Cod liver oil 'prevents diabetes'
Giving cod-liver oil to babies reduces the risk of getting diabetes later in life, researchers have found.
Studies carried out by scientists in Norway revealed that infants regularly given a spoonful of the oil during their first year were 25 per cent less likely to develop the disease.
And apparently vitamin D is not the active ingredient; it appears to be the anti-inflammatory long-chain fatty acids: read more here at femail.co.uk. The study was published in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; here's the abstract to the cod liver oil study.
UPDATE 7:43 pm CST
When I first ran across this story, I thought it would be the typical hype for supplements--another miracle cure. But then I noticed the quotation marks around the words 'prevents diabetes,' when the story actually reports a reduction in risk, not a preventer of diabetes.Joyce's first reaction: "It doesn't work; Momma gave us cod liver oil; yuck."
I thought: maybe you have to take the stuff constantly for your whole life?
But the story claims that usage of cod liver oil during the first year of life has a measurable impact on the chance of getting diabetes. I wonder--how is the population controlled for other lifestyle factors? People that give their children cod liver oil are going to have significantly different life-styles than those that don't: more vegetables, more exercise, more checkups with the pediatrician, etc. How can they claim that they can isolate cod liver oil as such an important factor? I know that so-called type I diabetes is not supposed to be 'lifestyle-induced' diabetes, but how do we know that?
