) The "raw milk can be consumed by anyone" anecdote does thus belong to the realms of scientifically unwarranted die-hard bro-science | Comment on Facebook!

References:

• Ehling, Stefan, and Todime M. Reddy. "Investigation of the Presence of β-Hydroxy-β-methylbutyric Acid and α-Hydroxyisocaproic Acid in Bovine Whole Milk and Fermented Dairy Products by a Validated Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry Method." Journal of agricultural and food chemistry 62.7 (2014): 1506-1511.
• Hulmi, Juha J., Christopher M. Lockwood, and Jeffrey R. Stout. "Review Effect of protein/essential amino acids and resistance training on skeletal muscle hypertrophy: A case for whey protein." (2010).
• Mummah, Sarah, et al. "Effect of Raw Milk on Lactose Intolerance: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study." The Annals of Family Medicine 12.2 (2014): 134-141. 
• Panahi, Shirin, et al. "Mechanism of action of whole milk and its components on glycemic control in healthy young men." The Journal of nutritional biochemistry (2014).

The "Insulin Resistance Saga" - Part II: Jimmy has Asthma and My Daddy Eats Five Cheeseburgers and Three Large Servings of French Fries in One Sitting!

Image 1: In 2009 10% of all US children had at least a mild form of asthma. 57% of these children had had at least one asthma attack in the year before. And in the year 2007, 9 people died of an asthma attack on each of the 365 days of the year (CDC. 2007-2009)... yet our understanding of the nutrition-cleanliness-autoimmune axis is still in its infancy while millions of dollars are spent on a non-sensical "war on cholesterol", every day.
  

[Note: This is a direct sequel to the last installment] There she is, Mrs Youesdeay... you hated her. Her and her healthy greens: "Good morning my dear! I see your mommy is in a hurry today?... Good morning Mrs. Singleparent!" Mrs. Youesdeay was standing there, her usual half-anorexic vegan self, staring right into your eyes." It was as if she was saying: "Gimme those peanut-butter sandwiches my dear!" To escape this fate, you had made it a habit to hurry right past her and into the grey building with its unique smell. Mrs. Youesdeay always said that it was smelling of cleanliness... but how could something smell of cleanliness? You have been dwelling over this for some time now, but were not been able to come up with a solution. Jimmy started to cough. "I wonder whether his does this deliberately!" - it is the same ritual every morning. You obviously cannot know that Jimmy's asthma attacks, of which everyone keeps telling you that they are a result of the dangerous house dust - how on earth can some dust be dangerous? - are in fact triggered by the "smell of cleanliness" - or rather the toxic air-pollutants which form, when the vapor from the anti-bacterial cleaning products the cleaners are pouring over the floor by the liter every morning at 4am, right before you and your friends arrive at the kindergarten and the air fresheners Mrs. Youesdeay has placed in regular intervals all over the building mingle (Nazaroff. 2004).

"Jimmy is getting onto my nerves, really!" As usual, Jeany, your best friend, had been the first to arrive at the Kindergarten. You wonder why she does not want to tell you what her mommy did for a living, but in the end, it did not matter, anyway. You take your lunchbox out of your bag and check whether the peanut-butter sandwiches are still there. "You never know, what Mrs. Youesdeay is up to..." The sandwiches are still there and the Snickers bars, as well. Now, that your catecholamine levels are slowly returning to baseline your blood sugar is dropping back to the alarmingly low levels which made you yawn, when you got out of the car, at 7am.

Five past seven, high time for one of those Snickers bars!

Image 2: Takeru Kobayashi is only the most prominent of a new generation of media-hyped "food athletes" and questionable rolemodels for our children (img welt.de).

You grab one of the Snickers and scoff it down with two bites. This way you can make sure that Mrs. Youesdeay, who is still dealing with Jimmy's every morning asthma attack, is not going to see it. While you are waiting for the soothing and gratifying effect of the sugar rush to set in, you are heading over to the shelf with your name - the first (and only) word you can read - and take the half-finished of you, your mommy and your daddy at McDonald's... that was only half a year ago! In those days, when you were still a happy family. "My daddy can eat 5 Cheesburgers and 3 large servings of French fries!", you say. Your own personal record is 3 Happy Meals and in retrospective you were sure that you had finished the fourth one, as well, if you had not insisted on the super-size Fanta, but had stuck to those ridiculous standard sizes. One day, you would beat this tiny Japanese hot-dog eater, ...

... 69+1 hot dogs? that cannot be so difficult, right?

The regular corn syrup from the Snickers bar is doing its job pretty decently, your blood sugar rises and your thoughts stop wandering from topic to topic. Now, you are ready to go. You grab your pencil and begin to draw one of those creamy milk-shakes onto the already over-laden meal tray your mother is carrying. Meanwhile, your pancreas is pumping out insulin like crazy, but the constant influx of long-chain fatty acids from your digestive tract and the triglycerides your liver is still producing from the "corn sugar" (for those who are not aware, this is the new name for high fructose corn-syrup) that is responsible for the unbelievable sweet taste of your "healthy whole grain cereals", along with your chronically elevated cortisol levels, are tricking your body to believe that those free and glycerol-bonded fatty acids must be coming right from the adipose tissue, from which they are liberated in order to preserve your blood glucose levels from falling back into the hypoglycemic abyss and shut down the insulin-induced glucose transport into your brain and muscle cells by -50% (Thiébaud. 1982; Roden. 1996; Shulman. 2000).

"Vanilla or chocolate?"

Mrs. Youesdeay is passing out the low-fat vanilla and chocolate milk that is part of your governmentally sponsored breakfast, here at the Kindergarten. You grab one of the 100% vanilla-free yellowish brews, open the lid and avail yourself of another 10g of sugar and a whole host of artificial flavorings. "Mrs. Youesdeay?", you hear Carlson say. "Mrs. Youesdeay, that is not raw milk, is it? My daddy said that I must never drink raw milk, because it will make me sick and go to the hospital... that happens to 1000s of people every year, my daddy says!" You drop the PET bottle with your vanilla milk and stare over to Mrs. Youesdeay. "You don't have to be afraid Carlson. The USDA and our government are making sure that those scrupulous farmers are made accountable. Our milk is pasteurized and homogenized!"

Did you know that carrageenan (E407), also known as Ammonium Carrageenan, Calcium Carrageenan, Potassium Carrageenan, Sodium Carrageenan, Chondrus Extract or Irish Moss), a emulgator and stabilizer that is used whenever the fat that is giving real foods their unique texture is removed (such as in "your" no-fat vanilla or chocolate milk), is a potent pro-inflammatory agent? In a 2010 study from the University of Illinois (Bhattacharyya. 2010), it stimulated the inflammatory effects TNF-alpha in colonic epithial cells and inhibited its apoptotic (inducing programmed cell-death) effects and thusly set the stage for the development of colon cancer.

You pick the bottle back up and empty the rest of the 0.33l of milk not being aware that the mould-derived vanillin in it is only one of the 7 listed E-numbers and countless unlisted chemicals, of which you can safely assume that their addition to raw milk would solve the "problem" with bacterial contamination in no time ...

[to be continued...]