tldr: >canadian man starts eating bread after not having eaten it for a while >after a few months starts getting dandruff and dry skin >guesses it's because canadian/american flour is "fortified" with niacin >switches to imported german bread (no niacin) >symptoms improve >concludes that niacin is unnecessary (or at least over-consumed) also >there are some interesting links to people complaining about being gluten intolerant in the US but being able to eat gluten in europe (where they don't add niacin to wheat flour) and >there are some different types of niacin and some may be better than others
@LouisConde@MechaSilvio I found out about the guy from /fit/. He's known for claiming that vitamin A isn't a vitamin.
He has some evidence to back it up. He also hasn't consumed vitamin A for almost a decade (he's been at so called "death imminent" levels of low vitamin A for years). His backstory is that he had very bad eczema and nothing worked, then he tried cutting vitamin A out of his diet and it cured him.
I don't agree with everything he has to say, but he is interesting. So many alt-health people promote the idea that you aren't getting enough of this vitamin or micro-nutrient (so they can shill their product). Few take the opposite stance that you are getting too much.
@sickburnbro@LouisConde@MechaSilvio I'm not actively avoiding niacin or vitamin A (the latter would require avoiding dairy...), but I'm also not trying to consume more of them.
His anti-niacin position isn't nearly as strong as the anti-vitamin A position, but if I was gluten intolerant I would consider trying to reduce my niacin intake and see if that makes a difference.
An issue in his thinking (and the thinking of many alt-health people) is that he thinks that "if it works for me then it works for everyone", but people have different genetics - he could have some gene which causes him to have a negative reaction to niacin or vitamin A.
E.g. imagine if an asian said that people should avoid alcohol because he has a bad reaction to it (asians commonly have the genetic condition called the alcohol flush reaction)
@billiam@LouisConde@MechaSilvio well, I think an important thing to note is that just like dietary iron, the form of delivery matters a lot too, so that iron in red meat is absorbed much better than iron in broccoli.
I think the linked article he had where they were trying to explain why "gluten intolerant" people could eat bread in europe makes the niacin enriched point something worth thinking about.