Looking into it I think it's legit because the highest content foods were all fermented. It read like a list of eating fermented veggies, cheeses and organ meats for longevity.
It does read like that pretty much -- except for odd, surprising things like peas, corn, and grapefruit juice.
I wonder if the vaunted high average longevity of the Japanese is owing to their habit of eating fermented soy bean products, products having a lot of spermidine in them.
By the way, Michael Greger, author of "How Not to Age" pointed out that the cheap white button mushrooms -- of all those mushrooms readily available in Western markets -- were highest in spermidine. He also believes the highest spermidine concentrations in foods are found in wheat germ. I don't know if he's entirely correct, though -- I found a Turkish paper that indicated wheat bran is also about as high in the stuff -- all of which suggests whole wheat flour per se is no slouch as far being a particularly good polyamine source.
Maybe you saw this already, but the highest spermidine values for cheeses in the US market appear to be those for sharp (aged 1 year or more) cheddar.
There is potentially a bit of a problem with the food content polyamine data, though, in that there seems to be some noise in some of the food analyses -- different references give quite different values for some of the polyamines. Could be analytical problems, could be variation in the food varieties sampled, I imagine.
Re: Japanese health, I always have to consider if it's having so much iodine in the diet that makes the difference. Of course they do eat tons of fermented everything too. There's some link between the thyroid which uses iodine, thyroid cancers and the polyaminse/spermidine you mentioned.
Looking into it I think it's legit because the highest content foods were all fermented. It read like a list of eating fermented veggies, cheeses and organ meats for longevity.
It does read like that pretty much -- except for odd, surprising things like peas, corn, and grapefruit juice.
I wonder if the vaunted high average longevity of the Japanese is owing to their habit of eating fermented soy bean products, products having a lot of spermidine in them.
By the way, Michael Greger, author of "How Not to Age" pointed out that the cheap white button mushrooms -- of all those mushrooms readily available in Western markets -- were highest in spermidine. He also believes the highest spermidine concentrations in foods are found in wheat germ. I don't know if he's entirely correct, though -- I found a Turkish paper that indicated wheat bran is also about as high in the stuff -- all of which suggests whole wheat flour per se is no slouch as far being a particularly good polyamine source.
Maybe you saw this already, but the highest spermidine values for cheeses in the US market appear to be those for sharp (aged 1 year or more) cheddar.
There is potentially a bit of a problem with the food content polyamine data, though, in that there seems to be some noise in some of the food analyses -- different references give quite different values for some of the polyamines. Could be analytical problems, could be variation in the food varieties sampled, I imagine.
Re: Japanese health, I always have to consider if it's having so much iodine in the diet that makes the difference. Of course they do eat tons of fermented everything too. There's some link between the thyroid which uses iodine, thyroid cancers and the polyaminse/spermidine you mentioned.
Thanks -- never heard of the iodine factor before. Just found this regarding that:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/longterm-iodine-nutrition-is-associated-with-longevity-in-older-adults-a-20-years-followup-of-the-randersskagen-study/D5F512AB0A2D01834E7528674FFEF264
Whatever, this is normal wedding bliss. One of the two has to give. He is acting like a child wanting to escape.
Eh?