Effects of Germination on the Nutritional Profile of Gluten-Free Cereals and Pseudocereals: A Review

Happy to say I'm a co-author of a paper that was published this week in Cereal Chemistry. Here is the abstract:

There are a growing number of individuals diagnosed with food allergies and intolerances. Gluten, in particular, is avoided by many individuals because of celiac disease, gluten intolerance, and gluten ataxia. Individuals with allergies, intolerances, or both follow strict diets, but there is concern that these individuals may be at risk of several nutrient deficiencies, including decreased calcium, iron, B vitamins, and fiber. To prevent deficiencies, alternative sources of these nutrients must be provided. Gluten-free cereals and pseudocereals such as amaranth, buckwheat, corn, millet, rice, sorghum, and quinoa can be excellent sources of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other important nutrients. Germination of these edible seeds has been shown to further increase nutrient content and to reduce antinutrients. Their use to naturally fortify and enrich gluten-free foods has great potential. Although there are many benefits to germinated seeds in food, more research must be done to improve texture and sensory properties to gain wider consumer acceptance. A review of germination of gluten-free cereals and pseudocereals and its effect on their nutritional profile is presented.

Effects of Germination on the Nutritional Profile of Gluten-Free Cereals and Pseudocereals: A Review

María Botero Omary, Christina Fong, Jeffrey Rothschild, and Patrick Finney

Cereal Chemistry Journal 2012 89:1, 1-14 

Thiamin and Endurance Athletes

Thiamin (vitamin B1) plays a key role as a coenzyme in the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex, turning pyruvate into acetyl CoA and preventing excess lactic acid from accumulating in our blood. As an endurance athlete, excess lactic acid buildup is one thing we don’t like to have. I haven’t heard much about athletes taking this supplement so I’ve been fishing around the scientific literature the past few days....

Thiamin supplements have been shown to have both positive effects (Bautista-Hernandez and others 2008; Suzuki and Itokawa 1996) and no effects on physical activity (Webster 1998; Webster and others 1997). These inconsistencies could be due to the different derivatives of thiamin (TTFD vs TPP) that were used.  

This might surprise you.....

I haven’t written a blog post in a while, but after stumbling across a few of these studies recently I just couldn’t resist. Most people probably think that the lowest cholesterol is best, saturated fats are bad, vegetable oils are good, animal products give you cancer, and kids get fat because they eat more food than they used to. Not necessarily so....

Is the use of cholesterol in mortality risk algorithms in clinical guidelines valid?

When you go to the Doctor and get your cholesterol measured, scoring over 200 mg/dl will classify as ‘borderline high’, and over 240 mg/dl is considered too high. The authors of this study found that according to these authoritative CVD guidelines, 75% of the adult Norwegian population would be deemed at risk for CVD and in need of clinical attention. The aim of this study was to document the strength and validity of total cholesterol as a risk factor for mortality in a well-defined, general Norwegian population without known cardiovascular disease (CVD) at the start. They looked at the association of total serum cholesterol with total mortality, as well as mortality from CVD and ischemic heart disease (IHD). The study comprised 52,087 Norwegians, aged 20–74, who participated in the a study from 1995–1997 and were followed-up on cause-specific mortality for 10 years (510,297 person-years in total).

The results may not be what you expected...

Among women, cholesterol had an inverse association with all-cause mortality as well as CVD mortality. The

Understanding Ketosis

One of the most misunderstood, misrepresented, and underused approaches to eating is the very low carb diet, also known as a ketogenic diet. Often referred to as dangerous  or a “fad” diet, a closer look into the mechanisms will show it is quite likely our natural state of metabolism, with the modern carb-rich diet only being a seasonal exception to the rules. Closer examination will also show that it is a safe and extremely effective way to treat obesity, diabetes,  alzheimer’s and many other diseases. Lucas Tafur has a very good and very technical blog on this subject, and  Paul Jaminet and Dr. Michael Eades have covered these topics very well, this is my way of summarizing, simplifying, and tying some things together.

Fat & Protein with a side of Carbs: Why the traditional diet for endurance athletes prevents optimal health and performance.

According to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, endurance athletes on a high-carbohydrate diet can exercise longer than athletes eating a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. This is the “common knowledge” of sports nutrition and up until the past ten years seemed to be relatively unchallenged. This type of diet emphasizes pastas, breads, and grains of all kinds that are supposed to make up 55-65% of an athletes daily caloric intake.

At the bottom of the page is a menu from one day of the Tour de France (tdf). While most athletes do not burn as much energy as a tdf rider, we can look to that as a standard of

The Skinny on Saturated Fats: A Summary of Research, Literature, and Blogs

We constantly hear about the dangers of saturated fats, however so much of the demonizing of saturated fats just does not seem right to me on an intuitive level. For example coconut, nearly all saturated fat, seems to be one of the healthiest foods on earth. The sanskrit word for the coconut palm tree means ‘the tree which provides all the necessities of life’, and it has been said that a person could live on coconut alone. Correlation with disease does not always seem obvious to me either. People of northern India consume 17 times more animal fats and have an incidence of coronary heart disease 7 times lower than people in southern India, and the Masai and other African tribes subsist largely on milk, blood, and beef while staying free from heart disease. Rather than stay confused when people condemn saturated fats, this blog is my attempt to make sense of the research findings and literature written on the subject and condense it into something manageable. As we will see, the bulk of the science is no longer controversial, but its potential significance has been minimized by the assumption that saturated fat is still the primary evil in modern diets. Let’s first look at the different types of saturated fats

I should also mention that this meta analysis of nearly 350,000 people concluded that "there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD." That could probably end this debate but let's continue looking at the evidence...