Last updated 03/18/07.
Published on: June 1, 1998
The range of absurd dietary beliefs is truly mind boggling. They grow from the very valid interest in optimizing health by eating well. But most people are extremely casual about choosing their dietary beliefs without even applying the most basic scientific understanding or skepticism.
Luckily, we live in a society with strong public-health measures, abundant food, and FDA supervision of most of the more dangerous substances. This makes it fairly safe to indulge in all but the most excessive of these dietary beliefs.
There's no shortage of people out there doing classic pseudoscience, i.e., making fat profits out of unsubstantiated claims, either in sales of books, "supplements," "organic foods," bizarre diets, or patent medicines.
There is a vast pseudoscientific literature out there, mostly generated by those commercial interests. Like most such literatures, the "best" is identifiable by heavy footnoting and citation with its ilk. Absent are the up-to-date references to the real, peer-reviewed literature of nutrition.
Suite 101 has several purveyors of this sort of nonsense: see the Health and Nutrition, Alternative Health Care, and Vegetarian Living topics for examples. (Some much worse than others.)
The vast majority of these claims can be accurately evaluated by a simple reference to a college-level introductary nutrition textbook. If it isn't confirmed there, it's likely fraudulent. Another alternative is to check out sites like the Tufts University Nutrition Navigator, which rates nutrition sites on their scientific accuracy. Or the excellent QuackWatch, with its section "Dietary Supplements," Herbs, and Hormones. These specifically debunk a fair number of the most fashionable health food fariytales. Two other relevant sites newly added to the Skepticism links are Healthcare Reality Check Online and National Council Against Health Fraud.
Vegetarianism is a fascinating case in point. There are many, greatly varying, degrees of vegetarianism, ranging from "no read meat," to "no face," to "no dairy either," to fruitarianism, to breatheaireanism. (No food at all. Yes, there really have been such cults. See Why I Am Not a Vegetarian.) There is a vast literature of contradictary, unscientific health arguments for these positions, most amusing perhaps being that meat putrefies in our long intestines. (Here's a Vegan Site that repeats this hoary old myth spread by vegetarian and health-spa fad promoter Kellogg in the 19th century. An AltaVista search "+vegan +putrefy" turns up several other repetitions.)
A more topical case in point is the "organic" foods industry. Valid interests in safety of foods and harmful side effects of common agricultural practices have brought about the confabulation "organic." This earthy-crunchy-groovy-cool term is supposed to mean pure, healthy, without synthetic fertilizer, without pesticides, natural, grown by hippies or native peoples on small back-to-the-earth or traditional culture farms, and/or a host of other nuances. But of course, there is no such defined meaning, and it only matches reality in a few well publicized exceptional cases.
The fact is that the highly marketed "organic" term bears a much greater corellation with high profits and high prices than any of those other things. Even with virtuous cultural practices, organic products often have significant pesticide residues, heavy metals or other toxic substances because they are omnipresent in that local environment. I have a friend, a retired research chemist, who made a bet with the manager of a local natural foods supermarket. He bet that the "organic" foods would test worse than the conventional foods for an array of toxic substances. And he won a perpetual 25 percent discount that way. The manager no longer has religion.
Recent efforts to give a legal definition to "organic" have pitted giant agribusiness against the small, high-margin growers who have traditionally claimed the term for themselves. Not surprising, since there is no consistent meaning to the term that is relevant to the consumers: it is a glittering generality. The proposed regulations cynically recognized this, much to the distress of the small growers, who successfully lobbied to prevent their enactment. That's not a win for us either: what would be a win would be terms that certify specific, actual low levels of toxic substances, and specific, actual earth-friendly practices on the farms. Anything less is an invitation to fraud.
That's not too much to ask for. We already have a variety of excellent
requirements for documentation of nutritional content, ingredients, and
a wide variety of quality standards. Just as we now have meaningful
regulations about when "low fat," "fat free," "cholesterol free," and other
such claims can be made, we can have meaningful regulations about what
"organic" is about. There will still be people who wish to be sold by
"heart healthy" and other marketing terms which mean "whatever the customer
wants which will sell the product." But I like terms with meat to them.
Copyright 2001 by Mike Huben ( mhuben@world.std.com ).