The unmapped chemical complexity of our diet

[helvella]

One of the continuing issues with hypothyroidism in particular is the interrelation between gut, food and general well-being.

We see post after post explaining how people have become sensitive to foods they used to eat without any problems.

We do not have proper explanations of many of these problems, but it is interesting that this paper looks at food differently. Although we might find many causes, the idea that unknown, or at least under-recognised, components could be important appears very reasonable.

New Scientist currently has an article but only a fragment is accessible unless a subscriber and, from what I can see, it appears based on this paper.

Hidden nutrition: We don't know what makes up 99 per cent of our food

newscientist.com/article/mg...

The unmapped chemical complexity of our diet

• Albert-László Barabási,

• Giulia Menichetti &

• Joseph Loscalzo

Nature Food volume 1, pages33–37(2020)

Abstract

Our understanding of how diet affects health is limited to 150 key nutritional components that are tracked and catalogued by the United States Department of Agriculture and other national databases. Although this knowledge has been transformative for health sciences, helping unveil the role of calories, sugar, fat, vitamins and other nutritional factors in the emergence of common diseases, these nutritional components represent only a small fraction of the more than 26,000 distinct, definable biochemicals present in our food—many of which have documented effects on health but remain unquantified in any systematic fashion across different individual foods. Using new advances such as machine learning, a high-resolution library of these biochemicals could enable the systematic study of the full biochemical spectrum of our diets, opening new avenues for understanding the composition of what we eat, and how it affects health and disease.

nature.com/articles/s43016-...

Barabási, A., Menichetti, G. & Loscalzo, J. The unmapped chemical complexity of our diet. Nat Food 1, 33–37 (2020). doi.org/10.1038/s43016-019-...

[LindaC]

Thank you so much. Very interesting.

[Clarrisa]

I use to take vitamin E without any problems when young. Much later on a emergency room doctor said I was allergic to vitamin E. The doctor thought it was the source of my presenting abdominal pain. I thought how could that possibly be? But I find now if vitamin E is in a lotion I break out in a rash so it must be true.

It is encouraging to see this broadening of the scope of nutrition in these articles.

[tattybogle]

I think we already have the knowledge we need on this subject, but we haven't heeded it.

I wonder how many of the 26,000 things, are things added /mucked about with by the industrialisation of the food industry? When i did 'O' level Home Economics we learnt about something like 12 Essential Amino Acids, carbohydrate, protein , fat, vitamins , minerals.

In the 1970's, a kid with an allergy was a rare thing. All the farmers i knew never let margarine in the house. World War 2 was probably the best thing ever for the diet of the nation (in health terms if not pleasure!)

'You are what you eat' ,literally.

My mum told me not to play with my food. Today's food producers should heed that advice.

I think we should return to teaching all children how to cook nutritionally balanced meals from scratch at school.

If we did that then maybe more doctors of the future might not have such an appalling lack of knowledge on the importance of the subject.

[Hillwoman in reply to tattybogle]

Not sure I agree about WW2 being good for the diet, though it's a statement I've often read. Possibly the requirement to keep bran in milled flour provided more nutrients, though they're not all well absorbed from grain (Zoe Harcombe has written about this problem, somewhere on her blog). The wartime rations emphasised carbohydrate in its various forms at the expense of protein (meat and eggs), and margarine came into universal use because butter was so restricted.

My grandmother told me she and her female relatives became overweight - in an era when few people were - and unhealthy during the war, despite the fact most of them were farmers and had more access than most to good quality food. When rationing eased, they went on strict weight loss diets that emphasised fat and protein - none of the low fat nonsense that reared its head in the late 70s here in the UK. The 'before and after' photos of Gran and my mother from that period are striking.

[tattybogle in reply to Hillwoman]

Yes , you're right, the WW2 comment was an over-generalisation. Most of my stories of it are probably 'rose tinted', but have come from inner city areas and people who previously didn't eat enough high quality protein, ate too much cheap refined carbs,didn't previously grow much veg etc, and then had to dig up the lawn to grow cabbages and parsley, and start making rose hip syrup, so i wonder if that was the difference ?. and the margarine and aspartame substitutions for butter and sugar were not good.

Totally agree about the 'low fat ' nonsense.

[Hillwoman in reply to tattybogle]

Yes, I think my mother's side of the family were more fortunate than most. My father came from a very impoverished inner city background. To this day, there's a legacy of obesity, inflammation and autoimmune disease among relatives on that side of the family. Whether this is a consequence of necessarily poor dietary habits having been handed down, or the action of genetics and epigenetics, I'm too ignorant and fuzzy-brained to work out!

[helvella in reply to tattybogle]

World War 2 was probably the best thing ever for the diet of the nation

In amongst everything else, we need to remember that WW2 was preceded by severe poverty - especially in the 1920s but continuing long after. Some of the worst affected might have ended up better fed during the war than before. Both as below, due to the impact of rationing, but also as many of the poor joined up with one or other of the forces, etc., and ended up being fed by the army, navy, air force, etc., better than ever before.

Most people ate less meat, fat, eggs and sugar than they had eaten before, but people who had previously consumed a poor diet were able to increase their intake of protein and vitamins because they received the same ration as everybody else. Thus, many people consumed a better diet during wartime food rationing than before the war years and this had a marked effect on health outcomes; infant mortality rates declined, and the average age at which people died from natural causes increased.

nutrition.org.uk/nutritioni...

[humanbean in reply to helvella]

My father was called up near the end of WW2. He hated the army food (and the army) and always claimed that there were three grades of food available :

Grade A for civilians

Grade B for farm animals

Grade C for troops

I suspect that his attitude to the food was coloured by his absolute hatred of being forced into the army.

[dtate2016]

Yes very interesting article! An older farmer here in the US - remembers when the United States government gave them margarine to feed to their pigs to fatten them up. It was during World War II. Later there was a different kind of margarine given as a ration to people in the United States during World War II and right after. He said it was the same stuff only they were also given a yellow dye to make it look more like butter. The literature that came with the margarine for human consumption said it would help them lose weight - it was better than butter etc. He was a child at the time but he Said he never understood why - on The one hand you give it to pigs to fatten them on the other hand you give it to humans to make them thinner?

Of course we know it made both pigs and humans fatter - We know that now.

The question I have is why did the child know but not the adults and his family? The other thing that’s kind of interesting to note is that he didn’t get fat - nor did any of the men and his family, even though they ate it, but all his sisters and his mother did. Of course they worked outside in the field and again were very hard-working farmers that’s probably part of it but I don’t think it’s all of it. May all of us continue to keep our eyes open - and ask the questions about our food, even as a little child.