I admit it… a few months back, I took the stupid Real Age quiz.  So now I’m the lucky recipient of the Real Age “Tips of the Week” – a weekly newsletter with links to articles on fitness/nutrition.  Most of the time, I just scan ’em and hit “delete”, although I do click on a few provocative-looking links every once in a while, just to see what they’re all about.

In fact, I did that just a few minutes ago, when a new edition showed up in my e-mail.  This was the link that caught my eye:

Try This Noodle for Better Blood Pressure
Pasta salad. Summer isn’t complete without it. And here’s the noodle you should use to do your blood pressure some good at the same time . . .

Ok, I’m not a big pasta eater, but I was curious to see what this was about… it made me wonder if there was some new variety on the market with beneficial effects on blood pressure.

Should’a known better.  The article that popped up wasn’t about a link between pasta and blood pressure at all… it concerned a study on the link between glutamic acid consumption and blood pressure.   The pasta connection was an invention of the Real Age staff writer, since gluten, the main protein in whole wheat (as well as white) pasta, is high in glutamic acid.

The author could have just as easily made bread or tofu the “main attraction”, but whatever…

Unfortunately, the connection between eating whole wheat pasta and blood pressure wasn’t the only invention of the author.  These paras had me shaking my head in disbelief:

Pasta salad. Summer isn’t complete without it. And here’s the noodle you should use to do your blood pressure some good at the same time: whole-wheat pasta.

How’s it work? Well, whole-wheat pasta contains glutamic acid, a vegetable protein that has been linked to better blood pressure in recent research.

…In a study released last month, the more glutamic acid people got in their diets, the better their blood pressure was. In fact, just a 4.7 percent increase in the proportion of protein people got from glutamic acid instead of other sources…

Emphasis mine.  Anyone see what’s wrong with the bolded statements?

It’s this: glutamic acid is NOT a protein or a source of protein.  It’s an amino acid – a building block OF protein. 

The Real Age writer had it completely bass ackwards.  And the same mistake was repeated twice, which indicated it was an error of comprehension, not typing. 

Not good…

Even worse, the writer cited a reference…

Glutamic acid, the main dietary amino acid, and blood pressure: the INTERMAP Study (International Collaborative Study of Macronutrients, Micronutrients and Blood Pressure). Stamler, J. et al., Circulation 2009 Jul 21;120(3):221-228.

This study was the focus of the article. It’s clear from both the title and the abstract that glutamic acid is a component of vegetable proteins, and not vice versa.  It makes me wonder if anyone at Real Age even bothered to read it.

Quite honestly, this kinda creeps me out: the people behind the Real Age site – like Dr. Mehmet Oz – are supposed to be experts on nutrition and health.  Yet this is a fundamental error that no expert could possibly make.  Nonetheless, it went public without being caught by an knowledgeable editor or qualified reviewer.

It’s bad enough that pharmaceutical marketing is part of Real Age’s mission.  But to me, this kind of sloppy reporting is infinitely worse, as it demonstrates a basic lack of professionalism (not to mention education) on the part of the Real Age management and staff.