The Latest News

This has already been a very busy year. There are new postings on the website for those of you who are not scientists, as well as for those of you who are. Among this year’s already posted or completed podcasts, lectures and webinars, are:

• Vitamin & Me (part 1)
• Vitamin & Me (part 2)
• Doug Evans Instagram- Live
• Eatwell-Staywell Whole Food Plant Based Meetup
• Chef AJ Live
• WholeScripts with Dr. Cheryl Burdette and Lisa Curtis
• Invited Scientific Seminars:
  • JHU Schizophrenia Center
  • SIRS2021 - Schizophrenia International Research Society Virtual Conference
  • American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology Annual Meeting
  • Institute for Functional Medicine - AIC2021

A number of additional podcasts/videocasts/seminars, are already recorded or are scheduled to be, and should be posted in the next few months:

• How to Launch an Industry
• Mariana Figares: Alimentación y habitos de vida saludables en base a la evidencia cientifica (YouTube Videocast)
• 5th International Symposium on Phytochemicals in Medicine and Food (Nanchang, China)
• FxMED: New Frontiers in Functional Medicine with Dr. Kara Fitzgerald
• #FoodTruth Podcast with Sharon Cryan, Dr. Kevin Lyon, and Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Other print popular media (not peer-reviewed scientific papers) are:

• Vitamin & Me Sprouting Guide
• FoundMyFitness Sprouting Guide
• “Green Pharmacy” from Koppert Cress, a microgreens company in theNetherlands 

And for those who are interested in seeing some of our recent scientific publications, the following papers were published this year. Some are quite technical (especially those in 2.) but the others are of a more general nature and may be of interest to non-scientist interested in Moringa (see 1.) or in phytonutrients (phytochemicals) from plants and whey we should care about them (see 3.):

1. (on Moringa):  

Chiu, BC, ME Olson,  JW Fahey. (2021) Exploring the Use of Moringa oleifera as a Vegetable in Agua Caliente Nueva, Jalisco, Mexico: A Qualitative Study. Food Frontiers 1-11.  https://doi.org/10.1002/fft2.103. 

Waterman, C, JW Fahey, and ME Olson.  (2021) A review of scientific results on uses of Moringa-based leaf products. Acta Horticulturae 1306: 121-134.  doi 10.17660/ActaHortic.2021.1306.15.

2. (on Broccoli Sprouts and Sulforaphane):

Zimmerman, AW, K Singh, SL Connors, E Diggins, A Foley, A Panjwani, L-C Lee, S Melnyk, SJ James, H Liu, and JW Fahey.  (2021) Sulforaphane treatment of children with autism spectrum disorder.  Molecular Autism https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-021-00447-5.

Fahey, JW and TW Kensler.  (2021)  The challenges of designing and implementing clinical trials with broccoli sprouts . . .  and turning evidence into public health action.  Frontiers in Nutrition doi:10.3389/fnut.2021.648788.

Dickerson, FB, AB Origoni, EB Katsafanas, A Squire, T Newman, J Fahey, J-C Xiao, C Stallings, JGoga, S Khushalani, R Yolken (2021) Randomized controlled trial of an adjunctive sulforaphane nutraceutical in schizophrenia.  Schizophrenia Research. 231: 142-144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2021.03.018.

3. (on phytochemicals or phytonutrients in general):

Fahey, JW and TW Kensler (2021) Phytochemicals: Do they belong on our plate for sustaining healthspan?  Food Frontiers 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1002/fft2.81.

For those of you who are NOT scientists, I’d like to call your attention to this last paper. My co-author (longtime colleague and friend Professor Thomas Kensler) and I took the opportunity to aim this paper at a more general audience. It is relatively short and non-technical, and it conveys a message about which I am particularly passionate. To paraphrase from our paper:

“Epidemiological evidence points strongly to beneficial effects of phytochemical-rich foods on the prevention of essentially all chronic diseases. An extraordinary multitude of phytochemicals have been shown in preclinical settings to be potent allies in our fight against the entire spectrum of chronic diseases and many acute conditions such as infections.. . . As phytochemical abundance appears to be declining in our food supply, the need for better and more strategically focused science is great. . . .  It is of the utmost importance to remember that these phytochemicals come from edible plants, and that the human species has evolved eating them.. . . Western consumers appear fixated on increasing their vitamin, mineral, and supplement intake, but a clear-eyed look at what has happened to diet and nutrition over the past two decades, two generations, or two centuries, cannot help but bring one to conclude that a return to a more phytochemical-rich and phytochemically diverse diet ought to be guiding us to sustained good health.”

In Other News

I’d like to call your attention to another development in nutritional science. I had nothing whatsoever to do with it, but it was just published, and it is yet another in a long series of clarion calls to all of us to do a better job taking care of our bodies. It is also yet another wake-up to nutritional scientists that we MUST do a better job getting across messages about what is killing us and shortening our lives.  Most critically, it is about making the years of our lives less wonderful because we (so many of us) grapple with multiple chronic diseases as we age . . . . and it doesn’t have to be that way.

The following editorial was just published in the high profile scientific journal JAMA. I’ve reprinted it verbatim below, and provided the journal link, as well as the link to the scientific study about which it was written. In many ways this directly relates to the our phytochemicals paper highlighted in the previous section of this newsletter because the lack of phytochemicals in ultraprocessed foods as well as the high levels of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) in these foods, are two of the “elephants in the room” that neither the editorial nor the original article even call out.

That being said, the data and the authors’ conclusions about the data are scary enough, even without factoring in the lack of phytochemicals and the abundance of AGEs in ultraprocessed foods:

Editorial -- August 10, 2021, by Katie A. Meyer and Lindsey Smith Taillie

intake of Ultraprocessed Foods Among US Youths: Health Concerns and Opportunities for Research and Policy. 

JAMA. 2021;326(6):485–487.
doi:10.1001/jama.2021.9845

“Technological advancements in food production, preparation, and processing have
yielded improvements in the quality of life, food safety, and health. Yet, the proliferation of
highly processed, ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat products, commonly referred to as
ultraprocessed foods, has elicited concern because they tend to have poorer nutrient
profiles and can replace more nutrient-dense, whole food options in the diet.
In this issue of JAMA, Wang et al present trends in the consumption of ultraprocessed
foods among US youths using data from 1999-2018 National Health and Nutrition
Examination Surveys (NHANES). Foods were categorized based on the NOVA
framework, the current gold standard for classifying processed foods. NOVA-classified
ultraprocessed foods are industrially produced and contain ingredients that will rarely be
included in culinary preparations. The industrial production of ultraprocessed foods uses
modern technology to create visually appealing and hyperpalatable products comprising
materials extracted from food, such as casein and whey; substances derived from food
constituents through further processing, such as soy protein isolates and maltodextrin; and
nonculinary additives, such as flavor enhancers and emulsifiers. During the 20-year study
period, the estimated percentage of total energy consumed from ultraprocessed foods
increased from 61.4% to 67.0% (difference of 5.6%), whereas the estimated percentage of
total energy consumed from unprocessed or minimally processed foods decreased from
28.8% to 23.5% (difference of −5.3%). The estimated percentage of energy from
consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages decreased (from 10.8% to 5.3%), but the
percentage of energy from other subgroups of ultraprocessed foods increased, especially
ready-to-heat and -eat meals (from 2.2% to 11.2%).”

The study to which the editorial is referring, is by Wang L, Martínez Steele E, Du M, et al., entitled "Trends in Consumption of Ultraprocessed Foods Among US Youths Aged 2-19 Years, 1999-2018." (JAMA. 2021;326(6):519–530. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.10238).

. . . and just to put a point on their findings: 2/3 of the food energy intake by American youths is not from the fruits, nuts, vegetables, and animal protein that our species evolved to eat – it is from the highly processed food-like products that the latest 2 or 3 generations of human beings have been told we should eat, by multinational corporations. The way forward from a national or global political and socio-economic perspective is very complex . . . however, individuals can seize upon their own habits and immediately eat well, to be well, and to stay well.