don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

There are so many really good reasons to eat wisely. One of my own favorite reasons for intelligent dining, by which I mean eating moderately in a manner consistent with established dietary guidelines or the food pyramid, is that good, nutritious food tastes great. (See Dietary Guidelines to learn how many daily servings of varied food categories are recommended to reach and maintain optimal health.) I know some junk food tastes great, too, else people would not eat so much of it. However, even though it might take a little while for people to appreciate this fact, healthful food choices taste even better. When you realize that what you are consuming is doing wonderful things for your well-being, then such foods will always be enjoyed more than the sweet/fatty/chemical-laden stuff. In the case of delicious junk food, there is stress even while trying to enjoy the taste, for while you're chewing it, you're probably worrying about adding more fat or going to an early grave!

I mention this because I recently came across information that reinforces my bias against taking extra minerals and vitamins in supplement forms. If there are medical reasons for doing so and you have done your homework and believe that certain quantities of a given nutrient cannot be obtained from real food, then perhaps a case could be made for some supplements, on some occasions for very specific reasons. This category entails a lot of conditions! However, few people fit in such a category, so basically my view is get all the nutrients you need from real food. Select fresh, tempting comestibles dense in nutrients that look appealing and taste good that you can chew and enjoy, rather than pills you have to swallow whole which usually have no taste and are hard to get down the gullet! Sometimes you look like a pelican trying to stuff those tablets down your beak!

The dietary supplement industry is unregulated and fraught with hazards. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stringent regulations for prescription and over-the-counter drugs, but almost none to insure the safety and efficacy of vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements. The reason this is so is that the supplement industry succeeded in 1994 in getting Congress to remove the FDA's authority from the supplement market. This infamous "Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act" basically classed supplements as food, and thus exempt from pre-market governmental or other approvals. As a result, you can never be sure if supplement ingredient claims are accurate or, more significantly, if the product itself, whatever the mystery ingredients, is safe, sensible or effective.

Which is another VERY good reason NOT to buy supplements, unless VERY good reasons exist for doing so. For most, such reasons do not exist.

The situation is so bad that third party organizations exist to analyze and give a sort of housekeeping seal of approval to brands that fulfill their labeling promises. This speaks volumes about the hazards of the dietary supplement product line. However, this independent testing is not shared with consumers. This means you and I can gain no insights from such testing about supplement product safety or efficacy. Furthermore, these secret tests are subsidized by the supplement manufacturers! More reasons, if you needed more, NOT to buy supplements.

In one assessment of 500 products of the best-selling supplements, huge gaps were found between claims and contents. (For the full story, go to http://www.consumerlab.com/.) Specifically, 15 percent of vitamins and minerals and 40 percent of herbals contained less active ingredient than promised on labels. This sounds like fraud to me. Worse, or equally bad (I'm not sure which), the supplements contained MORE of something consumers did not seek, want or need, namely, pesticides and heavy metals! Another reason not to buy supplements. Do you need more?

The good news is that consumers are catching on to these problems. Since 1998, there has been annual declines in supplement sales and this trend continues (Source: NY Times, 1/2/02, "Eating Well" by Marian Burros.) -- to which I say, "Hip hip hooray" or something like that.

Two independent consumer-testing groups, Consumer Reports and the Good Housekeeping Institute, have done a miniscule amount of supplement testing. However, efforts to assess safety and efficacy resulted in high costs and discouraged continued research with these products. While Consumer Reports tests are fully independent of supplement manufacturers, Good Housekeeping requires the purchase of an advertisement in its magazine before granting its famous seal of approval. In my view, this is little different from taking fees from the vendors. In such instances, objectivity has to be suspect.

As noted at the beginning of this rant, there are so very many really good, positive reasons to eat wisely. The good taste positive reasons should suffice but, if not, consider the above negative reasons as justification for shunning supplements. The best way to obtain the nutrients you need is through real food, so skip the pills and eat well, exercise vigorously and do as much as you can consistent with self-managing for lifestyle artistry.

For now (and always), enjoy yourself, be well, have fun and always look on the bright side of life, or ALOTBSOL. If you find that a challenge, well, consider this for purposes of sparking a clearer perspective on things. In about two billion years, Earth will become uninhabitable as a gradually warming Sun produces a runaway greenhouse effect. In five billion years the Sun will swell up and die, burning the Earth to a crisp in the process. At about the same time, the Milky Way will collide with its twin the Andromeda galaxy, now about two million light-years away and closing fast, spewing stars, gas and planets across intergalactic space.

Any civilization that managed to survive these events would face a future of increasing ignorance and darkness as the accelerating cosmic expansion rushes most of the universe away from us. So, enjoy your time now and eat your vegetables and fruits while they're still around. (Source: January 1, 2002 NY Times, "The Universe Might Last Forever, Astronomers Say, but Life Might Not." Dennis Overbye.)

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the PHYSICAL DOMAIN under the skill area of nutrition. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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