In the marketing of various health care products and “magic foods”, we often see such propaganda: “XX is an essential nutrient for the human body, what are the important functions, and the lack of it will lead to the symptoms of one two three three... certain food It is rich in XX, so it can effectively prevent symptoms...". If another scientist is awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the physiological function of the XX component, it will become even more "higher."


This kind of propaganda full of scientific terminology has great appeal to many consumers. However, the logic of this argument is mostly flickering.


First of all, the human body needs a certain substance, a substance is very important to the human body, and lack of a substance will cause certain symptoms, which is completely different from the need for the body to supplement the substance. The physiological activities of the human body consist of a variety of biochemical reactions, their participation requires the participation of various enzymes, and various small molecular substances as the messenger of the transmission signal. They are of course important for human health, because lack of them will cause certain physiological activities to fail, and various symptoms may occur. However, many substances require the body to synthesize itself, and the human body regulates their own synthesis. It is meaningless to supplement it with food, digest and absorb it, and it has no physiological activity at all. A variety of enzymes - the fashionable name is "enzyme", is not the case.


Secondly, the lack of a substance can cause symptoms, and it is also different from supplementing it to prevent the symptoms. In general, most symptoms of the human body have more than one incentive. Lack of a certain nutrient will cause it, but as long as the intake reaches “sufficient amount”, there is no additional “control effect” for additional supplementation. This is true for all kinds of vitamins and minerals. If the body is lacking, it will naturally be "effective". But if it's not missing, there's no value for extra supplements—even if you add too much, it can be risky. All of these vitamins and minerals have two indicators: “sufficient intake” and “maximum intake”. The former is the amount that should be ingested from various ways, and the latter is the amount that the various pathways do not add up.


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Scientific flicker of functional ingredients such as spirulina


Moreover, even for those nutrients that need to be taken from food, the body needs "total intake" rather than "concentration." The total amount is determined by multiplying the amount of food consumed by the concentration of this ingredient – even if it is high in a food, but if it is small, the total is limited. A typical example is spirulina. The protein quality in spirulina is not bad, and the concentration is not low, but as a health care product, spirulina usually consumes only a few grams per day, providing less protein - a few tens of grams per day needed by the human body. The protein, the point in spirulina is completely negligible. For example, “Selenium-enriched tea”, the selenium content in tea is not low, but considering the tea used every day and the dissolution rate of selenium in tea, the selenium that it can contribute can only be used to “talk better than nothing”. To describe. In fact, all kinds of magical health products that are made with "XX high nutrient content" are basically similar situations.


In addition, there are some ingredients that are not necessary for the human body, but marketing often claims that "scientific research shows a certain role." Most of these studies are just a few cell tests or animal tests. Cellular assays can provide some direction of research, but the conditions in the body may be quite different. Moreover, it cannot conclude that “how much is effective”. Animal tests have a higher reference value than cell tests, but they are still far away.


More importantly, these tests are often just to explore the mechanism of action, to be applied to humans, "there is still a need for further testing in humans." However, after the publication of this kind of research, after many years there was no “then”—the “still need” was too long, and often it was not that no one did it, but the results of human trials were not satisfactory, and the sponsors were unwilling to publish. It has to continue to "still need". Or some experiments have found that the amount required for "effective" is too large and completely unrealistic. For example, resveratrol in wine, the cell test results are good, but to be effective for people, you have to drink the wine to kill yourself. The effect of many "phytochemicals" is probably the case.