Biotech Values

[biomaven0]

>>Pomegranates:

I view the pomegranate as the fruit equivalent of those biotech companies that are basically science experiments masquerading as for-profit companies.

There are well over 1,000 PubMed articles relating to pomegranates.

Pomegranates contain maybe 50 or more different families of phytochemical compounds, some of which are largely specific to that fruit. Each of those compounds typically has a bunch (like half-a-dozen) chemical variants relating to added sugar chains and the like. Each variant has unique absorption and PK and each interacts differently with different gut microbiota, which metabolize them in different ways. Different varieties and growing conditions produce a different collection of compounds. The seeds, the juice, the pulp and the skin all have different properties.

So bottom line is that it's pretty close to impossible to study the effects of ingesting pomegranate properly. Just too many variables and not enough money. But pomegranates are indeed a great source of mostly useless publications.