Chokeberry extract found to regulate weight gain, blood glucose, and inflammation in rats

Drs. Qin and Anderson are federal researchers in the Diet, Genomics, and Immunology Laboratory at the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, a component of the US Department of Agriculture. This study was supported, in part, by Integrity Nutraceuticals International (South Spring Hill, TN).

So the researchers are "federal researchers", i.e., government employees, and part of this study was funded by an apparently private company called "Integrity Nutraceuticals." The other part of the study, I suppose, was funded by taxpayers.

The article itself is a press release advertising the research and the company. Doesn't inspire confidence. If you follow the "FASEB" link in the press release to the home page, you'll see that it calls itself an "advocacy group" -- a lobby! What is "Integrity Nutraceutical's" relationship to this lobby?

http://www.npicenter.com/anm/templates/newsATemp.aspx?articleid=23591&zoneid=11

Integrity Nutraceuticals, a worldwide supplier of innovative and specialty nutraceutical science-based ingredients, is pleased to announce that they have received NSF’s Good Manufacturing Practices Certification.

NSF International, an independent, not-for-profit organization, audits according to the only American National Standard for Dietary Supplement and are consistent with the requirements that FDA has laid out in the Final Rule, 21 CFR § 111. This certification reflects Integrity’s continued commitment to excellence by ensuring the utmost quality of their products.

21 CFR 111 Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) is newly enacted regulatory requirements for the dietary supplement industry. CGMPs provide guidelines for necessary processes, procedures and documentation to assure the product produced has the identity, strength, composition, quality and purity it is represented to possess. During the NSF certification process, a plant audit is conducted to verify compliance with these cGMPs and NSF will conduct periodic audits at Integrity to ensure continued conformance.

"This is an incredible accomplishment for Integrity and one we have been working on for a number of years. Our vision from startup has been quality through verification,” stated Tim Romero, President of Integrity. “By achieving the NSF GMP Certification, Integrity has demonstrated our steadfast commitment to supplying the highest quality products."

Everyone in the supplements industry knows that the FDA and "Big Pharma" are out to regulate them. As in all government regulation of private industry, only the larger, more established firms will be able to afford compliance with the new testing requirements, new labeling laws, new processing mandates, etc., and this is usually just fine with them...it assures that they cannot be knocked off their perch by some new upstart company with a better product but with higher costs of production. We'll soon see retiring government regulators become the new presidents of "private" supplement companies; and conversely, former senior management from supplement companies will step into powerful regulatory positions in Washington. This will have the effect of serving the economic interests of the already established companies to the detriment of innovative upstarts, and was studied and written about at great length by an economist named George Stigler. He appropriately named it "Regulatory Capture" since private industry under this sort of system has a powerful incentive to try to "capture" the regulatory agency to serve its own purposes. This is not a matter of corruption on the part of the regulators or the industry leaders, but rather a problem that occurs precisely because of the system of incentives created by government regulation of private industry.

We'll be seeing a lot more of that in the very near future as manufacturers of supplements begin to jockey for position in the economic pecking order as they are mandated to "partner" with government. Of course, as in all government/private-industry partnership, it will have the affect of killing innovation and the price reductions that accompany the constant introduction of new products on the free market. We won't have a chance to vote on any of this; it will simply be done, though it will be rationalized by the left (and the early compliers in the industry) as a "quality control" measure for the sake of the public.

Don't think for a moment that once government gets its hands on the food supplements industry that it will provide a possible alternative to zerocare. It could be an alternative to zerocare only on condition that it NOT be controlled and regulated by government. Once it's under regulation, food supplements will start to climb in price (no more "cut-throat competition" to drive prices down for poor people); there will be fewer new products; fewer improvements in existing products; many marginal products that only a few people buy will disappear from the market entirely; and -- who knows -- perhaps "in the public interest" zerocare will require that doctors write prescriptions for supplements. This will be found necessary after some contrived "catastrophe" (perhaps stage-managed) in which many people are made ill or die from taking some sort of "unapproved" food supplement.

I see this very interesting press release as a red flag; yet another warning (innocent looking at first) of government intrusion into our lives.

As for the science in the press release, chokeberry has been researched for a while, and also appears as an ingredient (usually called "Aronia") on a number of products.

An interesting site to check out is "Life Extension":

http://www.lef.org/

Here are some pages with research links and a sample product label with chokeberry ("aronia") listed as an ingredient.

Never trust "government science" to be on the cutting edge of anything.

http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=816&query=chokeberry&hiword=CHOKEBERRIES%20chokeberry%20

Polyphenols are found not only in fruits and vegetables such as the blueberry, but also in cocoa, tea, and the exotic fruit known as the chokeberry. A number of studies show that consuming polyphenols from a variety of sources may be more healthful than limiting ourselves to plants foods typically found in the Western diet . . .

http://www.lef.org/Vitamins-Supplements/Item00994/Super-Polyphenol-Extracts-with-CocoaGold.html

Supplement Facts Serving Size 1 vegetarian capsule Servings Per Container 30 Amount Per Serving CocoaGold™ Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) extract (bean) [standardized to 45% polyphenols (100 mg)] 224 mg Apple (Pyrus malus) Polyphenol extract (skin, root and bark) [std. to 40% phloridzin (80 mg) and 30% polyphenols (60 mg)] 200 mg Aronia (Aronia melanocarpa) extract (fruit) [standardized to 15% anthocyanins (17.25 mg)] 115 mg Green Tea (Camellia sinensis) Decaffeinated extract (leaf) [std. to 98% polyphenols by UV (98 mg), 45% EGCG by HPLC (45 mg)] 100 mg Other ingredients: microcrystalline cellulose, silica, magnesium stearate, vegetable cellulose. Contains tree nuts (cocoa beans). Contains corn.  This product contains NO milk, egg, fish, peanuts, crustacean shellfish, (lobster, crab, shrimp) soybeans, wheat, yeast, gluten, or rice. Contains NO sugar, and no artificial sweeteners, flavors, colors, or preservatives.

http://search.lef.org/cgi-src-bin/MsmGo.exe?grab_id=0&page_id=8947&query=chokeberry&hiword=CHOKEBERRIES%20chokeberry%20

Direct vasoactive and vasoprotective properties of anthocyanin-rich extracts.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) play a critical role in the impairment of nitric oxide-mediated vascular functions and overall pathogenesis associated with cardiovascular disease. Plant pigment anthocyanins are exceptionally potent oxygen radical scavengers that produce beneficial effects in diseases outside the cardiovascular system. We examined for the first time the potential coronary vasoactive and vasoprotective properties of three anthocyanin enhanced extracts prepared from chokeberry (Ck), bilberry (B), or elderberry (E) . . .

J Appl Physiol. 2006 Apr;100(4):1164-70

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