6 ms·

“Sardines will therefore have a protective element because they are rich in the aforementioned nutrients, whereas nutrients taken in isolation in the form of su

by Ecco 5y ago

“Sardines will therefore have a protective element because they are rich in the aforementioned nutrients, whereas nutrients taken in isolation in the form of supplements won’t work to the same extent” : to me this reads as “we found a correlation but we are clueless about the root cause”.

evgen 5y ago
No, it simply repeats the commonly understood fact that it is better to have a diet rich in specific nutrients than to try to use supplements to make up the difference. Everything from dosage to bio-availability of supplements shows them to mostly be not worth the price of manufacture, let alone the price people pay at the till.
- podgaj 5y ago
  There are times, however, the high-dose vitamins Are the only thing that can replace a deficiency Quickly enough. Two of them that come to mind are zinc and biotin. So like everything else in nutrition, it depends, of deficiencies and genetics.
vanderZwan 5y ago
While I can follow that line of thinking, we also shouldn't immediately be dismissive of the conclusions of a professor/researcher at a faculty of health sciences. At least not without a good reason to believe that we have more expertise on the subject than them. On the other hand, there might also be a bit of Spanish cultural bias at work there (Spain is the second-largest consumer of fish after Japan). On the other other hand, it would fit into the mystery of the mediterranean diet.
- Ecco 5y ago
  I didn’t mean to dismiss their conclusions! It might be a pretty awesome discovery actually: eat delicious sardines and avoid getting diabetes? Count me in! I just meant that, as is often the case, great discoveries are often made before we really understand them. For example, isn’t this what happened with antibiotics?
  - vanderZwan 5y ago
    Ah, like that! Fair enough, thank you for elaborating (please consider adding a bit of extra context next time, it will go a long way to prevent such misunderstandings)
woko 5y ago
True. The "root cause" could be that one improves one's diet: - if you take "sardine" supplement pills and go on eating burgers and fries, do not expect a miracle with respect to type 2 pre-diabetes, - if you eat sardines as part of a meal, I suspect that you are likely to *replace* parts of your current diet with the (fatty) fish, rather than keep your usual diet and add fish on top of it. For instance, a funny paragraph from section 4 (Discussion) hints that the SG (Sardine Group) must have added less olive oil to the rest of their meals: > Another possible limitation of the study to bear in mind is the use of canned sardines in olive oil, which, despite easing distribution and consumption, present differences in MUFA content as compared to fresh sardines. Although this may have modified the pattern of lipids consumed, the SG group decreased their overall MUFA consumption. This could be due to the fact that the use of olive oil added to meals did not occur when they consumed the canned sardines and, therefore, there are no differences in its consumption with respect to CG. NB: I don't want to dismiss any part of the article, I only want to insist that it is hard to isolate causes because of this effect of "communicating vases".
- podgaj 5y ago
  This is true, just adding sardines your diet will probably do nothing for most people. It’s more about the elimination of other things we eat as well. It wasn’t until I was eating only salmon for my fat and protein source that I was able to raise my HDL from 35 to 54!. I credit this to totally eliminating the omega-6 fats. But this is just me because I’m a genetic freak with hyperlipidemia.
  - lapsis_beeftech 5y ago
    Totally eliminating omega-6 from your diet can't be healthy, can it? There are only two essential fatty acids for humans and one of them (linoleic acid) is omega-6.
    - podgaj 5y ago
      Well, I exaggerated to make a point. Even salmon has long chain omega 6. I soul have said "eliminating plant based omega 6" and this is just for me and my genetics. People without certain FADS1 genetics can do fine with short chain omega 3 and 6.
azalemeth 5y ago
Edit - I managed to mis-read the press release and read through the wrong paper in detail! Disregard the below… <s> Quite. If you read the paper -- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59643-7.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59643-7.pdf -- the word 'sardine' doesn't appear once; 'fish' doesn't either. The trouble with observational cohort studies is that causality is very hard, if not impossible, to identify. Their main result is based on multivariate logistic regression. I like logistic regression as a technique, and it is very powerful, but if, for example, there is an unmeasured cofounding or causal variable that manifests itself as a linear combination of a number of measured but perhaps more acausal variables, it _will_ confidently give you the wrong result. </s>
- yawnxyz 5y ago
  Isn't this the paper...? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261561421001539?dgcid=author https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02615...
  - azalemeth 5y ago
    Do'h. Thank you – I'd skim-read the news release very quickly and jumped to the first paper linked, which I now see was published in 2020. Apologies.
ackbar03 5y ago
Since supplements have been brought up, what's with the American's obsession over supplements? It's like people are just chomping them down like they're some sort of food stable like bread or rice (or maybe that's just what all the youtube videos want you to think). Its like every bodybuilder on youtube has their own brand of supplements now. Don't even get me started on pre-workout. "Don't feel like working out? Chug this powder!"
- KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  Certain segments of America tend to have poor diets. Especially the young, working class which happens to overlap with the bodybuilding class which makes whey protein a logical choice. Whey protein. It is very cheap; just add mix in a multivitamin and OTC stimulants like caffeine and you have a very marketable product with a 300% markup. The YouTube body building demographic is in the same economic class so capitalizing on a product their audience already uses makes perfect sense. Also, America is one of the few countries with consumer pharmaceutical advertising so marketing supplements is not out of the ordinary.
  - opportune 5y ago
    Approximately nobody mixes whey protein with caffeine. Not sure what you’re talking about
    - catblast01 5y ago
      Look up “protein coffee” and maybe try to lay off the snark a bit if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Supplements don't cure diabetes. The sardines are a very high-fat food item that will satiate you and potentially replace a big load of carbohydrates. Which would affect the prediabetes.
- opportune 5y ago
ivanhoe 5y ago
These are very complex bio-chem processes, so there's probably no single "root cause", but a multivariable situation where certain combinations of nutrients in certain proportion causes these beneficial effects. Also nutrients in supplements often don't have the same bioavailability as in natural products, so it's possible that you take in the same amount of nutrients per label, but your body actually ends up absorbing only a small % of it. Supplements are not that strictly regulated, so many of them are fairly poor quality products making wild claims, counting just on marketing BS to sell.

by Ecco 5y ago

evgen 5y ago

No, it simply repeats the commonly understood fact that it is better to have a diet rich in specific nutrients than to try to use supplements to make up the difference. Everything from dosage to bio-availability of supplements shows them to mostly be not worth the price of manufacture, let alone the price people pay at the till.

podgaj 5y ago
There are times, however, the high-dose vitamins Are the only thing that can replace a deficiency Quickly enough. Two of them that come to mind are zinc and biotin. So like everything else in nutrition, it depends, of deficiencies and genetics.

vanderZwan 5y ago

While I can follow that line of thinking, we also shouldn't immediately be dismissive of the conclusions of a professor/researcher at a faculty of health sciences. At least not without a good reason to believe that we have more expertise on the subject than them. On the other hand, there might also be a bit of Spanish cultural bias at work there (Spain is the second-largest consumer of fish after Japan). On the other other hand, it would fit into the mystery of the mediterranean diet.

Ecco 5y ago
I didn’t mean to dismiss their conclusions! It might be a pretty awesome discovery actually: eat delicious sardines and avoid getting diabetes? Count me in! I just meant that, as is often the case, great discoveries are often made before we really understand them. For example, isn’t this what happened with antibiotics?
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  Ah, like that! Fair enough, thank you for elaborating (please consider adding a bit of extra context next time, it will go a long way to prevent such misunderstandings)

woko 5y ago

True. The "root cause" could be that one improves one's diet: - if you take "sardine" supplement pills and go on eating burgers and fries, do not expect a miracle with respect to type 2 pre-diabetes, - if you eat sardines as part of a meal, I suspect that you are likely to *replace* parts of your current diet with the (fatty) fish, rather than keep your usual diet and add fish on top of it. For instance, a funny paragraph from section 4 (Discussion) hints that the SG (Sardine Group) must have added less olive oil to the rest of their meals: > Another possible limitation of the study to bear in mind is the use of canned sardines in olive oil, which, despite easing distribution and consumption, present differences in MUFA content as compared to fresh sardines. Although this may have modified the pattern of lipids consumed, the SG group decreased their overall MUFA consumption. This could be due to the fact that the use of olive oil added to meals did not occur when they consumed the canned sardines and, therefore, there are no differences in its consumption with respect to CG. NB: I don't want to dismiss any part of the article, I only want to insist that it is hard to isolate causes because of this effect of "communicating vases".

podgaj 5y ago
This is true, just adding sardines your diet will probably do nothing for most people. It’s more about the elimination of other things we eat as well. It wasn’t until I was eating only salmon for my fat and protein source that I was able to raise my HDL from 35 to 54!. I credit this to totally eliminating the omega-6 fats. But this is just me because I’m a genetic freak with hyperlipidemia.
- lapsis_beeftech 5y ago
  Totally eliminating omega-6 from your diet can't be healthy, can it? There are only two essential fatty acids for humans and one of them (linoleic acid) is omega-6.
  - podgaj 5y ago
    Well, I exaggerated to make a point. Even salmon has long chain omega 6. I soul have said "eliminating plant based omega 6" and this is just for me and my genetics. People without certain FADS1 genetics can do fine with short chain omega 3 and 6.

azalemeth 5y ago

Edit - I managed to mis-read the press release and read through the wrong paper in detail! Disregard the below… <s> Quite. If you read the paper -- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59643-7.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-59643-7.pdf -- the word 'sardine' doesn't appear once; 'fish' doesn't either. The trouble with observational cohort studies is that causality is very hard, if not impossible, to identify. Their main result is based on multivariate logistic regression. I like logistic regression as a technique, and it is very powerful, but if, for example, there is an unmeasured cofounding or causal variable that manifests itself as a linear combination of a number of measured but perhaps more acausal variables, it _will_ confidently give you the wrong result. </s>

yawnxyz 5y ago
Isn't this the paper...? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261561421001539?dgcid=author https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02615...
- azalemeth 5y ago
  Do'h. Thank you – I'd skim-read the news release very quickly and jumped to the first paper linked, which I now see was published in 2020. Apologies.

ackbar03 5y ago

Since supplements have been brought up, what's with the American's obsession over supplements? It's like people are just chomping them down like they're some sort of food stable like bread or rice (or maybe that's just what all the youtube videos want you to think). Its like every bodybuilder on youtube has their own brand of supplements now. Don't even get me started on pre-workout. "Don't feel like working out? Chug this powder!"

KingMachiavelli 5y ago
Certain segments of America tend to have poor diets. Especially the young, working class which happens to overlap with the bodybuilding class which makes whey protein a logical choice. Whey protein. It is very cheap; just add mix in a multivitamin and OTC stimulants like caffeine and you have a very marketable product with a 300% markup. The YouTube body building demographic is in the same economic class so capitalizing on a product their audience already uses makes perfect sense. Also, America is one of the few countries with consumer pharmaceutical advertising so marketing supplements is not out of the ordinary.
- opportune 5y ago
  Approximately nobody mixes whey protein with caffeine. Not sure what you’re talking about
  - catblast01 5y ago
    Look up “protein coffee” and maybe try to lay off the snark a bit if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
bayesian_horse 5y ago
Supplements don't cure diabetes. The sardines are a very high-fat food item that will satiate you and potentially replace a big load of carbohydrates. Which would affect the prediabetes.
opportune 5y ago

ivanhoe 5y ago

These are very complex bio-chem processes, so there's probably no single "root cause", but a multivariable situation where certain combinations of nutrients in certain proportion causes these beneficial effects. Also nutrients in supplements often don't have the same bioavailability as in natural products, so it's possible that you take in the same amount of nutrients per label, but your body actually ends up absorbing only a small % of it. Supplements are not that strictly regulated, so many of them are fairly poor quality products making wild claims, counting just on marketing BS to sell.