Rense: A Hard Look- Health Food Supplements- And it Begins :(

[Guest guest]

This article is so completely biased, that they have to use

flouride, something that a naturally minded person would never

support, as an example of crooked naturally minded people!!

Comments?

Misty L. Trepke

http://www..com

 

A Hard Look At Health Food Supplements

By John 'Birdman' Bryant

Birdman's Weekly Letter

john

www.thebirdman.org

11-3-4

 

I am in favor of health freedom, and in particular I oppose any

legislation restricting availability of over-the-counter nutritional

supplements. Having said that, however, I would add that I think

that the supplement industry is largely fraudulent and basically

unnecessary, and the recent effort on the part of Western

governments to impose the so- called Codex Alimentarius is going to

save a lot of folks a lot of money, even if it makes some of them

apoplectic over what they can no longer buy.

 

As a result of being an enthusiastic supplement taker for many years

myself, and an enthusiastic reader of the supplement literature,

here is what I have surmised takes place to drive the supplement

industry.

 

First, the industry finds some industrial waste product that

somebody will give them free, or maybe even pay them to cart off.

(Fluoride is the classic example here, which is now added to the

water supplies in much of the nation, supposedly to stop decay in

children's teeth. Problem is, it's a poison, and its effects are

both subtlely lethal and cumulative.)

 

Next, they look at what is in the waste.

 

Third, they search the medical literature to see if they can find a

couple of obscure studies that 'prove' that one of the components of

the waste is 'healthful'. If they can't find one, then maybe they

will fund one.

 

Finally, after 'finding' a substance that 'fortifies against'

or 'helps prevent' disease X, they trot out their ad men and crank

up a campaign to sell their (waste) 'product' to every grandma,

maiden aunt, health foodist, athlete, and sufferer from Disease X,

along with every sawbones, naturopath, homeopath, nutritional

counselor and everyone else in the heath business who can be

expected to be up on the latest hula-hoop-like industry fad.

 

The result, of course, is the bizarre array of pills, potions and

putties with which every So-Called-Health-Food-Store is filled to

the gills. It is an industry based, not on anything real like Lydia

Pinkham's medicine-show swill -- at least hers had opium, and was

damned effective for 'female troubles', particularly squalling

babies -- but is rather based upon fantasy so-called science in

which statisticians manipulate data to exaggerate a bias that

supposedly proves whatever the hell that they intended to prove

before their study was ever begun. But the psychology underlying all

this is not just the ad-man/bad-man hype. It is also the psychology

of the Skinner Box. Now old Doc Skinner, whom I knew very slightly,

discovered something very important about pigeons -- and people. He

discovered that randomly reinforced behavior became (gasp!) religion

(ok, he called it 'superstition'). In pigeons, he just dropped a

grain every so often into their box, and whatever the pigeon was

doing, that's what it now started doing even more of in order

to 'get more grains'. The psychology works the same with supplement-

takers: You take a pill that has been recommended, and you think you

feel better, so you take more, and keep taking them, and every time

you feel better, well, 'it must be my pills'. OK, maybe it's not

quite that simple, but it's actually worse -- while Skinner's

pigeons based their religion on objective fact, pill-takers often

don't evaluate whether they have gotten better at all -- they just

keep taking them because Dr Ripoff recommends them and Doctors Bull

and Shit have done a study proving that they 'work' (You bet they

do -- they work very effectively to take money out of people's

pockets!)

 

So what, then, is the way to health if not thru supplements? One way

is what we might call 'limited supplements' -- if you take something

that really does make a difference to you, then keep taking it. That

is, if you have quit taking a supplement on more than one occasion

and you clearly experience a problem that is correlated with your

abstention, then this is an objective reason to think the supplement

is genuinely helpful.

 

A second way is to eat good food. Eating your vegetables (just like

Mother told you!), eating natural rather than processed foods,

avoiding microwaved food, and similar habits will do much to help

your health. A codicil to this is to eat the foods that people have

been eating for centuries -- eggs, meat, etc, versus such

artificial 'health food' concoctions as tofu (which I call Toad

Food -- a good name, since the stuff is actually dangerous, at least

when prepared as as is customary in America, as opposed to oriental

methods.)

 

A third way is to be guided by taste. Taste is something which has

been developed by evolution to make people prefer healthy food.

Taste is not a perfect guide, but it needs to be counted as first

among equals, not merely because it guides you to the good food, but

because if you ignore it, you may experience increasing compulsions

to violate your 'good' diet.

 

But if there is any one thing that can best replace supplement-

gobbling, it is regular eating of concentrated foods. Vegetable

juice is a prime example -- nobody in his right mind could eat all

those vegetables -- even Mother -- but turning them into juice makes

their major components available to everyone. There are, however,

many other concentrated foods - - cod liver oil, spirulina, brewer's

yeast, wheat germ, etc. Yes, most of them taste terrible, but then

they aren't generally eaten as foods, so aren't required to pass

the 'taste test'.

 

In short, then, while the Dad Gummit may have been leading us down

the Evening Primrose Oil Path by shilling for the drug industry, it

may just have done us a favor, and I think we should limit our

lacrimations to no more than two crying towels.