What to feed or what not to feed-that is still the question

Abstract

Introduction: This review addresses metabolic diversities after grain feeding of cattle using artificial total mixed ration (TMR), in place of pasture-based feeding.

Objectives: To determine how grain feeding impairs the deuterium-depleting functions of the anaplerotic mitochondrial matrix during milk and meat production.

Methods: Based on published data we herein evaluate how grain-fed animals essentially follow a branched-chain amino acid and odd-chain fatty acid-based reductive carboxylation-dependent feedstock, which is also one of the mitochondrial deuterium-accumulating dysfunctions in human cancer.

Results: It is now evident that food-based intracellular deuterium exchange reactions, especially that of glycogenic substrate oxidation, are significant sources of deuterium-enriched (²H; D) metabolic water with a significant impact on animal and human health. The burning of high deuterium nutritional dairy products into metabolic water upon oxidation in the human body may contribute to similar metabolic conditions and diseases as described in state-of-the-art articles for cows. Grain feeding also limits oxygen delivery to mitochondria for efficient deuterium-depleted metabolic water production by glyphosate herbicide exposure used in genetically modified crops of TMR constituents.

Conclusion: Developments in medical metabolomics, biochemistry and deutenomics, which is the science of biological deuterium fractionation and discrimination warrant urgent critical reviews in order to control the epidemiological scale of population diseases such as diabetes, obesity and cancer by a thorough understanding of how the compromised metabolic health of grain-fed dairy cows impacts human consumers.

Keywords: Branched chain amino acids; Deupletion; Deutenomics; Grass feeding; Mitochondria; Total mixed ration.

Fig. 1

Significantly different biochemical reaction architectures for the processing of deuterium-rich and -poor feedstocks under artificial TMR cattle feed (orange) and grass (green) feeding strategies in dairy cows, respectively. The text frames labelled A and B show the ketogenic substrate metabolites of grass-fed animals that lead to the combustion of naturally lower deuterium fats, glycerol and fatty acids that produce deuterium-depleted (deupleted) matrix water for mitochondria. Substrates labelled C and D show essential branched-chain amino acid feedstocks of artificially TMR fed animals, such as leucine, isoleucine and valine, as well as methionine, threonine and thymine, and their odd chain fatty acid derivatives with higher deuterium content, as explained in the article. Reaction path labelled E shows the use of higher deuterium glutamine by reductive carboxylation towards branching mitochondrial function. Please note that glutamate and its derivative ketoglutarate (alpha-carbon) is also used via oxidation to produce NADPH, i.e. the reducing equivalent for reductive carboxylation towards citrate production in severely defective mitochondria of grain-fed cows (Mullen et al., 2014). Artificial TMR cattle feeds used at Western farming establishments also contain glyphosate. PC Pyruvate Carboxylase, MCM Methylmalonyl-CoA Mutase (also known as isomerase), G6PDH Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase, TK Transketolase, TA Transaldolase, NADPH Nicotine Adenine Dinucleotide Phosphate (protonated), LDH Lactate Dehydrogenase, PDH Pyruvate Dehydrogenase, MDH Malate Dehydrogenase, PEPCK Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxykinase