Already credited for promoting a healthy cardiovascular system, Spanish researchers now say that the Mediterranean style diet enriched with olive oil may help your bones too.

The Mediterranean diet consists of lots of fish, vegetables, fruits and whole grains. It is rich in healthy fats from fish, olives, and avocados and high in fiber but low in saturated fats.

Study Details

During the two-year study, the researchers examined the effects of three diets on markers of bone health and bone formation among 127 study participants between the age of 55 and 80.

Of the participants, 34 received a low-fat control diet, 51 received a Mediterranean diet enriched with nuts, and 42 received a Mediterranean diet enriched with virgin olive oil.

They found that only the group receiving the Mediterranean diet with olive oil experienced an increase in serum concentration of osteocalcin and other bone formation markers, suggesting a beneficial effect on bone health.

The researchers also discovered differences in calcium levels among the study groups. The subjects taking olive oil had no significant changes in serum calcium but calcium decreased significantly in the other two groups.

Exercise and Bone Health

It’s important to note that the bone-building power of the Mediterranean lifestyle is due to more than just diet; exercise plays a role too.

Another recent study found that engaging in more than two hours of physical activity per week helps pre-menopausal women maintain healthy bones.

Exercise, it appears, inhibits the production of a protein that impedes bone growth (sclerostin) while boosting the activity of another protein (IGF-1) that promotes bone formation.

The study participants that exercised more than two hours per week had significantly lower sclerostin levels and higher IGF-1 levels.

Sources:

Nutraingredients

WebMD

Health Finder

If you’re a salad lover and use ready-made dressings, you may have seen the notice on bottles that reads something like: “the oil in this dressing helps your body absorb important nutrients from salads.”

While it is true that vegetables and fruits are full of fat-soluble nutrients like vitamin E and carotenoids that require fats to be absorbed, all fat is not created equal.

Researchers found that among common types of fats/oils used in dressings, monounsaturated fats like those found in canola and olive oil deliver the highest nutrient absorption with the least amount of fat.

Study details

The researchers gave 29 test subjects a salad topped with saturated fat (butter), monounsaturated fat (canola oil) or polyunsaturated fat (soybean oil) -based dressings. Each salad was served with either 3 grams, 8 grams or 20 grams of fat as dressing.

The typical commercial full-fat salad dressing has 10 to 20 grams of fat per serving, while low-fat versions have about 3 grams. Nutrient intake was measured in the study subjects through blood samples.

The researchers found that soybean oil, which is high in polyunsaturated fat, was the most dose dependent. The more soybean oil the subjects consumed the more carotenoids they absorbed. Saturated fat from butter was also dose-dependent, but to a lesser extent.

The monounsaturated fats in canola oil dressings, on the other hand, promoted the same level of carotenoid absorption with a 3 gram serving as a 20 gram serving. So, you can get the same level of absorption with fewer fat grams and calories, making this lipid source a good choice.

So if you are watching your calories and want a low-fat dressing, make sure the dressing includes at least 3 grams of monounsaturated fat from canola or olive oil or you just might miss out on many of the nutrients in your salad.

Source:

WebMd

According to estimates, as much as one-third of all “100% Honey” sold in stores contains something other than honey. In this example of “food fraud,” a cheaper substitute ingredient such as high fructose corn syrup or glucose is added to the honey to boost profits.

Unscrupulous food producers have been committing food fraud for some time, but until now, there hasn’t been a public database that compiles all the data surrounding these foodie crimes—an important first step in stopping food fraud.

A new database, which is available at www.foodfraud.org consists of data from over 1,305 cases of food fraud that occurred between 1980 and 2010. The database was created by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), a nonprofit scientific organization that develops standards to help ensure the identity, quality and purity of food ingredients, dietary supplements and pharmaceuticals.

Top Ten Adulterated Foods

According to the USP research, below are the most adulterated foods along with a list of the “fake” ingredients found in them.

1. Olive Oil – non-olive oils such as corn oil, hazelnut oil and palm oil.
2. Milk – whey, bovine milk protein, melamine, and cane sugar.
3. Honey – high fructose corn syrup, glucose, and fructose.
4. Saffron – sandlewood dust, starch, yellow dye, and gelatin threads.
5. Orange Juice – grapefruit juice, marigold flower extract, corn sugar and paprika extract.
6. Coffee – chicory, roasted corn, caramel, malt, glucose, leguminous plants and maltodextrins.
7. Apple Juice (Tie) – high-fructose corn syrup, raisin sweetener and synthetic malic acid.
8. Grape Wine (Tie) – apple juice and a toxic sweet chemical called diethyleneglycol.
9. Maple Syrup (Tie) – corn syrup, beet sugar, and cane sugar.
10. Vanilla Extract – synthetically-produced vanillin and maltol.

Danger to Food Supply

If you consumed honey that contained corn syrup, you’d probably never know it or suffer any ill effects, but that’s not always the case. There are many notorious examples of food fraud that involved toxic substitute ingredients that claimed many lives and went undiscovered for years.

How could problems go undetected for so long? It’s because current food protection systems are not designed to look for the nearly infinite number of potential adulterants that may show up in the food supply.

Melamine, for example, was considered neither a potential contaminant nor an adulterant in the food supply before the episodes of adulteration of pet food in 2007 and infant formula and other milk products in 2008. Melamine was used as an adulterant to mimic protein as early as 1979, but this remained virtually unknown until 2007. Therefore, testing for melamine was not included in routine quality assurance or quality control analyses.

In some ways food fraud may be more risky than traditional threats to the food supply. The adulterants used in these activities often are unconventional and designed to avoid detection through routine analyses.

The researchers pointed out that food ingredients and additives present a unique risk because they are used in so many food products and often do not have visual or functional properties that enable easy discrimination from other similar ingredients or adulterants throughout the supply chain.

Glycerin, for example, is a sweet, clear, colorless liquid that is difficult to differentiate by sight or smell from other sweet, clear, colorless liquid syrups -- including toxic diethylene glycol, which has been substituted for glycerin with deadly consequences. Diethylene glycol has been fraudulently added to wines, and used as a substitute for glycerin used in pharmaceuticals.

Benefits of Database

The new USP database will help stop food fraud by:

• identifying specific food ingredients and food categories vulnerable to adulteration.
• indicating the types of analytical detection methods used to discover the fraud.
• classifying the type of fraud employed in each case using three categories: replacement, addition or removal.

The authors found 95 percent of food fraud cases involved replacement -- an authentic material replaced partially or completely by another, less expensive substitute.

Protecting Yourself

Unfortunately there’s not a lot consumers can do to protect themselves from food fraud, but here’s a few tips:

• Buy from reputable stores you trust.
• When possible, purchase from major brands.
• When purchasing olive oil, look for quality certifications on labels. (COOC for California oils and IOOC, DOP, DO or HAEPAO for imported oils)
• If it’s an option, consume whole foods rather than processed foods. (For example, purchase coffee beans rather than ground coffee or apples rather than apple sauce.)
• Price can be a good indication as well. If the price looks too cheap for an expensive item like saffron, then there’s a good chance you may not be getting an authentic product.

Sources:

Science Daily

CBS News

USP

Stroke is more common in older people, however a new study published in Neurology reports that consuming high levels of olive oil may help prevent a stroke by over 40 percent. The researchers also found that those with the highest levels of plasma oleic acid – a monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid found at high levels in olive oil – had a 73 per cent reduction in the risk of stroke.

The study followed 7,625 people aged 65 and older with no history of stroke from three cities in France. The participants were categorized by olive oil consumption into one of three groups: ‘no use’, ‘moderate use’ such as using olive oil in cooking or as dressing or with bread, and ‘intensive use’, which included using olive oil for both cooking and as dressing or with bread.

After adjusting their findings for diet, physical activity, body mass index and other risk factors for stroke, the researchers found that those who regularly used olive oil for both cooking and as dressing had a 41 percent lower risk of stroke compared to those who never used olive oil in their diet. And, those with the highest plasma levels of oleic acid had a 73 percent reduction of stroke risk.

“Our research suggests that a new set of dietary recommendations should be issued to prevent stroke in people 65 and older,” said the study author Dr Cécilia Samieri, of University of Bordeaux and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Bordeaux, France.  

Dr Sharlin Ahmed of the Stroke Association said, “Olive oil has long been known to have potential health benefits.  However, it's important to note that a person's risk of stroke would only be reduced through consuming olive oil as an alternative to other cooking fats and as part of a healthy balanced diet that is low in saturated fat and salt.”

Sources:

Nutraingredients

Olive oil isn't the only kind of cooking oil that provides an anti-inflammatory health benefit merely by consuming it. A daily dose of safflower oil of just under 2 teaspoons for 16 weeks was enough to improve the health of a group of obese, post-menopausal women suffering from type 2 diabetes.

These latest results followed up a previous study that favorably compared the benefits of safflower oil to conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). For this newer study, researchers applied a powerful statistical analysis, and did more checking to determine how long it took for women to experience any health benefit via blood samples taken at four-week intervals.

By 16 weeks, C-reactive protein levels (that rise in the presence of inflammation) dropped more than 17 percent, insulin sensitivity increased close to 3 percent and levels of NbA1C, a blood protein that signals the long-term presence of extra glucose in blood, fell by less than 1 percent, a small but significant number, researchers said.

Although these and other health markers improved for patients by the end of the study, they still remained at an increased risk for heart disease. Nevertheless, female patients enjoyed this nutritional benefit, merely by adding safflower oil (a substance that contains linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fatty acid) to their diets and doing nothing else.

Image source: WikiMedia Commons/Paulatz

Clinical Nutrition February 3, 2011

EurekAlert March 21, 2011

It's hard to imagine extra virgin olive oil and the anti-inflammatory pain drug ibuprofen having much in common, but the interesting way in which they do chemically is the subject of today's blog.

Before this study, the only thing the two had in common was the sting and subsequent cough people experience in the back of their throats after tasting both. This doesn't sound like a big deal at all -- except for olive oil connoisseurs who rate the purity of brands based on the number of coughs they have -- until you understand what happens afterward.

Both ibuprofen and extra virgin olive oil contain unrelated anti-inflammatory compounds that cause the same reaction: Activating the TRPA1 receptor located in the back of the throat that protects the lungs "from 'chemical insult,' for example, from toxins in the air," says Dr. Paul Breslin, a sensory biologist at the Monell Center. The hope: This same receptor in the throat may be able to spot other anti-inflammatory compounds that can prevent serious diseases, Breslin says.

The real mystery for another day, scientists say, is how humans have learned to associate these known beneficial anti-inflammatories with irritation and pain in the throat, and better health.

The Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 31, No. 3, p. 999-1009, January 19, 2011

NPR.org January 19, 2011

ScienceNews January 18, 2011

Monell Center January 18, 2011

Along with the sweaty practice of exercise, the natural compounds in the whole foods we eat every day can play an important role in helping our bodies slow down the aging process and avoid Alzheimer's disease.

Luteolin, a plant-based compound found in carrots, celery, peppers, chamomile, peppermint, rosemary and even olive oil, is the latest noteworthy nutrient found to decrease inflammation in the brain and improve cognitive health.

Based on experiments with rodents, University of Illinois researchers observed how older mice (possessing higher levels of inflammatory molecules in the hippocampus) that were fed a luteolin-supplemented diet for four weeks performed better on memory and learning tests than the rest of their peers. What's more, the level of inflammatory signaling molecules (cytokines) in the brains of the luteolin-fed mice resembled that of younger mice.

There's many tasty ways to protect your brain with all kinds of memory foods, like fish, chicken, tomatoes and nuts.

Journal of Nutrition, Vol. 140, No. 10, p 1892-1898, October 2010

Mail Online October 15, 2010

University of Illinois News Bureau October 13, 2010