Vitamin warning! Some nutritional supplements use hydrogenated oils as filler

Thursday, October 13, 2005 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: hydrogenated oils, nutritional supplements, fish oils

The next time you buy soft-gel vitamins, you'd better take a look at what's inside them. Would you be surprised if I told you that vitamin companies are taking one of the most toxic food ingredients known to mankind and putting it in soft gels as a filler? It's absolutely true. You can find it in vitamins and supplements in health food stores, grocery stores, price discount warehouse clubs, retailers and pharmacies all over the country and around the world right now. What toxic ingredient am I referring to? Partially hydrogenated soybean oil.

Today, anyone who follows nutrition knows that hydrogenated oils are extremely toxic. We know that, long-term, they will lead to cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. They can even encourage strokes. We know that they cause harm, sometimes irreparable, to the nervous system. We know that they interfere with the absorption of the essential fatty acids you need to maintain healthy cells, a healthy nervous system, healthy blood sugar regulation and many other functions.

Big Pharma manufactures vitamins, too

And yet, vitamin companies – the cheap ones – are taking this ingredient and putting it in soft gels as filler. And that's not the only ingredient they're putting in, either. Some vitamin companies are taking artificial colors – that's right, chemicals extracted from coal tar – and putting them in not only soft gels but in tablets and capsules, too.

Now, why on earth would a vitamin company do this? The answer is because some of these companies aren't at all interested in health. In fact, the dirty little secret of the nutritional supplements industry is that many of these companies are wholly or partially owned by pharmaceutical companies, so these vitamin manufacturers think they can standardize, process and manufacture vitamins in the same way they manufacture prescription drugs (which is an entirely unnatural process, by the way).

When companies manufacture prescription drugs, they really don't care what goes into them as long as the active ingredient is there. Prescription drugs, in addition to containing highly toxic chemicals that are supposed to be medicinal, also contain highly toxic fillers, colors and other additives that sometimes even counteract the intended effect of the drug. When those pharmaceutical companies decide to branch out into nutritional supplements because it's a hot industry, they, of course, carry over these same manufacturing practices to nutritional supplements. This is why you don't want to get your supplements from these mega corporations that are actually owned by Big Pharma. It's better to get something from smaller, more passionate companies.

I don't necessarily mean "mom-and-pop" shops, but I mean companies that are solely focused on health, even if they do happen to be commercially successful. Companies like New Chapter, Nature's Way, Now Foods, Garden of Life or Jay Robb Enterprises (which has outstanding whey protein, soy protein and egg protein products). These are a few of the many companies that seem to really care about health and they avoid using toxic ingredients, whereas many other supplement companies don't care at all what they put in there, as long as they can claim something on the label.

What you see is not always what you get

When you're buying a soft gel capsule, you would normally think that what goes inside that soft gel is what's stated on the label. It makes sense, right? So if the label on that vitamin bottle says "salmon oil," and you take out a soft gel and look at it, you would think it's filled with salmon oil, right? This is what most people think. This is common sense. But in fact, it is incorrect.

You might be amazed to learn this, but that soft gel may not be filled with salmon oil at all; it may have a miniscule amount of salmon oil in it, but the rest of it is just filler. It could be soybean oil, hydrogenated oils or some other form of filler. It could be something that's actually dangerous to your health, so you'd better read the ingredients labels on those vitamins, minerals and supplements, in addition to reading the ingredients labels on foods, as I've always recommended. Watch out! Just because you buy something that looks good on the label – something that claims to have flax oil, salmon oil or vitamin B in it – it doesn't mean it's actually good for you.

How to put a negative spin on healthy vitamins: Use cheap vitamins to skew results

Now, of course, researchers have also figured all this out. If I'm a researcher in organized medicine and my mission is to discredit vitamins, these are the vitamins I buy and use in my research. If I wanted to ensure that I had a study saying vitamin E causes an increase in heart attacks, you know how I would do it? I would buy vitamin E soft-gel products that have hydrogenated soybean oil as filler, so that I could be absolutely sure that this study would come out showing an increase of heart attacks. Then, I could write a headline that says, "Vitamin E Kills People!"

Following that study, if I were associated with the right school or university or the right medical group, I could send out a press release to all the newspapers around the country or around the world and they would blindly print that headline. People would be all over TV and radio talking about how vitamin E kills you.

How do I accomplish that? I just choose a soft gel container with hydrogenated oils as the toxic filler ingredients because I, as an evil researcher, know that these journalists are not going to ask questions. No one's going to look at this study and see what the other filler ingredients were. No one's going to do anything other than reprint whatever I fax them. Why? Because I'm associated with a medical school or a university, that's why. That's how it works out there. That's the real world of nutritional supplements "research."

Of course, none of that has anything to do with reality because, in the real world, vitamin E is extremely healthy. It's very good for you, even in higher doses than most people take, and it's found naturally in nuts and seeds. Salmon oil is also very good for your health in many ways; not just your heart health, but also for your nervous system health, for stabilizing blood sugar and for providing nutrition and lubrication to some of the cells, organs and tissues in your body.

There are so many healthy products out there. It's just a shame when these companies take healthy oils, vitamins and minerals and package them in unhealthy containers. They package them in tablets, capsules and soft gels that have other ingredients that will actually harm you if you take them with enough frequency and duration.

Take your healthy vitamins correctly to see results

This is why I have consistently recommended that you get your nutrition from eating whole foods, superfoods or nutritional supplements made from whole food concentrates. Of course, there are some nutrients that you can't get that way, like cod liver oil and salmon oil, but there are companies out there that really care about the quality of their oils and aren't going to give you garbage. In terms of cod liver oils, one of my top recommendations is Nordic Naturals. They will give you a quality product without a bunch of harmful fillers.

The truth about calcium supplements

In terms of calcium supplements, I know that calcium is one of the most common supplements out there and researchers have managed to finagle a study that even shows calcium supplements aren't useful for boosting the bone density of elderly patients. People are being told that calcium is absolutely worthless if you don't digest it and absorb it. So how do you do that?

Well, you certainly don't take it with an antacid. That's a ridiculous way to get calcium. Calcium needs to have an acidic environment in order to be broken down and assimilated by your digestive system. If you don't have acid in your stomach, then you can't absorb the calcium. And if you don't have vitamin D in your small intestine, you can't absorb the calcium, either. There are a lot of senior citizens out there who are spending small fortunes on calcium supplements and antacid tablets, but they're not getting any sunshine. And that means they're not getting enough vitamin D. With a vitamin D deficiency, they can't even absorb the calcium. It's either going right through their bodies or actually contributing to the buildup of calcification in their kidneys. So guess what? They'll probably end up with kidney stones.

When I was at a discount warehouse club recently, I was looking at all these supplements – calcium, vitamin D, flax oil, cod liver oil and so on – and reading the ingredient labels, and I could only find one product that I would personally consume. Only one! I saw people buying these vitamins by the basket-load, thinking they were doing themselves some good. The only one I found that didn't have any artificial ingredients or other garbage in it was organic flax oil. Every other product offered was garbage, in my view. Nutritionally, it was a disaster. I wouldn't feed those supplements to any person or animal that I cared about.

So there you go. This is the nutritional supplement industry that a lot of people see. I know that these particular supplements are from the same manufacturers that you find making low-cost vitamins sold at grocery stores and pharmacies. It's no wonder that some people have such a dim view of the nutritional supplements industry. They take these products and they feel worse.

Well, no wonder; you've just consumed toxic ingredients – not what was in the label, but what was listed in the fine print of the ingredients section. No wonder you feel worse; you're just eating hydrogenated oils. You're actually taking them as a supplement. What a foolish thing to do, but people do it every single day in this country.

Lawmakers deserve a lot of blame and shame for allowing this to go on, in my view. The fact that food manufacturers and vitamin supplement manufacturers can put highly toxic, death-promoting, disease-causing ingredients into your foods, products and supplements and sell them to you without warning labels is absolutely unconscionable. It's near criminal that they allow this to happen.

Failing to warn consumers about toxic vitamin fillers should be a crime

Lawmakers have been asleep at the wheel. They've allowed food companies to run the system. They've allowed drug companies and nutritional supplement manufacturers to steamroll any attempt to protect the public, and that's why all these dangerous, toxic, disease-promoting ingredients are still perfectly legal.

The FDA seemingly continues to actually support these ingredients. They haven't done enough to try to outlaw them. It seems that from the FDA's point of view, getting tough means sending a wimpy warning letter that says, "Oh, by the way, your ads are misleading people." To them, it means requiring trans fats to be listed on foods. Never mind actually outlawing the ingredient.

In my opinion, the FDA should ban these ingredients. They should be outlawed. It should be a crime to put a toxic substance into a food product and sell it to a consumer. Shouldn't that be a crime? I mean, if the world made sense, it would be a crime, especially now that we know these ingredients promote disease. It's not even debatable anymore. Heck, even the FDA finally has admitted it and is requiring labels – warning labels, in a sense – that say, "Here's how many grams of trans fat you have in this food." That's a warning label, folks. There is no nutritionist or doctor in his or her right mind who would argue that these ingredients are safe for long-term human consumption.

Yet every single day, we have consumers going into these discount club warehouse stores, pharmacies, grocery stores and even health food stores, buying these dangerous products, taking them home, consuming them and thinking that they are doing themselves some good. In fact, they are actually harming themselves. When I see this situation, I genuinely fear for the future of this nation; I really do. I'm not sure if we can ever get above water again, if we can ever overpower the financial interests of big business that have allowed this to happen (and have in fact lobbied for and defended it). It's possible that we're going to spiral out of control into a health collapse, where everybody is diseased from the moment they're born, nutrition is nonexistent and everyone is financially beholden to this system of pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals and diagnostic labs because they've been labeled with various diseases that could have been solved or prevented by changing the food supply and outlawing dangerous ingredients.

You want to know the funny part in all of this? Everything I've been talking to you about, everything that I'm outraged about in this particular commentary, was found in the "healthy" section of this particular retailer. This was the health section, folks. This was the stuff that's supposed to be good for you. The rest of that store was just outright garbage – products loaded with sugars and artificial colors, hydrogenated oils, high sodium, tons of preservatives (literally, tons of preservatives), sodium nitrate – just all kinds of unhealthy ingredients from top to bottom, stacked as high and as far as the eye can see in this warehouse retailer.

Spread the word: Your neighbors' vitamins could be toxic

I believe we each have to do our part and stand up and speak the truth. That's what I'm trying to do here. I'm telling everyone I meet and everyone I know, "You've been conned. You've been scammed by the system, by a bunch of manufacturers, a whole lot of big business and a good dose of government corruption thrown in to protect the system and make sure you never find out what is going on. You've been scammed."

The only way to beat the scam is to get outside the system – get outside of conventional medicine, give up all these processed foods and move over to a healthy lifestyle where you actually have cognitive function and where you have mental awareness because you're eating well. You're eating real food, not that processed, manufactured garbage that passes for food in most peoples' homes in the United States and everywhere around the world.

So if you have a friend or a family member who doesn't know about this, and you'd like to either help them or annoy them (your pick), tell them what's really in their vitamins. Show them: Pick up that vitamin bottle out of their cabinet, refrigerator, purse or wherever they happen to have it and point out that artificial color, that FD&C Red No. 2, yellow dye or whatever it happens to be in that particular vitamin. Point it out to them; show them the hydrogenated oils in these vitamins. Point out the sucrose, the corn syrup, propylene glycol or whatever else happens to be in there. Show them what they're really consuming and then give them a better choice. Introduce them to a health food store in your local community that sells some quality products. Encourage them to go there if they really want to take care of their health.

It's funny that people complain about how much money it costs to buy nutritional supplements. Then, they go out and spend a few dollars on vitamins that will actually make them sick. They think they're getting a bargain. I say that you might as well spend your money on cigarettes, you know? You might as well eat some fried chicken. If you're going to spend $6 on a bottle of vitamins that are bad for you, then skip the whole thing and just go eat some hamburgers at the local fast food restaurant or some cookies from the grocery store. Of course, I don't recommend that anyone do any of that. I recommend you spend your money wisely on nutritional supplements, vitamins, minerals, and herbs from passionate, honest companies you can trust.

Of course, they're going to be slightly more expensive, if not a lot more expensive. But aren't you worth it? If you're going through the trouble of taking these supplements, shouldn't you put the best thing you can find into your body? Don't you deserve healthy supplements, rather than supplements packaged with hydrogenated oils and other poisons that are legalized by our system of corrupt government and private industry? Shouldn't you deserve the very best? I think so. Get the best and put that in your body. Be healthy. Thanks for reading. This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, for Truth Publishing.