Health roundup: Herb bashing, black box warnings and Honey Nut Cheerios (satire)

Thursday, February 16, 2006 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: health news, Natural News, nutrition

All nutritional supplements have recently been found to be no good for anything. This is according to the latest research from all scientists, reported by all members of the mainstream media. The conclusions have been offered as a way to make scientific reporting more "time efficient," because discrediting herbs one at a time was taking too long.

So in the future, instead of declaring one particular herb to be useless (after ginning up some meta-data study that mysteriously excludes all the legitimate studies showing the herb to be effective), top medical journals, research scientists and even the FDA will just issue the blanket statement, "All nutritional supplements are no good for anything, trust us."

In a related decision, the same group is said to be close to announcing that, "All prescription drugs are safe and effective at treating everything!"

Note to the wise: When you read disparaging news about herbs or vitamins in the press, just recognize it's all part of the system of health oppression rigged up by the pushers of organized medicine. The more they can convince people that herbs or vitamins are useless, the more drugs they can sell.

FDA says, "We warned ya!"

An FDA panel has voted, with a slim margin, to require "black box warnings" on ADHD drugs following the deaths of hundreds of people who were taking them. If these drugs had been a Chinese herb, of course, the FDA would right now be issuing a nationwide ban and confiscating millions of dollars in inventory at health food stores all around the country. But since it's a highly-profitable class of prescription drugs, the agency is resorting to warnings that are routinely ignored by doctors and patients alike.

The matter is made worse by the "duh factor" fact that people diagnosed with ADHD or short attention spans probably don't have the concentration to read the black box warning in the first place.

Not everyone knows what the "black box" refers to in these black box warnings, by the way. The answer is that the black box is a COFFIN. Better yet, it's the coffin in which you may find yourself if you continue to take drugs with black box warnings.

There is no drug too dangerous for humans that it can't be excused by the FDA with a black box warning. This warning is the FDA's sneaky mechanism for allowing extremely dangerous (even deadly) drugs to stay on the market, earning billions in profits for Big Pharma while killing nearly 100,000 Americans each year. When people die from the toxic side effects, FDA bureaucrats can always claim, "Well, we did warn you."

The FDA seems to have forgotten that its job is not to merely warn people but to protect people from dangerous foods, drugs and personal care products that present a genuine risk of harm to users. But the threshold of fatalities required for the FDA to actually outlaw a drug is apparently infinite. Vioxx alone, according to the FDA's own drug safety scientist Dr. David Graham, probably killed more than 60,000 Americans by itself. And yet an FDA panel voted to put it right back on the market.

Health claims from sugary breakfast cereals

General Mills has launched a new promotional campaign that appears to be making outrageous health claims for Honey Nut Cheerios (a sugary breakfast cereal). Some of the ads say Honey Nut Cheerios will "help lower your cholesterol," and the front of the cereal box screams, "New Pyramid Recommends More WHOLE GRAIN!"

Now I've seen everything.

Manufacturers of aged garlic nutritional supplements, which actually lower cholesterol more powerfully than prescription drugs, cannot claim any health benefits whatsoever without being raided by the FDA and having their inventory confiscated. But a sugary breakfast cereal, somehow, can make health claims that seem to ignore the fact that the product is made with at least three different forms of sugar. As listed on the ingredients label: sugar, honey and brown sugar syrup. It's four if you count the modified corn starch.

Let's face it, the commercial health messages plastered on grocery products are almost universally ridiculous. Health benefits are often claimed on single ingredients (like oats) even when those ingredients are bathed in a recipe of sugar, salt or even hydrogenated oils. Apparently, you could sell oats with crack and still make cholesterol claims for the combination. "Smokin' Crack Oats™ Lowers Cholesterol While Getting You High. Protect Your Heart With Smokin' Crack Oats! Made with 100% pure Colombian crack cocaine wrapped in all-natural whole grain oats!" (For greater effect, imagine Chris Rock shouting it.)

Simultaneously, the really healthy, nutritionally superior grocery products that actually demonstrate solid health improvements are outlawed from explaining their health benefits to consumers. Cherries, in particular, have been under attack by the FDA, which has censored the very reasonable health claims offered by cherry growers, such as the fact that cherries reduce arthritis pain and prevent inflammation of the joints. Today, if you live in the U.S., you live under a system of FDA tyranny that blatantly outlaws the truth about real nutrition.

I regularly notice examples of outrageous (but popular) grocery products deceiving consumers. Slim-Fast meal replacement powder, which is positioned as a weight loss product, has sugar as its top ingredient. So-called "natural" Doritos is made with yeast extract, an ingredient classified as an excitotoxin by Dr. Russell Blaylock, and one that always contains MSG according to a number of health researchers. I once saw a Quik strawberry milk product, made primarily with table sugar, that actually claimed to be good for kids' bones because it contains some calcium.

There is almost no combination of sugars, chemicals and artificial colors that food companies can't hop up with some minor nutritional ingredient in order to make FDA-approved health claims on the front of the package. Manufactured and processed foods, it seems, all have the right to advertise they're extremely healthy. But unprocessed, unrefined, wholesome fruits and vegetables right out of the garden cannot be marketed with any health claims whatsoever without running the risk of an FDA lawsuit.

And that, friends, is the current state of food politics in the United States: Foods that harm consumers are marketed with FDA-approved health claims, while foods that prevent disease are have their health benefits silenced by the FDA. Thank goodness we still have Freedom of Speech, or it would be illegal for me to even report this.