Incidentally, another bit of “conventional wisdom” that’s been overturned, along the lines of the butter/margarine reversal: according to controlled studies, large doses of antioxidants reduces life expectancy. And by “antioxidants” I mostly mean vitamin E:
This does make you wonder just what on earth people were thinking when they thought extremely large doses of something fat soluble was a good idea. Crazy. I am somewhat wary of saying ‘large doses of antioxidants reduces life expectancy’… that seems to be completely the wrong inference to make. Melatonin is a far stronger anti-oxidant than vitamin E but ridiculously high doses of melatonin don’t cause the same problem. (By ridiculously high I refer to levels of antioxidising power that would require easily fatal levels of vitamin E to achieve.) Why don’t they try the generalisation “large doses of fat soluble vitamins”? That’s far more credible.
This does make you wonder just what on earth people were thinking when they thought extremely large doses of something fat soluble was a good idea. Crazy. I am somewhat wary of saying ‘large doses of antioxidants reduces life expectancy’… that seems to be completely the wrong inference to make. Melatonin is a far stronger anti-oxidant than vitamin E but ridiculously high doses of melatonin don’t cause the same problem. (By ridiculously high I refer to levels of antioxidising power that would require easily fatal levels of vitamin E to achieve.) Why don’t they try the generalisation “large doses of fat soluble vitamins”? That’s far more credible.
/me shrugs
I don’t really know all the details, but “Eat this because it has antioxidants, which are good for you” still seems like a bit of a lie...
Good point.