Who Sleeps With The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition?

This morning Aaron Blaisdell sent an email out to a group of paleo bloggers including myself, letting us know that the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition just published an article entitled "A high-fat diet impairs cardiac high-energy phosphate metabolism and cognitive function in healthy human subjects."  The abstract reads:  

Design: Men (n = 16) aged 22 ± 1 y (mean ± SE) were randomly assigned to 5 d of a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet containing 75 ± 1% of calorie intake through fat consumption or to an isocaloric standard diet providing 23 ± 1% of calorie intake as fat. In a crossover design, subjects undertook the alternate diet after a 2-wk washout period, with results compared after the diet periods. Cardiac ³¹P magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy and MR imaging, echocardiography, and computerized cognitive tests were used to assess cardiac phosphocreatine (PCr)/ATP, cardiac function, and cognitive function, respectively.

Results: Compared with the standard diet, subjects who consumed the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet had 44% higher plasma free fatty acids (P < 0.05), 9% lower cardiac PCr/ATP (P < 0.01), and no change in cardiac function. Cognitive tests showed impaired attention (P < 0.01), speed (P < 0.001), and mood (P < 0.01) after the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.

Conclusion: Raising plasma free fatty acids decreased myocardial PCr/ATP and reduced cognition, which suggests that a high-fat diet is detrimental to heart and brain in healthy subjects.

 Reading the first sentence of the study design reveals immediately that this "study" falls into the more bullshit bad science  category.  Holloway et al apparently either don't know that people accustomed to a standard carbohydrate-rich diet need more than 5 days to adapt to a high-fat diet, or they exploited this fact to create another biased study as "evidence" that a high-fat diet will do something harmful to your heart and brain.  In short, they are either ignorant or malicious, neither a desirable characteristic for a scientist.

In the Results section, they report that "subjects who consume the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet had 44% higher plasma free fatty acids (FFA)."  While these authors apparently believe this is a "bad" thing, this actually indicates that the low-carb diet phase increased the release of fats from storage (i.e. adipose tissue) for use as fuel.  In other words, they showed that a low-carb diet increased the use of stored body fat as fuel by 44% compared to a high-carb diet.  In comparison, 24 hours of fasting will increase FFA concentrations by about 50%.   The low-carb diet thus produces a release of body fat approximately equivalent to fasting. 

Now I want to know, do these people really believe that 24 hours of fasting will harm your heart by route of raising plasma FFAs?  If so, how come humans and all other animals readily survive prolonged fasts without having cardiac arrest?

Of interest, in the results they even had to admit that the subjects who consumed the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet had "no change in cardiac function."  In other words, they admit that the low-card diet DID NOT impair cardiac function. 

As for the cognitive speed, attention, and mood changes, these can occur due to psychological resistance to the low-carb diet.  Many people believe that low-carb diets will ruin your brain function by depriving it of sugar, so they expect to have a crummy mood and poor cognitive function.  In other words, the effect could be entirely due to expectation.  If not, it merely reflects the fact that they did not require the subjects to eat the high-fat diet long enough for them to adapt to it (i.e. at least 2 weeks).

In short, this study has no value except as toilet paper.  As I discussed it with Tracy, she suggested that these "scientists" must have an agenda, that they might actually be working for some entity that benefits from promotion of high-carbohydrate diets.   Her comments got me to wondering:  Who funds the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN)?

Proudly funded by Multiple Carbohydrate Corporations.

Well, if you go to the AJCN website you learn that it is published by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN).   I searched around the ASN website looking for their list of "sustaining" corporate members, which you will find here.  Here is the entire text of that page, including its already embedded links:

The American Society for Nutrition is pleased to acknowledge the generous support from these organizations for educational programs of the Society.

In an effort to promote great transparency, please note that clicking on any link with an * next to it will direct you to a company portal page on the ASN website featuring more detailed information about that organization's relationship with ASN. Many of ASN's Sustaining Members have special resources and activities available for nutrition scientists.

• Abbott Nutrition
  
• The Almond Board of California
  
• Bush Brothers, Inc.
  
• The Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA)
  
• Cadbury
  
• Campbell Soup Company, Global Nutrition & Health
  
• Coca-Cola Company
  
  
• ConAgra Foods, Inc.
  
• Council for Responsible Nutrition*
  
  
• The Dannon Company
  
• DSM Nutritional Products, Inc.
  
• Egg Nutrition Center
  
• General Mills
  
• GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare
  
• Kellogg Company
  
• Kraft Foods
  
• Mars, Inc.
  
• Martek Biosciences Corp.
  
• McCormick Science Institute
  
• McDonald's
  
• McNeil Nutritionals
  
• Mead Johnson Nutrition
  
• Metagenics, Inc.
  
  
• Monsanto Company
  
• Mushroom Council
  
  
• National Dairy Council
  
• Nestle Nutrition Institute
  
• PepsiCo
  
• Pfizer
  
• Pharmanex
  
• POM Wonderful, LLC
  
• The Procter & Gamble Company
  
• Salt Institute
  
• Sara Lee Corporation
  
  
• Solae, LLC
  
  
• The Sugar Association, Inc.
  
• Tate & Lyle
  
  
• Unilever North America
  
• Welch's

The Sustaining Members are represented in the Society by a Sustaining Member Committee. The members of this standing committee help to provide visibility within ASN to matters of interest to industry by exchanging ideas and providing corporate financial support for the society's activities in education/training, scientific programs and professional outreach.

Just reading this list, you can already conclude that the ASN has multiple conflicts of interest, and that the majority of its "sustaining members" have an interest in promoting high-carbohydrate intakes.  Out of the entire list, only three financially minor members, the the California Almond Board, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and the National Dairy Council, really have an interest in promoting high fat foods.

And if you click on the links you will find that they take you directly to the promotional pages of the corporations.

Proudly Funded by Multiple Carbohydrate Corporations

In short, the ASN (and by extension, the AJCN and the Journal of Nutrition) shares a bed with multiple partners who would like to screw you with their high-carbohydrate foods.  Suddenly I don't have much respect for the ASN, AJCN, or JN, and I completely understand how junk science like the study above dominates the pages of the ASN's journals. 

Don't get involved with these bedfellows, unless you like STDs (Sugar-Transmitted Diseases).

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