Comment · Wed, October 26, 2022 · ND Owner
Lab Testing Results: Dried Parsley
Original post in this thread
MisterYouAreSoDumb · 88 points
So about a month ago there was a discussion about dried parsley and how it was a superior apigenin supplement.
You can see that some studies were linked talking about how much apigenin was in dried parsley. Some of the higher numbers seemed unlikely to me, but I figure the only way to really know would be to test it ourselves in the lab. My lab director went to Fry's Food And Drug here in town, and we purchased Kroger brand dried parsley. The hunt for apigenin was on!
Here is the product in question: https://imgur.com/a/CD7Gc1e
I want to preface this by saying I am making no qualitative claims to the efficacy of Kroger's dried parsley flakes. I know some people may have had good results from consuming an entire can of these flakes, and I don't want to discount their experiences. Neither Fry's Food nor the Kroger corporation participated in this research. I've had these results for a few weeks, but I have held off on releasing…
What they were answering
Affectionate-Soft280 · 1 points
This is the source for Apigenin content of dried parsley. USA department for agriculture. Pretty legit and not from a lab that works for a private company which sell a product to compete with much cheaper natural sources ;). I would imagine Kroger is just a cheap brand that sources from poor quality soils.
https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400525/Data/Flav/Flav\_R03.pdf
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
LOL, this post was mostly a joke. However, I just looked at the USDA results. The USDA DID NOT DO THE TESTING... They are citing other papers. That's why the table has reference numbers. Let's look at the two parsley results in there. The dried sample is code 02029, and it is on page 14. However, they tested a second fresh parsley sample as well. NDB number 11297 on page 75. Those results are very different than the other sample.
The second fresh parsley sample they tested had 215.46mg/100g. That's 0.215%. Very low amounts. As I said, it is likely going to vary, as nobody is standardizing to apigenin in parsley sold as a spice. Maybe you get a batch with high amounts. Maybe you don't. That's how non-standardized things work. If you don't see a value in a standardized apigenin, and think eating random parsley for its apigenin content makes more sense, well then you are just being daft. Let's look at the actual primary sources for these numbers now. The dried parsley uses references 119 and 173.
119 is: Quantitative variation in Brazilian vegetable sources of flavonols and flavones
173 is: Determination of flavonoids in plant material by HPLC with diode-array and electro-array detections
So 119 is from Brazilian parsley. Here are the results. As you can see, they are in mcg/g. That's the same as ppm. So that's 1,521ppm and 1,636ppm. That's 0.15% and 0.16%, respectively. Also very low. Let's look at 173. Here are those results. OHH SNAP! The numbers don't match the USDA claims... Surprise surprise. They found 1,484.2mg/100g. That's 1.48% apigenin. That's higher than the other paper, but nowhere near the table in the USDA paper. Maybe they fat-fingered it? Hard to say, but the numbers don't match up. Also, this is not a USDA lab doing this. The first paper was Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil. The second was the Agricultural Research Centre of Finland. Actually reading the papers you link helps when making claims about them...
Let's look at the references for the fresh parsley. Those are 128, 129, 164, 231, 119. We have already looked at 119.
Mmmm, Danish. They found 510-630mg/100g. That's 0.51% to 0.63%. Also very low.
This one is from Denmark. A Møøse once bit my sister... They found 185mg/100g. That's 0.18%.
164 is: FLAVONOID AGLYCONS IN FOODS OF PLANT ORIGIN I. VEGETABLES
This one is from Budapest. I actually got robbed in Budapest once. It was at a club down a dark alley. I lost about $500. Bastards! This study found ZERO APIGENIN in the parsley they tested. That's 0.00%, in case you were wondering.
231 is: Simultaneous Determination of All Polyphenols in Vegetables, Fruits, and Teas
This one is from the Department of Life Science, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kobe University Japan. They found 8.6 μmol/100g apigenin in their parsley sample. Apigenin has a molar mass of 270.0528 g/mol. That means they found 0.2% apigenin. Very low again.
So what did we learn here today? Reading the actual papers linked is crucial to making any scientific determination on things. The USDA did not analyze any samples themselves. It was essentially a meta analysis, where they cited other papers. The cited papers found very small amounts of apigenin in the parsley samples they found. The parsley they tested was from all over the world. The numbers ranged wildly, as you would expect for a non-standardized plant. Eating random fresh or dried parsley is not going to give you much apigenin, and you will never have any real idea of how much is in your specific batch you are consuming. This is why we make standardized products that you can always know exactly what you are getting. If you want to shove random bunches of parsley in your mouth instead of taking a lab tested product that you know exactly what it contains, GO FOR IT!