Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I'm curious if you science smarties can help me!

Maybe you've seen articles like these in the last few days.
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010 ... -diabetes/
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/ ... betes_risk

They're based on this study -
http://www.annals.org/content/153/12/790.abstract

It sounds pretty impressive but I have a couple questions.

Why does nutritiondata say that whole milk has 0 mg trans-palmitoleic acid (http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dai ... ducts/69/2) and almonds have 11 mg per cup (http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut ... cts/3085/2)? (It's also known as 16:1 t). Also, it seems likely to me that macadamia nuts would be an even greater source of this acid since they're such a good source of the undifferentiated version (http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut ... cts/3123/2) but maybe that's all cis and not trans? Is it about the balance between cis and trans palmitoleic acid and somehow there's more trans in cow milk?

I'm not at risk of diabetes or anything but I'm curious.

Your chemistry questions are interesting and worth addressing (by somebody else that knows chemistry!) but at far as I can tell they're looking at a very broad parameters that are affected by many things, eating healthily among them. We both live in the US, who do we know that eats whole-fat dairy consumption? Pretty healthy people in the first place. Maybe? Also, this data was on 327 women out of the original 3736. It would be very interested to know the regions of study and the recruiting criteria/cohort criteria.

Plus, even if milk is really healthy, do you think this makes a difference? Sounds like the government just loves studying the shiitake.

Also, what the hell, why does the annals.org have an annoying splash ad? I hate this study just for that.

the casein may trigger type 1 diabetes in children that have a family history.

Good points Sra Nooch. Aliks, what's your source on that?

http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/42/12/1786.abstract

Wow, thanks!

I didn't know it was casein, but I did know people have been looking into a dairy/Type I connection for years.