Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 As with many fruits, juices, and foods that have been used medicinally for centuries in a variety of cultures, the rigorous scientific study of noni is still emerging, and it's likely that the health claims may outpace the evidence for a while. Nonetheless, there's enough solid science—not to mention a long history of folk tradition—to support the inclusion of noni juice on this list. Remember, the taste is off-putting—the best companies making this stuff make a pure juice that has to be diluted with water or taken in 1-ounce servings. |
| The FDA is currently reviewing its policy on soy health claims. And a recent article by Harvard Women's Health Watch (April 2006) was titled "Soy: Not So Miraculous?"
The soy associated with the Asian diet is a whole different animal from the soy we've been sold in America as a health food. There, they eat naturally fermented soy foods like tempeh and miso and old-fashioned fermented soy sauce—and they eat way less of it than you might imagine. |
| The problem is that the multilevel marketers discover them, and then you have a war in which everyone claims their product is the only
"real" one, fantastic health claims are made that range all over the map and compete for sheer silliness, and before you know it you're in multilevel marketing hell and don't know what to believe. I've seen Web sites that claim that Goji berries cure cancer, guarantee you an extra twenty years of life, and make you a sexual superman. All of this is nonsense. |
Devra Davis
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 They have complex information systems at hand to control the manufacture of chemicals, the ordering of materials, and the processing of health claims. Can you really imagine that such an organization does not know whether or not its workforce in Indonesia or Silicon Valley has greater risks of breast cancer and leukemia? Can you believe that Pratt & Whitney—one of the largest and most profitable makers of airplane engines in the world—does not know whether or not its workers have higher rates of brain cancer than the general population? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Most grocery products that make loud health claims on their packaging are, in reality, nutritionally worthless (like meal replacement shakes, instant chocolate milk, etc.). The most nutritious foods are actually those the FDA does not allow to make any health claims whatsoever: fresh produce. See articles on food labeling.
10. Food manufacturers actually "buy" shelf space and position at grocery stores. That's why the most profitable foods (and hence, the ones with the lowest quality ingredients) are the most visible on aisle end caps, checkout lanes and eye-level shelves throughout the store. |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| He has allowed food giants to make unsubstantiated health claims. He has also been vocal in criticizing Canada, Germany, and other countries for providing their citizens with controlled drug prices. Such criticism does not bode well for his vision for American citizens. Whose interest is served by not controlling the cost of drugs?
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. |
Bill Sardi
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 Q-0201]
The supplement manufacturers can't figure out why their health claims have been denied when it's obvious their lycopene products aren't stable and don't provide the same consistent benefits as tomato paste or tomato paste-powder.
So what should a cancer patient do? There are some other ways to optimize lycopene for health.
One is to incorporate tomato paste and other processed tomato products into the diet, and use with oils like virgin olive oil, along with vitamin E and flaxseed meal, to enhance absorption and antioxidant activity while calming hormone levels. |
David W. Grotto, RD, LDN
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 Home Remedies
There are many health claims attributed to mangoes, ranging from improved digestion and immunity, to heart health, to lowered blood pressure, to curing asthma. Many believe that mangoes are both an aphrodisiac and an effective means of birth control.
Throw Me a Lifesaver!
HEART HEALTH: Fruits and vegetables high in potassium and antioxidants such as vitamin A, carotenoids, vitamin C, and flavonoids may help prevent or control hypertension and reduce the subsequent risk of stroke and heart disease. |
Wendy Bazilian, DRPH, MA, RD, Steven Pratt, MD, Kathy Matthews
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 Manufacturers have caught on that we're looking for convenience and they've found lots of enticing ways to package fruits and vegetables—sometimes even with health claims on the packages. But read the labels! You'll often find long list of added ingredients and these "convenience" foods are to be avoided. Stick to simple, unadorned frozen options. They're the best for your health and your taste buds.
Some of my clients like to decorate the fridge with notes, photos, and tips that keep them going when the going gets tough. |
Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D.
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 Doing so without evidence and FDA approval is illegal, although a glance at just about any health magazine shows ads that do make substantial health claims.
In addition, the entrepreneur selling these products does not have to demonstrate that they are safe. The bottom line is that what is available for purchase—even if "organic"—is not necessarily safe. In fact, I know of one proposed clinical trial at my institution with a nutraceutical that was found to be contaminated with lead. Perhaps just as troubling, nutraceutical manufacturers don't need to set uniform dosages either. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The FDA has approved health claims that mislead consumers into thinking things like sugary oatmeal is good for your heart because it contains oats. It's a ridiculous claim. And yet the legitimate food claims -- like olive oil prevents breast cancer, garlic prevents cancer, raw nuts prevent heart disease -- are not allowed at all. In fact, those are outlawed by the FDA. So today we have a regulatory environment that actually prevents people from learning the truth about foods that could help prevent disease. Thank goodness the FDA is protecting us from all those dangerous health claims! |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 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. |
| 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. |
Michael Pollan
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 You also won't find any elaborately processed food products, any packages with long lists of unpronounceable ingredients or dubious health claims, nothing microwav-able, and, perhaps best of all, no old food from far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of their taste and nutritional quality—precisely the kind your great grandmother, or even your Neolithic ancestors, would easily have recognized as food.
Indeed, the surest way to escape the Western diet is simply to depart the realms it rules: the supermarket, the convenience store, and the fast-food outlet. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| 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. |
Devra Davis
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| Having made explicit or implicit health claims about its product for decades, and seeing those claims endangered by widely reported studies coming out in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the tobacco industry hit upon the strategy of fanning both public and scientific skepticism about any reports that cigarettes could be dangerous. In a move of staggering cynicism, the industry secretly funded studies on the hazards of chemicals, hoping to divert attention from tobacco. The chemical industry, in turn, engaged in similar tactics, seeking to focus interest on tobacco as a cause of poor health. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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 Food labeling: health claims. Soluble fiber from certain foods and coronary heart disease: Final rule. Fed. Register 63, 8103-8121.
272. Knekt, P., Ritz, J., Pereira, M. A., et al. (2004). Antioxidant vitamins and coronary heart disease risk: A pooled analysis of 9 cohorts. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 80, 1508-1520.
273. Virtamo, J., Rapola, J. M., Ripatti, S., et al. (1998). Effect of vitamin E and beta carotene on the incidence of primary nonfatal myocardial infarction and fatal coronary heart disease. Arch. Intern. Med. 158, 668-675.
274. Bjelakovic, G, Nikolova, D., Gluud, L. L., Simonetti, R. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
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 INVESTIGATING TRADITIONAL health claims FOR TEA
Tea, whether green, black, or oolong, has an impressive history as a healthful beverage. The famous Chinese tea master Lu Yu wrote in A.d. 780 that tea could cure headaches, body aches and pains, constipation, and depression. Over the centuries, many others have praised the healing properties of tea, and drinking green tea was even purported to have brought a thirteenth century Japanese official back from his death bed. |
| This skepticism was soon transformed into appreciation when researchers began scientific investigations into the disease-preventing properties of green tea and confirmed most of the health claims.
Green Tea and Cardiovascular Disease
One of the most impressive discoveries has been the effect that green tea has in bolstering the heart's resistance to cardiovascular diseases. |
Ann N. Martin
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 The FDA/CVM oversees health claims made by pet food companies placed on their labels to attract consumers to their particular product. Pet food companies are not supposed to make claims that their particular pet food is for the prevention or treatment of a disease. For example, in 1990 some pet food manufacturers advertised that their cat food might prevent Feline Urological Syndrome (FUS). This is a drug claim that the FDA/CVM challenged as false. The pet food manufacturers were given ample time to remove bags of pet food with this false claim and change labels, deleting the claim. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 In my opinion, with vitamins and supplements we have returned to the era of the patent medicines (undocumented and potentially dangerous compounds that were promoted with outrageous health claims, which led to the passage of the Food and Drug Act in 1905).
Another aspect of vitamin marketing is the portrayal of products as wholesome and natural. They are frequently juxtaposed with conventional medications, which are portrayed as artificial, foreign, unwholesome, and potentially dangerous. And yet vitamins and minerals are no more natural than medications. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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| The room for health claims is limited, however, because a claim will not be authorized for food unless the benefit the claim would convey is supported by scientific evidence concerning the relationship between a specifically identified food "substance" and a particular disease condition. That evaluation is based on an "evidence-based" ranking system3
' 21 U.S.C. 301 etseq.
2 21 U.S.C. 321(g)(l)(B)(defining "drug" to mean "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals)". |
| Although there is no expressed objection by nutritional scientists to recognizing multiple systemic consequences of nutrient inadequacy, the hold of the one-nutrient-one-disease model continues to dominate nutritional policy and regulation of health claims. It is expressed, for example, in the reluctance of the field, in the case of vitamin D, to label as "deficiency" the osteoporosis, fracture risk, propensity to falls, immune defects, hypertension, and cancer risk of low vitamin D status. Clinical scientists call all this morbidity "vitamin D insufficiency. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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| As long as they don't claim that their products cure a specific disease without showing evidence, they can make general health claims without providing backup. For instance, a manufacturer can say its product "promotes liver health" and advise someone with a liver problem to take it. The fact that there is no evidence for this claim doesn't matter under the law. No wonder we get taken in by vitamin salespeople. They can and do make their products sound so good. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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| Dietary Guidelines for Americans and certain other authoritative statements of federal government agencies and the National Academy of Science are not evaluated under the evidence-based ranking system, but instead upon FDA procedural guidelines designed to ensure health claims are supported by "significant scientific agreement" through equivalent systems of scientific evaluation. Food and Drug Modernization Act, P.L. No. 105-115, ?03, 111 Stat. |
Ron Garner
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 In my opinion, however, the health claims made by some water marketing companies are greatly overblown because water naturally seeks a neutral balance. Special water qualities, even if they were there, would change over a period of time. In addition, chemicals from some of the plastic bottles and pipes can leach into the water, which would pollute it.
Carbonated Water
Bottled carbonated water is a popular drink that many people view as good water. It is made by infusing water with carbon dioxide. However, the result is acidic water. |
Ann N. Martin
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| It also oversees labeling and health claims made about a pet food.
If your dog or cat becomes ill after eating a pet food manufactured in the United States, can you go to the FDA/CVM and request that this government agency investigate? Unless you can provide scientific data that indicates the source of the problem, the answer is no. FDA/CVM requires chemical analysis of the food, veterinary reports, any blood work, urinalysis, or any other medical tests done on your pet, which can be very costly for a consumer. Then, and only then, will the FDA investigate. |
| Its role pertains to the labeling of the product and any health claims made by the company; for example if the food contains an ingredient(s) that prevents a particular ailment or disease.
Where Is Truth in Advertising?
Pet food advertising shows prime cuts of beef, plump chickens, whole grains, and fresh vegetables. Pet food manufacturers want us to believe that these are the healthy wholesome ingredients used in their products. This has been very bothersome to me, and I have often questioned where is the "truth" in advertising? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| 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. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The FDA, you see, has no jurisdiction over sunlight, unless you sell it along with health claims, in which case the FDA would say that your "claims" about sunlight turn it into a drug. Following that, the FDA might actually try to outlaw sunlight, claiming its health benefits are "unproven" and that it must undergo $800 million clinical drug trials before anyone can use sunlight again.
Fortunately, the FDA can't stop you from experiencing the benefits of sunlight yourself. |
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