Claiming your First Amendment rights are being violated is a sure way to have the spotlight shone on you. It's also an effective way to shut down criticism of whatever you're selling. From the 1940s-60s, supplements manufacturers used the free speech gambit to keep regulators away from their products, resulting in a 1969 Supreme Court case. Derek looks at the 20th century evolution of medical regulations, and how companies are still using a similar argument to dissuade consumers from looking too deeply into what's inside the bottle.
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Show Notes
Dietary Supplements: A Framework for Evaluating Safety
United States v Kordel
Some Implications of the Kordel Decision
163: The Huberman Paradox
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Get the fear and paranoia around Western medicine.
We live as Americans inside of a for-profit medical industry and that industry favors the wealthy and it drains the savings accounts of the middle and lower classes.
We're all collateral damage in this ongoing trilateral war between pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and hospital systems, with lobbyists from each of them constantly pulling and pushing regulators in every direction except the one that leads to socialized medicine.
I mean, my wife and I have just switched to our sixth insurance provider in under four years.
We've lost thousands of dollars in that time due to deductibles alone.
And I'm as frustrated at our government's flaccid response to regulating medicine in favor of citizens as anyone else.
Yet I'm also perturbed by this alternative health industry that capitalizes on people's confusion and fears around science and medicine, and profits from their willingness to believe in untested and often unfounded health claims.
So for example, while it's true that an over-reliance on processed foods leads to negative health outcomes, the idea that supplements can fix what they believe to be a broken food system is hyperbolic.
It might feel right, but it's a statement without evidence and it's often wrong.
So when Clinton made his pro-supplements statement, he was parroting the sentiment expressed in a 1992 Time cover story that waxed poetic on the luminous benefits of megavitamins.
Terms like antioxidants and free radicals entered the public vernacular.
Studies showed that diets filled with antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables results in better health outcomes.
And then supplements manufacturers ran with this narrative.
Pediatrician Paul Offit wrote about this mindset at the time, quote, If fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants, and people who eat lots of fruits and vegetables are healthier, then people who take supplemental antioxidants should also be healthier.
But, isolating minerals and vitamins from food sources is not the same thing as eating the foods that provide those benefits.
Organic interactions in the original foods likely provide those benefits.
Removing them from their food source and increasing their quantity doesn't necessarily equate to better health.
Too much is often too much.
And as we all know, the dose makes the poison, so what starts as healthy can quickly turn dangerous or deadly.
So those are the organic interactions inside of food, but I now want to turn to the interactions of these isolated vitamins and minerals with other medications that you might be taking, because to me, this is one of the biggest red flags that the supplements industry does not address.
We recently covered Andrew Huberman on our episode The Huberman Paradox, and I talked with McGill University Science Communicator Jonathan Jerry about all the supplements that Huberman promotes on his podcast.
We focused a bit on AG1, formerly known as Athletic Greens, and since then I went back and looked deeper at their product.
So first off, Huberman's endorsement of AG1 fits a common pattern that I've noticed.
And this is also a pattern AG1 uses all over its marketing website.
So first, you identify a study.
It doesn't matter if it was a pilot study or if it was only conducted on animals.
If it fits a narrative that suits your conclusion, you use it in your marketing.
Next, you discuss the study's broad parameters and focus on what the listener lacks.
In this case, it's a vitamin or mineral, even though something more aspirational that can't be quantified, like living your best life or tapping into more energy, is often used as well.
Then you use this lack as a motivation for claiming that you need this particular substance or product.
And finally, you make it seem as if this substance or product will fill that lack in your health stack.
So...
What you get is people like Huberman making statements like this, quote,
I've been using AG1 since 2012 because it's the simplest, most straightforward way for me to get
my basis of important vitamins, minerals, and probiotics.
Now, in 2022, he became a scientific advisor to AG1. So besides them sponsoring his podcast, he
now works with them. And he said this, quote, Athletic Greens is transforming how people around
the world approach nutrition through an extraordinarily simple and comprehensive daily
habit.
The comprehensive blend of ingredients with well-researched benefits offers the most convenient way to invest in your nutritional foundation and complement a healthy lifestyle.
So first off, you notice daily habit.
So he's positioning it as something you should take every day.
Then, here's the bigger thing.
The comprehensive blend hasn't yielded well-researched benefits, because AG1 has never been researched.
But you see how the language works.
When you break apart the sentence, You can read it as the comprehensive blend with well-researched benefits, but what he says is the comprehensive blend, pause, of ingredients with well-researched benefits.
So you have to extrapolate from the ingredients as if all of those are combining to give you these benefits, which is not necessarily true.
