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I read this a while back and thought people here might like it. I can't help but wonder about D'Qwell Jackson's vitamin D levels sometimes.

Are the Boston Red Sox Malnourished?

Last Thursday’s post was mainly concerned with Abby’s bone injury that refused to heal. I noted that four nutrients – vitamins C, D, and K2, and magnesium – were essential for bone health, and that deficiencies could have contributed both to Abby’s injury and her slow healing.

Today’s post is about another group of people who frequently break their bones and don’t heal well: the Boston Red Sox.

Injury-Prone Sox
Those who follow baseball may know that a promising 2010 Red Sox season was sabotaged by a rash of broken bones:

Centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury missed 144 games with hairline fractures in four ribs; they failed to heal properly and re-fractured months after the initial injury.
Second baseman Dustin Pedroia missed all but two games after breaking his foot June 25.
Catcher Victor Martinez missed a month with a broken thumb.
Backup catcher Jason Varitek played just five games after breaking his foot on July 2.
There were muscle and joint injuries too, but let’s stick to bones.

Is it possible the Red Sox players are suffering from micronutrient deficiencies?

The Red Sox Hire a Dietitian
A few years ago the Red Sox hired a professional dietitian to advise their players: Tara Mardigan of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Ms Mardigan is a lovely woman, a marathoner and former gymnast, with a charming personality that shines through in radio interviews. She obtained her position with the Red Sox after meeting Red Sox president Larry Lucchino at a charity breakfast.

But what is her diet advice, and which players are taking it? I found a hint about the latter question in an interview in the student newspaper at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science, where Ms Mardigan studied:

I stopped working full-time at Dana-Farber to accommodate working with the Red Sox, and luckily they have a great relationship with the team so I was able to reduce my hours. I also work with the Red Sox’s minor league teams, the Lowell Spinners, Pawtucket Red Sox, and Portland Sea Dogs. This is where I really make changes. I work with young guys who are interesting in learning about how nutrition can improve their performance. They are hungry to get to the big leagues. It’s great to see them move up into the major league, and then become someone like Jacoby Ellsbury (Left Field/Center Field) who is now well-versed in nutrition.

Uh oh! Jacoby Ellsbury, who managed only 18 games in 2010, whose bones break on incidental contact and whose hairline fractures won’t heal in six months, is the dietitian’s prize pupil?

The Dietitian Advises Avoiding Supplements
The Friedman School interview didn’t tell us much about Ms. Mardigan’s dietary recommendations, other than that she opposes most nutritional supplements:

I try to get them to choose food before supplements, and only supplements when necessary. Athletes are vulnerable and think [supplements] are well made and well regulated, and they are shocked when they find out they are not.

Those who have read our book know that we have a chapter titled “Why Moderns are Malnourished” which explains why modern agriculturally-produced foods and treated water don’t provide enough micronutrients, and why supplements are needed to optimize health.

Among the micronutrients for which supplementation is most needed are vitamin K2 and magnesium – two crucial nutrients for bone health.

What Is Her Diet Advice?
To get an idea of what diet she might be recommending, I looked at the Dana-Farber nutrition team web site, and was surprised to see this graphic illustration of their “Optimal Diet plan for cancer survivors”:



Yikes! No fats, and no mention of healthy plant foods like starchy tubers. A quarter of the diet is toxic grains and the protein may be derived from toxic legumes. It looks like roughly 70% of calories come from carbs and 25% from protein.

Later in the page they suggest such omega-6-rich oils as soybean oil, canola oil, flaxseed oil, wheat germ oil, and walnuts – all eliminated on the Perfect Health Diet.

It seems Ms Mardigan has recommended a similar diet to the Red Sox. From the Dana-Farber site:

On staff with the club since January 2006, she attends most home games to meet with players and make sure grilled chicken, steamed vegetables, and other healthful options are available in the team dining room.

Vegetables and lean protein, just like the Dana Farber diet. Another clue from this interview:

“My diet is very restricted right now, but Tara has been wonderful at helping me figure out what I can eat, like certain thick-skinned fruits and soy products,” says Anne Forgit, a leukemia patient and recent bone marrow transplant recipient.

Soy products. As readers of our book know, this is a highly toxic food.

Ms Mardigan does have a personal home page. The only clues I found there to her diet advice reside on her “Resources” page, where she recommends Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food and Dr. Walter Willett’s Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. Pollan is a journalism professor who has made a career attacking industrial agriculture, and has likened the Atkins diet to an eating disorder. He seems to avoid specific diet advice, but it looks like he favors grains and omega-6-rich plant fats over animal fats. Dr. Willett is mentioned in our book, where we object to his opposition to coconut oil and saturated fat. He is a promoter of polyunsaturated fat and whole grain consumption.

If this is what Ms Mardigan is recommending to the Red Sox, it’s no wonder their bones are breaking:

Grains are toxic to bones. Wheat, oats, and other grains induce rickets, a softening of the bones that leads to frequent fractures. (This is discussed extensively in our book, and has been known since Mellanby’s original experimental investigations into rickets in dogs [1].)
Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats reduce bone mineral density. [2]
The Missing Nutrients
So the Red Sox players are being recommended a diet that is highly toxic to bones. But what about the key bone nutrients? Are they lacking in those as well?

The answer is almost certainly yes. The fat-soluble nutrients are critical to bone remodeling, and it seems the Red Sox diet is completely lacking in vitamin K2. Plant sources of vitamin K1 aren’t sufficient for bones, and animal sources of K2 seem to be excluded from the Red Sox diet.

Bone fracture rates are very strongly dependent on vitamin K2 levels. Most people are deficient, and supplementation with K2 reduces risk of vertebral fractures by 60%, hip fractures by 77%, and non-vertebral fractures by a remarkable 81%. [3]

If that happens on ordinary diets, the reduction in fracture rates would probably be even more remarkable on a K2-empty diet like the one that has been recommended to the Red Sox.

Conclusion
If a biomedical scientist were asked to contrive a diet that maximized the likelihood of bone fractures, the advice would be:

Eat lots of grains to induce rickets.
Eat vegetable oils and non-tropical fatty plants to reduce bone mineral density.
Avoid animal and dairy fats to deprive the body of fat-soluble vitamins needed for bone mineralization, such as vitamin K2.
Do not take nutritional supplements, in order to maintain a deficiency of bone nutrients.
It seems that this is precisely the advice that is being given to the Red Sox and their minor league players.

This year’s broken bones cost the Red Sox a chance at a World Series. The player who followed this diet advice most rigorously, Jacoby Ellsbury, lost a full season to bone fractures, and his injury history could cost him millions when he becomes a free agent next year.

As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I beseech the team to reconsider their diet advice.

The American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Annual Meeting held in San Diego was the site of a presentation on July 10, 2011 of the finding of Michael Shindle, MD of Summit Medical Group and his colleagues of a higher incidence of vitamin D insufficiency among National Football League players with muscle injuries.

The current study included 89 NFL players aged 21 to 32 years. Fifty-eight subjects were African American and 31 were Caucasian. Sixteen of the players suffered from a muscle injury. Vitamin D levels were tested in the spring of 2010 during routine pre-season evaluations.

Vitamin D deficiency, defined as a level of less than 20 nanograms per milliliter, was identified in 27 participants and insufficient levels of 20 to 31.9 nanograms per milliliter were observed in 45 subjects. Caucasian players had an average level of 30.3 nanograms per milliliter, while African Americans averaged 20.4 nanograms per milliliter. Among those with muscle injury, vitamin D levels averaged 19.9 nanograms per milliliter, which is considered deficient. "Eighty percent of the football team we studied had vitamin D insufficiency," commented Dr Shindle. "African American players and players who suffered muscle injuries had significantly lower levels."

"Screening and treatment of vitamin D insufficiency in professional athletes may be a simple way to help prevent injuries," added coauthor Scott A. Rodeo, MD, who is Co-Chief of the Sports Medicine and Shoulder Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Joseph Lane, MD of the Hospital for Special Surgery, who also contributed to the study, concluded that "Further research also needs to be conducted in order to determine if increasing vitamin D leads to improved maximum muscle function."

Vitamin D insufficiency associated with football injuries

Complete Garbage.


I only had to read this quote "A quarter of the diet is toxic grains and the protein may be derived from toxic legumes" and then look at the chart to see that this is absolute junk.

Hell, it's pretty clearly an article manufactured to try to sell a stinking book (and on, that I'd opine, that offers you nothing of worth in terms of nutrition).

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it's pretty clearly an article manufactured to try to sell a stinking book

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You don't know that.. heck for all you know the guy that wrote it might also own stock in a company that makes Vitamin D tablets.

The toxic grains thing I think was a topical joke about the recent rice/arsenic situation.

The article is written for its blog readers so it may not have been well written for a sports audience.

The toxic grains bit is about how most people can't digest certain grain proteins, especially those found in wheat, (gluten, transglutaminase etc.) and that it contains high levels of lectins & phytates which prevent mineral absorption. The way around this in traditional cultures is fermented sourdough.

For the protein portion coming from legumes he is referring to the option of eating soy. The problems with soy being phytoestrogens, very high phytate level, and isoflavones. A good food if you want to screw up your endocrine system and malabsorb your nutrients. They way around this in traditional cultures is fermentation for tempeh / natto. (These are the soy products the japanese typically favor)

None of this is particularly controversial or without scientific backing. Ask most nutritionists in weight lifting and you'll hear this kind of advice. Basically a lot of nutritionists are just terrible at their jobs. The woman for the Red Sox obviously knows squat about fat-soluble vitamins and their relation to bone mineralization and muscle injury; thus all the bone injuries they've had.


The article is essentially about bone mineralization. The process is well understood as an interaction between Vitamins D, A, K2 which are the channeling hormones for Calcium/Magnesium placement. The Red Sox diet is very low in K2 and A (and contains no supplemental vitamin D3), and high in foods like grains + possibly soy, which if they aren't prepared correctly (fermented or soaked/ground, properly cooked in the case of lectins), contain very high phytate/lectin levels which will hinder the absorption of other vitamins/minerals. As well a good percentage of people simply can't have gluten without a whole other slew of problems less related to bone injuries.

Hopefully someone can appreciate the article or we can post up pee guy without understanding the physiology behind sports injuries

This can't be real. I don't see "Beer" or "Fried chicken" on that chart.

"Hell, it's pretty clearly an article manufactured to try to sell a stinking book (and on, that I'd opine, that offers you nothing of worth in terms of nutrition)."

If I were to add ketchup and some mustard to this book,would it then have nutritional value?

Kingcob,

Is this the whole "Paleo" movement that's going on right now? Without knowing a whole lot about it, it just seems like the latest nutrition fad. Toxic grains? You gotta be kidding me. That goes against all 28 years of my midwestern upbringing.

I'd be really surprised if this whole thing doesn't go the way of the Atkins diet pretty soon.

This is a variant of what you would call a paleo diet.

The problem with the paleo movement from the start was Gary Taubes wrote a very popular "scientific" book in 2007 Good Calories Bad Calories that really swept the community up. It was devotedly anti-carbohydrate, and it took a few years for most people in the field to really figure out how he was wrong. This is why it will resemble Atkins for the most part.

The reasoning behind not eating Grains and Soy are fairly well understood by most nutritionists regardless of a paleo-orientation. Grains in particular just have some very complex and difficult to digest proteins that cause people a lot of problems (often in the long run). Soy for an athlete who is really dependent on having their testosterone as high and functional as possible is a really really bad idea.

Eventually all of this stuff will come down to a matter of science and the title of the diet won't be particularly important. Most of the people who are respected scientists in that community do shy away from the "paleo" tag.

As a note... None of the silly fadishness of the diet is going to take away from our current knowledge of how bones mineralize in relation to fat-soluble vitamins and that the Red Sox diet was absolutely lousy from that standpoint.

Hmmm, that's interesting. I've heard bits and pieces about paleo to know I don't like it (I take my tacos in flour tortillas, and nobody will convince me otherwise... I also go heavy on the beans).

Growing up in the 80's and 90's, I was taught that grains were an essential part of the diet (food pyramid with breads and stuff at the bottom that we've all seen). Now we're getting the whole "toxic grains" shtick. What did I miss in the last 10 years? It seems like folks are just now starting to rally against a bread-heavy diet. Is this due to the way the grains are grown and prepared. I heard a little tidbit that those gluten allergies we're starting to see are due to the genetic modification of some grains.

Then again, this whole thing might just be new to me. I hadn't started paying attention to my diet until the last couple years.

In the early 60's Norman Borlaug created a strain of wheat "semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease resistant". This particular type of wheat has vastly more gluten than you would find in other strains, and it is by far the one produced and consumed world wide. Wheat strains mentioned in the bible for example are fairly innocuous as to gluten content.

To my knowledge little has changed since the 80s-90s in terms of wheat quality though.


Beans are typically not as bad as grains. Some of them are very high in lectins, but those can be reduced if you soak and cook them. Eating a lot of lectins is really really bad for you, so indigineous tribes were always careful how they prepared them. Generally if you are soaking and pressure cooking your beans you'll be fine.

Similarly with wheat, plenty of cultures have thrived eating wheat. They do however grow a different strain of wheat much lower in gluten, and always ferment the dough into a sourdough of some kind. This reduces the gluten and phytate levels pretty effectively.

Honestly a lot of a paleo diet is something you need to focus on if you are sick. If you have an auto-immune condition, mood disorder, or are overweight; it can help with that. But some people will be fine eating pretty much anything and never develop this kind of illness. All that said... just not eating grains/legumes isn't going to do things like get you the vitamins you need.

Generally speaking most people need to eat more egg yolks for selenium/choline and more beef liver for vitamin A and copper. Supplement with a little bit of magnesium and sunshine or (vitamin D) and you pretty much have cured most of the deficiencies in modern society.

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I heard a little tidbit that those gluten allergies we're starting to see are due to the genetic modification of some grains.

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Often repeated, and definitely not as clear-cut as people want it to be. Proteins are degraded in the stomach into random, very tiny, pieces. These cleaved proteins, now small strings of amino acids, proceed into the upper small intestine for further processing into single amino acids. The argument is that gluten gets cleaved, and then enters the small intestine, where it's recognized by immune cells in the epithelium of the small intestine. Those immune cells then begin a signaling cascade that leads to attacking those molecules as if it were a foreign substance, rather than an inert protein, and your body takes the hit due to your intestine's epithelium becoming inflamed and misshaped, which leads to not being able to absorb nutrients normally. So that part of argument remains. However, where this argument goes wrong is that it leaves out important parts. In order for this to occur, you have to be genetically predisposed toward it. In the case of gluten allergies there are a few different genetic determinants; any and all can cause the disease. To make matters more confusing, these same determinants are not necessarily indicative of the disease being active. People of european descent, and to a lesser extent african, are also more predisposed toward passing on this "bad" gene than other regions. This suggests that these genes underlying the cause of gluten allergies are fairly old, and haven't popped up because of anything that gluten has done to us in recent decades. In this regard, it makes sense that people in American would have a high incidence of this disease too. So, it's probably not the case that gluten allergies are increasing, just that people who are currently asymptomatic are being alerted to the fact that they carry one or more of these genes that could cause them to have the disease. (That's not even taking into account the utter disregard towards the science that these tests employ.)

Ok, dealing in a bit of science-based medicine, I'm going to put a few things out there. The first is that woo-peddlers, snake-oil salesman, quacks all will deride others while promoting themselves as they are the ones with the "one true cure." If you look around this guys website you'll see some about how this diet is the one true way to diminish disease, so please buy his book. That's the first thing that strikes me.

The second is that some of the science is right. The third is that some of it is wrong. And finally, this is all based off of conjecture. He has no evidence pointing to a lack of bone density across all the players on the team. As any sports fan knows, coincidental, post-season ending, team-wide injuries happen sometimes. He's really jumping to conclusions here. Layout of his argument is as follows:

• The Red sox were injury plagued this season.
  
• The team has a doctor is implementing a diet that isn't his, that he doesn't agree with, based off some biochemical evidence.
  
• Therefore, the doctor's diet is causing the problems.

Is it hypothetically possible? Yes, given enough time on a diet that's restricted in any of these areas, one could develop brittle bones. But, one thing that scientists often don't keep in mind when reading outside their topic area, not everything is the same as your pet topic/subject area. another thing to keep in mind is that more than likely she makes suggestions, and probably isn't the final say of what goes into these guys stomachs. Second, it takes years in men for this to happen. Again, I'm not saying it can't happen, but it's highly unlikely that the cause of the Red Sox injury problems is dietary.

Also, an aside, he's an astrophysicist? Oddly enough? That doesn't preclude him from knowing some stuff, just that this guy (or the fact that his wife is a molecular biologist) isn't an expert, someone who's dedicated decades toward the understanding of some of these things.

Ok, into the post I go ...

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I noted that four nutrients – vitamins C, D, and K2, and magnesium – were essential for bone health, and that deficiencies could have contributed both to Abby’s injury and her slow healing.

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No problems here; this is all correct. Deficiencies in any of these nutrients can cause bone problems.

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The Friedman School interview didn’t tell us much about Ms. Mardigan’s dietary recommendations, other than that she opposes most nutritional supplements:

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She's correct in this instance. Most supplements are not regulated in any way. They have no one checking their work, and no one holding them responsible. There can be wild fluctuations within a supplement container between different pills, let along different batches. This can be a problem for vitamins because it is possible to overdose on them, shutting down your liver and worse. Supplements aren't benign substances, they have active ingredients (sometimes) and they produce effects on your body by interacting with certain parts of your biomolecular machinery when you take them. As such, the lack of regulation introduces an unknown variable into your diet that can have adverse affects on your health.

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“Why Moderns are Malnourished” which explains why modern agriculturally-produced foods and treated water don’t provide enough micronutrients

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I'd love to see that data. Everything I've ever read is that if anything, we get too many micronutrients. Leading to people that OD on vitamin D.

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Among the micronutrients for which supplementation is most needed are vitamin K2 and magnesium – two crucial nutrients for bone health.

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True again in the sense that these can be a bother for some people, but not all. Magnesium can come from many sources in a diet, and vitamin K is in many vegetables. There's really no need to purchase an overpriced supplement when you can just eat the food. It tastes better, and is potentially more cost effective.

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Yikes! No fats, and no mention of healthy plant foods like starchy tubers.

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True, these are missing, and are probably important in our diets. But, how important, depends on one's body and metabolism.

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Soy products. As readers of our book know, this is a highly toxic food.

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Same as the sentiment that grains are toxic, it's just untrue. Soy products do contain phytoestrogens, or compounds that can mimic endogenous Estrogen that can be stored in fat deposits. The author is either intentionally using the word to make these sound worse than they actually are, or he's ignorant of the true meaning of "toxic." Using his same argument, i.e. trace amounts of active ingredients in food can have an effect on one's body and as such should be labeled "toxic", Vitamin C is a toxic substance, so is Vitamin D. As soon as these necessary molecules go from trace concentrations in the body to much larger concentrations, it starts to throw the body out of whack and you have the potential to kill your kidneys, liver, etc. What he's not seeing is that concentration of a substance matters, not the substance itself. Our bodies produce formaldehyde, it processes minute amounts of arsenic even small amounts of mercury. You wouldn't want these in your body in large concentrations, but in small doses they're innocuous and our body is able to deal with it.

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Grains are toxic to bones. Wheat, oats, and other grains induce rickets, a softening of the bones that leads to frequent fractures. (This is discussed extensively in our book, and has been known since Mellanby’s original experimental investigations into rickets in dogs [1].)

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This is bogus information. Doing a literature search for "Gluten" and "Bone" in pubmed returns 299 articles. Those almost three hundred research articles are about the effects of bone density in people with celiac disease, and nothing with grains causing bone deteriorization. Also, if he wants to be taken seriously he should look for more recent studies than one from 1919, that was republished in 1989. Again, maybe i'm just ignorant to the data, but it seems like this is a shot in the dark, and is oft quoted because it backs up his preconceived notions.

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Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats reduce bone mineral density. [2]

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I don't know if he just misquoted the wrong paper or what, but that's not what that paper shows. Here's a sentence from the abstract, emphasis mine:

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This study indicates that the dietary ratio of n-6/n-3 PUFAs (LP5 and HP5) and bone tissue concentration of total long-chain n-3 PUFAs (DHA) minimize femur bone loss as evidenced by a higher BMC in OVX rats.

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Just a quick explanation of the study. These researchers ovariectomized (OVX) rats, meaning they cut out their ovaries. This effectively puts the rats into a menopausal state, where they mimic all the symptoms of menopause down to osteopaenia, and porosis eventually. By giving these girls a diet rich in omega fatty acids they were able to minimize the loss of bone.

OVX also removes the source for the majority of estrogen production from the body, which eventually leads to bone loss. So here's the thing about phytoestrogens, they could also hypothetically improve bone density because of estrogen's bone protective effects on the body. When estrogen is absent, bones start to break down. So why again would phytoestrogens breakdown bone? It doesn't make much sense to me.

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So the Red Sox players are being recommended a diet that is highly toxic to bones. But what about the key bone nutrients? Are they lacking in those as well?

The answer is almost certainly yes.

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I'm sorry, a scientist should never say something like this. He has, at most, a guess backed up by conjecture and his own preconceived notions.

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The fat-soluble nutrients are critical to bone remodeling, and it seems the Red Sox diet is completely lacking in vitamin K2. Plant sources of vitamin K1 aren’t sufficient for bones, and animal sources of K2 seem to be excluded from the Red Sox diet.

Bone fracture rates are very strongly dependent on vitamin K2 levels. Most people are deficient, and supplementation with K2 reduces risk of vertebral fractures by 60%, hip fractures by 77%, and non-vertebral fractures by a remarkable 81%. [3]

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All of this is wrong. K2 comes from two sources in the body. The first is our symbiotic gut flora, our bacterial friends in our intestines. While this isn't much that they give us, it's still some. The second is from our own freaking bodies! K2 can be made, if needed, from K1 which comes from leafy greens and vegetable oils. People in the developed world generally don't have a problem with this. So about that meta-analysis he cites?

He is mistaken ... Here's the last line of the study:

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From a clinical perspective, the results of this review suggest that patients at risk for fracture should be encouraged to consume a diet rich in vitamin K, which is chiefly obtained from green leafy vegetables and certain vegetable oils. Routine supplementation, however, is not justified until these results are confirmed in a large pragmatic RCT with fractures as the main outcome.

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So, they state that it Vitamin K from food sources are fine for people who are at risk. The majority of people in the "at-risk" group in these studies? The elderly, in nursing homes or retirees who already have bone density trouble, not people that are deficient in vitamin K. I mean, it even says that supplementation isn't required in these at-risk groups! Geez, did he read this? It totally doesn't support his ideal ...

So here's his conclusion:

• Eat lots of grains to induce rickets.
  
• Eat vegetable oils and non-tropical fatty plants to reduce bone mineral density.
  
• Avoid animal and dairy fats to deprive the body of fat-soluble vitamins needed for bone mineralization, such as vitamin K2.
  
• Do not take nutritional supplements, in order to maintain a deficiency of bone nutrients.

I mean, honestly, he was wrong on all of those in the biological sense. His argument doesn't seem to have much of a basis, and sometimes run counter to large bodies of evidence stating the exact opposite. The one thing I do agree we need in our diet is a bit of animal material, meats and fat. Not tons mind you, just a couple portions a day.

Wow, that took awhile. Now that I've gone through it all, I'm not buying it. He's reaching for evidence that seems to back up his own viewpoint without regard to the actual data, and is outright wrong in many aspects of the foundational knowledge pertaining of his argument. It doesn't add up.

Holy Awesome Post, BatMan!

Thanks

Talk about coincidences, one of the blogs I read posted a discussion of celiac's vs. nonceliac gluten sensitivity today! Odd ... anyways, it can be found here. This doesn't directly address the original post, but is probably a better explanation than what I gave in regards to Oobernoober a few posts up.

Well I might have more reading to do now

I am familiar with an over abundance of certain vitamins being a problem
The case against antioxidants

I'm unfamiliar with anyone making an argument about excessive vitamins besides so called antioxidants. (edit: except Iron, calcium supplements, and betacarotene supplements) If you have any sources or information recommendations I'd like them. Is it a matter of a problem with supplementation or dietary intake in general? Everything I've been told is that most people are deficient/insufficient in zinc, magnesium, D and K2.

Some people do overdose on Vitamin A or vitamin D if taken in extreme amounts of extended amounts of time. An article I am linking later has references to the toxicity A & D being dependent on a deficiency in the other (also K2).

I'll need to do more research in regards to magnesium. It is something that is universally recommended among the paleo, bodybuilding, webosphere. So I haven't recently read any sources regarding its intake. If you are limiting grains and legumes it will certainly limit your intake of magnesium. If you have any info I'd appreciate a link.

Vitamin K: There is some debate regarding the ability to convert from K1 (Green leafies) -> K2 (fermented foods). There is some evidence (particularly regarding arterial calcification) that preformed K2 is vastly superior to relying on K1 being converted. I'll need to look further regarding bone density, but the science is there for arterial calcification. Besides supplements this particular author recommends fermented foods like Natto, Kimchi, or hard cheese to get dietary K2.

K2 v K1 in atherosclerosis

Here's a lengthy article on the benefits of K2 with plenty of sources. Masterjohn is my source of info for A, D, and K2; I would be surprised to find out he was wrong.
Chris Masterjohn - K2


Also there is debate about the conversion of beta-carotene -> usable vitamin A. I'm told it can vary wildly depending on your genetics. So if you're not converting it well, you'll need to eat animal sources of vitamin A to meet your needs. I'm also familiar with megadoses of beta-carotene through supplementation causing issues.

As to recommending Vitamin D supplementation. I'm unaware of any problems involving supplementing vitamin D. There are some cases where people are taking 50,000 IU a day, which after 2-3 months causes significant issues, but that is just mis-dosing. 5,000 IU seems fairly innocuous and there are studies showing improvements in inflammatory responses with blood concentrations around 50ng/nl. (edit: ng, not mg )

D3 article with various studies


As to Non-celiac gluten intolerance. I know there are some in vitro studies testing gluten on non-celiac people from Pedro Bastos, but my memory is that the study is terribly flawed. It could be completely a non-issue, I'll be interested to see how further studies end up. There are a lot of anecdotes of people feeling better on a gluten free diet, but probably as many on vegan diets or other silly things.

As to recommending against legumes. Most legumes are fine if you cook them long enough to remove the lectins. A lot of people in the paleo community are leaning that way, even the author of this particular article. I am unsure if soy phytoestrogens / isoflavones are problematic for the general population; If you have a link I'd appreciate it. I would err on the side of caution recommending soy for professional athletes though.

As to the Omega 6 article he referenced. I think the study was showing that a ratio of 5:1 (O6:O3) was protective for bones and superior to 10:1. The diet blog author is suggesting that having high omega 6 fatty acids can skew your ratio beyond 10:1 making it possibly detrimental to bone health. He, and most paleo-blogo-authors, recommend a ratio of 2:1 or 1:1. It certainly doesn't appear to be a study involving Omega 6 positively causing bone degeneration though, so linking it is misleading.

I'll need to learn more about the levels of phytates and "anti-nutrients" in grains before I comment further. If you have a link on the time it takes for bone degeneration to happen I would appreciate it. It could be complete nonsense that it would only take a season for it to happen, I don't really know. I know very little about porosis; but am familiar with sources suggesting A,D,K2,Mag,Cal are responsible for bone strength. And you are correct that citing Mellanby from the early 20th century needs to be further verified. This was a problem originally with Gary Taubes..most of his Good Calories Bad Calories book was using examples from German scientists in the 1930s. I would be interested to find out it is entirely hokum; it wouldn't be the first time I've been mislead about diet.

Anymore I feel that people should just get back to eating a well rounded diet, with plenty of fresh vegetable, (especially leafy greens) fruits, and whole grains, lean red meats, fish, chicken, milk and dairy ...... and so on ..... and that a well rounded diet would be far, far more beneficial than all of the constant over/inappropriate dosing of vitamins, minerals, and supplements.

If someone overdoes calcium and magnesium, for example, and does not drink a lot of water, then can give themselves kidney stones. In fact, I've been there ..... and that's probably what caused my first one many years ago, because my doctor asked me how much I was taking, and he told me to drop almost all of it unless I wanted another one.

Everything I have read about calcium supplementation says it is a very bad idea.

Getting enough from dairy is important for bone health and weight loss; but too much, and in supplemental form, is very bad for you. Artery calcification and kidney stones will be your side effects.

I haven't heard the same about magnesium at all though

This stuff is really interesting.

Thanks, bud!

Sorry ... maybe it was potassium.