[TooCreative]

Why did they study a combination of substances and not a single one? Wouldn't a study of a single substance be more valuable then a study of a mix?

Sometimes I have the impression that these type of studies are more common among studies initiated by a company. Here it was some supplements company.

I think it is important to remember that by testing random mixes, any company can produce an arbitrary amount of studies and then publish the one with the best looking results and use it for marketing.

[EyeOfNico]

Nothing more to say than highlighting the funding of the research by NeoLife International, LLC (who is selling supplements).

[floatingatoll]

Neolife funded this study to (apparently) support the release of a new product to market, “Neolife Botanical Balance”, a couple months after publication.

N=30 short-term ensures minimum chance of detecting side effects to provide plausible deniability to the FDA. Age range 40-60 excludes the less wealthy <40 and those higher risk of death age ranges >60.

Nutrition studies of the general population with N<1000, without any qualifying factor such as “extremely rare cancer subgroup”, ought to be banned at HN.

[Jimmc414]

Not to be argumentative but there are numerous studies involving these compounds individually evaluating their effect on blood glucose, cardiovascular health, cholesterol and other measurable health-related metrics. Respectfully, what is wrong with a study that might show a synergistic or deleterious effect involving taking these compounds together compared to them taken individually? Since a study like this is a QA of sorts for scientific truths shouldn't tests involve as many permutations as possible? Also, it's not like they could corner the market even if this study went viral. I can buy each of these compounds in bulk and cheaply at my local Costco.

[Mutjake]

Nutrition studies are, to my understanding, a tough nut to crack i.e. it would be prohibitively expensive to hire people to allow full monitoring and regulation of their diet. Imagine using just cinnamon to spice your food every day for an extended period.

So, AFAIK these studies are often based on questionnaires (=fuzzy indicators, easily skewed as people want to decorate their answers for the better etc.) and the sample sizes are limited, so the results cannot be directly ingested as facts.

But that’s often the best we have due to the state of affairs. Option is to not do the studies at all, which seems counterproductive. At least we can duplicate the studies if the results seem promising, maybe combine some other dietary studies for a meta-analysis to try to improve the accuracy.

Not to downplay the risk of science-clad marketing with food&nutrition, what I said does not mean I carefully read the study or that it’s correct. Just wanted to contribute the general view I’ve adopted for these types of studies — the field is NP hard if you want to produce concrete facts as results, so read them with an inquisitive mind. And yeah, check for independece, it certainly doesn’t hurt :-)

Got sidetracked for a bit, but summa summarum: they probably did questionnaires, and had to live with people commonly using those mixes of spices since they cannot really insist them on using just one (or factor out the effect of other spices, since people mix in the other stuff anyways, if ask if they spice with turmeric).

[rat9988]

> by testing random mixes,

This is by itself interesting too.

[Throwaway1771]

They're found together in foods a lot, why not?

Not perfect for efficacy of one substance, but...their money.