Considering CLA

A quick survey of the interesting looking links from a google search on CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) revealed the following.  The BLUF:   CLA is another ingredient we used to get naturally as hunter gatherers, which seems to be deficient in the SAD.  Eat grassfed animals, eat pastured butter, and rest easy knowing you probably got the CLA you needed and are not deficient.

http://www.mercola.com/beef/cla.htm
Pretty typical summary from Mercola, in which he touts the possible advantages of CLA consumption from grass fed beef, and skewers the industrial food chain and all of its adherants, sycophants and government enablers.  Takaway: CLA seems to be good but evidence is minimal. 

http://www.eatwild.com/cla.html
Takeaway: CLA as a supplement is as questionable as 98% of supplements, but the natural form is available in grass fed cattle and is another factor in a growing list of the differences in grass fed vice feedlot cattle products:

Where do you get CLA? Many people take a synthetic version that is widely promoted as a diet aid and muscle builder. New research shows that the type of CLA in the pills may have some potentially serious side effects, including promoting insulin resistance, raising glucose levels, and reducing HDL (good) cholesterol. (3)

Few people realize that CLA is also found in nature, and this natural form does not have any known negative side effects. The most abundant source of natural CLA is the meat and dairy products of grassfed animals. Research conducted since 1999 shows that grazing animals have from 3-5 times more CLA than animals fattened on grain in a feedlot. Simply switching from grainfed to grassfed products can greatly increase your intake of CLA. (4)

http://www.naturalnews.com/010126.html
A sad article, well written but from my perspective, terminally mis-informed. Nice discussion of CLA's possible benefits, but since the author's so poorly informed about saturated fats, it's hard to take anything in this article seriously.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/2007/01/30/21608.aspx
The author reviews two studies, one on rats and one on mice, which had mixed results from CLA supplementation.  Takeaway:  Don't supplement CLA if you are a rat or a mouse.

Link for this quote follows.  Takaway:  don't read The Health Ranger unless you like this sort of speculation.

I've often said that raw broccoli is such a powerful anti-cancer food that if it could be patented and sold in capsules, pharmaceutical companies would charge patients $100 a plate for the same chemical compounds that you can get in broccoli florets. So if you're looking for a supplement that can help stop breast cancer, CLA is marginally effective, but it is way down on the list -- near the bottom of the list as far as I'm concerned -- of things that are effective at preventing and reversing breast cancer. Heck, even natural sunlight has a far more powerful preventive effect than CLA, and breast cancer is precisely one of the main diseases that appears in people who lack frequent exposure to natural sunlight (they have a sunlight deficiency).
Cancer is also addressed by consuming various sea vegetables. In fact, taking daily supplements of seaweed, kelp, and fucoidan extracts is well known to both prevent and even reverse breast cancer. Dulse is another outstanding sea vegetable, and of course, spirulina is harvested from the oceans as well and contains a powerful anti-cancer pigment chemical that both gives spirulina its cyan color and demonstrates powerful anti-tumor effects in clinical studies performed in Japan.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/001579.html#ixzz1BW6wgjWG

The Health Ranger is one smart, passionate guy, and I think his advocacy is admirable; where we part is his advocacy of 'superfoods.'  I don't see a lot of evidence that we're going to thrive by hunting down a bunch of so called superfoods, rather, the way to thrive is to avoid eating foods that damage us by intelligently applying the paleolithic model of nutrition.  When I see anyone advocating a 'superfood' that comes in a quart container that's loaded with sugars, I can't take that advice or advisor seriously.