NutritionEd:

Super Food!

Cancer Killer!

Crazy Happy Weight Loss Without Lifting A Finger Call Now Satisfaction Guaranteed!

…

Slogans like these are both familiar to us all and yet flagrantly misleading. Let me tell you right now, there is no super food, no wonder nutrient, no gastronomic holy grail which will cure disease. The world and human evolution just isn`t that simple. It`s a whole body, total nutrition approach tailored to specific needs which provide the most benefit. And doesn`t that make more sense than the idea of one plant or one food being a cure-all?

Sadly, there are times when I am simply astonished by the gullibility of some consumers. Granted, many of these people are facing delicate, unfamiliar situations and the savvy marketing campaigns out there can make it hard to tell fact from fiction. As a result, every year Billions of dollars of sketchy nutritional products are successfully finding their way off store shelves and into naive consumer`s cupboards.

Thankfully, there is often little harm in people consuming things like celery extract or distillations of exotic fruit (well, your wallet might complain.) Other products, however, can be far more sinister in their utilization. One prime example is the now infamous (to me) Gogi Juice. This product, it is claimed, can help you fight all sorts of cancer; and naturally to boot! Why bother with all the conventional approaches like chemotherapy or radiation therapy?  Gogi Juice is all you need! Can you imagine? The marketing of this juice has been so successful it has led people to abandon their doctor-prescribed therapy and instead rest their hopes of a cure on a cancer killing campaign using…. juice. It`s absolutely incredible, and it should be illegal.

Now to be fair, I cannot say that the Gogi BERRY doesn`t have cancer fighting properties wtihin it. Indeed there is a small study in the literature which shows the berri “may“ have such health benefits. (a study which companies promoting gogi juice have exploited and exaggerated). Of note is that this study is in regards to the BERRY, not JUICE. Only in pure and concentrated form may the compounds in a gogi berry impart any cancer fighting qualities.

So don`t fall for the hype or rhetoric surrounding `natural` nutritional supplements. We all know we should be careful to trust in a sales pitch. So heed your intuition and proceed with caution. And of course if you`re ever in need of more substantiated information on something speak to a registered dietitian.