Trying to stay healthy. Can seem like up full-time job. Sometimes especially during a pandemic, but I'm here to make that goal a little easier. Welcome to the nutrition facts podcast. I'm your host. Dr. Michael Greger. It's time for the nutrition facts grab bag. While we look at the latest science and hold variety of topics starting today with pine nuts. Did you know that some pine nuts and cause a bad taste in your mouth that can last for
A weeks.
The reason I make my pesto with walnuts, instead of the more traditional pine nuts, is not only because walnuts are probably healthier. We're talking 20 times more polyphenols, but also because of a mysterious phenomenon known as PMS. Nope, not that PMS. Pine mouth syndrome characterized but what has become my favorite word of the week Kaka, Julia, meaning
Bad taste in your mouth. You can get it from heavy metal toxicity, Seafood, toxins certain nutritional and neurological disorders or from eating the wrong kind of pine nuts. Termed Pine mouth by the public a few days. After eating pine nuts, you get this persistent metallic or bitter taste in your mouth that can last for weeks. Thousands of cases have been reported Raw vs. Cooked pine nuts. Doesn't seem to matter. Could The Cosby's
Some unidentified toxin present in some varieties of non-edible pine nuts out of more than 100 different, kinds of pine trees than that's of only about 30 are considered to be edible. So pinenut samples from stricken consumers were analyzed and indeed they all contain nuts from Chinese white pine, which is not reported to be. Edible that tree is typically only used for lumber. You don't know. It's the Chinese white pine nuts though until you put it to
Test research side, a few folks, consume six to eight Chinese white pine nuts. Most of the subjects had ever heard of pine mouth syndrome and boom. They all developed symptoms and we still don't know exactly what it is in those nuts. That causes such a weird reaction. We just know to stay away from those kind of pine nuts. So what kinds of pine nuts? Do we have on our shelves here? All kinds apparently including those associated with pine mouth?
So, unsurprisingly, hundreds of cases have been reported in the US as well. Most of the implicated nuts. Were reportedly labeled as originating from Asia. And in most cases China, Europe actually did something about it and demanded China stop sending them toxic nuts, which they did in 2011 and this export restriction, likely resulted in less being imported into the us as well. Given the declining cases going to 2012.
Are
cases still happened though, is evidence by an active Facebook group, entitled. Damn, you pine nuts. Although there are no proven therapies. Pine mouth syndrome. Appears to be benign and just goes away on its own
in our next story. We look at how emulsifiers are the most widely used food. Additives. What are they doing to our gut
microbiome today? When grocery shopping, unless you're sticking to the produce aisle. It's nearly impossible to
To avoid processed foods. Particularly if eating the standard American diet, characterized not only by insufficient plant foods and too much meat, Dairy and eggs, but also Lotsa processed junk and along with that and increase exposure to food, additives, for example, the artificial sweetener, sucralose old the Splenda can disrupt the human gut microbiome and induce glucose intolerance. In other words. It can make your blood sugar's worse. Instead of better. It's relatively easy to avoid artificial.
But it may be more difficult to avoid ingestion of emulsifiers because they're commonly added to. So many foods. In fact, most of ours are the most widely used food additives and most processed foods contain one or more of them. We Now consume a most fires by the Megaton every year. Thanks to a multi billion dollar industry. You can only find a most fires in Fanny dressings, fatty spreads baked goods, mayonnaise salad, dressings, candy and beverages. Why do we care?
Like all authorized food, additives. Most of ours have been evaluated by risk assessors, who consider them as safe. However, there are growing concerns among scientists about their potentially harmful effects on our intestinal barrier, in terms of causing a leaky gut as well as their effects on our microbiome. Moreover, they could possibly increase the absorption of environmental toxins present in the food. We know that the consumption of ultra-processed foods may be a contributor to weight gain. For example, healthier.
Girl live population. Don't just have low meat intake and high plant intake but they're eating minimally processed foods. May be the emulsifiers found in processed foods could be playing a role based on a number of preclinical studies. But who cares, if emulsifiers make rats, gain weight, when you read it emulsifiers can cause striking changes in the microbiota. They're not talking about within human beings. Mice, are often used to study diets impact on the microbiome.
But we only share a few percent of bacterial genes in common, even the gut Flora of different Mouse. Strains can be considerably different from each other. So they can't even extrapolate from one type of mouse to another. How are you supposed to translate results from mice to human beings remarkably. There's been little studied the potential harmful effects of ingested, emulsifiers in us, for example, lecithin, perhaps best known as a key. Component of egg yolks was found to be worse than
Bait 80 in terms of allowing bacteria to leak through the gut, wall, into the bloodstream. But whether lecithin consumption in humans causes the same problem is yet to be determined. There's certainly a paucity of human trials on the effects of emulsifiers and processed foods, but we at least have data on human tissue cells and gut, Flora dietary emulsifiers directly, altered the composition of the human microbiome, ex Vivo potentiating, intestinal inflammation, ex Vivo.
Mo means outside the body. Researchers inoculated an artificial gut with fresh, human feces into that a nice stable culture going and then added carboxymethyl cellulose or polysorbate. 80 and got a boost in pro-inflammatory potential starting with in one day with the carboxymethyl, cellulose, and within the first week with polysorbate, 80 this approach revealed that both emulsifiers acted directly upon human gut bugs to increase their pro-inflammatory.
If you didn't test the effect of these emulsifiers on the protective mucus layer, and petri dish cultures of human gut lining cells, you'll find that they can partially disrupt the protecting layer, but both this study in the last used, emulsifier concentrations that were far in excess of what people might typically get day-to-day. This is probably the study that raised the greatest potential concern. The researchers surgically obtained, not just cells, but actual intestinal wall tissue.
And found that polysorbate 80 could double the invasion of E coli through the intestinal lining tissue. Whereas adding fiber, in this case, fiber from plantains could seal up the gut wall tissue twice as tight
in our final story today. We look at how the spice cumin can work as well as orlistat. The anal leakage obesity drug
in my video benefits of black cumin for weight loss. Total of 17 randomized, controlled trial, showed that the sea.
Apple spice, could reduce cholesterol and triglycerides and the side effects all weight loss. Of fact, saffron is another spice found to be effective for treating, a major cause of suffering depression. In this case, with a side effect of decreased appetite, when put to the test in a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled, trial, saffron indeed was found to lead to a significant weight loss, five pounds, more than Placebo in an extra inch off the waste in eight weeks, the dose of saffron used in the study.
What's the equivalent of drinking? A cup of tea made from a large pinch of saffron threads. Suspecting the active ingredient might be crocin, the pigment in Saffron that accounts for its crimson color. Researchers also tried giving people just the purified pigment that led to weight loss to, but it didn't do as well as the full saffron extract. Being the placebo by only 2 pounds and half an inch. The mechanism appeared to be appetite suppression as the croson group ended up, averaging about.
Eating fewer calories a day. Where's the full saffron group consumed, 170 calories less a day on average. A similar study looks specifically at snacking frequency the researcher stop, perhaps the mood boosting effects of saffron, might cut down on stress related, eating and eat eight weeks of a saffron extract. Did cut snack intake in half compared to Placebo, accompanied by a slight. But statistically significant weight loss about two pounds. Even a loss of a few pounds is pretty remarkable, given that.
Tiny doses utilized about 100 mg which is equivalent to about an eighth of a teaspoon of the spice. The problem is that saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. It's composed of delicate threads sticking up out of the saffron crocus flower. Each flower produces only a few threads. So you need fifty thousand flowers to make a single pound of spice enough flowers to cover a football field so that pinch of saffron could cost.
A dollar a day. That's why my 21 tweaks to accelerate weight loss and how not to diet instead of saffron include black cumin, which at a quarter teaspoon a day would only cost three cents a day.
What about just regular cumin used in Cuisines around the world from Tex-Mex to the South Asian. Cumin is the second most popular spice on Earth. After black pepper. It's one of the oldest cultivated plants with a range of purported medicinal uses, but only recently, has it been put to the test for weight loss? Those randomized to a half teaspoon of both lunch and dinner over three months. Lost about four more pounds in the next 2 inch off their waste. The spice was found comparable.
To the Obesity drug known as orlistat. For those of you don't remember. That's the anal leakage drug. You may have heard about sold under the brand names. A line xenical though, the drug company. Apparently prefers the term fecal spotting to describe the rectal discharge. It causes the drug company's website offered some helpful tips, though. It's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants and bring a change of clothes with you to work.
You know, just in case their drug caused you to crap your pants. It work. I think I'll stick with the cumin. Thank you very
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Our podcast landing page there. You'll find all the detailed information. You need plus links to all the sources. We cite for each of these topics for a vital timely text on the pathogens that cause pandemics you can order the ebook audiobook or hard copy of my latest book how to survive a pandemic for recipes. Check out. My even newer book. The how not to diet cookbook is beautifully designed with more than 100 recipes for delicious and nutritious.
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