B Vitamins Cause Obesity

Tarmander

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Interesting paper, especially when you read it from a Peat view. Some hilarious excerpts:

"This led to a nationwide increase in the consumption of many vitamins, especially fat synthesis-promoting B vitamins[21-24], including B1 (thiamin), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin) and B6, in many countries[18-20]. Thus, there is a possibility that the food fortification-induced high vitamin intake may be related to the sudden increase in the prevalence of obesity in the 1970s-1980s."

"Although there are few studies linking the increased prevalence of obesity to vitamin fortification, existing evidence suggests that high-risk populations are those who are most likely to have an increased intake of synthetic vitamins and decreased vitamin elimination, e.g., populations in fortified countries[6], individuals with low SES in developed countries[6-10] or with high SES in developing countries[11,12,55], formula-fed infants[15-17], and those who live in fortified countries with less rigorous physical activity[56-59]."

"Many vitamins are known to act as coenzymes or as parts of enzymes responsible for essential chemical reactions, e.g., the synthesis of fat and neurotransmitters. Excess vitamins may also affect the degradation of neurotransmitters and one-carbon metabolism. Therefore, excess vitamins may trigger obesity through multiple ways, including increasing fat synthesis, causing insulin resistance, disturbing neurotransmitter metabolism and inducing epigenetic changes. "

"Vitamin B6 administered together with B1, B2and B5 (pantothenic acid) resulted in a significant increase in body fat in rats[22]. Niacin has been found to increase daily feed intake, weight gain and percentage of abdominal fat in chicken"

I'm guessing most of these documented trends could also be lined up with pufa increase as well.

My favorite: "While vitamins are an important weight gain-promoting factor, at toxic levels they are no longer associated with weight gain or even cause weight loss."

Excess vitamin intake: An unrecognized risk factor for obesity
 

Jayfish

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And they totally missed the real culprit, iron.

Amazing how woefully inept mainstream authority is. Almost like there's a conspiracy...
 
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Tarmander

Tarmander

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If you read through it, you actually find a lot of places where vitamin supplementation made people healthier, yet it was analyzed as the opposite. Most of the stuff about increased child weight seemed positive
 

mujuro

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Wow. Academics will publish anything to substantiate their research positions.
 

tara

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Consumption of breakfast cereal, which is usually fortified, is associated with a reduced risk of being overweight or diabetic.

http://advances.nutrition.org/content/5/5/636S.full
I just read the first bit of the paper you linked. Nice one - I'd like this to be read by the people in the media here who keep spouting sugarphobia as though it was based on established facts.
I think it's says that people who eat breakfast cereal tend to eat more vitamins and minerals and less fat for instance. I assume they tend to eat more milk than non-cereal eaters. If doesn't show anything about the specific nutritional value or otherwise of the cereal itself, just that people who eat cereal do better overall than people who don't.

I am happy when my kids eat cereal because it means they have milk for breakfast (or whenever).
 

NathanK

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Its almost like some papers are put together with a bunch of big words they dont fully understand to sound more photosynthesis
 
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Their conclusion is:

"Since the late 1930s, when synthetic vitamins were first used, the human being has experienced the largest growth in vitamin intake in human history. It is possible that excess vitamins, especially B vitamins, may contribute to the development of obesity. Vitamin-rich formulas and food fortification with vitamins may, to a large extent, be responsible for the increased prevalence of obesity over the past several decades. Different fortification policies and standards may account for the differences in the prevalence between countries, while disparities in the consumption of fortified foods may contribute to the disparities in obesity between population groups within a country. Staple food fortification may be of great harm because it leads to a sustained high vitamin intake. Therefore, given that there has been a significant increase in vitamin supply from natural sources, it is necessary and urgent to review and modify the standards of vitamin fortification."

"It is possible" and "may, to a large extent"..

An observational hypothesis and not controlled. It's a weird study. They are focusing on added synthetic vitamins but are ignoring the real cause, excess fat consumption. They talk about fat synthesis. Fat is already fat. And people eat lots of it. There may be some interactions that cause some fat synthesis but to ignore overall fat consumption when talking about obesity is crazy. The actual cause is excess fat consumption, not synthetic vitamin consumtpion.

“The war on sugar sounds so good on the surface that it has become politically correct to support it. But just scratch that surface and you have a tangled knot of reasoning that goes nowhere, that ignores the contribution of fat, which has never decreased in the modern diet despite claims to the contrary. The entire war on sugar and the advice that stems from it is less effective than the old advice to give up dessert for a while if you want to lose weight. And that’s the real problem; In the modern diet we have so mishandled the information on carbohydrates that we can no longer distinguish dinner from dessert”-NZ
 
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Waynish

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I've had copious amounts of b vitamins and the only way I've been able to increase my body fat is by eating gluten (I'm celiac).
 

Johhny Tazzle

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Cereal, for example cocoa pebbles, worsens my digestion notably, I'm still trying to conclude what it is exactly about them (possible the coconut oil/palm oil, or the crazy amount I eat because they are so addicting) my best guess though is all the synthetic vitamins are causing my digestion to slow down, just my opinion though. Like I would go through an 11 ounce box a day, which was probably a lot of synthetic vitamins, also it might be the artificial flavoring, anybody have thoughts?
 

Blossom

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It could be any of the things you mentioned or a combination of them all.
I used to eat Mom's Best version of cocoa pebbles occasionally. The additives seemed a little better but that brand still had zinc and iron added. I don't remember it bothering my gut but I would only eat a single serving.
Here are the ingredients:
Rice, Sugar, Coconut Oil, Cocoa (Processed with Alkali), Contains 2% or Less of: Salt, Caramel Color, Natural Flavor, Reduced Iron, Zinc (Zinc Oxide). Gluten free.
Im sure part of the reason I chose that brand was because it's labeled gluten free and I'm celiac. It might be worth trying if you can find it just to see if it agrees with you any better than cocoa pebbles.
Cereal, for example cocoa pebbles, worsens my digestion notably, I'm still trying to conclude what it is exactly about them (possible the coconut oil/palm oil, or the crazy amount I eat because they are so addicting) my best guess though is all the synthetic vitamins are causing my digestion to slow down, just my opinion though. Like I would go through an 11 ounce box a day, which was probably a lot of synthetic vitamins, also it might be the artificial flavoring, anybody have thoughts?
 
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i have had vitamin B cause me weight gain and an increase in estrogen also. not sure why yet.
 

Jack Roe

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"I'm guessing most of these documented trends could also be lined up with pufa increase as well."

Nutrition is a 39 or so variable problem. You can line up lots of correlations. Whether they mean anything or not is another matter. Peat's views of iron, for example, iron deficiency is still a big problem much of the world over---iron homeostasis is very highly regulated, except in cases of congenital iron metabolism problems. Is it the B vitamins in the cereal, or is it that the cereals are mostly made from refined grains that lack certain trace minerals?

As I like to repeat, I know lots of healthy, happy people who have no specific "diet." In fact, anecdotally, the people I know who have 'diets', be they vegetarian, vegan, or whatever, a lot of them tend to be what I would call neurotic. But is it the diet causing the neurosis, or is it the neurosis causing the diet?

All of the focus on "too much" tends to come from the premise that Americans/Europeans are well-nourished in general, they just have "too much" nourishment. This is mostly a conceit that the healthy classes use to blame the unhealthy classes for their 'excess.' If someone is continually hungry, for example, what makes most sense, biologically, that the organism is simply deranged and stuffing itself beyond necessity, or that it lacks a nutrient and, therefore, will eat as much as possible to get as much of that nutrient?
 

tankasnowgod

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Nutrition is a 39 or so variable problem. You can line up lots of correlations. Whether they mean anything or not is another matter. Peat's views of iron, for example, iron deficiency is still a big problem much of the world over---iron homeostasis is very highly regulated, except in cases of congenital iron metabolism problems. Is it the B vitamins in the cereal, or is it that the cereals are mostly made from refined grains that lack certain trace minerals?

I've heard this before, that Iron Deficiency is big problem worldwide. First off, based on what test? Serum Iron? Ferritin? TSAT? Hemoglobin? Some other measure?

Regardless of whether iron deficiency is a massive problem worldwide, it is still a Medical Problem, and as such, CAN NOT be addressed with a Nutritional Intervention. For example, if someone has iron deficiency anemia because they host excess hookworm, the treatment should be to eliminate the hookworm, not mandate an iron fortification program on a mass scale that may or may not help said individual, and is most sure to harm several other individuals. If Iron supplements are warranted for an individual, they may only be so for a limited time, say, 3-6 months, not decades on end with no end goal in sight.

And just because Iron Homeostasis is highly regulated, that does not mean that excess iron doesn't pose a threat to those without congenital iron metabolism problems. Cyclists with often "Iron Dope" while competing, and have very high Ferritin levels, even approaching and over the highly toxic threshold of 1000 ng/ml. A small child can die if they eat as few as 10 iron supplement pills. The FDA even sets the tolerable upper limit of iron per day at 45mg, a number than can easily be exceeded in one meal by eating 300 calories of Total Cereal.

Oh, and of course, Iron Fortification programs are fine with poisoning those of us that DO have congenital iron metabolism problems. Thanks for discounting our lives, there.

And, lastly, Iron is a very dangerous mineral. All plants and animals have an Iron Defense System to store iron safely. When you dump iron shavings into cereals (which is essentially what fortification is) , you aren't getting any of the protections.

Based on what we know about iron's ability to promote bacterial growth, and completely neutralize the effect of antibiotics, anyone who has the "benefit" of eating Iron Fortified foods has greatly and artificially exploded their gut bacteria, and has to deal with a much higher endotoxin load.

By the way, it's not just Ray Peat that has talked of Iron's Dangers. E.D. Weinberg wrote an excellent book "Exposing the Hidden Dangers of Iron," and Dr. Fachinni has also done some fantastic work on the Iron issue.
 

Jack Roe

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"Estimated iron intakes were higher in the 1860s than in the 1930s or 1960s (Barker et al, 1970). Estimated intakes in the 1860s were 12.5mg⁄d for indoor workers and 15.9mg⁄d for rural workers: 50% more iron than in the diets of the urban poor in the 1930s (Boyd Orr, 1936)." http://www.bloodmed.com/home/hann2pdf/bjh_4529.pdf

So, well before any concerted fortification, your average worker got far more iron than the DRI. Fortification was introduced in response, so it seems, to urban populations eating very poor diets.

What I mean by multi-variable problem is that it is very difficult to analyze a single nutrient, to even think about how you would do the studies. We're not allowed to purchase children, raise them in labs so that they all eat standard chow. When we feed lab animals in labs, where their lives are important, we are pretty good at that, the animals don't tend to have the vast array of health problems that humans develop.

As for poisoning people with iron metabolism problems, these problems tend to only crop up later in life, and they're fairly well-treated by phlebotomy.

The problem with nutrition gurus is that they only tend to deal with unhealthy populations---it's not like every healthy person has a nutrition guru telling them what to do (except Mom, a good Mom is worth her weight in gold!). The vast majority of healthy people I know have one thing in common: healthy parents. Whether this is genetic or environmental (good eating habits), I do not know. I suspect it is a bit of both, people with good genetics are able to make better choices, be more responsive to environment, but also less responsive to environment: some guru says "NO SALT!!" and they don't just go with it, they say "well, mom ate salt, and she lived to be 90!"

What gurus (of all sorts, not just nutritional) tend to do is make strong pronouncements about things, then give vague directions to follow, so that if their followers don't get better/enlightened/whatever, they can simply blame the follower for not really following the directions, even tho they were vague. This is how gurus work in religion and in nutrition. Anyone who claims to have advice for nutrition, the simple thing to do is to provide a 30 day cycle for a 70kg male. If they aren't willing to do that, and they give some BS about how "it varies", well, no, it doesn't, not unless there are really abundant genetic polymorphisms. And in those cases, yeah, you either have to listen to your body or, if you can afford it, have personalized medicine, but I am skeptical this is the case for most people.

Iron and zinc deficiency are big problems worldwide because the population doesn't have access to sufficient iron and zinc. http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/en/ida_assessment_prevention_control.pdf suggests that anemia is what they mean by iron deficiency, that is, insufficient red blood cell production. The story I've heard about how zinc was declared essential had to do with a fellow doing some over-seas medicine, finding a population of dwarfs with poor testicular development. He put them on zinc and things improved.

As for this "iron defense system," the "defense" is that the uptake of iron from the gut is tightly controlled, so most iron is excreted in feces.

Focusing on single nutrients or excluding single nutrients will over time lead to a deficiency. There seems to be pretty good evidence that Peat is wrong about PUFA, it's just that anyone not eating a purified/refined diet is going to get enough PUFA that getting below the 1-1.5% energy that is required (20-25 kcal for a 2000 calorie diet, or about 2-2.5g of PUFA) is almost impossible. And there are likely health benefits to minimizing PUFA, but the idea that they're not biologically essential, this is just not the case. If it is, I think I have a standing offer, anyone who thinks fat is not essential, I will pay for 6 months of whey protein, purified vitamins, minerals and refined sugar. If Peat is right, that should be enough to sustain you indefinitely, as fat is not biologically essential, the body can produce whatever fats it needs from sugar and protein.
 

tankasnowgod

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"Estimated iron intakes were higher in the 1860s than in the 1930s or 1960s (Barker et al, 1970). Estimated intakes in the 1860s were 12.5mg⁄d for indoor workers and 15.9mg⁄d for rural workers: 50% more iron than in the diets of the urban poor in the 1930s (Boyd Orr, 1936)." http://www.bloodmed.com/home/hann2pdf/bjh_4529.pdf

So, well before any concerted fortification, your average worker got far more iron than the DRI. Fortification was introduced in response, so it seems, to urban populations eating very poor diets.

What I mean by multi-variable problem is that it is very difficult to analyze a single nutrient, to even think about how you would do the studies. We're not allowed to purchase children, raise them in labs so that they all eat standard chow. When we feed lab animals in labs, where their lives are important, we are pretty good at that, the animals don't tend to have the vast array of health problems that humans develop.

As for poisoning people with iron metabolism problems, these problems tend to only crop up later in life, and they're fairly well-treated by phlebotomy.

The problem with nutrition gurus is that they only tend to deal with unhealthy populations---it's not like every healthy person has a nutrition guru telling them what to do (except Mom, a good Mom is worth her weight in gold!). The vast majority of healthy people I know have one thing in common: healthy parents. Whether this is genetic or environmental (good eating habits), I do not know. I suspect it is a bit of both, people with good genetics are able to make better choices, be more responsive to environment, but also less responsive to environment: some guru says "NO SALT!!" and they don't just go with it, they say "well, mom ate salt, and she lived to be 90!"

What gurus (of all sorts, not just nutritional) tend to do is make strong pronouncements about things, then give vague directions to follow, so that if their followers don't get better/enlightened/whatever, they can simply blame the follower for not really following the directions, even tho they were vague. This is how gurus work in religion and in nutrition. Anyone who claims to have advice for nutrition, the simple thing to do is to provide a 30 day cycle for a 70kg male. If they aren't willing to do that, and they give some BS about how "it varies", well, no, it doesn't, not unless there are really abundant genetic polymorphisms. And in those cases, yeah, you either have to listen to your body or, if you can afford it, have personalized medicine, but I am skeptical this is the case for most people.

Iron and zinc deficiency are big problems worldwide because the population doesn't have access to sufficient iron and zinc. http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/en/ida_assessment_prevention_control.pdf suggests that anemia is what they mean by iron deficiency, that is, insufficient red blood cell production. The story I've heard about how zinc was declared essential had to do with a fellow doing some over-seas medicine, finding a population of dwarfs with poor testicular development. He put them on zinc and things improved.

As for this "iron defense system," the "defense" is that the uptake of iron from the gut is tightly controlled, so most iron is excreted in feces.

Focusing on single nutrients or excluding single nutrients will over time lead to a deficiency. There seems to be pretty good evidence that Peat is wrong about PUFA, it's just that anyone not eating a purified/refined diet is going to get enough PUFA that getting below the 1-1.5% energy that is required (20-25 kcal for a 2000 calorie diet, or about 2-2.5g of PUFA) is almost impossible. And there are likely health benefits to minimizing PUFA, but the idea that they're not biologically essential, this is just not the case. If it is, I think I have a standing offer, anyone who thinks fat is not essential, I will pay for 6 months of whey protein, purified vitamins, minerals and refined sugar. If Peat is right, that should be enough to sustain you indefinitely, as fat is not biologically essential, the body can produce whatever fats it needs from sugar and protein.

No matter what you say, Iron Deficiency is not a worldwide problem. Not at all. It does not matter if 7 Billion People are Iron Deficient. It is an INDIVIDUAL MEDICAL PROBLEM, that, in my wild example, 7 Billion People would have. And Iron Fortification would still not be a good response to that problem.

Ironically, you even ADMIT this in your first paragraph, stating that people were getting enough iron before fortification, based on the crude data you had. Again, you don't reference any testible iron marker (like Ferritin or Hemoglobin), and simply go with intake, and even that data shows that Iron Fortification would be, at best, unnecessary.

Even if it started out warrented (which it wasn't), Iron Researchers such as E.D. Weinberg and Jym Moon testified in the 70's that this program was harmful, and should be ended. Instead of ending the program, Iron intake was doubled.

The rest of your response is devoid of any content, just you saying "look, nutrition is complecated man!"

As for your dismissal of those that have iron loading problems and that they only crop up in "old age"..... tell that Jim Becker's Father, who died at 43. Love of Football Saves Fan From 'Celtic' Curse

And yeah, it's impossible to analyze any single nutrient in Obervational studies...... but the studies involving iron come from experiments, not population studies. For example, When Iron was Injected into Maori Infants, the injected infants developed extensive growth of E. Coli, and many otherwise healthy infants died. Iron and infection

Dr. Facchini got amazing results in diabetic patients by lowering iron through diet- A Low-Iron-Available, Polyphenol-Enriched, Carbohydrate-Restricted Diet to Slow Progression of Diabetic Nephropathy

Stop looking at population wide studies, and stop listening to United Nations funded organizations like the WHO, and do some real research. You are ignorant of which you speak, and you are defending programs that offer no benefit while harming many.
 

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