Supplements under scrutiny from NIH

Yet more skewed, misguided advice from the pointy-heads issuing the marching orders to the medical establishment...

According to some "experts" from the National Institutes of Health's Office of Medical Applications of Research and Office of Dietary Supplements (pretty official-sounding, isn't it?), we Americans take too many vitamins. Half of all people in the U.S.A. take at least one multivitamin or mineral supplement, spending $20 billion per year on them.

Apparently, that's just too much good money we should be spending on drugs.

Summarized by a recent Reuters article, the 13-member NIH panel concluded that modern medical science does not yet know whether vitamin- and mineral-takers benefit from the supplement pills they're popping. Predictably, they also caution against taking too many of certain vitamins and minerals, like vitamin A or iron (I totally agree on the iron, by the way - it can be seriously toxic).

They also claim it's likely that people who "eat healthy" (like using the Food Pyramid?) and exercise can get more benefits than those taking vitamins and such. They also claim that the vitamin-takers may just be generally more health-conscious people - and that the healthier lives they lead have more to do with this fact than to any supplements they may be taking...

Yet out of the other side of their mouths, the panel concludes, among other things:

• The use of both Vitamin D and calcium supplements helps protect the skeletal health of women after menopause
  
  
• Taking zinc and antioxidants can help adults fight early-stage macular degeneration, a common cause of blindness
  
  
• Ingesting daily folate supplements can help young women prevent certain birth defects in their not-yet-born children

Hmmm. Vitamins and minerals have no tangible benefits - except for this group and that other group and those folks over there...

Am I the only one who sees this as a shameless campaign on the part of government to discredit alternatives to drugs?

The (other) Rabbit Test

In keeping with the mainstream's theme of "eating right" instead of supplementing your diet with the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that modern food processing strips out of our meals, I want to tell you an amusing anecdote I came across concerning Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), a modern soy-based meat substitute the vegan and vegetarian crowd raves about...

Apparently, not even rabbits will eat the stuff!

According to a brief un-attributed editorial on NewsTarget.com, the author left some TVP on a small hillock behind his (or her) house - a place where the local rabbits, squirrels, and birds typically dispose of all manner of the author's old or extra foods in mere hours. And nothing touched the TVP for three days!

Now THAT's pretty telling. A vegetable product that large numbers of wrong-headed humans are stuffing into their faces in the name of health that rabbits and vermin won't even eat...

I wonder if anyone's ever tried to feed tofu to animals? What about veggie-burgers? Seems to me that vegetarians should submit their "health foods" to the rabbit test before even considering ingesting it themselves.

Better yet, they should use these foods to bait the bunny to within slingshot range, then eat the rabbit...

Now THAT would be real health food.