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An Open Letter to Consumer Reports: 10 Misinformation Hazards in Your “10 Surprising Dangers of Vitamins and Supplements” Article
By James J. Gormley
It is personally disappointing for me that Consumer Reports, the flagship of the respected marketplace-empowerment organization, Consumers Union, has once again seen fit to arm the American consumer with detrimental misinformation regarding safe, beneficial food supplements.
In the alarmist piece which appears in the September 2012 issue, the anti-supplement subtitle reads: “Don’t assume they’re safe because they’re all natural.”
Here are the “10 Surprising Dangers” along with some accurate information and perspective:
“1. Supplements are not risk free.”
With 3,000 deaths and 128,000 hospitalizations a year from food poisoning, it is clear that nothing in life is risk-free, but we already knew this. It would be of better service to do an expose on the dangers of properly prescribed pharmaceuticals, which injure over 1 million and kill over 100,00 Americans each year in hospitals alone. The subtitle on a prescription drugs-focused article could read: “Don’t assume they’re safe because they’re FDA-approved.”
The fact of the matter is that food supplements are inherently benign and pharmaceuticals are inherently dangerous; they are part of a completely different risk paradigm. With the millions of supplements sold and safely used every year, dietary supplements have an enviable consumer safety record.
Since the 1994 enactment of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), FDA has had the authority to remove any dietary supplement from the market if FDA shows that it presents “a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury” or that it contains “a poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious to health.” In fact, the FDA can act immediately against any product that poses an “imminent hazard to public health or safety.” With the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in 2011, the FDA’s mandatory recall authority was affirmed and expanded.
Recently released data from risk-management expert Ron Law confirmed that food supplements are by far the safest substances that people are exposed to daily (http://tinyurl.com/ron-law-data).
“2. Some supplements are really prescription drugs.”
Supplements are a class of food, not drugs, so drugs masquerading as supplements is a drug adulteration problem best handled by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), something which I and Citizens for Health have been calling for since early 2010 (http://tinyurl.com/dea-should-take-over), which is now being supported by industry as well (http://tinyurl.com/dea-and-steroids).
“3. You can overdose on vitamins and minerals.”
With only a few exceptions (e.g., iron, selenium, zinc, vitamin A), even with the dosages found in high-potency supplements there is a window of safety on supplements of several hundred percent; in fact, most supplements are so safe that no upper limit can even be determined. What we really have to worry about are the over 13,000 truly dangerous prescription drugs on the market with known side effects.
“4. You can’t depend on warning labels.”
True, but since dietary supplements are inherently benign with a margin of safety a mile wide, there is virtually nothing to warn consumers about. To be conservative, many products carry cautions relating to consumption by children and pregnant/breastfeeding women, but this is more to protect companies from actions stemming from gross misuse.
“5. None are proven to cure major diseases.”
The same can be said for prescription drugs. And even if they did, supplement manufacturers would not be allowed to tell consumers about it. Regardless, supplements are complements to the diet not substitutes for healthy food and physical activity.
“6. Buy with caution from botanicas.”
I would venture to say that apart from cities bordering Mexico, over 99.999% of herbal products are sold through mainstream channels of trade. We could also say “don’t buy prescription pain killers” on the black market or from peddlers in back alleys, but some level of common sense usually prevails.
“7. Heart and cancer protection: not proven.”
The American Heart Association recommends a diet rich in marine-based omega-3s, and the U.S. government has approved health claims for vitamin D and calcium supplementation. In 2005, Harvard researchers estimated that low intake of omega-3s in the U.S. diet accounted for 72,000 to 96,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease. There have been numerous animal studies showing direct cancer prevention with omega-3s and epidemiological studies associating high levels of dietary omega-3s with reduced rates of cancer.
“8. Choking.”
Now Consumer Reports is really reaching. Anybody who tries to dry-swallow any pill can experience a gag reflex, which is not a problem unique to any one class of products.
“9. Some natural products are anything but.”
Most dietary ingredients are analogues of natural extracts; technologists are not standing around with wooden mallets, mortars and pestles. There are only one or two cases where a true synthetic is not as efficacious as a natural source nutrient, and that is with vitamin E.
“10. You may not need supplements at all.”
But we need drugs? For decades the USDA has shown that most of us do not get anywhere near a basic level of vitamins and minerals from the standard American diet, so it would be a rare person indeed who would not stand to benefit from a multivitamin/multimineral supplement at the very least.
Although Consumers Union has a long, and illustrious, track record in advocating for consumers, Consumer Reports appears to have a bug in its bonnet regarding dietary supplements, either that or single-copy newsstand sales soar when “supplements are bad” stories are run.
This is unfortunate, since scare-mongering re safe, well-regulated and effective dietary supplements will, at best, only serve to unfairly cause consumers to wrongly distrust a beneficial class of products and, at worst, drive even more Americans away from responsible self-care into the welcoming arms of drug-happy conventional medicine.
That’s not what I call consumer advocacy.
Source:
http://www.citizens.org/?p=3091
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I wish the vitamin industry WOULD address usage of magnesium sterate in it’s products. It triggers my psorasis and I have to be very careful in what I take because it’s usage is so prevalent.
Thank you for this article. I just joined Consumer Reports and the first thing I received was this attack on supplments. It infuriated me.
Anyone with a brain in their head must real;ize that the nutrition we are supposed to get from our foods rarely happens. Diets are notariously bad in most cases, foods have lost nutritional value through transportation and shelf life either in store in the home, and soils are so depleted of nutirion that instead of absorbing nutrition from the soil, we are now absorbing chemicals in our foods used to raise pest-free mega-sized, nutriutionally lacking tastesless products. Why? Because the lack of following the rule of fallow fields, natural fertilizer, and the desire to speed up the growing season to produce extra crops has allowed farming practices to seriously undermine food nutrition.
Unfortunately, not all food supplements are equal in either purity, bioavailability or strength. This was revealed in a Landmark Study By The School of Public Health, UCLA, Berkley Campus in 2007, an published under the title “Usage Patterns, health, and nutritional status of long-term multiple dietary supplement users: a cross-sectional study”, published in the Nutrition Journal and by BioMed. The study compared over a twenty-year period , users of a variety of multi-vitamins and those who took none which proved that multi-votamin usuage is better than none, and that not all supplements are equal.
I would suggest that “Consumer Reports” do a little more thorough research before publishing such fallacious information. And, as an added piece of information, under my doctor’s control, I have now been able to replace five of my six long-time prescriptions with good supplements with vastly improved lab-tested health improvements.
Dolores Myles
Five years ago after being incorrectly diagnosed and put on what I would call heavy duty medications that did not help me, I walked away from standard medicine for good. I was on my way to homeopathy already and that just clinched it for me! I have not had a flu shot in that time and had the flu 1 day in the last 5 years. I have turned to colloidal silver and olive leaf as my antibiotics. I take probiotics, a good fish oil, and multivitamin with minerals daily. I am in my 60′s and have never felt better in my life!!! I hope people will take it upon themselves to study the facts and not rely on those in the media who are directed by the medical/pharmaceutical cartel!!
Thank you very much for a commonsense response!
Let’s face it, Consumers Union sold out to the pharmaceutical companies years ago. Why would a totally “neutral” organization work so hard to push through Obamacare if they weren’t in the pockets of the corporations or pandering to the political party in power.
I stopped believing in their neutrality once I realized that they were taking sides in issues. I’ve not read Consumer Reports since.
Paul Tappenden
Well said!
And more direct:
Dear Consumer Reports:
How about writing about all those isles and isles of so called “foods” in our grocery stores claiming their ingredients as being natural or even organic? How about writing about their agricultural, manufacturing and refining processes that turn our real foods into vitamin, mineral, and natural complexes depleted and denatured cardboard faux-food – junk they then add more junk to, like artificial and toxic and cancerous ingredients, to try and get them back into tasting LIKE “natural” foods? Now those so-called authorities should be the ones arrested and having their heads examined! Because THAT is insanity!
But worse…how about writing about how we are being fooled into thinking we are eating natural produce from nature, when in reality we don’t know which foods are being created in the genetic laboratory and then sold to us to put into our USDA volunteered experimental digestive systems?
How about alerting your readers that they are consuming the rice from the hands of the Indian farmer who then committed suicide because Monsanto owns their seeds and now their land – because they are failed GMO experimental crops and the farmers have no more money to buy more seeds from him…or the cotton from those cotton Indian farmers whose hands and bodies are skinned raw by the disease caused by the GMO cotton experiment they were conned into farming by Monsanto…
or the animals that are dying from consuming GMO products, which are sold to us and which we serve to our children over a prayer of trusted thanks…. leaving the future consequences to undiagnosed symptoms which then the medical “authorities” chuck up to mental illness or stress and hands down to the Kings of pharmaceuticals, psychiatrists, to “resolve” or rather quiet and dumb-down because they have no evidence-based testing protocols?? …to then commit “perplexing” Batman Massacres, “disturbing” school shootings, “surprised” boss killings, or assumed “terrorist” attacks??
WHERE are the Consumer Reports of those “FDA approved” drugs that written on their label warn us of violent behavior and suicides as their SIDE EFFECTS? and HOW have these been “approved” as medicine for mental uses without the existence of testing protocols??
And how about going to the horses’ mouths and see how many thousands of people are healing themselves with real natural supplements because the medical “authorities” have failed them miserably to even at the very least provide for real relief??? Voices, by the way, and records you will NOT find at any doctors’ office, or medical establishment, for they REFUSE to listen much less record them!!!
WHERE are all THOSE Consumer Reports?????
I, as a consumer, would sure like to KNOW! – the TRUTH!
Thank you so much for this eloquent refutation of Consumer Reports’ attempt to scare people away from natural supplements!
In the United States, unfortunately, many people are so inclined to BE scared easily. I think we need to take a page from the Europeans, who have for centuries relied on preparations made from naturally occurring plants for enhancing their health. And it seems to become more urgent by the year!
Again, thank you very much
Dietlinde