The question about the roles of Vitamin A, Hormone D, other hormones and

quinones comes up from time to time.

FCLO's role is high levels of fat-soluble nutrients including vitamins A, D, E, and K;

quinones; enzymes; hormones; and fatty acids. The complex of these nutrients will be totally different in the butter oil versus the FCLO.

The Fatty Acid Complex is completely different as are the species collecting these nutrients. The hormone/steroid structure is directly related to the species and the fatty acid structure of the species’ diet.

Vitamin A: The FCLO will have more types of vitamin A at much higher levels than the High Vitamin Butter Oil. Typical vitamin A content for butter oil is 45-90 IUs per ml, for FCLO it is1500-5000 IUs per ml. One does not buy the butter oil for vitamin A. The FCLO will have many forms not just one s most industrialized food and the forms are naturally occuring.

Vitamin or Hormone D: This nutrient—like most, if not all hormones—is altered and destroyed with heat early in the processing of industrial CLO.

The FCLO contains many varieties of hormone D, including D3. The butter oil contains exclusively D3. Typical D3 levels per ml in the butter oil are 200-300 IUs. FCLO has a higher typical level of D3—700-1200 IUs per ml—although these levels can be higher depending on the measuring method. Please keep in mind that due to prohibitive testing costs, we do not test all the different derivatives of D in the FCLO.

Quinones: I am aware that many people follow the theory that MK4 is the most important quinone, but I do not. I don’t believe our understanding of whole foods is advanced enough to determine which quinones are more important than others.

The quinone structure will be totally different in the FCLO versus the butter oil. I suspect that the quinone, hormone, vitamin, fatty acid comparative structures between the butter oil and the FCLO are complimentary just as Dr. Weston Price** discussed when he discovered the synergy between the two. The total quinone structure is very high in both the butter oil and the FCLO. Based my knowledge of how the products are provided in nature, collected, and prepared, I suspect that the FCLO have a higher content of Ks than the butter oil. The butter oil will have higher amounts of other quinones. Typical total quinone content of the FCLO will range from 30-90 mg per ml (note the units of measurement when comparing products), and the High Vitamin Butter Oil will range from 20-30 mg per ml total quinone.

**Side note regarding the above paragraph: I do not know if Weston Price had access to Fermented CLO, as by the 1930s most or some of the cod liver oil should have been rendered rather than fermented, this is only a guess based on my research. It is possible some cod liver oil produced during this time was still made the old way.

Hormones/steroids might be the most misunderstood nutrients but the most important to consider. There are hundreds of these structures consolidated and tied within the fatty acid structures if the food is carefully collected and prepared. Vitamin D is a hormone. I have a book that shows 937 different structures of vitamin D (not all naturally occurring). Despite the discussions regarding medicine in the media, it is not all about D3.

Think for a moment about the skate fish and the cod. Cod have bones; skate do not. The skate cannot make bone. However, the skate does make cartilage, and does it without thinking about what to eat and not eat. The skate eats a diet similar to that of the cod. We still do not understand how cartilage is formed. Why, with similar diets, don’t both the skate and the cod have bones? Just because we do not know the answer does not make the picture less whole. The underlying question is; is it the nutrient that determines the outcome or something else?

What do you think? Is this statement as startling to you as me? Which is it, the nutrient or what we do with the nutrient? I have to assume that what we do with the nutrient is greatly affected by steroids and hormones.

Dr. Weston Price described Activator X as a vitamin enhancer or enabler that found in highest quantities in High Vitamin Butter oil, some eggs, some insects, and some fish species. Dr. Royal Lee described Activator X as the steroid-like key that opens the door for vitamin D and calcium to enter the cell. Dr. Richard, who founded the company Plant Stem Cells, says Activator X is a Brassino steroid. Chris Masterjohn’s theory is that Activator X is within the quinone family, most likely in the K class of nutrients.

If Activator X is a plant steroid, hormone, or quinone, it makes sense that the highest levels of Activator X will be found in animals’ milk fat if they are eating these plants during the time period of the highest activity of the nutrient. My theory is that all these nutrients are important in their whole form and one should not attempt to isolate and identify this or that as being of most important. I think we will always miss the whole story. Dr. Price could not identify Activator X, nor did he understand the variety of nutrients in CLO, but this did not stop him from highlighting and using High Vitamin Butter Oil and CLO in his work. He did not have to know what Activator X was to make use of the whole food product or to write about its effects.

I think in time, plant and animal hormones/steroids will be viewed as the real deal as far as human nutrients. Scientists are starting to pick up on the concept of hormones as nutrients. I had a plant scientist tell me 'every time we study one of these plant hormones we find it is found to be important for human nutrition'. Hormones are very delicate and are easily altered or destroyed through industrial processing. The hormone structures change rapidly depending on feed, soil, light, species, processing, and more.

Industrial processing methods change and alter the entire nutrient integrity of the product. We may not understand what we are measuring and there may be factors involved that we just do not have the ability or technology to comprehensively understand. It is like trying to put together a million piece jigsaw puzzle without a picture. We understand small fragments of the picture and may have ability to put some parts of the picture together, but the final picture is still a mystery. The debate is centered on how much of the picture we think we know. I believe we are clueless, but, as long as we don’t lose or disrupt them, we have all the pieces to the puzzle.

Our foods need to be as unprocessed as possible. Heat is the biggest sinner in the industrialized food model. Just because we do not fully understand the affects of heat on nutrients does not mean those affects aren’t real and far-reaching.