Packaged Deceit: How Dietary Supplements and Fortified Foods Fool You

For years, Bayer has been marketing its One A Day supplements with selenium to men as a way to prevent prostate cancer. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to take a harmless pill to fend off the most common cancer in men? Wouldn't it be wonderful if Bayer's claims were true?

But they're not. The evidence that selenium prevents prostate cancer is as skimpy as Paris Hilton's bikini. Worse: there's disturbing evidence that selenium may actually increase the risk of diabetes. Because of that, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has threatened to sue Bayer unless the company stops its deceptive marketing. CSPI is also calling on the Federal Trade Commission to require the company to run corrective advertising.

Photo Credit: Jeff Cronin, CSPI.

Bayer, of course, is not alone in exaggerating the benefits of dietary supplements and foods spiked with everything from ascorbic acid to the amino acid taurine to zinc. The supplement craze was sparked in 1970, when Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling contended that megadoses of vitamin C prevent the common cold. There never were more than shards of evidence that vitamin C could ward off colds, but Pauling's credibility paved the way for a burgeoning industry.

Since then, countless companies have marketed countless products on non-existent or paltry evidence, taking in the gullible... and even the somewhat skeptical. For many years, it was the pill pushers who proclaimed supplements' glories. But then small food companies began to put their toes in the "functional foods" waters. And major corporations, not wanting to miss out on a potentially profitable niche, have now dived in.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used to object to the frivolous fortification of foods. It reasoned that haphazardly adding cheap nutrients could encourage the consumption of fortified junk foods and might even be harmful. But the vitamin industry lobbied Congress, and in 1976 Congress forced the FDA to make its "fortification policy" voluntary (though the agency still could take action against harmful levels of vitamins and minerals).

The agency also had the power to stop the marketing of dishonestly labeled or dangerous dietary supplements. However, in 1994 the dietary supplement industry got the law weakened again to further reduce the FDA's ability to protect consumers.

The proliferation of deceptively marketed foods and supplements harkens back to the patent medicine quacks of the 19th Century. Consider:

• Ginkgo is advertised everywhere for improving memory and concentration, but the vast majority of studies show it does nothing for the memory and concentration of middle-aged and older people.

• Garlic is advertised as cholesterol's "natural enemy," but it has failed to lower cholesterol in so many studies over the past two decades it is no longer allowed to be promoted as a cholesterol-fighter, even in Germany where the garlic supplement craze began.

• Airborne, the fizzy vitamin and herbal "cold remedy," advises consumers to take the product before entering a germ-infested environment, but there's no credible evidence that it can protect people from getting sick in any environment.

• A huge banner on packages of Kellogg's Frosted Krispies blares "NOW HELPS SUPPORT YOUR CHILD'S IMMUNITY," which falsely implies that this candy (40 percent sugar) helps prevent colds and other illnesses.

• Kraft adds a few vitamins and other ingredients to its Crystal Light On The Go drink mixes and gives them names like "Metabolism +," "Immunity," and "Skin Essentials." They're not going to improve your health, but at least they are sugar-free.

• Red Bull adds taurine, caffeine, and a few nutrients to pretend that it's an energizing drink. (Red Bull can actually be harmful, because when mixed with alcoholic beverages, the caffeine makes inebriated people think they are alert.)

• Hershey's Chocolate Flavor Syrup with Calcium is gussied up with calcium, zinc, vitamin E, and other nutrients. Don't count on getting any benefit from that random grab bag of nutrients in a product that contains five teaspoons of sugar per six-teaspoon serving.

• Coca-Cola's Enviga beverage deceptively claims to burn more calories than it provides, thanks to the magical EGCG ingredient from green tea. Coke also markets VitaminWater as a healthful alternative to soda, claiming that the drinks reduce the risk of chronic disease, promote healthy joints, and support optimal immune function. In fact, the 33 grams of sugar in each bottle of VitaminWater do more to promote obesity, diabetes, and other health problems than the vitamins do to achieve the advertised benefits. (CSPI has sued Coca-Cola for deceptive marketing of Enviga and VitaminWater; the cases are still in court.)

Fortification can be useful when it involves the right nutrients in the right foods. The vitamin D added to milk helps us get more of that bone-building nutrient. Adding calcium to orange juice helps people who don't drink milk or other major sources of that mineral.

Exceptions like those aside, health-food stores and supermarkets are bulging with foods and supplements that are fortified primarily to distract you with fancy claims while the manufacturers and stores pick your pocket. Trial lawyers and state attorneys general have brought a handful of cases against some of the most egregious cheaters. But what's needed is stronger laws and greater funding that would enable state and federal agencies to protect the public from unscrupulous marketers. That would be fortification we could all use.

Jacobson is executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the nonprofit publisher of Nutrition Action Healthletter.

Comments

[MikeLMiller]

What sort of science do you do at CSPI? Are you really so ill-informed on this topic? Or is your industry bias just showing? How much support does CSPI get from big Pharma that you would write this junk about non-threatening supplements?

A NCI study on selenium and vitamin E was intentionally flawed so warnings could go out to doctors about supplements. Flawed how? The vitamin used was a coal-tar based synthetic with zero anti-oxidants. The scientists had to know that and had to know it would prove useless in treating anything.

Show us all the dead bodies from supplements.

Here they are for drugs.

NSAIDS like tylenol, aleve, aspirin, kill close to 20,000 a year.

And here's a snapshot of some of the drugs the FDA approved which killed people and had to be removed or recalled.
Fenfluramine
Pemoline
Ticrinafen
Zomepirac
Benoxaprofen
Nomifensine
Suprofen
Seldane (terfenadine)
Etretinate
Encainide
Hismanal (astemizole)
Permax (pergolide)
Flosequinan
Temafloxacin
Propulsid (cisapride)
Levomethadyl
Redux (dexfenfluramine)
Duract (bromfenac)
Raxar (grepafloxin)
Posicor (mibefradil)
Baycol (cerivastatin)
Rezulin (troglitazone)
Raplon (rapacuronium)
(manufacturer only decision)
Rofecoxib
Lotronex (alosetron)
Phenylpropanolamine
Valdecoxib
Natalizumab
Technetium fanolesomab
Palladone (hydromorphone)
Zelnorm (tegaserod maleate)
Vioxx
Rezulin
Propulsid
PPA
GRIFULVIN V
Fen-Phen

[tws0000]

The whole health industry needs to be picked up, turned upside and shook until all the crap falls out.

1) Doctors need to be re-educated about nutrition.
2) Big Pharma needs to be handcuffed on so many levels. Heck throw in the FDA also.
3) Legitimate studies need to be funded on nutritional supplements, specific foods etc to see if they are truly helpful. We need facts, not snakeoil salesmen.
4) All "processed foods" should be considered to get a health care tax, not a certain product like sodas.
5) Big farms need to be dismantled and serious effort needs to be put back into local farming. I'm tired of beef with hormones, steroids, xrays etc. True organic needs to be considered. For gods sake, we as a species didn't make it this far on luck.
6) Want to know about obesity and where we are heading...then read Pottinger's cat experiments.
7) Let's re-examine the works of some of the great researchers and scientists...Weston A Price, Otto Warburg, Linus Pauling etc...etc... instead of trying to re-invent the wheel to come up another "miracle" pill.
8) ...etc...etc...etc

[Idytme]

There is now a PDR for nutritional supplements. Yes, Physicians Desk Reference. In Europe they take supplements so seriously that in some countries some are prescription only and in other countries they are prescribed along with pharmaceuticals. Studies are so vast on some supplements that there is actually a PDR for them. But just ask any American doctor about the using bromelain as an anti-inflammatory, (it works just as well as others but no stomach side effects) or using it to treat angina - as they do in Japan, works better than some pharm products - or using to increase the healing time of bruises, works twice as fast - or using it to increase the absorption of certain medications. I could go on, talking about coq10, or DGL, or cinnamon for diabetes or many others. They know nothing. Many scoff, never having thought to buy a PDR for nutritional supplements.

[CTModerate]

As, I wrote here: http://losingweightafter45isabitch.blogspot.com/2009/06/just-step-away-from-box.html, no matter what the claim is on the box, eating processed foods will make you fat.

I'm reading Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" right now, and he details how Food Inc., has made weight loss claims for its products for years, and end result of eating Snack Wells cookies and other manufactured food is an increasing obesity rate in the West.

Eating processed, manufactured food is bad for you. Both health wise and weight wise. If you want to be healthy and thin, then the majority of you diet should be fresh fruits and vegetables. Period, end of story.

[halli620]

(continued...)

Moreover, regarding Airborne, this is a product I have actually bought and used before, and I still don't think it deserved the negativity and accusations it has received, for the simple reason that it doesn't "promise" results in a way that makes it seem failproof. Even if "studies" haven't shown "credible evidence that it can protect people," its vitamins are well known to be likely strengtheners of the immune system. I and many other people I know believe we have had shortened or lightened colds due to taking Airborne. Maybe it was a coincidence; maybe it wasn't. Regardless, as long as it isn't making any "promises" that sound like certainties, things like this are part of a free market system. While we certainly should be able to rely on the FDA to monitor all substances designed for ingestion that are on the market (which isn't the case right now) so that no objectively dangerous products are for sale, beyond this, it has to be acceptable in a free market society for a certain amount of "buyer beware" to exist in regard to claims made by manufacturers.

[halli620]

While I agree that products should not make "promises," I feel that you're going a bit overboard in your accusations. You haven't given us the actual wording on the packaging for the Bayer's or the Ginkgo, and if they use the little word "may" in their claims, it would make all the difference. Anything like chocolate with nutrients isn't going to be seen as a "health food." The public isn't THAT dumb. It's a marketing gimmick for people who want to make themselves feel better by trying to ingest nutrients with the sweets they would be eating anyway. Regarding Red Bull, which I think is awful, and too unnatural for me anyway, your accusation that it "can actually be harmful because when mixed with alcoholic beverages..." is surprisingly desperate. I haven't seen any Red Bull ads advocating its use with alcohol, and you won't find drink recipes on its packaging. To say that the reason it "can actually be harmful" is that it can be used by consumers in an irresponsible way would be to say that coffee "can actually be harmful" for the same reason, as it's not uncommon for people drink coffee to "sober up" as well, when that of course doesn't work either.

(continued...)

[Idytme]

From its inception there has always been a tension between people selling herbs and the AMA. At the beginning they were fighting "snake oil salesmen" and had justification to dispute people's claims. But science has come far since then, with 1/3 of all pharmaceuticals deriving from plants, yet stances have not changed. There are some in the industry that do not put near the criticism on pharm products as they do natural products. Many plants and supplements do have the studies but no big pharma to pay for the PR. Despite studies, this country has made the stance that if you make a health claim, based on studies, that you are calling yourself a drug and have to pay for the expensive trials, even though what you have cannot be patented. Drug companies run away from anything they cannot put a patent on, so we are left in a conundrum. We should have, as they do in Europe, a special regulator that looks at herbs and supplements and the studies and what can be claimed and cannot, but our regulation is highly, outrageously, skewed toward the pharma industry. Two of the worst are the red yeast rice derivative pulled from the market and troptophan being pulled from the US market. Google it.

[MikeLMiller]

I think CSPI works for industry which is trying to wipe out supplement companies in a bill called HR 2749. Jacobson seems to be helping big Pharma work to tar supplements.

“Misbranded” can mean that the producer makes a completely true statement about the product but without FDA permission. A cherry producer who cites peer-reviewed scientific research from prestigious universities on the health benefits of cherries would, in FDA-speak, have engaged in “false” and actionable “misbranding” which suddenly turns the cherries into drugs. Producers, of course, have the right to take cherries through the new drug approval process! In this and other ways, FDA already censors science and quashes constitutionally protected free speech. ...

'.... an administrative violation (such as not keeping records exactly as required) that harms no one carries exactly the same penalty as a violation in which a product is adulterated during the manufacturing process and poses a significant risk of illness or ends up killing people. ...

"... FDA will have full authority to conduct random, warrantless searches of all records dealing with any aspect of a company’s production, manufacture, or distribution process. ... [and] FDA has access to all records, at any time, and without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. Warrantless searches are a powerful weapon of intimidation and harassment." http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/new-bill-hr-2749-gives-fda-unheard-of-power-over-small-farmers-food-and-supplement-producers/

[VicDaring]

It's pretty easy to dupe the public these days.

Just follow the current "Natual is good...Artificial is Bad" mantra and millions of people will eagerly lap it up.

Without ever pausing to think that rattlesnake venom is natural and aspirin is artificial.

(Throw in "organic", "ancient", and "Eastern" and you can sell pretty much anything.

[tibetsun]

That's why the discerning do research. Not all are gullible enough to believe the doctors are gods, and the public their chattle.

[RMankovitz]

One reason for the popularity of alternative health remedies is the widespread disgust with much of the medical establishment, the third leading cause of death in the US. Adverse reactions to prescription drugs is the fourth leading cause. It has become obvious to many that peer-review can be bought by the highest bidder, that physicians receive their training and CME from BigPharma, that the FDA has sold out to industry, and that nobody is left to advocate for the consumer.

Compounding the above is the continued arrogance of the medical profession to cover up ignorance. As a scientist and lawyer with two decades of medical research under my belt, it is amply clear that nobody, including the medical profession, fully understands how the human body works.

Using your words, what's needed is stronger laws and greater funding that would enable state and federal agencies to protect the public from unscrupulous marketers such as Big Pharma. That would be fortification we could all use. I have proposed elsewhere the formation of an Office of Illness Prevention to conduct unbiased research in the non-existent field of nature-based illness prevention.

Roy Mankovitz, Director
www.MontecitoWellness.com