Turning Meat, Poultry, Eggs, and Dairy Products Into Nutraceuticals Through Increasing Their Conjugated Linoleic Acid Levels, Part One: Reviewing the Literature of Benefits Claimed for Conjugated Linoleic Acids in Human Health

ABSTRACT

In the first of this two-part series of articles, the debate in the clinical literature over the reality or extent of particular positive health benefits of a putative nutraceutical, conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs), in human subjects will be reviewed. In the second article, the means by which animal scientists and farmers—responding as much to annual sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars in health food stores of seed oil capsules rich in CLAs, as opposed to any conclusive clinical science—are aggressively pursuing ways to feed livestock that would naturally increase the concentration of CLAs per conventional consumer dietary portions, essentially allowing meat, eggs, fluid milk and the processed foods derived from them to be marketed as functional foods. In both installments in this series, the core journals covering developments in CLA-related research are identified for agricultural and food science librarians.

KEYWORDS:

• Conjugated linoleic acids
• functional foods
• human nutrition
• nutraceuticals
• dieting
• obesity
• metabolic syndrome
• atherosclerosis
• cancer prevention
• inflammation