時尚雙語:最新的怪誕食品概念 OMP牛奶

The latest weird food idea: osteoblast milk product

by Marion Nestle

I had never heard of OMP (osteoblast milk product or protein) until this morning when a reporter from the Associated Press in Beijing sent me an e-mail about it. A milk company in China, it seems, is adding OMP to its milk and the Chinese food safety agency is investigating. The companies say OMP is safe and FDA-approved.

It didn’t take long to find out what this is about. Japanese investigators isolated a protein, kininogen, from milk and demonstrated in laboratory experiments that it promotes bone growth. These and other experiments in rats and people also show that it stimulates bone formation (I haven’t read them so I can’t comment on their quality).

FDA approved? Not exactly. In response to a petition from a company called Snow Foods, the FDA agreed that the use of milk proteins as additives to dairy foods is GRAS (generally recognized as safe) for human consumption. But its “approval” letter assumes that the proteins are mainly lactoferrin and lactoperoxidase, which are pretty well known to be safe. The FDA’s letter says nothing about the use of kininogen as a bone-promoting agent.

I can see why the Chinese government is concerned. It is one thing to demonstrate the effects of a protein in experiments, and quite another to add that protein to a food likely to be consumed by children. The protein is already in milk and there is no evidence that adding more of it will make any difference to bone growth. Without further studies to make sure that adding this protein does no harm, putting it into milk seems like a bad idea.

This seems like more about marketing than health, and it sounds like it is part of the huge current effort to sell more milk to the Chinese people. I am bewildered by the pressure on the Chinese population to drink more milk and eat more milk products. Aren’t most Chinese sensitive to undigested lactose? None of this makes any sense to me. Milk is not an essential nutrient or food and the Chinese have done fine for millennia without it.

I will be watching the unfolding of this story with much interest. Stay tuned.

最新的怪誕食品概念:OMP牛奶

馬裏恩·內斯特

在北京聯合通訊社的一個記者給我發電子郵件之前，我從未聽說過OMP(造骨細胞乳製品或造骨細胞乳蛋白)。看來中國的一家公司正向牛奶中添加OMP而中國食品安全機構正在調查此事。那家公司聲明OMP是安全的且經FDA認證。

找出真相併不難。日本科學家從牛奶中分離出一種蛋白質——激肽原並在實驗室模擬實驗中發現其能促進骨骼生長。小鼠和人身上的活體實驗也證明了它在骨構成方面有刺激作用（我對這方面沒有研究所以不能對實驗效果做任何評論）。

經FDA認證？不完全是。由於一家名爲Snow Foods公司的申請，FDA認證了向人消耗乳製品中添加其他乳蛋白的行爲爲GRAS級（generally recognized as safe，通常認爲安全）。但認證信顯示添加的蛋白主要是乳鐵傳遞蛋白和乳過氧化物酶，這兩者的安全性早已得到認可。FDA的認證信對激肽原作爲骨生長因子則隻字未提。

我能理解政府爲何如此關心這件事。這件事說白了就是將還在實驗階段的物質加入到很可能爲孩子們消費的食物中。牛奶中已含有這種蛋白而且沒有證據顯示額外的添加這種物質會對骨生長帶來任何作用。在更多的實驗確實證明安全性之前就將其添加入牛奶顯然是個壞主意。

這件事看起來更像爲了市場而非健康，而且也像是爲向中國人賣更多牛奶的巨大努力中的一部分。我對中國推動居民消費更多牛奶和乳製品的做法感到困惑。難道大多數中國人不是乳糖不耐受的嗎？這對我沒有任何意義。牛奶並不是必須的營養品或食品，而中國人也已經過了幾千年沒有牛奶的日子了。

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