From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Nov 13 2002 - 17:48:07 MST
> (Technotranscendence <neptune@mars.superlink.net>):
>
> I'm not so sure it would be so small. For instance, vitamin C -- to
> pick on supplement -- is on the shelf in every health food store I've
> been in. There are often half a dozen or more brands of it. Granting
> that they contain vitamin C -- and aren't just baldly lying -- these are
> quite helpful for most people. Ditto for many other vitamin products.
> In fact, in my local health food store -- which I mainly frequent
> because it has lots of tasty vegetarian foods NOT for supplements --
> they have a large section of TwinLab supplements and almost all of those
> are reputable products that don't make outlandish claims.
With the possible exception of Vitamin C for some very few uses,
there is almost no evidence that /any/ vitamin supplement has
/any/ beneficial effect. There's lots of evidence that diets rich
in foods that contain certain vitamins and other nutrients produce
fewer health problems, but there are no studies to show that
supplements do, and in fact several to show that they don't, and
even that some are harmful. Vitamin pills are hype, not science.
Any claim that vitamin supplements improve health in any way is an
"outlandish" claim--there's simply no evidence of that.
> Yes, there is a homeopathic section too, but that doesn't make up 90% of
> the products. In fact, in the supplements section, most of the products
> are vitamins, minerals, animo acids, and stuff like melatonin and
> glucosamine sulfate. Unless the makers of these are lying about the
> contents, none of these products are proverbial snake oil. Also, the
> FDA still requires a disclaimer. (I'm against the FDA (period), but I
> note that the FDA does not label stuff you like -- such as "this lettuce
> sprayed with pesticide.")
Glucosamine has some science behind it, so while there's not much
proof of that either, I agree it's not "snake oil". There's not much
evidence that melatonin does anything except for jetlag, and even
that evidence is pretty dicey. Minerals and amino acids are pretty
simple nutrients, but it's quite easy to get more than adequate
amounts from an ordinary balanced diet, and no evidence that more
than adequate amounts do any good. Yet these, too, are marketed
with meaningless claims like "helps the immune system" (well, yeah,
so does water, I suppose), or "boosts energy" (yeah, anything with
calories does that). And need I even mention all the crap they
sell as "weight loss" aids, with totally nonsense claims like
"burns fat" or "increases metabolism"?
> You impugned the ethical behavior of all in the supplement industry --
> not just a few snake oil salesmen. I don't think all supplements are
> fraudulent. Also, if you're worried about this, you should be reading
> the scientific literature on the subject and maybe getting assays of any
> brands -- e.g., TwinLab or Life Extension -- you want to take and making
> a decision based on that rather than merely getting on an anti-Green
> hobby horse and riding it off into the sunset.:)
Entirely aside from the fact that I'm assuming my audience is smart
enough to understand that ordinary generalizations in the English
language are /not/ meant to imply universals as you seem to think,
I stil maintain that if you walk into /any/ "health food" store anywhere
in this country right now, it won't take more than 2 minutes to find
a dozen bottles of various things with totally false, misleading, or
meaningless claims on them. And this time I do mean /every/ store,
without exception.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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