67.
Toxins on Your Toast
By Valerie James, BA
The latest buzzword in the food industry is “neutra-ceuticals,” plant-derived substances added to foods to make them “healthier.” This is the food industry’s solution to the problem of sluggish growth and declining profit margins on processed foods.
There’s more money in pills containing “phytonutrients” like indoles or isothiocyanates derived from broccoli, than in broccoli itself; and more profit from “functional foods” like “energy bars” with added soy isoflavones, touted as a panacea for everything from menopausal symptoms to osteoroposis, than from old-fashioned candy bars.
Recently the FDA allowed the industry the right to add plant-derived sterols to such pedestrian products as vegetable oil spreads, salad dressings, health drinks, health bars and yoghurt-type products. These phyto-sterols include beta-sitosterol, campesterol and stigmasterol, all estrogen-like compounds derived mostly from wood-pulp effluent.
The products will carry a health label claiming cholesterol-lowering properties, thanks to FDA largesse, and consumers will pay highly inflated prices for the privilege of spreading these known toxins on their morning toast.
There’s more money in pills containing “phytonutrients” like indoles or isothiocyanates derived from broccoli, than in broccoli itself; and more profit from “functional foods” like “energy bars” with added soy isoflavones, touted as a panacea for everything from menopausal symptoms to osteoroposis, than from old-fashioned candy bars.
Recently the FDA allowed the industry the right to add plant-derived sterols to such pedestrian products as vegetable oil spreads, salad dressings, health drinks, health bars and yoghurt-type products. These phyto-sterols include beta-sitosterol, campesterol and stigmasterol, all estrogen-like compounds derived mostly from wood-pulp effluent.
The products will carry a health label claiming cholesterol-lowering properties, thanks to FDA largesse, and consumers will pay highly inflated prices for the privilege of spreading these known toxins on their morning toast.
Advertising Blitz
“My father died young,” says an earnest-looking man on a television commercial. “When I found out I had a cholesterol problem, I just thought, ‘Well, I’m not waiting around for it to happen to me.’ So I started using Flora ProActiv margarine which actually reduced my cholesterol absorption. With Flora ProActiv, I’m down from 6.5 to 4.5 in just three weeks. Now I can do anything I’ve been wanting to do for years.”
Not all consumers watch television. In fact, those consumers most concerned about their health don’t watch much television at all. Nutrition writers have been quick to comply with their advertisers’ wishes with articles on the virtues of functional foods. And the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s “New Guidelines” for preventing heart disease recommend the consumption of cholesterol-lowering margarines and spreads providing 2 grams of sterols or stanols per day.
The cash registers are ringing up the dollars; cholesterol-lowering phytosterols are already big business. Recently, the pharmaceutical giant Novartis sold the licence for its phytosterol product, Reducol, to Forbes Meditech, Inc. of Canada for US $200 million despite the fact that these sterols are not even legal additives in Canada. Predictably, Forbes Meditech is now lobbying the Canadian government for permission to sell to Canadians, and on their website they say they are confident that they can soon build significant sales and can establish a wide and extensive customer base for these products.
Not all consumers watch television. In fact, those consumers most concerned about their health don’t watch much television at all. Nutrition writers have been quick to comply with their advertisers’ wishes with articles on the virtues of functional foods. And the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s “New Guidelines” for preventing heart disease recommend the consumption of cholesterol-lowering margarines and spreads providing 2 grams of sterols or stanols per day.
The cash registers are ringing up the dollars; cholesterol-lowering phytosterols are already big business. Recently, the pharmaceutical giant Novartis sold the licence for its phytosterol product, Reducol, to Forbes Meditech, Inc. of Canada for US $200 million despite the fact that these sterols are not even legal additives in Canada. Predictably, Forbes Meditech is now lobbying the Canadian government for permission to sell to Canadians, and on their website they say they are confident that they can soon build significant sales and can establish a wide and extensive customer base for these products.
Dangerous and Also Useless
In 1990, Dr Peter Skrabanek of Dublin University commented in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet on the dogma that cholesterol reduction could extend life.1 He wrote: “There is not a scrap of evidence that it is capable of changing the risk of dying from coronary heart disease, but there is reasonable evidence that it does not. The oldest consensus among the vendors of health, and other traders along the valley of the shadow of death, is that people want to be deceived and should be pleased accordingly. In the past, mountebanks were distinguishable from their more respectable colleagues at least in appearance and manners, if not by the effectiveness of their cures. Nowadays, the convergence of medicine and its ‘alternatives’ is an ominous foretaste.” Dr Skrabanek recommends that “people should temper their faith in experts--particularly when they see them coming in droves--with their own informed scepticism.”
1. Skrabanek, “Nonsensus Consensus,” The Lancet 1990 335:1446-1447.)
1. Skrabanek, “Nonsensus Consensus,” The Lancet 1990 335:1446-1447.)