Will Non-GMO Foods Be Less Nutritious?

March 4, 2014 by Dr. Steve Chaney

The Unintended Consequences of the Proposed Non-GMO Labeling Laws

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

Post Foods recently announced that their Grape Nuts cereal will be completely non-GMO. General Foods followed suit by announcing that their Original Cheerios will also be non-GMO. That’s good news, right?

Maybe, but it turns out that the new non-GMO Grape Nuts will no longer contain vitamins A, D, B12 or riboflavin, and the amount of riboflavin in a serving of Cheerios decreased from 25% of the daily recommended value (DV) to 2% of the DV.

The cereal manufacturers claim that their new cereals are more wholesome, but one nutrition expert said “The new products are arguably less healthy given their lower vitamin content.”

I’ve never been one to claim that throwing a few vitamins into a serving of cereal turns it into a nutrition powerhouse, but the decreased vitamin content of the new non-GMO cereals does raise a few questions.

Why were the vitamins removed?

Did it have anything to do with the cereals being non-GMO?

Does this mean that the non-GMO processed foods of the future will be less nutritious than the foods they replace?

The cereal manufacturers were mum when asked these questions, so we will need to rely on some scientific sleuthing and a bit of intuition to get the answers.

The Flaw in The Proposed Non-GMO Labeling Laws

I first discussed this topic a few months ago in a “Health Tips From The Professor” article titled “When is GMO Non-GMO?” I received a lot of irate comments from people who take every word on the non-GMO websites and videos as the gospel truth. (The professor has never been one to shy away from controversy when he sees claims that aren’t based on good science.)

However, I think my article was misunderstood by some of my readers, so let me review my conclusions briefly:

There are definitely environmental concerns around the widespread use of GM crops – especially those that allow heavy pesticide and herbicide usage.

There are potential health concerns related to the consumption of unprocessed GM foods and proteins derived from GM foods – although those heath concerns have been blown way out of proportion in the media.

If the proposed Non-GMO labeling laws stopped there, they would be scientifically justified. But they go one step further by requiring that processed foods labeled as non-GMO cannot contain any ingredient obtained from a GM source. There is no scientific justification for this.

Nutrients (sugars, oils & vitamins) derived from GM sources are chemically and biologically indistinguishable from those same nutrients derived from non-GMO sources.

The intentions of the proposed non-GMO labeling laws are good, but whenever you go beyond what good science supports there are often unintended consequences – such as the vitamin-depleted non-GMO cereals that the food manufacturers have just announced.

Will Non-GMO Foods Be Less Nutritious?

To understand the answer to that question, let’s look at what probably happened to the vitamins in the non-GMO cereals.

In today’s world many vitamins are purified from genetically modified microorganisms – bacteria & yeast that have been modified to overproduce certain vitamins. In evaluating the significance of that statement, here are a few facts to consider:

1) We have gotten vitamins from these sources for many years.

B vitamins have been obtained from yeast for at least a hundred years.

A significant portion of the vitamins we absorb on a daily basis are made by bacteria in our gut.

2) The only difference today is that these microorganisms have been genetically modified to overproduce the vitamins.

3) These are naturally sourced vitamins.

The microorganisms are the same ones that have provided these vitamins for generations.

The enzymes used by the microorganisms to make the vitamins are the same.

4) There is no downside to the use of GM organisms as a source of natural vitamins.

There is no environmental risk from the use of these GM microorganisms. They don’t contain any dangerous genes that could wreak havoc if they escaped from the food processing plants.

Because the purified vitamins are indistinguishable from those obtained from non-GMO sources, there are also no health risks.

5) The advantage of using these GM organisms is clear. It substantially lowers the cost of vitamins and allows them to be used in the mass market – for example, in popular breakfast cereals.

6) Most food manufacturers can’t simply use non-GMO sourced vitamins and raise their prices.

A recent poll showed that 53% of Americans prefer non-GMO foods, but only 11% are willing to pay more for those foods

What Does the Future Hold?

Even though they are scientifically flawed, the proposed non-GMO labeling laws will probably become the law in several states in the near future. (Good science has never played much of a role in political decisions.)

Currently, there simply aren’t enough non-GMO vitamins available to supply the mass market – even if price were no concern. So, in the short term, many non-GMO processed foods are likely to be less nutritious than the foods they will replace – as we just saw with Grape Nuts and Cheerios.

However, most people feel that American ingenuity and the law of supply and demand will eventually result in a bigger supply of reasonable priced non-GMO vitamins. When that happens non-GMO processed foods will be just as nutritious as the older GM versions.

However, at this point nobody knows how long that will take.

The Bottom Line:

1) There is a scientific basis for environmental and potential health concerns regarding genetically modified whole foods and the protein extracted from these foods.

2) However, proposed non-GMO labeling laws would require that a processed food be labeled as genetically modified if it contains any nutrient purified from a genetically modified organism.

3) There is no scientific justification for this requirement. Purified vitamins from GM and non-GM microorganisms are chemically and biologically indistinguishable. Furthermore, the GM microorganisms used to produce the vitamins pose no environmental or health risks.

4) Non-GMO vitamins (vitamins prepared from non-GMO microorganisms) are currently in short supply and are very expensive compared to vitamins prepared from GM microorganisms.

5) Consequently, the unintended consequence of these proposed non-GMO labeling laws will likely be that many of the new non-GMO processed foods will contain fewer vitamins and, therefore, will be less nutritious than the foods they replace – at least in the short term. The new non-GMO Grape Nuts and Cheerios may be just the tip of the iceberg.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

The Two Biggest Misconceptions About Supplementation

December 31, 2013 by Dr. Steve Chaney

Secrets You Need To Know

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

In last week’s “Health Tips From The Professor” I told you the truth behind the headlines that vitamins are a waste of money. This week I’m going to be talking about the two biggest misconceptions that people have about supplementation. These are two secrets you need to know.

The Two Biggest Misconceptions About Supplementation

I won’t keep you in suspense. The answer is pretty simple. The two biggest misconceptions about supplementation that I hear over and over are:

1) Supplementation can cure disease

2) It doesn’t matter what you eat (or what supplements you take)

Of course, those statements don’t tell you much by themselves, so let’s delve into the subject more deeply.

Misconception #1: Supplementation can cure disease.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked “I have “disease X”. What supplements should I take? – as if supplements were drugs that can be taken to cure a disease.

We shouldn’t think of supplements as drugs that cure diseases. We should think of them as providing the nutrients that are the building blocks of health – or perhaps the ammunition that the body uses to fight diseases. Diseases, after all, are an abnormal state of being, and our bodies have an amazing capacity to fight those diseases.

When we have infections or cancer our body activates its immune system to fight it. When we have inflammation our body tries to put out the fire. When we have damage to our DNA – our genetic information – our body tries to repair it. The list is almost endless. Our bodies are wondrously designed!

Our immune systems require nutrients like protein, B vitamins, antioxidants, zinc and iron. The omega-3 fatty acids, anti-oxidants and polyphenols like resveratrol are anti-inflammatory. Nutrients like antioxidants and polyphenols support DNA repair.

So proper diet and supplementation are not “magic bullets” that cure diseases. They are simply the building blocks that allow the body to do what it does best.

And because no two of us are alike the nutrients that we need the most to allow our bodies to do their job efficiently may be different for each one of us.

So while there is no magic food or supplement that will cure a specific disease, a healthy diet and a holistic approach to supplementation can often work wonders.

Misconception #2: It doesn’t matter what you eat.

This is the flip side of the coin. I often come across people who have been told by the “experts” that the cause of their disease was not related to diet so they shouldn’t worry about what they eat. They are also usually told that supplementation will not do any good.

Let’s take the most extreme example – genetically caused diseases or serious degenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s for which the causes are still not fully understood.

It is generally true that these diseases were not caused by poor diet (MS may be the exception because there is some evidence that it can be caused by inadequate vitamin D during childhood). And I know many people who take the “expert’s” advice to heart and eat whatever they like and consider supplementation a waste of money.

Is that a sound approach? Let’s consider.

Any nutritionist will tell you that an inadequate diet can lead to malaise, low energy, inflammation, weakened immune system and impaired wound healing – just to name a few maladies. Even if you don’t end up with the symptoms of a nutritional deficiency, a poor diet can rob you of energy and vitality.

If you layer the consequences of a poor diet on top of the underlying disease, your chances of being able to cope with the disease and function optimally are greatly diminished.

I have come across many people with very serious diseases who are able to function at a very high level through proper diet and a holistic approach to supplementation.

Diet and supplementation did not cure their disease as they quickly discover if they stop supplementing and go back to the way they used to eat, but in many cases you would consider them to be perfectly healthy as long as they keep doing what they have been doing.

The Bottom Line

1) There is no perfect food or supplement that is capable of curing disease, but if you give your body the nutrients that it needs it often has the ability to heal itself.

2) Proper diet and supplementation can make a difference even if the disease was not caused by poor nutrition.

3) Each of us have unique nutritional needs so a holistic approach to diet and supplementation is best.

I didn’t specifically talk about weight control and exercise, but you should know from my previous “Health Tips From The Professor” that I consider them to be an essential part of any holistic health program.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Are Multivitamins A Waste Of Money?

December 24, 2013 by Dr. Steve Chaney

Don’t Throw Your Vitamins Away Yet

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

The Professor is annoyed. Two things really irritate me:

Charlatans who cherry pick studies to “prove” that their snake oil supplements will cure what ails you.
Doctors who proclaim that vitamins are a waste of money without understanding the science behind the studies they are quoting.

Are Multivitamins A Waste Of Money?

You’ve seen the headlines telling you that “the experts” have concluded that multivitamins are a waste of money. You might be wondering “What’s behind these headlines? Who are these experts, and what is their evidence?”

Let’s start at the beginning. The article (Gualler et al., Annals of Internal Medicine, 159: 850-851, 2013) that generated all of the headlines was an editorial, which means it is an opinion piece, not a scientific study. It represents the opinion of five very prominent doctors, but it is, at the end of the day, just their opinion. Many other well respected experts disagree with their opinion.

They based their editorial on three recently published studies:

The first study reported that vitamin and mineral supplements did not decrease the risk of heart disease and cancer in healthy individuals (Fortmann et al., Annals of Internal Medicine, 159, doi: 10.7326/003-4815-159-12-201312170-00729)

The second study reported that multivitamins did not affect cognitive function in healthy male physicians aged 65 and older (Gradstein et al, Annals of Internal Medicine, 159, 806-814, 2013)

The third study concluded that multivitamins did not reduce the risk of a second heart attack in patients who had previously had a heart attack and were receiving appropriate medical therapy.

These were all large, well designed studies, so it would be tempting to conclude that the headlines were right. Maybe vitamins are a waste of money.

But, what if the whole underlying premise of these studies was flawed? Let’s examine that possibility by examining the flawed premises behind these and other studies.

What’s Wrong With These Studies?

#1) These studies were too narrowly focused.

Multivitamins and individual vitamins and minerals are not magic bullets. They are not drugs. They are meant to fill nutritional gaps in our diet – not prevent or cure disease. We should be asking whether holistic approaches can prevent or cure disease – not whether individual nutrients can do so.

One of the examples that I love to use, because it really made an impression on me as a young scientist, occurred at an International Cancer Symposium I attended more than 30 years ago. I attended a session in which an internally renowned expert was giving his talk on colon cancer. He said, “I can show you, unequivocally, that colon cancer risk is significantly decreased by a lifestyle that includes a high-fiber diet, a low-fat diet, adequate calcium, adequate B-vitamins, exercise and weight control. But I can’t show you that any one of them, by themselves, is effective.”

The question that came to me as I heard him speak was: “What’s the message that a responsible scientist or responsible health professional should be giving to their patients or the people that they’re advising?” You’ve probably heard experts saying:

“Don’t worry about the fat content of your diet. It can’t be shown to increase the risk of colon cancer.”
“Don’t worry about calcium. It doesn’t decrease the risk of colon cancer”
“Don’t worry about B-vitamins. They don’t decrease the risk”
“Don’t worry about fiber. It can’t be shown to decrease the risk either”

But, is that the message that we should be giving people – that nothing matters? Shouldn’t we really be saying what that doctor said many years ago – that a lifestyle that includes all of those things significantly decreases the risk of colon cancer?

#2) These studies were destined to fail.

It’s almost impossible to prove that any single intervention prevents disease when you are starting with a healthy population (something we scientists refer to as a primary prevention study).

For example, in “Health Tips From the Professor” just a couple of weeks ago I shared with you that even when you combine all of the published studies with tens of thousands of patients, it is impossible to prove that stain drugs prevent heart attacks in healthy individuals.

If you can’t show that statins prevent heart disease in healthy people, why would you expect to be able to show that vitamins or minerals prevent heart attacks in healthy people?

I can’t resist pointing out that this perfectly illustrates the pro-drug, anti-supplement bias that is so prevalent among many of my medical colleagues. I haven’t seen a single editorial or headline suggesting that statin drugs might be a waste of money for healthy individuals.

#3) These studies simply asked the wrong questions.

For example, the third study described in the editorial was asking whether multivitamins reduced the risk of a second heart attack in patients who were receiving “appropriate medical therapy”. What does “appropriate medical therapy” mean, you might ask? It means that those patients were on 4 or 5 drugs, with all of their side effects.

In reality the study was not asking whether multivitamins reduced the risk of a second heart attack. The study asked whether multivitamins had any additional benefits for individuals who were taking 4 or 5 drugs to reduce their risk of a second heart attack. That’s a totally different question.

There are lots of examples of this paradigm. For example, 17 years ago the Cambridge Heart Antioxidant Study showed that vitamin E significant decreased heart attack risk in patients with severe cardiovascular disease (Stephens et al, The Lancet, 347: 781-786, 1996). Patients in that study were taking one or two medications. However, in today’s world that would be considered unethical. The standard medical treatment for high risk heart disease patients today is 4 or 5 drugs, and when patients are receiving that many medications it is no longer possible to demonstrate a benefit of vitamin E. The story is similar for omega-3 fatty acids.

That poses a dilemma. What recent studies show is that individual nutrients don’t reduce the risk of a second heart attack in someone who is receiving “standard of care” medical treatment.

But that’s not the question I am interested in. I’d like to know whether natural approaches might be just as effective as the drugs or whether natural approaches might allow one to use fewer drugs or lower doses. I’d like to avoid all of the side effects of those drugs if I could.

What about you? What questions would you like answered? Do these studies answer those questions?

What Was Overlooked In Those Studies

The studies did show conclusively that there were no harmful effects from supplementing except for high dose beta-carotene in smokers. Somehow that information never made it into the headlines.

The Bottom Line

Don’t pay much attention to the reports that supplements don’t work and are a waste of money. Those studies are fundamentally flawed.

Don’t pay much attention to the reports claiming that vitamins will hurt you. Except for beta-carotene in smokers the latest studies showed no evidence of harm.

On the other hand, don’t expect miracles from your vitamins. If you spend your time sitting in front of the TV set eating pizza & drinking sodas, popping a vitamin pill won’t prevent much of anything.

Finally, holistic approaches are often as effective as drug therapy – without the side effects. Your vitamins can be an important part of a holistic approach to better health that includes weight control, a good diet and exercise.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Use of Sports Supplements By Young Athletes

October 31, 2013 by Dr. Steve Chaney

Are Sports Supplements Effective? Are They Safe?

Author: Dr. Pierre DuBois

In recent years, the use of sports supplements by young athletes has increased dramatically. The most commonly used sports supplements among teenagers of all ages were vitamins and minerals, though “ergogenic aids” are used by some teen athletes specifically to enhance performance. Among these performance-enhancing supplements are substances such as caffeine, creatine, ephedra and other stimulants, human growth hormone (HGH) and anabolic steroids.

Of the vitamin and mineral supplements, mutivitamins, vitamin C, calcium and iron were reported as being taken most often. While the risks of taking vitamin supplements is relatively low, there is some concern that young athletes may then progress to taking more dangerous substances under the impression that they are as harmless as vitamins and minerals. And while the risk of overdose with vitamins and minerals is low, it is not nonexistent, and some vitamins can be toxic when too much is taken (such as iron and vitamin A) or may interact with other vitamins or drugs.

Although many performance-enhancing supplements are advertised as being safe – especially those made from natural compounds – a great number of them have not been tested by any regulatory agency, so their actual safety is not known. In addition, there are no formal guidelines for dosage in many cases, so there could be adverse side effects if too much is inadvertently taken.

The pressure to excel at sports is greater than ever, and there is increasing competition to get into elite sports programs where they have a better chance of being discovered by professional sports scouts looking for the next big star. The possibility of fame and fortune can be a strong enticement to young athletes to try performance-enhancing supplements to give them an edge over their competition. And often it is their coach that suggests or encourages this practice.

According to studies done on high school athletes, they report taking supplements to not only enhance performance, but also to encourage growth and muscle development, prevent illness and reduce fatigue. Supplement use was greatest among athletes who practiced two or more different sports and those who were required to “bulk up”, such as wrestlers and weight lifters.

While the opinions of friends, teammates and coaches were a big influence on the decision of young football players to take supplements (particularly creatine), it was their parents who had the greatest amount of influence on their decision. So it is incredibly important for parents to be educated as to the benefits and drawbacks of each of these supplements for young athletes.

The Bottom Line:

There is tremendous pressure on teenage athletes to qualify for elite programs that will increase their chances of being selected for the top college teams and eventually getting onto professional teams. Because of that, the use of sports supplements by teenage athletes is commonplace.

Vitamin and mineral supplements are generally harmless unless taken in excessive amounts.

Performance-enhancing sports supplements, on the other hand, are poorly regulated. Many are useless and others are potentially harmful. In next week’s “Health Tips From The Professor”, I’ll give you some examples of sports supplements you might want to avoid.

If you are the parent of a teen athlete, have a conversation with your child about supplements. Don’t lecture, but involve them in the process of doing research. You may be surprised what you both find.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.