Skinny Girl's Quest for Muscle

Dr. Weston Price was a dentist who became famous after writing Nutritional and Physical Degeneration, a book narrating his travels around the world to study the diversity in the dietary nutrition of remote, non-industrialized settlements ranging from locations in the Swiss Alps, to Eskimo and African villages. Dr. Price attempted to determine why these populations, who had no modern dental or medical technology available, appeared to have much better dental health, and overall health, than Westerners.

In 1945, Dr. Price published a new chapter as part of his second edition of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. In this groundbreaking new chapter, he suggested that a substance that he labeled as "Activator X" was the tie between the diverse diets of the remote populations. He found Activator X to be a fat soluble substance that assisted vitamins A and D with their useful functions in the body. Food sources containing Activator X identified were: milk, dark yellow butters and hard cheeses made from cattle that grazed on spring grasses.

Fast forward 60 years to today. The newly formed paradigm suggests that Activator X is actually vitamin K2. Haven't heard of it? You are not alone. Although vitamin K was discovered nearly a century ago, the role of vitamin k2, a substance that is found in fractional amounts in the diet, was overlooked until just recently. Modern research has not only created a link between the benefits that Dr. Price found from Activator X in the diet and those of what we understand of vitamin k2's role in nutrition, it has taken it a step further suggesting a link between k2 and cancer prevention. In April of 2008, research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggested an inverse correlation between vitamin k2 in the diet and prostate cancer (3). K2 has also been indicated for possible prevention of liver cancer (4) and heart disease (5).

So this is all great news, but what does it means for me?

Interestingly, although Dr. Price did not find many individual macro nutrient or food-specific commonalities between the diets of the remote people that he studied, the one commonality that did tie the groups together, the mysterious "Activator X" was found to naturally occur in fatty foods such as the whole milk hard cheeses and butters products consumed by the Swiss and the miscellaneous organ meats eaten by the other groups--organ meats that are not found in a typical Western diet as they are deemed inferior to lean muscle meats, and are rather considered byproducts appropriate for use in pet feeds, but not the human diet. Activator X, or vitamin k2 as we now assume, is also found in egg yolks, goose liver, and Natto--a gummy fermented soy-based food eaten in Japan. Vitamin k2 was on its way to being displaced in the typical Western diet by other foods, leaner muscle meats, skimmed and non-fatted milks and dairy, margarine, processed cheese foods, etc.(6) Additionally, Western butter, produced from cattle fed a grain-based diet has lower k2 content than the butters found in the European markets made from cattle fed a grass-based diet(6).

It wasn't until 2006 that the USDA even began reporting vitamin k values in foods(6). Today, it's still difficult to find a separation of vitamin k1 and k2 values for various foods. Vitamin k1 occurs mainly in plant foods where vitamin k2 can be found in animal products. Beyond the occurrence of the vitamin in food sources, it's important to note that vitamin k2 is a fat soluble substance meaning it requires dietary fat to be utilized properly in the body. Putting this into practice, would suggest eating fatty dairy instead of non-fat or de-fatted dairy products to get the full benefit from vitamins A and D, and calcium.

So, why Edam?

In a recent dissertation paper, a graduate candidate found that Edam cheese contained the largest concentration of k2 out of all cheeses in the study(7).



References:
1) Dr. Weston Price, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
2) http://www.westonaprice.org/On-the-Trail-of-the-Elusive-X-Factor-A-Sixty-Two-Year-Old-Mystery-Finally-Solved.html#60
(3) Katharina Nimptsch, Sabine Rohrmann and Jakob Linseisen, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 87, No. 4, 985-992, April 2008
(4) Daiki Habu, MD, PhD; Susumu Shiomi, MD, PhD; Akihiro Tamori, MD, PhD; Tadashi Takeda, MD, PhD; Takashi Tanaka, MD, PhD; Shoji Kubo, MD, PhD; Shuhei Nishiguchi, MD, PhD, Role of Vitamin K₂ in the Development of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Women With Viral Cirrhosis of the Liver , JAMA. 2004;292:358-361.
(5) [insert reference]
(6) http://www.westonaprice.org/On-the-Trail-of-the-Elusive-X-Factor-A-Sixty-Two-Year-Old-Mystery-Finally-Solved.html#fig4
(7) Koivu-Tikkanen, T. 2000. Determination of phylloquinone and menaquinones in foods by HPLC (dissertation). EKT-series 1216. University of Helsinki, Department of Applied Chemistry and Microbiology, 82 pp.