From the BBC on down, in the past few days the headline "Alchohol Makes Fruit Healthier" has been highlighted in nearly every news venue.
The fruit contains compounds [antioxidants] that can protect against cancer, heart disease and arthritis.But having them with alcohol, such as in a daiquiri, boosts these antioxidant properties, the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture says.
Nutritionists said the "detrimental effects" of such drinks could cancel out such benefits.
As a college student, no one takes this sort of study more seriously than I. Alcohol as health food? Surely you jest!
This deserved a bit more investigation.
UPDATE: I was threated by the publishers of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture with legal action if I didn't take down the one chart and one graph from the published results. Seems ironic since they release one million press releases. Anyway, I complied and formally requested permission. Hopefully they will grant it!
UPDATE TWO: At the suggestions of commenters, I have reproduced the data charts and graph in Excel. While not as pretty, you'll get the point much better than nothing at all. And I'm not stepping on any legal toes.
(Continued below the fold.....)
The study that all these 'blurby' news briefs are referring to is a brand-spankin'-new paper published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture entitled 'Natural volatile treatments increase free-radical scavenging capacity of strawberries and blackberries' by Chanjirakul et al. Quite the mouthful (forgive the pun). The paper was a collaboration between the USDA Fruit Labs and Produce Quality Labs, and the Dept of Horticulture in Thailand.
As many people know, certain fruits contain large amounts of healthful compounds called antioxidants which "scavenge" cell-damaging free-radicals in our bodies. Strawberries and blackberries fall into this category, both naturally containing high amounts of antioxidants such as anthocyanin and phenolic acid. These compounds interact with reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are byproducts of metabolic processes, and prevent them from damaging DNA and cells.
The other side of this is that improving the antioxidant levels in fruit not only increases healthful benefits to the people that ingest them, it increases the shelf life of fruit by slowing down decay. So obviously there is interest in getting fruit to last longer and reducing waste and allowing increases in transit time.
So the researchers tested whether treating strawberries and blackberries with natural volatile compounds (methyl jasmonate, allyl isothiocyanate, ethanol, and tea tree oil) would be effective in reducing decay in the berries. Natural volatiles occur naturally in some fruits, and were thought to have evolved as an antimicrobial and antifungal defense mechanism. But would they increase antioxidant activity as well?
The method was simple. Include a piece of soaked blot paper (saturated with a natural volatile) within a closed container of berries and wait 7 and 14 days at 4 degrees C. Antioxidant levels were examined before and after, and decay was measured visually. Results of treatment conditions and decay are below.
Compared to controls, allyl isotholcyanate treatment resulted in the least decay in both berry types. Ethanol treatment provided the least protection against decay.
As for antioxidant activity, that was measured by 'ORAC' test (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, no not Orac). Results are below, which show that compared to controls, all the natural volatiles except the allyl isotholcyanate provided modest increases in antioxidant activity. Methyl jasmonate treatment provided the largest increase in antioxidant activity (see below).
The group tested the quantities of specific reactive oxygen species and, overall, consistently found that methyl jasmonate treatment provided the best protection against ROS but that the other natural volatiles (ethanol included) provided some beneficial effect too. Take home message was that a combination of methyl jasmonate (to increase antioxidants) and allyl isotholcyanate (to reduce decay) would maximize shelf life.
So really, a dash of methyl jasmonate in your daiquiri might leave you healthier, but I can't say what that would do for the taste and fun of your beverage.
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Comments
can you just reproduce the results in your own graph? that is completely legal and clearly falls under fair use.
Posted by: steve | April 24, 2007 11:38 AM
Yes, you can definitely recreate the graph yourself using their data. There is no copyright on data.
Posted by: Dave Munger | April 24, 2007 11:42 AM
Hmmm. Very interesting! I think I shall do that!
Posted by: Shelley | April 24, 2007 11:44 AM
Nice find, first it was Red Bulls - I've switched to the Monsters but have made Taurine a part of my daily brain diet, or so the rationalization goes - now daquiris. Awesome work!
Posted by: Redleg | April 24, 2007 03:36 PM
Makes a nice rationalization for Red Bull and vodkas, eh!
Posted by: Shelley | April 24, 2007 03:55 PM
that's not Elsevier, is it? I hate them. For Cause.
Posted by: VJB | April 24, 2007 06:18 PM
Is there any chance you can answer these questions for me:
Is methyl jasmonate safe for human consumtion; Is there a "safe" quantity for people to injest; Where does one acquire it?
A much better article than the ones I've read in the news recently. Yours includes (horrors!) scientific data that makes the reader think (more horrors). Overall, a very good report, Shelly. Thank You!
Posted by: Jim | April 25, 2007 10:11 AM
Jim:
Methyl jasmonate (MJ) is an aromatic compound (think jasmine flowers), and is produced by plants as a antibiotic/antimicrobial/insecticide. Its harmless to humans though, and according to these results probably beneficial. MJ is also used as a flavoring, most often in teas. Its also used in fragrances from perfume to detergent. So, quite safe.
More info here: http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/jasmine/jasmineh.htm
Here's something cool: the most important drug in cancer comes from yew trees (called Taxol), and in the presence of MJ this effect is heightened. So, another plus for MJ.
And if you want some MJ of your own, go here:
http://www.chemicalregister.com/Methyl_Jasmonate/Suppliers/pid23337.htm
Apparently you can get about an ounce for $30, and that is enough for a truckload of produce so a little goes a long way.
Posted by: Shelley | April 25, 2007 01:34 PM
Unfortunately, there is no evidence that antioxidants provide any health benefits at all. A recent JAMA article showed that supplemental antioxidants actually increased mortality.
Posted by: daedalus2u | April 25, 2007 03:01 PM
Yep, good point Daedalus. The point of this study wasn't even to suggest any health benefits in people (although the press releases certainly didn't hesitate to), but decay in fruit. They kinda extrapolated from there, but yes, whether antioxidants actually have any real benefit, who knows.
Posted by: Shelley | April 25, 2007 03:03 PM
I actually looked up the paper after I saw the AP article. I mean, I have seen some writeups of research that have been wrong before, but this one took the cake. The AP article was not just wrong, but stunningly wrong, although I should have known that from the jocular tone of the article.
Posted by: Brian | April 25, 2007 04:06 PM
Yeah, they were bad. Hence why I wanted to display the REAL graphs from the paper. ::sigh::
Posted by: Shelley | April 25, 2007 04:17 PM
As I've not seen the portion that was pulled that is claimed to be fair use, I'll limit my comment to procedure (but note also that I'm in general agreement that overreaching is the norm amongst copyright holders on the web, as they lack serious disincentives not to overreach).
I also sympathize with Shelly not wanting to escalate matters, not having the resources to engage in games. But until your ISP receives a formal takedown notice, you aren't in any real jeopardy.
The DMCA has a procedure that must be followed before an American ISP will remove an allegedly infringing item. The copyright holder must send a formal request to the ISP, informing it that an item is infringing. The ISP is then required to inform the customer that they can either remove the allegedly infringing item, or risk suit. The purpose of the DMCA is to provide a mechanism by which service providers can indemnify themselves, and get out of the way of the real dispute between the alleged infringer and rights holder.
But the DMCA also commits the rights holder to stand behind its claim; a fraudulent takedown notice (without a good faith belief that an infringement has taken place) places the rights holder at risk for misusing the DMCA (section 512(f) - see OPG v. Diebold). Rights holders routinely send out a warning letter, but warning letters aren't enforceable--only a DMCA takedown request is predicate to legal action for copyright infringement. If they were serious, you'd have gotten a takedown notice from your ISP.
You might also want to send the whole story and correspondence to chillingeffects.org, who operate as a clearing house for this type of overreaching.
[Cross-posted to Shelly's blog]
Posted by: scott pilutik | April 25, 2007 05:31 PM
When you say that the decay was measured 'visually', what exactly did they measure? They have 3 decimal places of accuracy in the percent decays, so I'm wondering how they did that.
Posted by: archgoon | April 25, 2007 09:20 PM
I only became aware of this article because it was on the 'most popular' list at Yahoo news. This is yet another reason why open-access publishing is a necessity. Anybody with a high-school education could have figured out why that article was wrong. But almost nobody has access to it, and those that do (like you, Shelley), are apparently prohibited from placing the research results in an open forum.
The public already pays for a great part (I can't really figure the percentage) of the fees required for publication of research - "indirect costs" from grants pay for library access to journals. These payments for journal access keep the journals afloat, while the public has (at least until the recent 6-month NIH rule) no access to the research it pays for. If grants paid for publication costs, this would not be a problem.
This would also provide a more fair model for publishing. Nature, for a midsize university, costs $9000/yr for site-wide access. A lot of what Nature's budget goes toward is weeding out the excellent papers from the merely good. If scientists were willing to pay a fee to have their paper considered for publication in a Nature/Science/Cell/etc-class journal, this would be somewhat self-selecting for the more important papers, and more efficient. Also, it would prevent the more "important" journals from getting too full of themselves. Right now, the price of a university Nature subscription could pay for 20 third-tier journals or 5 second-tier journals. It's not really a choice for universities - they have to have a Nature subscription. However, under an open-access model, scientists may decide that it is not worth 5x as much money to publish in a first-tier journal. Especially given that databases such as Pubmed have reduced the difference between first & second-tier journals to an extent that the distinction is almost meaningless.
Posted by: Brian | April 25, 2007 09:37 PM
I was just talking to a vocal advocate of Open-Access scientific journals today, and we were talking about this very issue. I suggested reproducing the graphs from the data and his eyes lit up - he said he hadn't done that but it sounds like it is perfectly legal. I came over here to suggest it, and now that I see you're already on that, good show.
Let this be a lesson to everyone - science should be free and open to everyone! And lets find something prettier than Excel, so we can make better graphs than theirs!
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | April 25, 2007 11:02 PM
"Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture"? Probably hardly anyone had even heard of this journal before. Maybe it was a publicity stunt. A dumb one, but such things usually are.
Posted by: Joseph j7uy5 | April 26, 2007 07:54 AM
with an impact factor of under 1, they desperately need attention.
I used to like Wiley and am a bit disappointed that they should resort to Elsevier style bullying. I am glad you found a solution :)
Posted by: Catherina | April 26, 2007 10:42 AM
I wonder if anyone has brought this debacle to the attention of the authors of this study. I would think they'd appreciate their work being promoted here. I wonder if Wiley would take it seriously if authors, upon whose submissions their publications depend, disapprove of their bullying tactics.
Posted by: Ambitwistor | April 26, 2007 11:26 AM
These scientific publishers are out of control, I can't believe they'd threaten you over including a single graph on your site.. it seems to me the entire point of science and the scientific process is that work needs to be made public, reviewed, and commented on -- their behavior is unscientific and shocking.
Posted by: Mr. Paperless Office | April 26, 2007 12:53 PM
To the above commenter, I think you just need to keep in mind that the lawyers are just trying to do their job...
Posted by: P. from Weston MA | April 26, 2007 12:56 PM
As a librarian, I know that copyright is a very hot topic, and has been for some time, but you would think that an obscure journal like this one would not only applaud your interest, but be grateful for the free publicity in the hope that it would increase readership and/or subscriptions. Oh well, it seems that for America the Free, our freedom is disappearing along with the ozone layer.
As a side note, thank you Shelley for the interesting and insightful thread. You've got beauty AND brains. You go girl!!
Posted by: S. Librarian in Pgh. | April 26, 2007 01:53 PM
Off-topic, but to the Librarian: the ozone layer is not disappearing.
[from http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/ozone_resource_page.html]
Posted by: trr | April 26, 2007 02:16 PM
"Unfortunately, there is no evidence that antioxidants provide any health benefits at all. A recent JAMA article showed that supplemental antioxidants actually increased mortality. "
Painfully misinformative, daedalus2u. The linked article only says that some/certain antioxidants can have a negative effect, not the entire broad range which was hammered in the quote above.
CONCLUSIONS: Treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality. The potential roles of vitamin C and selenium on mortality need further study.
Posted by: Phil in Houston | April 26, 2007 02:25 PM
Great Job! You read the article -- I've only read the abstract. Did the investigators report the ORAC scores for fresh berries, control and treated? Are they higher or lower than scores for the 2-week-old berries?
"Everybody" seems to be assuming that these treatments are boosting antioxidant levels. I am wondering if they are merely reducing the severity of decline during storage.
Personally, I don't really want 2-week old blackberries, even if they are only 30% moldy.
Posted by: Family Nutritionist | April 26, 2007 02:33 PM