I was surprised to see how much money Infowars was making shown in the court documents. "Let us make our prime target market idiots" seems to be a profitable path.
Similar to Chesterton's fence, if you don't understand why the Goop brand has become incredibly popular for a particular demographic, maybe you aren't qualified to critique it.
In short: It is supposed to sound exactly as ridiculous as you think it sounds. The Goop line most famously includes a candle that is marketed as smelling like the creator's vagina. It is supposed to generate outrage among people of your demographic. Like the Kardashians, Gwyneth Paltrow knows exactly what she's doing, which is making money.
I agree. Goop’s making money. If it works, it isn’t stupid.
Hell, we have major corporations called “Google” (baby sound) and “Apple” (I’m so used to the name that it sounds normal, also, I love them. But a fruit? Really?)
Why is that the surprising part to you? It's a brand name. We buy hi-tech electronics from a company named after a fruit. Plenty of other top brand names are either nonsensical or heavily ironic. That's just how marketing works.
i'm not saying anything about the content of infowars but I can't believe how much money people will spend on "supplements", and pills and artificial products. and yet, somehow don't have any money for fruits, vegetables and beans. i can only imagine, there's something broken in how people are being raised.
You're underestimating how many people live in food deserts and basically don't have access to fresh food. That might seem like a nitpick against a larger argument, but I think it serves as a good example for why you need to take a close look at the environment that these people exist in as a whole, and that it likely goes beyond their innate habits or those of just their immediate family in childhood.
I wonder about that, even in the worst ghettos I've ever been in (I'm talking worse than bars on the door, but you have to ask the shopkeeper for what you want through a small hole and drawer) they've had some fruits and other forms of fresh-adjacent food.
I don't know how many people buy them, but a banana seems an easy snack.
The food desert concept is way overblown. They exist to some degree, but a lot of people choose to buy shit food when it would be equally convenient and affordable to buy something good. People walking around with 32oz (~1 liter) soda cups are not unable to find anything else to drink, they're sugar addicts.
Blaming food choices is often blaming the poor, ignoring that nutritious foods tend to be more expensive. Even pure water can be pricey if you live in an area with degraded lead pipes.
I specifically wrote 'when it would be equally convenient and affordable to buy something good'. I've spent a lot of life in poverty; if anything, it made me more rigorous about not eating trash. I took some cooking/nutrition classes in high school, but I'm not expert on it by any means; I have just never liked processed/sugary foods other than in small quantities or rare occasions like a party.
I'm expressing skepticism about the assumption that food deserts are such a big problem because I've always looked for and found ways to get decent food. The specific example I had in mind with my original comment was from a place I used to live where I would see a guy who bought microwave lunch and a giant cup of soda at a 7-11 every day, even though there was a small grocery store with some fresh produce, a good selection of packaged foods, and large hand-made tasty sandwiches at the same price as the guy's 7-11 lunch literally across the street on the opposite corner.
"Improved food access through establishment of a full-service food retailer, by itself, does not show strong evidence towards enhancing health-related outcomes over short durations."
"Initiatives to build supermarkets in low-income areas with relatively poor access to large food retailers (“food deserts”) have been implemented at all levels of government, although evaluative studies have not found these projects to improve diet or weight status for shoppers"
"Using a prospective controlled quasi-experimental design we evaluate the impact on Body Mass Index, fruit and vegetable intake and perceptions of food access, of increasing neighborhood supermarket provision in one community in Philadelphia. This increase in provision was one part of the wider public-private Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative. The intervention moderately increased perceptions of food access, but did not lead to changes in fruit and vegetable intake or BMI."
"We found no evidence that the absolute or relative accessibility of supermarkets, fast food restaurants, or mass merchandisers were associated with individual BMI change"
Additionally, for several decades Americans have lived in an environment that makes time feel like a precious resource which must be stolen back any way possible, which companies are all too happy to play into with food products that sell themselves chiefly on the idea of convenience. This then shapes the collective palate to prefer processed foods over fresh alternatives.
Also, even when suburbans have decent access to fresh food, it’s often not favored because trips to the supermarket are an ordeal that only happens every ~2 weeks and fresh food doesn’t fare as well on longer timespans like that. Fresh diets work best for those who can walk to their grocer.
Even further, Americans are so heavily marketed on junk food we don't know what is what. We're told that fruit is a sugary treat, bananas are 'belly fat food', and I have no idea how to cook beans to make them interesting to eat. (Not that I have tried or thought about it recently - I'm sure I could with a minute of applied brain time)
Meanwhile sugary cereals like Heritage Flakes, and honey loaded granolas are what we think is healthy.
People who value fresh produce are going to go out of the way to get it. If enough people do this, environments will adapt to that demand. NYC Chinatowns used to be quite poor and discriminated against, but they were still able to establish their own supply chains that provides cheaper and fresher vegetables than anywhere else in the city because vegetables are a quintessential part of Chinese cuisine. Food deserts, like gentrification, is a concept that assumes that demand follows supply, which is the opposite of how things actually play out in real life.
If people in the area generally wanted vegetables, someone would sell them. So the most likely case is that the vast majority of people in food desserts don't really want vegetables.
We have a few convenience stores in my city that have started offering a small selection of fresh foods, something like a little basket with a few apples, oranges, and bananas. Some of them have expanded out into a full produce section. Others removed them entirely. Some are holding steady with the small basket. The stores are delivering what people are willing to buy in their areas.
I've been heavily involved in a city council before that was trying to attract stores (especially a grocery store), so I'm pretty familiar with how it works, and this mostly incorrect. In fact, people going out of their way to get the produce elsewhere works against a new store, because the stores see that as cannabilization should they open a new closer location.
The decision to open new stores is mostly based on "number of daytime wallets in the area," which itself is mostly tied to the other existing businesses in the area. For example, for one major grocery chain, they wouldn't even consider it until we had 50,000 daytime wallets. For a commonly known gigantic home improvement chain, they wanted 100,000. It doesn't matter how badly people in the area want it. It just comes pretty mathematically with growth.
If you already have a grocery store that doesn't carry fresh produce, you can (sometimes) improve things by speaking with the store management, but beyond that you're pretty much out of luck unless you are willing to open your own store.
By "go out of the way," I just mean make some sort of sacrifice when it comes to getting fresh produce (e.g. gardening or paying more for vegetables). Even when we're talking about leaving your area, you're still increasing demand for vegetables somewhere, which prevents food deserts from spreading.
Dollar stores are the killer here. They can easily undercut regular grocery stores (low selection, low worker count) but they do not have produce sections. So people just give up the produce section to get all the other processed stuff cheaper.
Thankfully our local dollar store has a pretty decent produce section. Dollar General. I'm aware that we have one of the better dollar generals out there. (Hillsboro KS)
By decent I mean decent for a dollar store. They have apples and oranges and cabbage and lettuce etc, no beets or leeks or fresh cilantro.
Was this effort at the request of residents of this food desert? Or was this an initiative of people outside of the area the proposed stores would serve?
Yes this was primarily at the request of residents as they frequently had to drive 20 to 25 minutes to get to a grocery store with fresh produce (and by "fresh" I mean "Walmart". Other stores were even further. Take that for what you will).
The mayor's office did also have broader commercial development goals as the strain of growth and traffic was brutalizing the budget. If we could put a grocery store in town, that would be highly appreciated by the people, and also cut a ton of traffic
> a concept that assumes that demand follows supply
This is wayyyy too black and white. What is cheap and available is what becomes people's diets and historically folks are extremely creative with the stuff that's around. This is pretty much the entire story of culinary history and likely where all your favorite dishes originated. One of the reasons tea was so unbelievably popular in western Europe was because the staple diets of most folks was stale bread and people needed something to wash it down that didn't taste awful. Cheese follows a supply of milk and a demand to not have it spoil.
So you're right that just having the supply there doesn't work because there's no pressure to actually use any of it. The most economical foods by a wide margin non-perishables. When you get your CSA box you've already paid for the veggies so you're motivated to use them up before they turn but at the grocery store why would you even bother when you have anything else more important to do? If you were just handed a sack of apples you might find a way to use them all but "paying money to do more work" in an environment where every adult in the household works a full-time job, plus having kids or social obligations is quite the ask. Buying those apple bars is a much easier buy than fresh apples because they don't have an timer attached to them, you're guaranteed to extract all the value even when you're busy and not home for a few days.
And this isn't some new phenomenon, "cutting out work for wives and mothers trying to put food on the table every night" is an entire industry. Go look at any food ads from the 20th century.
That's a lot of words to say that fresh foods aren't available close by because people don't want them. They are demanding convenience foods with their dollars, so that is what the vendors provide. Forcing a store into existence by government (or other) proclamation to supply fresh foods won't make people buy them.
That's one read for the situation but that's not really how I meant it. My takeaway is that fresh produce is far too expensive in dollars to have any hope of competing with non-perishables in value. When the price of the food at your local grocery store is dominated by the price of the transportation to get it there low-value foods that either cause loss through expiration and/or require additional work to turn into a meal have no chance when they're the same price as non-perishables and prepared food. So yes people are demanding them with their dollars but that's less of a preference for them and more they would be stupid not to if budget is of any concern.
If all the fresh produce in the grocery store was $0 I bet consumers would choose it overwhelmingly compared to alternatives. So I contend there is a number where fresh produce wins but we're not even close to it. Because you have to save on dollars to make the additional work/risk worth it but right now you don't. And it's one thing to be like "well that's the market for ya" but we already heavily subsidize agriculture it's not that crazy to also subsidize produce at the point of sale both to reduce waste during harvest and to encourage healthier eating.
I don't disagree with your first paragraph, but I don't think it contradicts the spirit of my original comment. Cheeses were invented because there was a demand for non-perishable protein.
> And this isn't some new phenomenon, "cutting out work for wives and mothers trying to put food on the table every night" is an entire industry. Go look at any food ads from the 20th century.
Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean people's diets necessarily had to deteriorate. You get to pick 3 between healthy, convenient, cheap, and tasty, and Americans overwhelmingly chose the last three. This may caused some vicious cycles, but those are downstream affects caused by lack of demand.
A single fruit tree can yield 100-200 lbs of fruit (apples, pears, oranges, etc), conservatively. All you need is 40$ for a fruit tree and some water, and some space, and 5-10 years. Plant 5 of those and now you've got 500 to 1000 lbs of fruit per year.
If the free market refuses to provide what people want, then we can create our own food and let the execs wonder why they keep loosing market share every year.
You just described exactly how everyone in an ideal free market should behave.
Fruit is a tough one though: there are many hidden costs in providing it at scale. The 7 year waiting period is huge; add cost of the land, picking, transport, and spoilage. Fruit are fragile and stay fresh for a very short time.
There’s a reason fruit companies have tiny margins: here are the numbers for Fresh Del Monte: https://valustox.com/FDP
azurestandard or other wholesale companies sell large bags of orangic beans for just 50$ for 25 lbs (even in CA!). That's nearly 25 days worth of food for just 50$, much much cheaper than going to McFatBurger everyday.
People understand they have a problem and don’t know what to do.
They prioritize things they think will help, to the exclusion of generally healthy and good things (veggies, etc).
I think it’s human nature, although I’m sure good parenting helps.
Although I know some really smart people who spend $100/month in athletic greens and other well advertised snake oil. Pretty much all OTC supplements are bogus or have little effect. Yet smart people buy them. Hoping.
Is it “broken” if it was intentionally made to be that way? The American Heart Association reported that heart disease and stroke alone cost the U.S. healthcare system over $200 billion each year. Studies have shown that dietary improvements could save the U.S. billions in healthcare costs.
I’m pretty sure the guys who were gonna pocket all that cash prefer to have paying customers.
Ideas about wellness have been complete bullshit for 99% of human history. I think you could very plausibly argue that we're at an all-time peak of rational thinking about our health despite the existence of Goop.
Ideas about wellness have been complete bullshit for 99% of human history.
False, depending on what you mean by human history. Science on macronutrients was in that category once. Now it's science fact. So we've had some wellness which was borne out as fact for over a century. Human written history doesn't go back far enough for 99% history/100% bullshit to be correct.
Actually, some inklings about vitamins go back even further.
What makes you think it's a money thing and not just personal preference?
Also, for some of the things they are selling, like Chaga mushrooms or colloidal silver, there is not really a grocery store equivalent that has the same ingredients.
It's more about the cult of personality of Alex Jones or Gwyneth Paltrow. They aren't buying products to be healthy, they are buying products to be more like/to support their favorite celebrities. While thinking about "blame", don't ignore that some people are working pretty hard to find & target these products to whales.
Before all this there has been GNC, taking advantage of the health conscious and gym rats.
As well as a whole Whole Foods aisle dedicated to supplements and natural substances but can’t carry Aspirin! It irks me that they can’t carry aspirin and basic OTCs you can get at a 7-11.
Even CostCo is 110% in on selling overpriced "supplements" to an ageing, afraid, and underinsured populace. Surely this industrial quantity of random pills will fix me!
There is a, frankly insane episode of This American Life, where they take a look at one of the stories Alex tells about his childhood. The ending of it is remarkable: even though they are talking to people who know the story that Alex tells is false, absolute fiction... they still believe him on everything else.
> It kept happening. All these people who knew for sure that Alex had been a liar back in Rockwall. A lot of them believed that what he says on Infowars might be true. They have a reference for him, like Coach Randy.
It gives some insight into the personalities here.
These are all popular dietary supplements sold by numerous retailers. Many are the same products with different branding because they're made by the same white label manufacturers. Not newsworthy or even interesting.
I once read an inspiring post from a european user who explained why these companies generally succeed. Namely, that formal treatment and healthcare for the underlying condition targeted by the "wellness" product is prohibitively expensive for American customers, and so snakeoil thrives in the absence of legitimate medical science.
you could literally bankrupt these companies in less than a fortnight with single payer healthcare.
> that formal treatment and healthcare for the underlying condition targeted by the "wellness" product is prohibitively expensive for American customers
This just isn't true. The vast majority of Americans are either covered by pretty decent employer-subsidized healthcare plans OR are poor enough to receive all of their medical care for free.
These companies thrive because many people have a (reasonable) distrust of big pharma.
I agree that single payer healthcare would pry be more efficient, but other than allowing pharma companies to advertise, our system really isn't that bad. We lead in almost every area of medical research, the standard of care is quite high, wait times are low and we have some of the best outcomes in the world.
I'm not sure I agree. For pretty much any supplement you want, you can find a good vendor that declares exactly what it is and provides third-party testing to confirm.
If we get specific to the sort of combos like what are sold on Infowars, then yes that's a problem, especially that they can hide behind "proprietary formula" without having to disclose exactly what it is. But the supplement market is way bigger than just that
Of course it's not. I don't see that I made any such claim.
I'm not seeing where the complaint is defined anywhere above, so we may be talking about completely different things. GP specifically said that the current law is what has caused this problem, and I dispute that. I think there's more to it than that. That doesn't mean the law is perfect, but it doesn't mean it's completely responsible either.
The whole point of a "supplement" is that it's something you can normally get from diet and foods which are already available. If you create some new thing, under the current system you can't just call it a supplement and sell whatever it is, let alone sell it while making medical claims about it. If I buy a head of broccoli at the grocery store, should that need a label on it that describes health benefits when ingested, and this must be approved by the FDA? Or should it be enough that they're selling "broccoli" and it really is "broccoli"?
Also pretty much every supplement I've ever bought has text on the label like "These statements have not been reviewed/approved by the FDA," so there's a chunk of people
> Also pretty much every supplement I've ever bought has text on the label like "These statements have not been reviewed/approved by the FDA,"
And this is exactly what was meant when it was said supplements are essentially exempt from truth in advertising laws. They can and do regularly make health claims with little to no evidence to back them up.
American media as a whole is exempt from truth, quite literally. In Canada, you cannot knowingly lie on air. It's illegal. Why do you think we don't have FOX
As opposed to the massive Homeopathy industry in Germany? I think the overall healthcare industry plays a part but I would bet that this is more of a human problem and less of an "american healthcare system is bad" issue. Germany has a massive homeopathic industry including brick and mortar stores, you could go to Asia and look at traditional chinese medicine. People love the idea of easy fixes where you can drink something or apply a herbal cream and your problems go away.
Xi Jinping wants to promote TCM as superior Chinese tech (saving your lives using tech that's worked for millennia!), their doctors were even giving out TCM to fight Covid: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/04/asia/china-tcm-approved-c... (ah, but the Emperor is wearing the most magnificent garment!), I can imagine the CCP funding TCM practicioners all over the world (like the Thai government with Thai restaurants)...
On homeopathy, I will say that when my mother in law's cancer got to the point where no more treatment was possible, she went home and diligently took her homeopathic "medicine" sent by her German health insurance. At first I thought it was 100% nonsense, but I realized it gave her a sense of agency over her situation, which was good for her (until she got too sick to do anything for herself). So only 98% nonsense.
German health insurance does not send out any medication, it also will not pay for homeopathic medicine anymore, but that's very recent and is not yet finalized
This was around 2004, but I should have said "paid for". Also the Diakonie came by twice a day to change her dressings, make sure she was fed, etc. SHe didn't have two pfennigs to rub together and the system made things go about as well as they could. Here in the US it seems barbaric by comparison.
I saw numbers that its a over a billion dollar industry. Lots of homeopathic practicioners and from my sample size of news articles, seems to be a hot topic in recent German history. Perhaps "massive" creates too much of a spin, my only point was that alternative medicines and pseudoscience exists out of the America and its not accurate to paint it as an American problem.
Is it a lack of access or a lack of faith in "big pharma" and the bureaucratic medical industry? If a large part of the motivation is a distrust institutionalized medicine, then trying to use this as justification for government run healthcare isn't going to win you any additional support.
Not saying these "wellness" treatments are legitimate, but your response has the smell of a beltway elitist pretending to represent the interests of the scammed without understanding their motivations or views.
Got any numbers on US sales for these sorts of products vs. in the EU or elsewhere? I spent two years in the Czech Republic and Czechs seemed just as likely to believe in all sorts of woo as Americans. In fact the irreligiousity of Czechs seemed to make them more likely to believe in new age mumbo jumbo (while Americans seem more likely to favor sketchy faith-based alternative healing methods, at least if they're religious).
This is such a bad and wrong Americentric take. Folk cures and medicine absolutely still exist in other countries, even ones with better QOL than us (see Japan). And pseudoscience like homeopathy is actively thriving in Europe.
The only difference is the FDA doesn't have the prerogative to regulate supplement manufacturers whereas in places like the EU counterparts (generally) regulate any product that tries to make medical claims.
>you could literally bankrupt these companies in less than a fortnight with single payer healthcare.
You'd certainly rob them of people who have legitimate and treatable complaints. But that does nothing to eliminate the people who think they're smarter than their doctors or don't trust them which ranges from Steve Jobs to ivermectin users. There are always those who view themselves outside the system, don't trust it, or simply don't want to accept their diagnosis and/or treatment.
Anecdotally I have a sister who was biopsied for cancer twenty+ years ago, and the result was negative. She's been telling people she has (not had) cancer ever since. With her it could just be a play for sympathy, but I wouldn't be surprised to see her buying anything that purported to "cure cancer", regardless of what any doctor tells her.
This is the kind of “I’m 14 and this is deep” thing that gets passed all over Reddit or twitter, because it sounds good and aligns with political dogma. But doesn’t make sense if you actually think about it, at all.
> Namely, that formal treatment and healthcare for the underlying condition targeted by the "wellness" product is prohibitively expensive for American customers, and so snakeoil thrives in the absence of legitimate medical science.
The issue with that explanation is that plenty of Americans who have health insurance still buy lots of that snake oil.
A great number of the ailments that afflict Americans are related to practically inescapable aspects of our built environment: sedentarism, cheap and high sugar/salt processed foods, car-bound living environments. Those things are hard to change, and there is a ton of resistance to change because those things are very comfortable/convenient in the short term.
Science-based medicine itself struggles to treat these environment/lifestyle induced conditions. While single payer healthcare would help, it can't on its own fix the structural problems with how we live.
This, coupled with superstitious and/or pseudo-scientific beliefs and entertainment being part of American culture, results in many people putting stock in shortcut "solutions".
Kind of a weird hit-piece - I'm not understanding why I should be shocked. When I visit the Zoo gift shop, I am not under the impression the zoo manufactures the stuffed animals.
Still, I guess, there's something fun about feeding conspiracy theorists a conspiracy.
What is the conspiracy theory here? The claim is that 2 crackpots from opposite extremes of the political spectrum know their fans are easily duped, so they sell similar fake products to enrich themselves. It's not a conspiracy, it's just a correct observation.
Huberman is almost as bad which is funny to me because he's regarded as an authority.
Worst is the completely useless powder called Athletic Greens that he pushes left and right.
There must _really_ be big bucks in supplements and lifestyle products like this, as it's coming just as much from very learned Harvard PhD's as Alex Jones.
Currently it's bro science connected to life extension, cold baths, red and blue light gadgets etc. and before that Paleo after an endless chain of products going back to the end of the 19'th century where the bourgeoisie were electrocuting themselves, poisoning themselves or lying in various useless massage machinery.
His podcast episodes on dopamine and addiction helped me quit cigs and alcohol because i got a clear understanding of how it works. But some of his other stuff is questionable and subjective
It took me way to long to find the ingredient list for the Athletic Greens starting from the main page. Even on the actual page itself you have to click a button to see it. https://drinkag1.com/about-ag1/ingredients/ctr
It appeared that it was hidden on purpose and I was expecting the worst, but after seeing it I would have to disagree with your comment about it being useless. From the list I would compare it to many daily vitamins. Many are deficient in these basic vitamins (why is a separate discussion).
It isn't useless, but maybe it is simply overpriced for what it is? Most notably seems to be missing vitamin D.
In the near future you could take your dna file and upload it to a website and it would tell you what supplement is best for you, but for now as in the past there will be generic multi-vitamins that try to fit everyone. And like in the past some will lean heavily on the marketing side.
Selling a multivitamin you could buy for a few dollars in a big cloud of smoke and mirrors is a scam in my opinion.
Just say you sell vitamin d. Not some ultra esoteric branded product with extreme markups and hints at something it definitely isn't - namely anything to do with "Greens.
And doing this as a "certified science man" is even more ridiculous.
A data point for the orthogonality of politics and intelligence.
If one is holding to the belief that a certain political stance means people are somehow deficient, it just shows that one is vulnerable to propaganda which dehumanizes and blames a group.
Don't hate the person. Call out the stupid.
Actually, don't hate. It makes you stupid. (Again, this is orthogonal to politics!)
It’s incredibly difficult to call out and correct negative beliefs and behaviours while maintaining a fully positive human relationship. — It just doesn’t seem to scale well.
How about not being 100% positive, while also not dehumanizing, devaluing, and hating? Is it too much to ask to just accept everyone as fully human and not something disgusting, even those we happen to disagree with?
It just doesn’t seem to scale well.
Please give us a historical example where "letting your hate flow" led to scalable mass changing people -- That didn't also involve mass death and violence?
And just wow - never in my most pessimistic estimation did I imagine that my post would be interpreted as defending “dehumanizing, devaluing and hate”.
Having lived in different cultures, I have experienced that perfectly acceptable wording of criticism of an idea in one culture was interpreted as a personal attack in another culture.
So the same wording of a critique didn’t “scale” across those cultures.
In a smaller scale setting, there’s a much better chance to hit the right tone for the smaller audience, so the criticism doesn’t come across as hurtful.
> Please give us a historical example where "letting your hate flow" led to scalable mass changing people
I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea how you got from my comment to that sentence?
Go watch early footage of that infowars nutball when he was an opening act for stand-up comics like Doug Stanhope[0] for the lols. It's unbelievable that droves of people are actually embracing what he spouts/peddles.
Worth reading just to learn of the existence of "activated cashews"
Our enzyme-rich, activated, and dehydrated cashews are a mineral-dense protein. Pure, alkaline water awakens the nuts' dormant properties, increasing digestibility and micronutrient, vitamin, and enzyme count. These raw, activated, bio-available nuts are a low-glycemic source of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
As well as a product for sale at infowars that makes fun of Alex Jones "making us fat, sick, and stupid" (an Animal House gloss).
Of course, but that's sort of the crux of the supplement business - take any substance that has any study that shows potential benefit, pump it up as the secret magic substance and peddle it with no real oversight.
It isn't that a liar can't say something true, it's just that you know they are willing to say something untrue to manipulate you. So the correct response is to automatically discount what they say until it's verified.
Not sure what your point is. It's well established that soaking nuts and seeds so they begin to sprout is healthier. I realize that it's written with a marketing slant, but it's not wrong.
> "The desirable nutritional changes that occur during sprouting are mainly due to the breakdown of complex compounds into a more simple form, transformation into essential constituents and breakdown of nutritionally undesirable constituents. This is a reason why sprouts are also called pre-digested foods."[12]
sort of. It's not really a binary yes or no on whether it's digested. Especially with seeds it's a little complicated because they have often evolved to survive digestion (especially where they spread by animals pooping them out in a physically different location than they originally grew). Some people can digest them better than others, but sprouting the seeds will cause them to morph from digestive-resistant seed form to nutrient-rich tiny plant, and make the nutrients more accessible to most people. It also (subjectively) improves the taste, which can be a nice bonus
That sounds like a very Huberman-like statement. Is there any literature that shows this not only to be true, but to be effective enough to make even a minute change in your health outcomes?
Regardless, I'm going to continue enjoying my store brand whole cashews and leave Alex's shriveled nuts soaked in pH-balanced super-water to someone else.
Healthier is highly subjective, but this sure sounds healthier to me:
> "The desirable nutritional changes that occur during sprouting are mainly due to the breakdown of complex compounds into a more simple form, transformation into essential constituents and breakdown of nutritionally undesirable constituents. This is a reason why sprouts are also called pre-digested foods."[12]
"The metabolic activity of resting seeds increases as soon as they are hydrated during soaking. Complex biochemical changes occur during hydration and subsequent sprouting. The reserve chemical constituents, such as protein, starch and lipids, are broken down by enzymes into simple compounds that are used to make new compounds."
"Sprouting grains causes increased activities of hydrolytic enzymes, improvements in the contents of total proteins, fat, certain essential amino acids, total sugars, B-group vitamins, and a decrease in dry matter, starch and anti-nutrients. The increased contents of protein, fat, fibre and total ash are only apparent and attributable to the disappearance of starch. However, improvements in amino acid composition, B-group vitamins, sugars, protein and starch digestibilities, and decrease in phytates and protease inhibitors are the metabolic effects of the sprouting process."
I assume it's because eleuthero root and cordyceps mushrooms are real things, while "nascent iodine" is made up. It is a marketing term for woo-woo supplements, not a technical term.
One imagines it's the term "nascent" which is an obsolete/anachronistic descriptor for a chemical substance. It would be a little bit like using "caloric" (a substance once postulated in order to explain heat) or "luminous ether" (a medium once postulated to explain propagation of light) in an ad pitch.
Not to give anyone any ideas....
(To be maximally clear/fair, all three of these concepts were part of healthy scientific discourse at one period of time, but have since faded into obscurity. That said I don't know that "nascent" anything was ever demonstrated to have health benefits, at least in virtue of its purported nascence).
This is explained further down in the article. Nascent iodine is in quotes because it doesn’t even seem like real quantifiable product.
The other supplements are real things with at least some semblance of scientific inquiry, but to quote the article:
> We couldn’t find any reliable scientific information on “nascent iodine.” ... The “nascent” stuff is supposed to have an “electromagnetic charge” that makes it easier to digest. ... iodine in this “charged” form cannot even exist in liquid form, which is how Alex Jones and company distribute it.
What does it tell us about the web that two websites that appear so different converge on the same business model? I guess it's hard to make money on the web.
More like "grifters and their marks have no diversity" in that, neither Alex Jones nor Goop are selling unregulated products for political reasons. They have cultivated an extremely motivated, more money than sense, gullible audience willing to eat up ANY nonsense you spout, no matter how self contradictory or evidently wrong to even the minimum of critical thinking, and are simply mining that self organizing gullible audience for profit.
Goop and Infowars are the same product, just in a different box.
I have taken a lot of these in the past, and the label "pseudoscientific" is unwarranted. The "writer" cherrypicks and generalizes data to discount it, but if you want to understand the mechanism of, say, Ashwagandha, you probably should spend a few hours reading research and meta-analyses and not spending 10 minutes on Google to decide if it's "good" or "pseudoscience".
Should these companies not be allowed to advertise and distribute products that might help some and might hurt others? Should tech writers write health articles when they don't know what they're talking about?
> Should these companies not be allowed to advertise and distribute products that might help some and might hurt others?
That is correct, yes. Pharmacologically active ingredients are medicine. Encouraging someone to take mental health meds without supervision, especially when made who-knows-where with who-knows-what quality control, because they're unregulated, is incredibly irresponsible.
There's a reason you can't buy Zoloft over the counter. Anything else in that space is either:
1. A placebo, in which case, no, companies should not be advertising it and thus keeping people from seeking qualified help, or
2. The real deal, in which case, no, companies should not be advertising it and selling it for unmonitored home use by people with zero education in the field.
There are a multitude of supplements with clinical evidence to support their efficacy that are neither #1 nor #2. These include caffeine, ginseng, various vitamins, etc. If you go to examine.com, they analyze the strength of the studies and the effect size. Most won't have the effect size of prescription drugs but some are absolutely worth taking, particularly fish oil and vitamins like B and D.
Caffeine and gensing have immediate onsets. You know in a small number of minutes whether you’ve had enough or too much. Vitamins usually have a wide range between enough to be useful and enough to harm you, although you’re crazy to take fat-soluble vitamins for a long period without telling your doctor and getting a blood test.
You generally have to take psych meds for quite a few days before determine their effect. If you take too little, you risk your mental health. Take too much? Have fun riding out Seratonin Syndrome!
Animal studies in the lab suggest Ashwagandha may be effective for treating cancer, diabetes, and somehow, both reducing fatigue and as a sedative, but these effects have not been thoroughly tested on humans.
The article doesn't use the term psuedoscientific at all. That was OP.
Something the article seems to overlook is why these seemingly antithetical companies are selling similar products. These are all 'white-label' products with high profit margins. Go to sites like Alibaba and you'll find countless manufacturers and distributors offering the same white-label health products you see on sites like Goop and Infowars.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadGoop? Someone named a "modern lifestyle brand" company Goop? And people are actually buying their shit?
I think whoever is running the show should just hand the reigns to the Dwarf Fortress guys. At least their bugs are believable.
An actress, in particular, Gwyneth Paltrow.
It also had a Netflix show in 2020.
In short: It is supposed to sound exactly as ridiculous as you think it sounds. The Goop line most famously includes a candle that is marketed as smelling like the creator's vagina. It is supposed to generate outrage among people of your demographic. Like the Kardashians, Gwyneth Paltrow knows exactly what she's doing, which is making money.
I'm not outraged, I'm amused... in a "bless your heart" kind of way.
The matrix would have been fine without that detail.
Hell, we have major corporations called “Google” (baby sound) and “Apple” (I’m so used to the name that it sounds normal, also, I love them. But a fruit? Really?)
I don't know how many people buy them, but a banana seems an easy snack.
I'm expressing skepticism about the assumption that food deserts are such a big problem because I've always looked for and found ways to get decent food. The specific example I had in mind with my original comment was from a place I used to live where I would see a guy who bought microwave lunch and a giant cup of soda at a 7-11 every day, even though there was a small grocery store with some fresh produce, a good selection of packaged foods, and large hand-made tasty sandwiches at the same price as the guy's 7-11 lunch literally across the street on the opposite corner.
-- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28566095/
"Initiatives to build supermarkets in low-income areas with relatively poor access to large food retailers (“food deserts”) have been implemented at all levels of government, although evaluative studies have not found these projects to improve diet or weight status for shoppers"
-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899338/
"Living in a food desert census tract was not significantly associated with BMI"
-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5615612/
"Using a prospective controlled quasi-experimental design we evaluate the impact on Body Mass Index, fruit and vegetable intake and perceptions of food access, of increasing neighborhood supermarket provision in one community in Philadelphia. This increase in provision was one part of the wider public-private Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative. The intervention moderately increased perceptions of food access, but did not lead to changes in fruit and vegetable intake or BMI."
-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4201352/
"We found no evidence that the absolute or relative accessibility of supermarkets, fast food restaurants, or mass merchandisers were associated with individual BMI change"
-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5895451/
Also, even when suburbans have decent access to fresh food, it’s often not favored because trips to the supermarket are an ordeal that only happens every ~2 weeks and fresh food doesn’t fare as well on longer timespans like that. Fresh diets work best for those who can walk to their grocer.
Meanwhile sugary cereals like Heritage Flakes, and honey loaded granolas are what we think is healthy.
The decision to open new stores is mostly based on "number of daytime wallets in the area," which itself is mostly tied to the other existing businesses in the area. For example, for one major grocery chain, they wouldn't even consider it until we had 50,000 daytime wallets. For a commonly known gigantic home improvement chain, they wanted 100,000. It doesn't matter how badly people in the area want it. It just comes pretty mathematically with growth.
If you already have a grocery store that doesn't carry fresh produce, you can (sometimes) improve things by speaking with the store management, but beyond that you're pretty much out of luck unless you are willing to open your own store.
By decent I mean decent for a dollar store. They have apples and oranges and cabbage and lettuce etc, no beets or leeks or fresh cilantro.
The mayor's office did also have broader commercial development goals as the strain of growth and traffic was brutalizing the budget. If we could put a grocery store in town, that would be highly appreciated by the people, and also cut a ton of traffic
This is wayyyy too black and white. What is cheap and available is what becomes people's diets and historically folks are extremely creative with the stuff that's around. This is pretty much the entire story of culinary history and likely where all your favorite dishes originated. One of the reasons tea was so unbelievably popular in western Europe was because the staple diets of most folks was stale bread and people needed something to wash it down that didn't taste awful. Cheese follows a supply of milk and a demand to not have it spoil.
So you're right that just having the supply there doesn't work because there's no pressure to actually use any of it. The most economical foods by a wide margin non-perishables. When you get your CSA box you've already paid for the veggies so you're motivated to use them up before they turn but at the grocery store why would you even bother when you have anything else more important to do? If you were just handed a sack of apples you might find a way to use them all but "paying money to do more work" in an environment where every adult in the household works a full-time job, plus having kids or social obligations is quite the ask. Buying those apple bars is a much easier buy than fresh apples because they don't have an timer attached to them, you're guaranteed to extract all the value even when you're busy and not home for a few days.
And this isn't some new phenomenon, "cutting out work for wives and mothers trying to put food on the table every night" is an entire industry. Go look at any food ads from the 20th century.
If all the fresh produce in the grocery store was $0 I bet consumers would choose it overwhelmingly compared to alternatives. So I contend there is a number where fresh produce wins but we're not even close to it. Because you have to save on dollars to make the additional work/risk worth it but right now you don't. And it's one thing to be like "well that's the market for ya" but we already heavily subsidize agriculture it's not that crazy to also subsidize produce at the point of sale both to reduce waste during harvest and to encourage healthier eating.
> And this isn't some new phenomenon, "cutting out work for wives and mothers trying to put food on the table every night" is an entire industry. Go look at any food ads from the 20th century.
Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean people's diets necessarily had to deteriorate. You get to pick 3 between healthy, convenient, cheap, and tasty, and Americans overwhelmingly chose the last three. This may caused some vicious cycles, but those are downstream affects caused by lack of demand.
If the free market refuses to provide what people want, then we can create our own food and let the execs wonder why they keep loosing market share every year.
Fruit is a tough one though: there are many hidden costs in providing it at scale. The 7 year waiting period is huge; add cost of the land, picking, transport, and spoilage. Fruit are fragile and stay fresh for a very short time.
There’s a reason fruit companies have tiny margins: here are the numbers for Fresh Del Monte: https://valustox.com/FDP
They prioritize things they think will help, to the exclusion of generally healthy and good things (veggies, etc).
I think it’s human nature, although I’m sure good parenting helps.
Although I know some really smart people who spend $100/month in athletic greens and other well advertised snake oil. Pretty much all OTC supplements are bogus or have little effect. Yet smart people buy them. Hoping.
1. Magic pills which cure them
2. Not eating vegetables
So this is not a shock to me at all. Such folks I am sure pin their hopes on things which are more convenient and do not require lifestyle changes.
I’m pretty sure the guys who were gonna pocket all that cash prefer to have paying customers.
False, depending on what you mean by human history. Science on macronutrients was in that category once. Now it's science fact. So we've had some wellness which was borne out as fact for over a century. Human written history doesn't go back far enough for 99% history/100% bullshit to be correct.
Actually, some inklings about vitamins go back even further.
Also, for some of the things they are selling, like Chaga mushrooms or colloidal silver, there is not really a grocery store equivalent that has the same ingredients.
As well as a whole Whole Foods aisle dedicated to supplements and natural substances but can’t carry Aspirin! It irks me that they can’t carry aspirin and basic OTCs you can get at a 7-11.
> It kept happening. All these people who knew for sure that Alex had been a liar back in Rockwall. A lot of them believed that what he says on Infowars might be true. They have a reference for him, like Coach Randy.
It gives some insight into the personalities here.
The segment of the episode in question: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the-jabberwock/a...
you could literally bankrupt these companies in less than a fortnight with single payer healthcare.
This just isn't true. The vast majority of Americans are either covered by pretty decent employer-subsidized healthcare plans OR are poor enough to receive all of their medical care for free.
These companies thrive because many people have a (reasonable) distrust of big pharma.
I agree that single payer healthcare would pry be more efficient, but other than allowing pharma companies to advertise, our system really isn't that bad. We lead in almost every area of medical research, the standard of care is quite high, wait times are low and we have some of the best outcomes in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Supplement_Health_and_...
If we get specific to the sort of combos like what are sold on Infowars, then yes that's a problem, especially that they can hide behind "proprietary formula" without having to disclose exactly what it is. But the supplement market is way bigger than just that
The whole point of a "supplement" is that it's something you can normally get from diet and foods which are already available. If you create some new thing, under the current system you can't just call it a supplement and sell whatever it is, let alone sell it while making medical claims about it. If I buy a head of broccoli at the grocery store, should that need a label on it that describes health benefits when ingested, and this must be approved by the FDA? Or should it be enough that they're selling "broccoli" and it really is "broccoli"?
Also pretty much every supplement I've ever bought has text on the label like "These statements have not been reviewed/approved by the FDA," so there's a chunk of people
And this is exactly what was meant when it was said supplements are essentially exempt from truth in advertising laws. They can and do regularly make health claims with little to no evidence to back them up.
I dunno, check out the Y axis on this chart the CBC posted: https://media.assettype.com/westernstandard%2Fimport%2Fweste...
Ah, the irrationality of humans strike again.
Not saying these "wellness" treatments are legitimate, but your response has the smell of a beltway elitist pretending to represent the interests of the scammed without understanding their motivations or views.
The only difference is the FDA doesn't have the prerogative to regulate supplement manufacturers whereas in places like the EU counterparts (generally) regulate any product that tries to make medical claims.
You'd certainly rob them of people who have legitimate and treatable complaints. But that does nothing to eliminate the people who think they're smarter than their doctors or don't trust them which ranges from Steve Jobs to ivermectin users. There are always those who view themselves outside the system, don't trust it, or simply don't want to accept their diagnosis and/or treatment.
Anecdotally I have a sister who was biopsied for cancer twenty+ years ago, and the result was negative. She's been telling people she has (not had) cancer ever since. With her it could just be a play for sympathy, but I wouldn't be surprised to see her buying anything that purported to "cure cancer", regardless of what any doctor tells her.
[1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilpraktiker
The issue with that explanation is that plenty of Americans who have health insurance still buy lots of that snake oil.
A great number of the ailments that afflict Americans are related to practically inescapable aspects of our built environment: sedentarism, cheap and high sugar/salt processed foods, car-bound living environments. Those things are hard to change, and there is a ton of resistance to change because those things are very comfortable/convenient in the short term.
Science-based medicine itself struggles to treat these environment/lifestyle induced conditions. While single payer healthcare would help, it can't on its own fix the structural problems with how we live.
This, coupled with superstitious and/or pseudo-scientific beliefs and entertainment being part of American culture, results in many people putting stock in shortcut "solutions".
Still, I guess, there's something fun about feeding conspiracy theorists a conspiracy.
But for Alex Jones' audience that would be exactly the kind of mild, uninteresting connection they would run wild with.
The quick skim I looked at seemed to discuss the word fascism a lot. Perhaps the horseshoe theory is better represented by adding an authoritarian/libertarian axis to the left/right axis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Compass
Worst is the completely useless powder called Athletic Greens that he pushes left and right.
There must _really_ be big bucks in supplements and lifestyle products like this, as it's coming just as much from very learned Harvard PhD's as Alex Jones.
Currently it's bro science connected to life extension, cold baths, red and blue light gadgets etc. and before that Paleo after an endless chain of products going back to the end of the 19'th century where the bourgeoisie were electrocuting themselves, poisoning themselves or lying in various useless massage machinery.
It appeared that it was hidden on purpose and I was expecting the worst, but after seeing it I would have to disagree with your comment about it being useless. From the list I would compare it to many daily vitamins. Many are deficient in these basic vitamins (why is a separate discussion).
It isn't useless, but maybe it is simply overpriced for what it is? Most notably seems to be missing vitamin D.
In the near future you could take your dna file and upload it to a website and it would tell you what supplement is best for you, but for now as in the past there will be generic multi-vitamins that try to fit everyone. And like in the past some will lean heavily on the marketing side.
Just say you sell vitamin d. Not some ultra esoteric branded product with extreme markups and hints at something it definitely isn't - namely anything to do with "Greens.
And doing this as a "certified science man" is even more ridiculous.
If one is holding to the belief that a certain political stance means people are somehow deficient, it just shows that one is vulnerable to propaganda which dehumanizes and blames a group.
Don't hate the person. Call out the stupid.
Actually, don't hate. It makes you stupid. (Again, this is orthogonal to politics!)
Thanks for sharing!
How about not being 100% positive, while also not dehumanizing, devaluing, and hating? Is it too much to ask to just accept everyone as fully human and not something disgusting, even those we happen to disagree with?
It just doesn’t seem to scale well.
Please give us a historical example where "letting your hate flow" led to scalable mass changing people -- That didn't also involve mass death and violence?
I didn’t say that, nor mean it.
And just wow - never in my most pessimistic estimation did I imagine that my post would be interpreted as defending “dehumanizing, devaluing and hate”.
Having lived in different cultures, I have experienced that perfectly acceptable wording of criticism of an idea in one culture was interpreted as a personal attack in another culture.
So the same wording of a critique didn’t “scale” across those cultures.
In a smaller scale setting, there’s a much better chance to hit the right tone for the smaller audience, so the criticism doesn’t come across as hurtful.
> Please give us a historical example where "letting your hate flow" led to scalable mass changing people
I have to admit, I have absolutely no idea how you got from my comment to that sentence?
Idiocracy[1], we are living it.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTHHBxCqnOA
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lai9QhBibk
Unrelated did anyone see the latest teenage engineering gear at CES?
And this is not trendy niche marketing, these are things that are inconsistent with basic models of biology/chemistry/physics/statistics.
I just have an aversion to highly refined and industrial stuff. Prefer to stick with meat from animals I’ve seen and plants grown by people I trust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization
Of course, but that's sort of the crux of the supplement business - take any substance that has any study that shows potential benefit, pump it up as the secret magic substance and peddle it with no real oversight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouting#Nutrition
> "The desirable nutritional changes that occur during sprouting are mainly due to the breakdown of complex compounds into a more simple form, transformation into essential constituents and breakdown of nutritionally undesirable constituents. This is a reason why sprouts are also called pre-digested foods."[12]
This implies that digestion does the same thing already and saves you a step?
Neither found an effect.
Simply soaking whole nuts doesn't appear to do anything.
Regardless, I'm going to continue enjoying my store brand whole cashews and leave Alex's shriveled nuts soaked in pH-balanced super-water to someone else.
> "The desirable nutritional changes that occur during sprouting are mainly due to the breakdown of complex compounds into a more simple form, transformation into essential constituents and breakdown of nutritionally undesirable constituents. This is a reason why sprouts are also called pre-digested foods."[12] "The metabolic activity of resting seeds increases as soon as they are hydrated during soaking. Complex biochemical changes occur during hydration and subsequent sprouting. The reserve chemical constituents, such as protein, starch and lipids, are broken down by enzymes into simple compounds that are used to make new compounds." "Sprouting grains causes increased activities of hydrolytic enzymes, improvements in the contents of total proteins, fat, certain essential amino acids, total sugars, B-group vitamins, and a decrease in dry matter, starch and anti-nutrients. The increased contents of protein, fat, fibre and total ash are only apparent and attributable to the disappearance of starch. However, improvements in amino acid composition, B-group vitamins, sugars, protein and starch digestibilities, and decrease in phytates and protease inhibitors are the metabolic effects of the sprouting process."
The above picture is apparently not satire, but entirely genuine.
And activated…like charcoal?
Is it not nascent iodine? If no, then what is it? Oh no, it's nail clippings, isn't it. Gwyneth has tricked me yet again!
Edit: Thanks to everyone who replied--I learned something!
Not to give anyone any ideas....
(To be maximally clear/fair, all three of these concepts were part of healthy scientific discourse at one period of time, but have since faded into obscurity. That said I don't know that "nascent" anything was ever demonstrated to have health benefits, at least in virtue of its purported nascence).
The other supplements are real things with at least some semblance of scientific inquiry, but to quote the article:
> We couldn’t find any reliable scientific information on “nascent iodine.” ... The “nascent” stuff is supposed to have an “electromagnetic charge” that makes it easier to digest. ... iodine in this “charged” form cannot even exist in liquid form, which is how Alex Jones and company distribute it.
"Seeking max profits always leads to the same point, regardless of where you start."
Goop and Infowars are the same product, just in a different box.
I have taken a lot of these in the past, and the label "pseudoscientific" is unwarranted. The "writer" cherrypicks and generalizes data to discount it, but if you want to understand the mechanism of, say, Ashwagandha, you probably should spend a few hours reading research and meta-analyses and not spending 10 minutes on Google to decide if it's "good" or "pseudoscience".
Should these companies not be allowed to advertise and distribute products that might help some and might hurt others? Should tech writers write health articles when they don't know what they're talking about?
That is correct, yes. Pharmacologically active ingredients are medicine. Encouraging someone to take mental health meds without supervision, especially when made who-knows-where with who-knows-what quality control, because they're unregulated, is incredibly irresponsible.
There's a reason you can't buy Zoloft over the counter. Anything else in that space is either:
1. A placebo, in which case, no, companies should not be advertising it and thus keeping people from seeking qualified help, or
2. The real deal, in which case, no, companies should not be advertising it and selling it for unmonitored home use by people with zero education in the field.
You generally have to take psych meds for quite a few days before determine their effect. If you take too little, you risk your mental health. Take too much? Have fun riding out Seratonin Syndrome!
Should hedgefund owned news outlets publish stock news? Should the US government secretary of defence be on the board of Raytheon?
People with power will always abuse their authority to further their cause.
Animal studies in the lab suggest Ashwagandha may be effective for treating cancer, diabetes, and somehow, both reducing fatigue and as a sedative, but these effects have not been thoroughly tested on humans.
The article doesn't use the term psuedoscientific at all. That was OP.