Jean-Louis Tu passed on more lab data that one 'scientist' interpreted one way
and a thousand other 'scientists' may have interpreted other ways, none of the
1001 ways necessarily being right:


> Am J Clin Nutr 1989 Oct;50(4):830-2
> Oxalate: effect on calcium absorbability.
> Heaney RP, Weaver CM
> Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178.
>
> Absorption of calcium from intrinsically labeled Ca oxalate was
> measured in 18 normal women and compared with absorption of Ca

[remainder of report moved down below]

Here's a few simple questions from a hill-billy dirt-farmer: did all this
"absorbed" calcium go toward bone-building or instead to make kidney stones?
Did it help the teeth grow stronger or did it indeed lodge as gallstones?   Did
the test subjects become more alive (thrive in every sense of the word) or did
they sit around and grow calcium lumps under their skin while grumbling that
their arthritis was getting worse?

Somebody has to wake up and start making connections.

Was this yet another of those sell-more-milk (or whatever) studies?  Am I the
only one who sees they are all bogus?  Am I the only one who understands that
when quality comes into the picture the baloney will rapidly evaporate.

So, yes, I'm not impressed by phony studies that make it to cyberworld---I
ignore them.  If anyone here thinks that makes me an ignoramus, sobeit.

I've noticed more than one person on this list who would profit from switching
off Medline and sitting on a bucket outside watching leaf lettuce grow.  There
are others who could learn a bit by watching blue mold spread over a bummer
orange lying in a fruit bowl.

Of course anyone who doesn't like what I have to say can do as Kirt suggests:
hit the delete key.   :)

Regards,
Rex Harrill


> from milk in these same subjects, both when the test substances were
> ingested in separate meals and when ingested together. Fractional Ca
> absorption from oxalate averaged 0.100 +/- 0.043 when ingested alone
> and 0.140 +/- 0.063 when ingested together with milk. Absorption was,
> as expected, substantially lower than absorption from milk (0.358 +/-
> 0.113). Nevertheless Ca oxalate absorbability in these women was higher
> than we had previously found for spinach Ca. When milk and Ca oxalate
> were ingested together, there was no interference of oxalate in milk Ca
> absorption and no evidence of tracer exchange between the two labeled
> Ca species.
> ----------------------
> Am J Clin Nutr 1988 Apr;47(4):707-9
> Calcium absorbability from spinach.
> Heaney RP, Weaver CM, Recker RR
> Department of Medicine, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178.
>
> The absorbability of calcium from spinach was compared with the
> absorbability of Ca from milk in 13 healthy adults in a randomized
> cross-over design in which the test meal of either milk or spinach had
> 200 mg of Ca labeled with 45Ca. Absorption was measured by the
> standard double-isotope method in which both the test food and the
> miscible Ca pool are labeled with different Ca tracers. Measurement of
> both Ca and oxalate in our test spinach revealed a very slight
> stoichiometric excess of oxalate; hence it is likely that all of the spinach
> Ca was effectively bound. Absorption was higher from milk in every
> case, with the mean absorption from milk averaging 27.6% and from
> spinach, 5.1%. The mean within-subject difference between Ca
> absorption from milk and from spinach was 22.5 +/- 9.5% (P less than
> 0.0001). These results conclusively establish that spinach Ca is much less
> readily available than milk Ca.
>
> ---------------------
> J Nutr 1987 Nov;117(11):1903-6
> Oxalic acid decreases calcium absorption in rats.
> Weaver CM, Martin BR, Ebner JS, Krueger C
> Department of Foods and Nutrition, Purdue University, West Lafayette,
> IN 47907.
>
> Calcium absorption from salts and foods intrinsically labeled with 45Ca
> was determined in the rat model. Calcium bioavailability was nearly 10
> times greater for low oxalate kale, CaCO3 and CaCl2 than from
> CaC2O4 (calcium oxalate) and spinach (high in oxalates). Extrinsic and
> intrinsic labeling techniques gave a similar assessment of calcium
> bioavailability from kale but not from spinach.
>
> --Jean-Louis Tu <[log in to unmask]>