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Can you pump them up w/ silicon and to negate their atherosclerotic effects!?

In today's installment of the Nutrition Research Update in the Short News, I am going to tackle three studies that deal with the surprisingly pronounced, yet practically potentially irrelevant benefits of eating a high protein breakfast, silicon... not in breasts, but sausages as a means to protect you from heart disease and the fact that calories count so much that even on a "healthy diet" only those who eat in moderation will age healthily.

That sounds interesting? Fine! I am not going to waste any more time and will fast forward to the first study...

• Breakfasts Higher in Protein Increase Postprandial Energy Expenditure, Increase Fat Oxidation, and Reduce Hunger in Overweight Children from 8 to 12 Years of Age - In the eponymous study, Baum et al. determined whether consumption of a protein-based breakfast (PRO) increases postprandial energy metabolism and substrate oxidation, reduces hunger, and reduces food intake at lunch compared with a carbohydrate-based breakfast (CHO) in normal weight (NW) vs. overweight/obese (OW) children. Both, the normal and over-weight children participated in the same randomized, crossover protocol that arranged for all participants to be served a
  • high PRO [344 kcal, 21% protein (18 g), 52% carbohydrate, and 27% fat] or 
  • high CHO [327 kcal, 4% protein (3 g), 67% carbohydrate, and 29% fat]
  breakfast, after which the energy expenditure (EE), substrate oxidation, appetite, and blood glucose were measured over a 4 h period. To access whether the high protein intake would also affect the participants appetite, the subjects had free access to a lunch buffet and food intake was recorded.
  

  Figure 1: Energy expenditure, fat and carbohydrate oxidation in the 4h post breakfast (Blum. 2015).

  The results were unambiguous: After breakfast, OW children in the PRO group had higher (P < 0.0001) EEs and fat oxidation over the 4 h period than did the NW children in the CHO and PRO groups. Of these, the increase in energy expenditure was transient and didn't last for the full 4h period. The increase in fat oxidation in response to the high protein intake, on the other hand, lasted for the full 4 h period (+16%; P < 0.05) and went hand in hand with a surprisingly pronounced 32% increase in carbohydrate oxidation in the PRO vs. CHO (P < 0.01) trial.
  

  Table 1: Despite decreased hunger and increased fullness, the protein breakfast did not reduce the total energy intake or modify the macronutrient ratio of the foods the kids selected at the lunch buffet (Baum. 2015).

  Now, all this sounds great, but even though the subjects experienced decreased feelings of hunger (−14%; P < 0.01) and increased fullness (+32%; P < 0.05) after the PRO than the CHO breakfast, the lack of effect on the intake at the subsequent ad-libitum lunch is disappointing to say the least. This and the lack of long-term data make it very difficult to predict if a similar increase in protein during breakfast only would actually help the subjects lose weight.  
• Silicon ... not breasts, but enhanced meat may protect older individuals against atherosclerosis - That's at least what a recent rodent study by Garcimartin et al. (2015) suggests.

  "Research has shown that silicon can play an important role in protecting against degenerative diseases. Restructuring pork by partially disassembling meat would permit the incorporation of active components with potential functional effects. However, there has been no research to date on the impact that silicon, as a functional ingredient in restructured pork (RP), has on lipoprotein composition, metabolism, and oxidation" (Garcimartin. 2015).

  In order to find out whether the addition of silicon would actually have a meaningful effect, the scientists added 1.3g/kg silicon to sausages that were then fed to one group of old rodents while the rest received regular, non-enriched sausages as part of regular and pro-atherogenic cholesterol-enriched diets.
  
  The results were quite astonishing, as is partially normalized the changes induced by the high cholesterol diet. Compared with the rodents who received the regular sausages, those on the silicon sausages had lower VLDL compound concentrations (P < 0.001; e.g., 75% less VLDL cholesterol) and a significantly reduced VLDL oxidation (65% less conjugated dienes and 85% less TBARS) that went hand in hand with an increase in LDL-receptor expression (200% more).
  

  Figure 1: The silicon in the sausages increased the LDL receptor density to (almost) normal, the amount of cholesterol protecting AE in the blood and liver, as well as its ratio to the amount of cholesterol. The result is obvious: With as little oxidized VLDL in the blood as the control, we can safely assume that the rodents that consumed the silicon enriched sausages have a sign. lower atherosclerosis risk (Garcimartin. 2015).

  In spite of the fact that there are differences in the susceptibility of mouse and man to the pro-atherogenic diets of the results do - just as the authors point out - still suggest that silicon added to restructure pork can strongly counterbalanced the negative effect of high-cholesterol-ingestion and, as I would like to add, the negative effects of endogenous cholestrol (by increasing its uptake by LDL receptors and decreasing its susceptibility to oxidation) thus "functioning as an active hypocholesterolemic, hypolipemic, and antioxidant dietary ingredient" (Garcimartin. 2015).
• Healthy eating requires a controlled (not restricting) energy intake to increase one's chance of "aging healthily" by almost 50% - If you question if eating "healthy" and not eating everything in sight is even worth it, you will like the results of a recent study from the Sorbonne in Paris (Essmann. 2015).
  
  In her latest study Karen E Essmann and her colleagues analyzed the diets of a subgroup of 2769 participants of the SU.VI.MAX (SUpplémentation en Vitamines et Minéraux AntioXydants) trial. They identified subjects consuming "healthy" and those on the "standard Western diet", adjusted the data for a large number of potential confounders and the influence of high(er) and low(er) energy intakes.
  

  Table 2: Overview of the criteria the scientists applied to identify "healthy eating" - CES-D, Center for Epidemiologic Studies–Depression Scale; DKTMT, Delis-Kaplan version of the Trail Making Test; IADL, instrumental activities of daily living; MMSE, Mini-Mental State Examination; RI-48, 48-item cued recall test; SF-36, Medical Outcome Study Short Form 36; SPPB, Short Physical Performance Battery.

  In that, the scientists found that the association between "healthy eating" and "healthy aging" was mediated by low(er) energy intakes. Only in subjects with median or lower energy intakes, the association between "healthy eating" and "healthy aging" reached statistical significance, so that the non-gluttonous "healthy eaters" were 49% more likely to age healthily.
  
  Since we are already talking "healthy eating", let's briefly mention that scientists from the University of Eastern Finland just confirmed the obvious (Haapala. 2015): A poorer diet quality is associated with worse cognition in children. What is a bit surprising, though, is that the relationship was stronger in boys than in girls.

References:

• Assmann, et al. "A Healthy Dietary Pattern at Midlife, Combined with a Regulated Energy Intake, Is Related to Increased Odds for Healthy Aging." J. Nutr. first published on 5 August 2015 doi:10.3945/jn.115.210740
• Baum, et al. "Breakfasts Higher in Protein Increase Postprandial Energy Expenditure, Increase Fat Oxidation, and Reduce Hunger in Overweight Children from 8 to 12 Years of Age." J. Nutr. first published on 12 August 2015 doi:10.3945/jn.115.214551
• Garcimartín, et al. "Silicon-Enriched Restructured Pork Affects the Lipoprotein Profile, VLDL Oxidation, and LDL Receptor Gene Expression in Aged Rats Fed an Atherogenic Diet." J. Nutr. first published on 5 August 2015 doi:10.3945/jn.115.213934
• Haapala, et al. "Associations of diet quality with cognition in children – the Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children Study." British Journal of Nutrition (2015): FirstView Article.

There are more than a dozen of options for virgin coconut oil on the market and there's no way the normal custumer can tell which one is actually "virgin" and which is a fraud and maybe even adulterated with palm oil - the technology to identify adulterations is there (Manaf. 2007), but I haven't heard of a label that would prove that the products were tested.

You are probably as fed-up with the hype around coconut oil as I am, right? Coconut oil here, coconut oil there. For this, for that and "did you know that coconut oil will also ..." Yes, you can even argue that a new branch of broscientists and snake oil vendors is dealing with little else than coconut oil.

In spite of that, I consider it at least remotely possible that the data from a recent rodent study that was published in the UK Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biosciences (Sharig. 2015) will catch your attention. I am sure you won't catch fire, though, but maybe at least some sparks, when you read that a relatively low dose of virgin coconut oil slowed down the weight gain, even if the oil was added to a non-obesogenic diet. Not excited? Well what about its triglyceride and total cholesterol lowering prowess and it's ability to keep LDL and VLDL in check while increasing HDL significantly - that's at least news-worthy isn't it?
But first things first - here's what the scientists did: The scientists bought a bunch of 2 months old rats. After 2 weeks of acclimatization, they randomly assigned them to one of the following diets:

• Group 1 was fed the normal pellet diet (control),
• Group 2 was administered normal diet with VCO (1 ml/day),
• Group 3 named as HCD received bread with pellet,
• Group 4  animals received HCD bread and pellet with VCO (1 ml/day),
• Group 5 called as HLD animals received cheese with pellet,
• Group 6 named HLD animals received cheese and pellet with VCO (1 ml/day)

All groups had free access to diets and water ad libitum for 10 weeks. To make sure the virgin coconut oil was actually consumed, the VCO was administered by oral gavage at a dose of 1.42 ml/kg. That's the rodent equivalent of ~3 tablespoons of coconut oil which is what Fife recommends in "Coconut Cures" (2005) you should take everyday to - as the title of the book says - prevent and treat common health problems with coconut (not all of the claims made in the book can be considered scientifically proven, btw).
The rodents remained on their respective diets for 8 weeks before... no, not before they were sacrificed, but before the scientists from the Managemant and Science University in Malaysia used a spectrophotometer and commercial enzymatic kits to determine the lipid parameters by enzymatic endpoint method, as well as the plasma total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels were measured using commercial enzymatic kits.

Figure 1: Effect of Virgin coconut oil on plasma lipid profile of albino Wistar rats after 8 weeks (Shariq. 2015).

A brief glimpse at the data in Figure 1 shows that the addition of virgin coconut oil did in fact have a not exactly life-saving, but still health-relevant effect on the lipid metabolism of the rodents. What I personally consider most intriguing is that this was the case for all diets, including the normal one.
References:

• Feranil, Alan B., et al. "Coconut oil predicts a beneficial lipid profile in pre-menopausal women in the Philippines." Asia Pacific journal of clinical nutrition 20.2 (2011): 190.
• Liau, Kai Ming, et al. "An open-label pilot study to assess the efficacy and safety of virgin coconut oil in reducing visceral adiposity." ISRN pharmacology 2011 (2011).
• Manaf, Marina Abdul, et al. "Analysis of adulteration of virgin coconut oil by palm kernel olein using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy." Journal of Food Lipids 14.2 (2007): 111-121.
• Shariq, B., et al. "Evaluation of Anti-Atherosclerotic Activity of Virgin Coconut Oil in Male Wistar Rats Against High Lipid and High Carbohydrate Diet Induced Atherosclerosis."

Bulletproof coffee is a bogus fad, but is it also bad for your blood lipids?

You will probably have heard about the (over-)hyped "bulletproof coffee" (=coffee with butter in it) triggering measurable (and in some cases) significant increases in total and LDL cholesterol in bulletproof addicts (case studies + Toklu. 2015).

Now, the most obvious trigger of the cholesterol increase is the butter you put into the coffee to make it "bulletproof". Another possible reason for the increase in cholesterol is yet the coffee itself. A reason that people apparently forgot about ever since van Dusseldorp, Marijke, et al. published their 1991 paper called the "Cholesterol-raising factor from boiled coffee does not pass a paper filter."
In their study the scientists wanted to test whether filtered coffee would trigger a similarly pronounced increase in serum cholesterol, as it has previously been observed for coffee that was prepared "Scandinavian-style" by boiling ground coffee with water and decanting the fluid into a cup (Arnesen. 1984; Førde. 1985; Aro. 1987).

To test whether the same mess would happen with filtered coffee, the scientists from the University of Nijmegen prepared their coffee as follows:

• Boiled-type coffee was prepared by pouring 0.5l of boiling water onto 25 g of coarsely ground coffee (Roodmerk, Douwe Egberts, Utrecht, The Netherlands) in an 0.5l Thermos flask. Ten minutes later, the liquid was decanted into a second Thermos flask, from which the coffee beverage was poured out into a cup or beaker just before consumption. One batch provided three cups of 0.15 l (5 fl. oz.), prepared with 8 g of ground coffee per cup. The contents of one bottle were usually consumed within half a day, after which another bottle was prepared. Most of the coffee grounds stayed behind in the first and second Thermos bottles. Those grounds that made their way into the cup were discarded by the study subjects. 
• Boiled and filtered coffee was prepared like the boiled coffee, but instead the liquid was poured into the second Thermos flask through a white paper filter (Melitta Nederland, Veenendaal, The Netherlands, 1x4, No. 4006508 200016) held in a conical plastic filter holder" (van Dusseldorp. 1991).

Subjects in both groups were allowed to dilute the brew in the second Thermos bottle with hot water if they found it too strong for their taste.
The caffeine content, measured by reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography, was 860 mg/1 for the boiled and 887 mg/1 for the boiled and filtered coffee - a difference that is way too small to explain why the 0.9 l or six cups of coffee brew the subjects were instructed to prepare and drink a day had drastically different effects on the cholesterol levels of the apparently healthy, non-smoking, non-medicated, non-dieting 33 male and 33 female habitual coffee drinker (four to seven cups of regular drip-filtered coffee per day) who participated in van Dusseldorp's study.
References:

• Arnesen, Egil, Olav H. Førde, and Dag S. Thelle. "Coffee and serum cholesterol." British medical journal (Clinical research ed.) 288.6435 (1984): 1960-1960.
• Aro, Antti, et al. "Bioled coffee increases serum low density lipoprotein concentration." Metabolism 36.11 (1987): 1027-1030.
• Førde, Olav Helge, et al. "The Tromsø heart study: coffee consumption and serum lipid concentrations in men with hypercholesterolaemia: an randomised intervention study." BMJ 290.6472 (1985): 893-895.
• Park, Taesun, Kyungshin Lee, and Youngsook Um. "Dietary taurine supplementation reduces plasma and liver cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations in rats fed a high-cholesterol diet." Nutrition research 18.9 (1998): 1559-1571.
• van Dusseldorp, Marijke, et al. "Cholesterol-raising factor from boiled coffee does not pass a paper filter." Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology 11.3 (1991): 586-593.
• Toklu et al. "Rise in Serum Lipids After Dietary Incorporation of 'Bulletproof Coffee'." Journal of Clinical Lipidology 9.3 (2015): 462.
• Zhang, M., et al. "Beneficial effects of taurine on serum lipids in overweight or obese non-diabetic subjects." Amino acids 26.3 (2004): 267-271.