Salmon’s benefits may extend beyond cardiometabolic health.
Salmon contains unique compounds that are associated with improved cardiometabolic health indicators, such as lower cholesterol, a new nutrimetabolomic study shows.
- The study
explored the health benefits of salmon in the context of a Mediterranean
diet, known for focusing on healthy oils and fats.
- As part of the
study, participants ate two servings of salmon a week, for two five-week
periods.
- Nutrimetabolomics is a cutting-edge means of investigating food nutrients, however, not everyone is sold on it.
Salmon has long been considered a healthy food,
especially when eaten in diets that forgo excessive salts, processed foods, and
unhealthy oils. Now, a new study examines salmon from a metabolomic perspective, and describes, on a molecular
level, the health benefits of salmon.
The study found that salmon contains 508 food-specific
compounds, or FSCs, including 237 metabolites that are unique to salmon.
When it is eaten as part of a Mediterranean diet,
salmon delivers to the body at least 48 of these compounds, along with 30
metabolites — substances produced during digestion or
other body chemical processes. Four of these metabolites are associated with
significant improvements in cardiometabolic health indicators, or CHI.
A Mediterranean diet has an emphasis on healthy oils for fat, such
as olive oil. It favors plant-based sources of nutrition,
including vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. Protein is supplied by sources
such as poultry, fish, and vegetable proteins such as beans, as
well as yogurt and cheese.
Compared to the standard Western diet, the
Mediterranean diet largely avoids red meats,
sugars, excessive salt, and unhealthy fats.
For the new study, researchers performed a secondary
analysis of an existing random controlled feeding trial involving 41
participants who ate a Mediterranean diet for two five-week periods, with a
four-week break in between. Individuals ate two servings of salmon per week
during the diet intervention periods.
Participants were recruited in the Greater Lafayette,
IN area, and none were already eating a Mediterranean diet. Their ages ranged
from 30 to 69. They had obesity or overweight, although none had any active
metabolic conditions — such as type 2 diabetes — or acute illnesses.
The researchers recorded their CHIs, and collected the
participants’ blood plasma samples before and after the study.
The researchers used chromatography-mass
spectrometry-based metabolomics to analyze participants’ plasma, as well as
salmon and 99 other foods consumed on a Mediterranean diet. If the researchers
found a compound in all instances of salmon but not in other diet foods, they
characterized it as a salmon FSC.
They then identified metabolites associated with the
salmon FSCs via machine learning.
The researchers found increases in two annotated
salmon FSCs and two metabolites were associated with greater
cardiometabolic health, evident by CHIs in the participants’ blood plasma at
the end of the trial. These cardiometabolic benefits included reductions in total
cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides, and
apolipoprotein B, which
is an indicator of heart disease.
The study is published in The Journal of Nutrition.
What is nutrimetabolomics?
Michelle Routhenstein,
cardiology dietician and preventive cardiology nutritionist at
EntirelyNourished.com, who was not involved in the study, said the study and
its “findings suggest that this approach could help find important compounds in
foods that might be helpful for health. But more research is needed to confirm
this.”
“Metabolomic studies have highlighted the diverse
array of bioactive compounds present in olive oil, such as phenolic compounds
and oleic acid, which are associated with anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and
cardiovascular health benefits,” she explained.
The same sort of research, said Routhenstein, has
found barley, quinoa, and
bulgur to be rich sources of phytochemicals. These include phenolic
acids, flavonoids,
lignans, and phytosterols, compounds possessing antioxidant properties that
help to combat oxidative stress and inflammation in the body.
Hyper-focusing on good vs. bad food may be harmful
Conner Middelmann, a nutritionist specializing in the Mediterranean diet who was
likewise not involved in the study, expressed some doubts, however, saying,
“research that reduces food to infinitesimally tiny molecules that may or may
not have some sort of effect on health isn’t highly relevant to my work.”
For her patients, Middelmann continued: “I’m just
wondering: will the metabolites of a particular food have the same effect on a
wide range of people with different biochemistries and histories? If not, how
relevant is this sort of research to people’s day-to-day lives?”
Middelmann cited, among other things, variations in
people’s individual biochemistry, genetics, age, sex, medical conditions, and
treatments, as well as psycho-socioeconomic and environmental factors that
affect biochemistry.
“If anything, I try to help my clients move away from
this hyper-granular approach to food as medicine where they obsess about
getting compound ‘X’ from one food and avoiding compound ‘Y’ from another,” she
said.
“[H]ealth is about so much more than food, and the
idea that if we eat ‘perfectly, we’ll be perfectly healthy’ is an illusion,”
said Middelmann.
Middelmann noted that several of her clients are now
recovering from hyper-focusing on ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ foods.
Other fish that are as good as salmon
The investigation of salmon in a Mediterranean diet
demonstrates the flexibility of the diet, since salmon are native to the coasts
of the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, far from the Mediterranean Sea. They
are, however, grown in aquaculture in other locations.
Routhenstein suggested the reason that the
non-Mediterranean fish nonetheless qualified as a sensible candidate for the
study.
“The diet includes a variety of other fish that have a
similar nutritional profile and are associated with numerous health benefits.
For instance, sardines and trout are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, particularly
EPA and DHA, which are beneficial for heart health. They are also a good source
of protein, vitamin D, and calcium,” she noted.
To Middelmann, who specializes in the Mediterranean
diet, it “is about joyfully eating lots of different types of fish and seafood,
but also a wide variety of everything else — veggies, legumes, whole grains,
fruits, nuts, seeds, olives, eggs, yogurt, cheese, etc. — because it tastes
good, makes you feel good, and is nutritious.”
“I know that doesn’t sound very scientific, but it
seems to work pretty well for the folks living in the Mediterranean region,”
she added.
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