I would first and foremost like to thank you for the wonderful creation that is the Chopped Chicken Salad.  This is a marvel of paleo food creation in what is nearly a desert of refined-carb free offerings.  It is so rare that dropping the bun on anything in life actually makes for a better tasting food item, but you have done it.  Part of that might be the fact that you need a chemist to make your bread rather than a baker, but this is the case of any fast food bread like substances:

ITALIAN (WHITE) BREAD

Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, barley malt, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, yeast, sugar, contains 2% or less of the following: soybean oil, wheat gluten, salt, dough conditioners (DATEM, sodium stearoyl lactylate, ascorbic acid, potassium iodate, azodicarbonamide), yeast nutrients (calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate),

wheat protein isolate, yeast extract, vitamin D2, natural flavor, enzymes. Contains: Wheat

I have been aware that you offered a salad of sorts for quite awhile, but I had no faith in this creation.  It may have been your marketing or the fact that I just imagined cold cuts, laying flaccidly out on a bed of shredded lettuce, but whatever the case, I have never desired a salad at your establishment.  Of course that all changed when you added chopped to the name and tossed up all the ingredients in a huge new bowl!

I first tried the chopped chicken salad about 3 months ago, right after I had decided to truly go paleo (you can find out more about a paleo diet here if you are curious).  You see,   I finally decided that being in good shape was nice, and not being fat had its advantages, but I really wanted to shoot for cut.  I mean ripped!!  I knew the only way to do this was to eliminate all starches and refined carbs from my diet.  So, one night as I was starving and the kids were jumping around on trampolines at a trampoline center, I headed out into the urban landscape to find something paleo I could eat.  After a lot of searching, I had given up and was honestly just going to get a cookie at Subway when I saw your salad on the menu.  I figured that if I didn’t like it, I could always have that cookie, so there was nothing to lose.  Trust me when I say my expectations were low, and not because you don’t make good food.  You do.  I have enjoyed your Italian BMT on wheat for years, just I had low hopes for your salads.

I ordered it with roast chicken.  Of course, I use the term ‘roast chicken’ loosely, very loosely.  Roast chicken loaf appears to be some sort of pressed chicken pieces, formed into a chicken breast like shape with grill marks painted on for ‘authenticity’ (even though it is roast chicken, not grilled chicken… explain that one).  I have generally been turning a blind eye to the chicken potion of the salad, happy for the protein, but thanks to this letter I had to look up the ingredients, and they made me shudder:

CHICKEN BREAST (pdf of all ingredients of foods at Subway can be found here)

PATTY

Chicken breast with rib meat, water, seasoning (corn syrup solids, vinegar powder [maltodextrin, modified corn starch and tapioca starch, dried vinegar], brown sugar, salt,dextrose, garlic powder, onion powder, chicken type flavor [hydrolyzed corn gluten, autolyzed yeast extract, thiamine hydrochloride, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate]), sodium phosphates

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The AMA called and they have asked for their self respect back! 

I had intended to find a recent article that I had written about how ridiculous the stars of The Doctors are and add some new points with their recent humiliating display of stupidity with respect to how full of preservatives fast food burgers must to to not rot.

I honestly don’t think this new level of unpreparedness, complete lack of science and general clamouring for camera time deserves a whole blog post of its own, but I realized I have started to write a number of articles about these idiots but haven’t posted any.   This is because I get a press release every week about their show, complete with links to tune in to segments before they air, so I as a healthcare writer can help promote their show.  I get a ton of ridiculous press releases and introductions to writers and products like this every day.  The Doctors are some of the worst.  The 4 people you see in the picture above could be the 4 dumbest doctors alive.  I find it astounding that they got through university.  I am sorry if you like them, and I don’t doubt that a lot of people do.  They are a very attractive group and I am sure they earn good money playing doctors on TV, but seriously, the four of them barely make one Doctor Oz and we all know how little respect I have for that man!

Each and every time one of the cast of The Doctors opens their mouth I am astounded by their stupidity, but I have to tell you, I don’t think I was ever as surprised as I was with this broadcast:

Firstly, how in the world they are just finding out about the dried out burger craze is beyond me.  It went viral years ago.  It was on Yahoo Health’s front page.  Hell, my burger experiment alone got tens of thousands of hits that day and it was just a small link in that story.

Did you notice how Dr. Stork said the word Kept when he said”So this has been kept for 14 years by David Whipple”?  It sounded like he was suspect of how Mr. Whipple kept his burger, and he should have been, but it turns out, Dr. Stork isn’t that bright.

As soon as they open the burger, literally, all of the standard lines that have been repeated over and over again come out, as if there is some talking points for the anti-hamburger movement.  ”It looks just like the one I bought a few days ago”, “It is completely preserved”, “How can it not be moldy?”  ”I will give you an idea… preservatives”, “If the mold won’t eat it, if the fungus won’t eat it, bugs won’t eat it, maybe we shouldn’t be eating it”.

These statements are amazingly stupid as statements.  The only intelligent thing said is, ‘How can it not be moldy?”, but it shouldn’t have been a statement, it should have been a question.  These are doctors for the love of god!  They should want to get to the bottom of the issue.  They should ask some questions, shouldn’t they?  I am sure they knew about this piece before the burger was rolled out.  Why didn’t any of them actually ask the question?  Why didn’t one of them notice that there were no condiments on the burger?  Who, other than a 4 year old kid, orders a perfectly plain hamburger?  Actually, even a 4 year old orders ketchup on it!  When Dr. Stork said that Mr. Whipple ‘kept’ the burger, why didn’t it cross his mind to wonder where Mr. Whipple kept his burger?  How did he store it?

And I don’t want to question Mr. Whipple… but seriously… how would a plain hamburger help you show people how enzymes work?  It hasn’t been touched?  That seems like the oddest explanation on earth.  He even said he used it for a month.  Why would someone buy a burger and then use the same burger for a month in some vague display of enzymes, especially when literally nothing is happening to the burger…  I can’t imagine a much worse explanation, or maybe I can.  ”Yes officer, you see I bought the hooker because I was trying to teach my friends about gravity.”  Oh, well, it couldn’t be that Mr. Whipple had maybe seen something about these burgers that had been dried out 10 years before Mr. Whipple had even purchased his burger could it?  Strangely after putting the burger back in the original bag after using it for 1 month (why he has the original bag is beyond me as well) along with the original receipt, he puts it in his coat pocket and it isn’t discovered for at least a year.  If you watched the video on Len’s website you will notice it is the same story, minus the receipt and bag.  Could he have gotten the simple instructions from Len Foley.  By the way, notice in the instructions there is a note about putting them in a fairly dry location:

Put your hamburgers in a fairly dry location and let them sit for many, many years.

With the following Warning:

WARNING: Do not put your hamburgers in any sealed containers, like jars. The moisture needs to escape the food naturally, so letting them breathe in the open air works best.*

Hmm… I think Len gets what is going on…  but not the doctors…

I cannot believe that between going through hair and makeup for a few hours and then costumes to put on the ‘TV doctor’ scrubs and lab coats so that they can have an air of legitimacy, that these 4 people would not suggest that maybe they should test the conclusion that they jumped to regarding the preservatives in a burger.

A while back when this story was trending with a one year old happy meal I became so frustrated that I did the burger experiment for myself.  I compared a McDonalds Cheeseburger, with a Burger King Cheeseburger with as nearly an identical home made organic burger.  I stored them together in a small greenhouse and they all rotted at about the same time.  There was no difference.

Part one of the experiment and links to all of the stages can be found here.

It was good science, not great science.  Another website took another tact and had more variation of storage, and they got the same results.  Each of these experiments can be found all over the internet and my experiment continues to be a very popular page.  It would have taken the simplest amount of research to discover some science behind this story and maybe share that with us instead of ridiculous conclusions about preservatives.

I am still not convinced these aren’t  just actors playing doctors on TV….

As many of you know, I am not a fan of McDonalds.  Okay, that isn’t quite true.  I do love the food.  When I say I am not a fan, it would be more correct to say, I am fully aware of the role that fast food plays in our current obesity crisis in general and my obesity crisis in specific.  This last 5 to ten pounds I cannot get off my body may as well have McDonalds, A&W, and Taco Time logos on it.  Still, it isn’t just the fact that fast food is so rich in calories, fats and refined carbohydrates that has me mad at the companies behind it.  It is actually, the fact that they work so hard to protect their pitch, to protect the access to their markets.  They have kids meals in party boxes with toys, they have kids playgrounds and clowns and cartoon characters directly marketed to children.  They pay good money to hide the damage that their food does (#10 on the dirty dozen of 2010).  In other words, they feel that doing whatever they can to misinform you about what is healthy is okay because they make money from it.  It isn’t.

But the reverse is more infuriating to me.  Much more.  In fact, this is one of my pet peeves.  It is terrible when a corporation goes to lengths to hide the damage their products do, but I believe it is more damaging when zealots and opportunists create false stories about these same products, but with the opposite intent because these urban myths become part of our ethos, our belief system and they seem to never die, just like the burger that people still wrongly report will not rot.  People begin to believe that fast food is bad because it is made of chemicals and it doesn’t have any nutrition.  They believe that we are getting fat because we are eating foods that are entirely bereft of nutrients and therefore we need to eat more of them.   They believe that the chemicals are causing us to be fat and if we just ate organic we would be fine.  The end product of this is a misinformed public that eats organic oreos and organic chocolate cake, thinking that these are in fact healthful, when the opposite is true.

What has occurred is a level of disingenuous reporting, combined with a nearly pathological prejudiced hatred of mass production and food standardization mixed with a huge dose of a misguided sense of health.  The fact is, some people hate McDonalds and their hatred leads them to jump to conclusions that do not exist (fast food does not rot) or equally as bad, causes them to fabricate a crisis where one does not exist (McRib).  When this happens, people end up believing that specific ingredients or methods of preparation are causing obesity problems or health problems.  We have seen this absurd reporting for margarine, cheez whiz, cool whip, and swiffer, and now we have the McRib.

The McRib case in point.

We can begin with the article titled: McDonald’s McRib Sandwich a Franken Creation of GMOs, Toxic Ingredients, Banned Ingredients,

The article is essentially a mix of lies and hyperbole which culminate in an expose that misses its own point entirely.  Some of the misinformation is below:
1.  ”The McRib is the result of intensive marketing by McDonald’s.”

The McRib is not the result of intensive marketing by McDonald’s.  In fact that doesn’t even make sense.  You might be able to say that about The Olive Garden and their focus tested menu, but the invention of the McRib was actually just the creation of a pretty incredible chef.  Really…

The McRib itself was the brainchild of Rene Arend, a native of Luxembourg who first appeared in the Chicago area not as McDonald’s first executive chef, but as a 31-year-old night head second cook at the Drake and a protege of “great chefs in Strasbourg, France.” Arend won a 1959 gourmet contest at the Drake with his supreme de poularde Amphitryon—chicken in sweet butter with cognac Martell, Madere sauce, cream, and goose liver, accompanied by veal dumplings and hearts of palm covered in orange hollandaise sauce—”fixed up for tastes of American people,” Arend told the Tribune. Arend moved to the Whitehall Club before being lured away by the hours, benefits, and challenge of McDonald’s in the late 1970s by Ray Kroc, a Whitehall regular.

The McRib, patterned after the pulled-pork barbecue Arend ate in South Carolina—pork barbecue itself being a means of dressing up low-cost meat in the impoverished South—was an initial failure, but it’s obviously popular enough maintain a large cult following. (source)

Given that Chef Rene is a native of Luxembourg, a graduate (first in his class) of the College Technique Hotelier de Strasbourg, and a man who has prepared dinners for such luminaries as Queen Elizabeth II of England, the king of Belgium, and Sophia Loren and Cary Grant, we asked him why the McFood at McYou-Know-Where’s doesn’t exactly taste like European gourmet cooking.

”We have to cater to the American public,” he replied. ”I am 31 years here, nearly as long as McDonald’s. I have also become Americanized. McDonald’s is perfect American food, you see. But never are any restrictions put on me when I do a product.” (source)

2. Utilizing the basics of supply and demand through creating scarcity over the McRib by only unleashing the culinary abomination for a fraction of the year that is only known once it is released

Although there certainly is a lot of marketing surrounding the McRib and every successful company utilizes the basics of supply and demand (for whatever that is worth), creating scarcity isn’t part of the marketing, it is apparently a fact of scarcity of pork trimmings.

And to this day, the McRib comes and goes from the McDonald’s menu for reasons that have to do with its intense popularity and a national supply of pork trimmings that’s typically a lot more limited than the supply of beef trimmings.

“If you suddenly start to buy a large amount of that material,” said Mandigo, “the price starts to rise.”

As the cost to McDonald’s rises, the McRib tends to go out of circulation again. And then the same parts of a hog tend to flow back into the processing lines for Spam, Vienna sausages and other specialized products. (source)

Above is just the coles notes version of the supply and demand problems with the McRib.  If you want to get deep into the research you can read a fascinating article A conspiracy of Hogs:  The McRib as Arbitrage.

This isn’t to say that McDonald’s doesn’t use the scarcity to help market the McRib, just that they don’t create the scarcity in the first place.  This works well for the McRib because according to Chef Rene Arand, ”We discovered that people would not eat pork every day” (source).
3. McDonald’s even made McRib fans sign a petition to ‘save the McRib’ online

The petition signing was clearly just a marketing technique for a sandwich they were keeping.  I don’t think anyone was MADE to sign a petition.  That is extreme hyperbole.  Seriously, did they kidnap people and torture them until they signed the petition?

They can also sign the “Save the McRib” petition and explore the BPFAA (the Boneless Pig Farmers Association of America) website,bonelesspigs.org, a fictitious organization that promotes the good will of boneless pigs. Hmm. OK. Why spend all this money if the product is just going to be dumped? Oh wait, silly me, they’re not dumping the product, they’re renewing demand by making us feel sorry for a bunch of boneless pigs. That’s it. (source)

4.  it’s a combination of unwanted animal scraps processed down in major facilities and ‘restructured’ into the form of a rib.

This one is sort of true, just not in the important way.  The meat is restructured, a technique created by a man who sits in the Meat Industry Hall of Fame:

In 1972 Professor Roger Mandingo of the University of Nebraska received a grant from the National Pork Producers Council to work on a process to create restructured meats. He developed a technology to bind small pieces of meat together in different shapes using salt and mechanical action. The results of his work can be seen today in such items as dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and the famous McRib” Sandwich. (source)

Restructured meat products are commonly manufactured by using lower-valued meat trimmings reduced in size by comminution (flaking, chunking, grinding, chopping or slicing). The comminuted meat mixture is mixed with salt and water to extract salt-soluble proteins. These extracted proteins are critical to produce a “glue” which binds muscle pieces together. These muscle pieces may then be reformed to produce a “meat log” of specific form or shape. The log is then cut into steaks or chops which, when cooked, are similar in appearance and texture to their intact muscle counterparts. (source)

While it is true that the meats used in the McRib are lower valued, they are NOT animal scraps.  We in North America have no value for organ meat and tripe and find it disgusting, but we are the minority in the world.  As I was reminded in my trip to China, most cultures in the world value these meats very highly and consider them a delicacy.  While in Beijing, my brother and I were very excited to go to a world class duck restaurant.  Our hosts happily obliged and asked us to do the ordering.  All we cared about was the duck, and we were not disappointed.  It may very well be the best meal I have ever eaten.  We noticed though, as soon as we had ordered, our hosts looked sad, more than sad, crestfallen.  They wouldn’t tell us what had upset them, but we knew we made a mistake.  We quickly realized that they were as excited to be eating in this restaurant as we were, but they didn’t care as much about the duck as the organ meat.  We quickly got the waiter to come back and we ordered some things that I still have no idea what part of what animal they were from, but it made all the difference to our hosts as their faces glowed and the night was a success.

According to Mandigo:

“Most people would be extremely unhappy if they were served heart or tongue on a plate,” he observed. “But flaked into a restructured product it loses its identity. Such products as tripe, heart, and scalded stomachs are high in protein, completely edible, wholesome, and nutritious, and most are already used in sausage without objection.” (source)

According to Chicago Magazine:

In other words, the McRib, or at least the restructured meat products like it, consists of staples—or even specialties—of other cuisines. Take pig heart, for instance. If you’d like to cook it yourself, here’s a 1945 recipe from Gourmet: Coeur de Porc en Civet à la Pompadour, i.e. stewed pig’s heart à la Pompadour, or bopis, a Filipino pig heart recipe. These sorts of things being unappetizing to the American palate, they’re shredded and restructured into an obviously fake rib. (source)

The most important point is that these parts of the pig have been used in sausage forever.  I love sausage.  Nobody thinks that an organic, butcher made sausage is frankenfood, but by most of these damning accusations above, it is.

5.  70 additives, chemicals, fillers, and GMO ingredients later, you have a ‘meat’ product that tastes like ribs.

The original claim of the article is that the McRib is made up of about 70 ingredients in total.  How in the world would all 70 ingredients, even if you exclude the pork, be chemicals, fillers and GMO ingredients?  That doesn’t even make sense, unless you are trying to fool us into thinking that the McRib is just chemicals and fillers and has no natural products in it.  Even using the graphic that the author supplies, you can quickly see that some of the ingredients are not chemicals, nor are the fillers or ‘common’ GMO ingredients.  Bleached Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, reduced Iron, Riboflavin, Water, salt, Malted Barley Flour, Pork, Tomato Paste, Spices, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Chili Peppers, cucumbers and slivered onions to name a few.

The common GMO heading is a bit of a misnomer because as far as I can tell, they are suggesting that items such as distilled vinegar are commonly sourced from GMO products.  This doesn’t mean that this specific vinegar is GMO, just that it is likely GMO, as would be the distilled vinegar in your cupboard.  I hate the fact that GMO products do not have to be labelled as such, but that really has very little if anything to do with McDonalds and the McRib.

In fact, it has almost nothing to do with the McRib, because, as you can see, it really isn’t the McRib patty itself that has all the ingredients, or even many of the ingredients.  It is the bun.  As we discovered with the McDonalds hamburger, when we looked into it, the meat is relatively straightforward.  It is the bun that is bad.  But it isn’t just McDonald’s buns.  It is all buns.  To keep bread fresh and white, the amount of crap that is put into the bread is disturbing.  If you think the McRib is bad, take a look at the much loved and health conscious Subway bread:

How many ingredients are in that Deli Style Roll?  In a quick count I would say more than in the McRib bread.

Of the over 70 ingredients in a McRib, more than half of them are in the bun.  More than 40!  The McRib itself has 6.  The McRib sauce has 19 ingredients.  Is that a damning number by the way?  Is the number of ingredients in barbecue sauce a bad thing?  If you look at Bull’s eye barbecue sauce you get the following 17 ingredients: Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Sugar, Vinegar, Molasses, Brown Sugar, Salt, Contains Less Than 2% of Modified Food Starch, Spice, Mustard Seed, Dried Onions, Natural Flavor, Dried Garlic, White Wine, Fruit Pectin, Tartaric Acid, Citric Acid.  Similar to the McRib sauce, although no sodium benzoate or High Fructose Corn Syrup.  If you look at Rufus Teages sauce, you get this:

There are more than 30 ingredients in that list and I have to tell you, it does look like the more the merrier there.  That list of ingredients actually makes my mouth water.

The most frustrating thing about the quoted line above is that they suggest that the 70 ingredients are used to make the McRib patty, something that they think deserves to have quotes around the word meat, taste like a rib, when even a 2 year old would realize that most of those ingredients aren’t used in the meat.  The McRib actually tastes like a pulled pork sandwich, I would guess about as much as a chicken nugget tastes like a chicken strip, because it is made from pork and covered in barbecue sauce and served on what is probably the very same bun as your pulled pork sandwich is.

6.  Out of the 70 ingredients that make up the ‘pork’ sandwich, a little-known flour-bleaching agent known as azodicarbonamide lies among them.

The thing is, azodicarbonamide is actually not a little-known (it actually appears well known) flour-bleaching agent.  Even according to this article it is known to mainstream media:

mainstream media outlets have generated content revealing how azodicarbonamide is actually used in the production of foamed plastics. Foamed plastics like yoga mats and more.

You can read all about azodicarbonamide here.  The fact that a food additive is used in an industrial purpose is clearly fear mongering and a ridiculous attempt to make you associate the additive with the product that uses it, as many food additives are used in industrial processes.  Did you know that citric acid has industrial uses, yet it is used in the most organic breads you can imagine.  Azodicorbonamide is banned in many countries and has warnings in others.  It is believed to be a respiratory sensitizer, which means that it could cause asthma.  Apparently it does this by being inhaled, which would be impossible when it is in the bread, as all studies done on it have been in powder form.  Some people argue that the FDA is behind the rest of the world in not banning Azodicorbonamide, and they may be.  Certainly we can all agree that we don’t need this many chemicals and additives in our bread, whether they are believed safe or not.  This seems excessive.  The problem is, even though the media totally neglected to pick up on this fact, bloggers didn’t, Azodicorbonamide is in MOST commercially available breads (here).

According to this blogger, who won’t eat fast food now because he or she is convinced that burgers taste like gym mats, “The big story was NOT that it was in the McRib bun. The big story is that it is in almost every bun. However, it seems journalism standards have dropped these days.”

The most annoying thing about this one article that is so full of misinformation is that almost all of the sources that I used above to counter these statements of hyperbole were from his article in the first place!

Another, very annoying blogger, or more correctly stated, quack of a health nut, Joseph Mercola had this to write of the same McRib story.  The Unsavory Truth of the McRib…

Not only does Mr. Mercola fall for the unrotting burger:  ”We’ve also learned that fast food fare such as McDonald’s hamburgers contain so many chemicals and so few real food ingredients that a burger fails to show signs of decomposition after more than a decade…”

To add to the 70 ingredient story that we talked about above, we get the chemicals aren’t food line:

So, is McDonald’s fare really food?

When you consider the fact that a large number of the ingredients in a fast food meal exist nowhere in nature, but are rather concocted in a lab, the answer would have to be ‘no.’

In conclusion

Obviously the title of this article is a little misleading.  You really don’t need to know anything about the McRib.  It isn’t going to kill you, at least not on its own, but I have to tell you, the actual story behind the invention of the McRib and the invention of meat glue is great reading and I would recommend it to anyone.

You should know though, the bun for the McRib is terrible.  Most commercial bread is terrible.  In fact, if you could just cut ALL bread out of your diet you would be a much healthier person.  Don’t buy the whole wheat scam either.  Just kick the bread to the curb.

I know you all know this as well, but you would be much healthier if you stopped eating fast food.  Not because some people believe it is a science experiment gone wrong, but because it is full of calories, mostly derived from fats and refined carbs.  The calorie density of fast food is terrible.  The McRib patty itself is probably very similar to the sausage patty that McDonald’s serves for breakfast, both of which are calorie bombs.

Please though, whatever you do, don’t listen to the health food quacks who try to convince you of things about fast food that simply aren’t true.  They do us all a great disservice because by lying and exaggerating their claims they somehow make the fast food restaurants into the victims and misinform people about what makes us fat and unhealthy.  The battle to lose weight is so hard, even when you know exactly what to avoid and WHY.  It is nearly impossible when you are being constantly misinformed by the corporations and their massive advertising budgets and by zealots and their misguided ideologies.

mir·a·cle [mir-uh-kuhl]

noun

an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.

In any case, this current blunder of his has nothing to do with miracles (and if I was being honest, I am not surprised at all that he is back here).  It has to do with his complete lack of research.  I have no idea if some idiot in his staff picks some crazy idea and Dr. Oz just reads the cue cards.  I saw his over selling of palm sugar today and I cringed through the whole thing.  You can see some quotes from the clip below:

I have something new today that will change everything you know about baking and sweetening coffee and tea.  This delicious simple switch can prevent the sugar crashes that make you hungry and then cause you to gain weight.  There is a new tropical sweetener to hit the market and doctors are taking notice.  It can help stabilize your blood sugar.

Why Coconut Sugar Really Isn’t Anything New

Those are pretty bold words… change everything I know…  This must be a pretty impressive sugar.  And listening to Dr. Oz, it seems like it is.  Look at this chart:

Holy Crap!! Look at the difference between the table sugar and the coconut sugar!  Of course there is no scale on the blood sugar axis so the image is literally meaningless, but if I didn’t know better I would say that the coconut palm sugar will actually single handedly reduce the GI response of foods that you have eaten, at least it appears to judging by Dr. Oz’s graph…

Of course coconut sugar does no such thing.  Coconut sugar is simply a version of unrefined table sugar taken from coconut flowers.  It is made up mostly of sucrose, which is the same substance that makes up table sugar.  Sucrose is an equal combination of a glucose molecule and a fructose molecule.  Sucrose typically has a GI range of 58 to 65.  Understanding that Glucose is pretty much defined as being a GI of 100 (it is what the whole scale is based on), and fructose, which has a GI range of 12 to 25, it makes sense that sucrose falls right in between.  Do remember though, sucrose is very refined.

Palm sugar is not and is often quoted as having a GI of 35, but that is the first warning sign.  There is no way that any food product has one GI number.  There are so many variations between people that multiple studies of any product will produce multiple numbers, or a range.  These ranges are reported for almost all sweeteners, but quite often the extreme in the range is suggested to prove a point.  Here the Sugar Association reports sucrose at 58, while here they report it at 80.  The bias of each of these people is clearly evident in the evidence they chose to present.  That is the problem with the GI of 35 for coconut sugar.  The number comes from a study done in the Philippines that measured 10 test subject.  The description of the test can be found here.   There is nothing particularly wrong with the study, except the low sample size.  Of course, the location of the study is important because, according to Wikipedia:

The world’s largest producers of coconuts are the Philippines.^[1] and Indonesia

I am not accusing them of wrong doing, it is just there is clear motivation for the country to select the best data and we have seen poor data done in countries that had a benefit from the outcome.  Remember Dr. Oz and the African Mango that had research done in Cameroon, the largest producer of African Mango?

In fact a little more digging turns up a range of 35 to 54 for coconut sugar, based upon tests from the Philippines, USA Australia, and Japan.  With these new figures, we are getting awfully close to sucrose, which makes sense.  What makes even more sense is when you look at evaporated cane juice (which is what coconut sugar essentially is), it has a GI of 55 (I can’t find a range for it by the way, so I am a little skeptical of how much research has been done on it).  55 is awfully close to 54.   Beyond the lack of refining, another explanation of the lower GI could be the amount of fructose to sucrose.  Maple syrup has a GI of 54, honey has a GI of 30 and brown rice syrup has a GI of 25 so, lower GI sweeteners have been around for awhile, it doesn’t change what we know about sugar at all.

What Makes This Segment Offensive

Fructose has a GI of 22, yet nobody is recommending using it as a miracle sweetener.  We know that Fructose is dangerous when consumed in moderate to large quantities because it is not absorbed and used in the blood stream but instead is metabolized by the liver and stored as fat.  You can read all about it here (and if you don’t understand what fructose is and what it does, I highly recommend you read that article, it sums it up well).  The point is, fructose is dangerous and it has a low glycemic index so you would have to be an idiot to recommend a sugar just because it has a low glycemic index, especially when you point out that it has the same calories as table sugar!  This is what Dr. Oz does with coconut sugar.  If that wasn’t bad enough, then he gets a self professed sugar addict and the rest of his audience to eat blondies (light coloured brownies) and cupcakes baked with coconut sugar instead of table sugar.  The level of cognitive dissonance is astounding.  It really appears that he is promoting eating baked goods just so long as they are made with coconut sugar (Try to cut out baked good entirely)!!!!  This is INSANE!!  Almost as insane as the line he uses to close his bit on coconut sugar:

Next, would you like to put your coconut palm sugar in a special tea that will help you lose weight all day long?

Don’t put sugar in your tea.  Tea and coffee are excellent opportunities to cut your sugar dependence.  I did it.  It was hard, one of the hardest things I have done.  It took awhile, to get used to it, but now I would never go back.  It was a necessary first step in cutting my dependence on sugar and if you want to get fit, you are almost guaranteed to have to go down this road, oh and drinking tea won’t help you lose weight, no matter what the crackpot on TV says.

Early next week, Dr. Oz is going to have Kirstie Alley on his show and I cannot imagine how that is going to go.  Here an actual doctor will have the opportunity to ask her about her missing science behind your ridiculous product, a product which has no explanation whatsoever as to how it works.  Of course Dr. Oz is the last doctor on earth I would want conducting this interview so I am guessing there will be some crazy demonstrations/props, a lot of hand holding (am I the only one who is creeped out by how he has to grab onto every girl on the shows hand and not let go no matter what?), and dancing.  After all, who needs evidence and science and answers when the two of them can get fabulously wealthy and dance around the stage….

And the even better thing is that she had ‘unfortunately’ gained 70 pounds with her pregnancy, which just makes her so much more lovable and human.  After hearing about her struggle to lose the weight after giving birth, Weight Watchers came to rescue and taught her the number system for foods so she could lose weight.  According to Weight Watchers:

“From the point when we started speaking with Jessica before she became pregnant, to now when she’s had baby Maxwell, Jessica has made clear her commitment to establishing a healthier lifestyle for herself and her family. We look forward to supporting Jessica as she embarks on this next chapter in her life.”

Oh… wait a minute…  She actually was in negotiations with Weight Watchers before she was even pregnant?!?!   …and she still ended up gaining 70 pounds during pregnancy?!?!  That doesn’t make any sense at all.  In the discussions with her, did they not tell her how many points a bagel is?  She says in numerous interviews that she thought all the baby weight would go with the baby.  She was repeatedly meeting with Weight Watchers… didn’t anyone tell her?   Sure, someone cynical could imagine that the 70 pound gain was an attempt to inflate the appearance of weight loss… could there have been an incentive to the weight gain/loss? I actually don’t know because all I know about her contract is what some source recently told US Weekly, which apparently is that:

Simpson’s contract requires a 20- to 30-pound loss by the end of August or no payday

The specificity of the details from that source (give or take 10 pounds) lets me know that I shouldn’t hold my breath to learn any other parts of the contract, other than the contract is worth $3 to $4 million!!  I guess though if they weren’t talking about  local meeting locations or revisions to the points plus system for 2012 for the months while they were in discussions with her, there must be a lot of details to the contract that probably involve payments for weight gains and losses.  Even how much weight she gained was a little unclear, as some reports have it at 50 or 60 pounds, not 70.  The thing is, I would like to ask Weight Watchers to reveal the contract.  After all, they are using that contract to snow so many people into signing up for their program, it would only be fair to know what incentives their spokesmodel had for losing weight…

Whatever, Jessica had struggled just like every other woman who has gained weight during pregnancy and has to lose it.  Well, almost like every other woman, except for the fact that she could enjoy knowing that each ice cream sundae she was putting away during the third trimester might bring her a cool $100,000.  Not too sure whenever I have binged that I could find any upside, instead of that feeling of self disgust…  Still, if you listen to the rhetoric from Weight Watchers, or hear Jessica’s disturbingly cute slightly vacuous southern drawl, it is clear that she is just like you.  According to Time magazine in reference to Jessica Simpson on the first episode of the Katie Show:

It was a trademark daytime-TV moment: the story of a Woman Who Is Just Like You, except that she’s not at all. Much of Katie’s audience can identify with trying to shed baby weight, not to mention the body-image pressure placed on women. But when Katie asked Simpson, “How do you focus on losing weight and taking care of your baby, because they’re both very demanding jobs, right?” you had to assume that being paid a zillion dollars to lose the weight probably helps. The balancing act continued when Katie brought out Simpson’s Weight Watchers coach, who, Katie said, “helped me lose a few L-B’s as well. She works with plenty of normal people though. Not that we’re not normal, but…”

It was her first interview by the way, so you can’t fault her for forgetting that she is supposed to pretend to be a normal person.  So, they even brought out her Weight Watchers coach.  How cool.  Apparently her independent trainer and most likely nutritionists and chefs weren’t available.  The best news is that the specialty Weight Watchers coach that the celebs get (Katie and Jessica) also does from time to time slum it up with us normal people.

I have been checking with Weight Watchers to see if I, or an every day average woman who say, has just given birth, will have the same resources that Jessica had.  So far I haven’t found her incentives, but I am still looking.  According to their website you will get:

Those all look like awesome things, but I can’t find the 3 to 4 million dollar incentive that Jessica got.  Maybe it is in the small print.   Oh, and she has been training at a gym with a personal trainer.  Some guy named Harley Pasternak.  Apparently he is a celebrity trainer, which in this case means he trains celebrities, as opposed to the other celebrity trainers who we see all the time who really just play trainers on TV…  I am guessing he doesn’t come cheap.  I wonder, does my Weight Watchers membership give me training sessions with a personal trainer?  I will have to ask them.  I do wonder though, do I have the same access to my coach as she did?  Does Weight Watchers care as much about my weight loss as hers?  Was she eating those little Weight Watcher meals that I can get in the freezer section of my grocery store?  Oh, well, I am sure that isn’t too important, what is important is that I can do the exact same program as Jessica!!

Well, the interview was just filmed in the last few days and she looks good.  She has apparently lost over 40 pounds!! CAAA-CHING!!!  Time to start running the ads (The ad was filmed just two months after having her child) and run the magazine article at the start of this page.

I just love her screwed up mouth thing… so cute…  She is sooo real, just a real girl in the real world…  Okay, lay off people, seriously.  She is awesome and make no mistake, I would sell you out for $4 million.  This blog would be the Vitamin Water and Triple Whopper with Cheese diet blog if someone was willing to give me $4 million. I must say though, Weight Watchers has done a great job of bringing all of this together in perfect timing.  Very well orchestrated….

Don’t fault me for finding this irresistible…

That said, Weight Watchers is a pretty good program.  They are definitely getting their value with Jessica.  After all, the first episode of the Katie Curic show played like an infomercial for Weight Watchers.  How much would an ad like that cost (they even played the ad apparently)?  So, who is losing here?  Well, I guess we are.  The people who want to believe that we can lose 70 pounds in just months.  The people who want to think that the weight will just melt off when we join Weight Watchers.  The people who at the end of the day, buy the magazines, watch the shows and then pay money for things that are nowhere near as effective as we want to believe.  Obviously celebrity spokesmodels are a joke.  They know that they are totally different from you.  They don’t even think of you as being the same.  You are normal, they aren’t, they are super.  They know that.  They get paid millions of dollars in cash to lose weight and that is beyond the millions of other incentives they have.  It would be literally INSANE to join Weight Watchers because Jessica Simpson tells you it works.  That is like taking investment advice from a lottery winner.  Of course, when you struggle to lose weight without the incentives you will just have to grant that these celebrities are just better than you, they are super and you are just pathetically normal….  After all, Kirstie Alley, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Hudson, they had no problems losing weight.

Ironically this all just proves how smart Kirstie Alley is.  She put on all of that same weight as apparently intentionally as Jessica Simpson, but rather than take a $4 million dollar payday (which she previously did for Jenny Craig), she smartly created a ridiculous pink drink and sold it herself.  She used her brand to make money for her and only her.  Unfortunately her insane program appears to be of almost no value, at least no value that I can find, whereas Weight Watchers has a lot of thought behind it.

Please, I keep saying stop buying magazines and programs that are recommended by celebrities.  That may not be enough.  Let them know how upset you are that they are lying to you and using huge contracts and celebrities to dupe you out of your money.  At some point this has to stop.  We just can’t be this stupid, can we?

By the way, most news agencies print press releases as news.  In fact the bulk of what you see as news on the internet is simply press releases.  There is no journalism and no reporting going on, just reprinting and sometimes repackaging of a corporate statement.  I bring your attention to this because the press release below isn’t news.  It is just what it says it is, and I am only printing it here because it is an excellent discussion on some of the pros and cons in a very difficult issue.  Let me know what you think.

I would have put Lindsey Duncan in the Rogues Gallery for his unparalleled work at talking out of his ass about ‘super foods’, detoxification, ‘anti-aging’ foods and constantly reminding people that he is the nutritionist to the stars.   This guy has a superfood for each and every ailment known to man.   It is astounding to me that we even need regular doctors and medicines with the quick fixes this guy finds.  Who needs more reasons?

In any case, I recently posted about Lindsey Duncan’s appearance on Dr. Oz and what a vacant, over acted and completely embarrassing performance Dr. Oz put in shilling this product for Lindsey Duncan.  There were no shortage of questions about what Dr. Oz is up to,as this was at least the 4th, ‘Miracle in a bottle’ that Dr. Oz has hyped recently.  The complete lack of research on his part and that of his staff is amazing.  In the previous misstep he missed almost everything to do with the ‘Raspberry Ketones’ that he was pitching in an earlier miracle episode.  Simple things like the fact that they are almost guaranteed to not be natural raspberry ketones, but instead are most likely made in a lab (source):

Raspberry Ketones (also known as 4-(4-hydroxyphenyl) butan-2-one) are an extract from Red raspberries usually used as a scenting and flavoring agent in foods and cosmetics.^[1] It has a structure similar to Capsaicin and Synephrine, sharing a 1,3,7-cyclohexene group with a carbon tail.^[2]

It can naturally be found in many foods, most notably raspberries (in which case it is synthesized from coumaroyl-CoA), however most raspberry ketone is synthesized^[3] or produced via bacteria^[4][5] due to its high demand in cosmetics and as a flavoring agent.

But how could he have missed this:

The Facts:

Genesis Today (for full disclosure, I am the Founder & CEO of Genesis Today)

You Probably Won’t Believe this Next Turn of Events

At this point he said something else. I had to stop and rewind the video segment several times to make sure I heard him correctly; Duncan reports that participants consumed 2400 calories and states “they burned only 400 calories, now that’s weight gain, not weight loss.”

Wow.

Is Duncan seriously suggesting that an average 170-180 lbs individual only needs 400 calories per day to survive? A simple test with a BMR (basal metabolic rate) calculator will show you that the amount of calories required is actually closer to 4 times that number!

Think about that for a second.  A so called Dr., a nutritionist of all people, is claiming these people only burned 400 calories a day… yet they ate 2400… How in the world would that be possible-are these people in a cryogenic sleep state?  Dr. Lindsey even thought about it and realized that they are storing 2000 calories a day, which is what he calls weight gain….  He thought about people burning 400 calories a day as normal… Still, this misstatement is showing up everywhere on sites associated with Lindsey Duncan’s products.  I would have let it go, anyone can misstep with language once on national TV, but he keeps making this claim, even after ultimatefatburner has brought it to his attention.  You can’t say that he may not have seen the blog entry because his team responded to it here.

I love that response by the way.  My favourite part is where they throw Dr. Oz under the bus:

“I understand your frustration with some of the products or some of the herbs that are seen on Dr. Oz and their efficacy, but Dr. Lindsey is very careful about what he brings to the public light – and just because there might be holes in the study that you want to attack, Dr. Lindsey shouldn’t necessarily be the brunt of your attack. As they say, don’t kill the messenger “

With a smiley face emoticon even! If there are holes in the study and this is the study that Lindsey Duncan is bringing to the public, and calling earth shattering, in fact, it is the only thing on which he bases all of the hype that HE IS CREATING, then by definition you HAVE to kill the messenger because he is the entire problem.  Still, I love how even Lindsey Duncan’s people think that Dr. Oz is a pathetic in the products he is shilling!

Getting back to the issue at hand though.  If Lindsey Duncan is in fact promoting 2 brands of green coffee extract and admitting out of the need for full disclosure that he owns one of the brands, is there anything wrong with him not disclosing that he owns the other brand as well?

SERIOUSLY!!

Again, I would have let this go, but a very astute reader of mine, Katrina noticed something a little more coincidental:

Katrina

August 2, 2012 1:12 pm

Dear Mark,
This was an interesting article. After also watching the segment on Dr. Oz with Dr. Duncan I started searching the Internet and found an article that stated the 2 best coffee bean supplements that he recommends (Genesis Today and Pure Health). It does state that he is CEO of Genesis but I decided to check out the Pure Health website as well. This website doesn’t mention who the owners are but If you dig deep enough the address is the same as Genesis (I think they were both in Austin, TX). Interesting, huh?????

My response:

Katrina,

That is interesting.  I did a bit of digging and yes, they do have the exact same address:

Genesis Today Inc.
14101 West Highway 290
Building 1900
Austin, TX 78737

Pure Health LLC
c/o 3PL Distribution
14101 W. Hwy. 290, #1900
Austin TX 78737

I checked out the location on google maps. It is a small warehouse in Texas, there is no way that there are 2 companies there, or that Pure Health coincidently uses the same fulfillment centre as Genesis today. Great digging.

Still, I have had products for sale before (nothing related to weight loss, in fact it was for poker) and we used a fulfillment centre (sometimes if you make a product you don’t want to be shipping it out of your garage, so you pay a company to store the product in their warehouse and fill the orders as they come in.  This is a fulfillment centre), so this could be a coincidence.  I did get a good look at the business centre and that building isn’t a fulfilment centre.  Even if it were, why would Genesis today list it as it’s legal business address?  A fulfilment centre has nothing to do with your legal business address, in fact it is that fulfillment centres legal address .  As well, Austin Texas is a strange location for a fulfillment centre.

It is the white roofed building in the upper left corner there.

So, I am now pretty sure that Lindsey Duncan used his ‘full disclosure’ to actually trick us into thinking that he was actually fully disclosing his conflicts of interest, when in fact he was hiding that he had business interests in both of the companies that he is promoting.  I don’t know if that would be so bad either if he hadn’t spent so much of each of his videos and press releases admonishing us to avoid fillers, get 400 mg, avoid scams, “use well-established companies (that were ‘founded’ more than 6 days ago)”, which all might have seemed like good, doctoral advice, when in fact it was all part of a scam to get you to buy his product instead of anyone else’s.  Here he is spending minutes and an entire press release, literally stating:

My mission is to make the world a healthier place by educating on natural health and wellness and to make affordable healthy, all-natural products available and accessible for everyone. It is unfortunate that when the natural, medical or scientific community uncovers one of Nature’s most incredible natural secrets that has the potential to make a significant impact and improve the lives of millions of people around the world – that so many scammers and marketeers jump on the bandwagon with only the mission to take advantage of innocent consumers who are searching for hope and seeking to improve their health and happiness.”

Yes, he literally stated that.  I wonder, was that little voice inside his head laughing and saying, and I am one of those scammers and marketeers…

If only I could find some evidence that he has some financial connection to the Pure Health company.  The problem is though, the website does not even list the real company name that sells the products.  Is it Pure Health, is it Pure Health 100, or some other variation.  You would be astounded at how many variation there are in Texas.  Is the company even founded in Texas or were they devious enough to found it somewhere else?  When was it founded even, was this a newly hatched plan or something thought up long before?

I was getting nowhere on the computer and had a list of people I could follow up with by phone over the next week or so.  I had landlord’s numbers, IT professionals who handled the website, etc.  I would get to the bottom of this.  I had done a lot of research into company ownership back when I was doing a report on a scam ring of websites run by Henny Den Uijl and Bryan Corlett, including Lypozene and a dozen others, so I kept looking.  After awhile, I became heartened when I came across this.  Do you see the words in the url?:

On the pure Health website, on an obscure link, when clicked, you get a link that includes Genesis Today.  This was evidence, but easy for them to clean up and certainly not proof.  Still, I knew I had the good Dr.

Some complaints for Pure Health (a lot of complaints: “Since the beginning of May 2012, BBB has received a high volume and pattern of complaints regarding non-delivery of products ordered online. Many of these complaints are currently pending response from the company” source) in the BBB and a website registration led me to Nevada, .  Once I had that, I had the whole picture:

PURE HEALTH LLC.

Active File Date:  2/27/2012 Type:  Domestic Limited-Liability Company Entity Number:  E0109572012-5 Qualifying State:  NV List of Officers Due:  2/28/2013 Managed By:  Managers Expiration Date: NV Business ID:  NV20121126197 Business License Exp:  2/28/2013

Why I was having no luck finding them was because they were only created at the end of February, 2012.  Coincidently, the press release from Dr. Lindsey Duncan (the one advising you to use well established companies) was dated May 4th and he appeared on Dr. Oz in April.  So, this company was created before the Dr. Oz show aired, but certainly after he knew he was doing it, possibly after it was taped… very tricky, but even he would have to admit that this certainly was not a well established company!

I actually was quite suspicious that his wife was involved in this scam earlier because as I searched through Lindsey Duncan’s associated companies and business associates I found some interesting connections, including a holding company owned by Cheryl Wheeler-Duncan.  At this point I assumed she was his wife, and that holding company made me suspicious (although to tell you the truth, it probably has nothing to do with the whole Pure Health thing, just that holding companies are ALWAYS suspicious).

The Owner of Pure Health 100

Complainants allege products are purchased via the company’s website, payment is received, sometimes overnight, and products are not delivered by the promised delivery date. Complainants also claim the inability to contact the company to inquire about their purchase.

“As you are reaching out to these companies, please be patient. They are also being inundated with orders and inquiries, and will serve you as quickly as they possibly can.”

Hey Everyone. Check out celebrity nutritionist and natural health expert Dr. Lindsey Duncan talking about Superfoods that will help you slim down this summer. Like Pure Saffron from Pure Health! Thanks for the support Dr. Lindsey!

Conclusion

Reblogged from Markvaughan2009's Blog:

Seriously, when did Dr. Oz start becoming a shill for the worst weight loss supplement ideas?  I want to like Dr. Oz but he has come up on my radar so many times before and I gave him a pass each time, but this is too much.

I recently read a junk email I had been received that blurted out PURE_KEYTONE.  I normally junk any email with all caps in the subject, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why my junk mail filter can’t figure out this simple rule, but for some reason I read this one.  It reads:

Just released:  Dr. Oz discovers new weight loss miracle

Now, there is enough in that heading alone to make me ignore the junk email, but I was feeling curious and there was a link to this video:

This video is so full of warning signs of a pure scam I am not sure what to think of Dr. Oz (Seriously, did I hear him say, #1 Miracle in a Bottle… how many miracles have been bottled??!?!).  I don’t think he is a con artist.  I don’t think he is being paid by the makers of Raspberry Keytones to say what he says….  Could he really be this stupid?  I don’t know how.  I figured I would research this product and then disprove everything in the video, but I didn’t even have to.  This guy, Andrew Lessman, already did and you can read all about it by clicking on the link.

I don’t know which of the main facts bother me the most.  This is not a natural raspberry ketone, but a synthetic manufactured one.  The real product is ridiculously expensive, but this cheap knock off obviously isn’t, yet everyone is touting this stuff as if it comes from real raspberries.  That is so bad it really does deserve extra mention, along with the fact that there is apparently almost no research behind this product even though Dr. Oz and Lisa Lynn talk so much about research, but I think what makes me the most mad about this Dr. Oz segment is the way he puts balloons in liquid nitrogen and explains that is exactly what is happening in your body…  SERIOUSLY DR. OZ?!!?!?  Did you just get a liquid nitrogen kit for your birthday and you were eager to try it out??? That has nothing to do with how fat loss works in any circumstances…  Balloons shrink because the atoms in them slow down as a consequence of cooling and therefore apply less pressure to the wall of the balloon… how in the world does this relate to raspberry ketone?!??!?  Please explain this to us!

I was already suspicious of Dr. Oz when he proclaimed that African Mango was a ‘Breakthrough supplement’, in First For Women Magazine.  I don’t want to slam First For Women Magazine here, because they are such a pathetic rag of a magazine, I will save them for a whole entry.  In any case, it seems that every week Dr. Oz has a new miracle diet that they are happy to share with us.   In fact, Dr. Oz even thought that African Mango is one of the 3 supplements you need in your medicine cabinet… seriously

Dr. Oz African Mango; Irvingia Gabonensis; In this segment of the Dr. Oz show today Dr Oz African Mango, Vitamin B And A Multi Vitamins In Your Medicine Cabinet Dr. Oz talked about the 3 must have’s for the medicine cabinet. There is interest in using supplements containing Irvingia gabonensis for weight loss, lowering cholesterol levels, and improving control of diabetes. weight loss and diet miracles that you find in your medicine cabinet including Vitamin B, African Mango(or Irvingia Gabonensis) and a multivitamin. source

He called this one a miracle in your medicine cabinet…  I get the impression that Dr. Oz throws around the word miracle a little too easily.  In any case, if you want to hear about the problems with African Mango, you can read about them here when I went after him in 2010.

That is 2 straight up scams he fell for… hopefully he has mended his ways, realized what a bozo he looks like being duped over and over again.  After all, he has an audience of millions who run out and buy whatever products he recommends.  I am sure he feels terrible for having these people spend their money and more importantly put their hope and their faith into something he assures them is an actual miracle, only to find out later that it does not do anything that it claims.

Wait… here he is selling a new Green Coffee Bean Extract as a weight loss supplement… opening up with claims like,’Magic Weight Loss Cure for EVERY Body type and Miracle Pill (there is a bunch of those miracle pills apparently).  You can see the embarrassing video for yourself, below:

Here you can read an unbiased reporting of the study that is apparently shaking the science community to their core!  Notice first and foremost the size of the study.  Only 16 overweight individuals.  Otherwise, the weight loss seems to be reported correctly, but look at how the study was run.  It was a ‘cross over study’ with each person taking each of the 3 treatments during the study, Placebo, High Dose and Low Dose.

It was a so-called “cross-over” study in which people cycled through the two doses and the placebo, each for six weeks. Such studies have advantages because each person serves as his or her own “control,” improving the chances of getting an accurate result.

For the life of me I cannot figure out how this makes each person his or her own ‘control’ unless they are reporting the data as a 6 week outcome.  Even then, how are they varying the treatment, is it random?  Do they report the weight loss during each portion of the study?  I can’t find that out because even more disturbingly, the study does not appear to have been published.  It has only been presented and all of the material for the article was sourced from this press release.

So, at best we have some intriguing information to follow up on with other studies.  It would be criminal for a doctor to jump from that to calling this a weight loss miracle and suggest that ‘this little bean has scientists saying they have found the magic weight loss cure for every body type.’  You can see him say that in the video above, I am not making this up.  I have no idea what network he is on, but I cannot imagine that this recklessness isn’t opening them up to some terrific litigation possibilities.

Of course, they could always blame it on Lindsay Duncan, the certified nutritionist who is so excited about green coffee beans.  Who is Lindsay Duncan?  Well, according to his bio:

With over 28 years of clinical experience naturopathic doctor and celebrity nutritionist, Dr. Lindsey Duncan is often called the “Indiana Jones of Medicine,” and is one of the world’s leading experts on superfoods, herbal medicine, natural remedies and natural health.

With an intro like that, you KNOW I am going to bury this guy.  Often called, the Indiana Jones of Medicine… maybe if you count the times he pays people  to say it to him.  This guy is remarkable.  He claims that he doesn’t often offer weight loss supplement advice and this appears to be mostly true, until you dig a little deeper and find out he too is in on the Raspberry Ketone deal and he also appears to be recommending Resveratrol, the much touted active ingredient in Red Wine, for weight loss (and there is the MLM scam, but that comes later).  Still, compared to how many other products he recommends for cures for just about every ailment, I am going to give him a pass on this one.  Comparatively he doesn’t recommend weight loss supplements as much as every other type of supplement on earth!  If you have the endurance to sit through it, this is an amazing self promotion video:

You even get to hear him called the Indiana Jones of Medicine…  So, other than the fact that this guy is spouting off about how ingredients work like he actually has a clue (it is this jump from the results of a study to this sureness of how the product works that makes nutritionists like this guy so detestable), you get this really annoying soundtrack that keeps on touting this ‘Genesis Pure’.  I will get to that in a second, but in the meantime I want to talk about his demo reel he is peddling on You Tube.  The thing is, if he had discovered a product that actually worked, touted one discovery that was of any value or performed any research on anything, that would be worthy of a demo reel and I would expect to see it in his video.  Of course I don’t believe he has done any of this, instead his demo reel consists of whatever promotional spots he can get on vapid shows like The View and the celebrities he has had his photo with.  He can’t even help himself but he has to look at the camera when he is being filmed climbing a palm tree.

All of this makes me hate the guy, and the fact that he states that he is ‘one of the world’s leading experts on super foods’, and I have said repeatedly that super foods are a scam and anyone who tries to pitch them to you is a con artist… well, by that definition, Lindsay Duncan is the world’s leading expert!  Further, what makes this guy even more suspect is the fact that he is an expert on the alkaline diet, a diet based upon such misinformation as to be mind boggling.  I had thought that everyone associated with this diet had hidden their heads in shame.

This is all bad, but possibly forgivable, but you see, what you didn’t find out from the Dr. Oz bit, you know the one about green coffee bean extract, is that this Lindsey guy likes it so much he is helping legitimate supplement companies by giving them a video telling people how to buy the right type of Green Coffee Bean Extract.  You can see the video here.  It is on the website of Genesis Today.  They sell green coffee bean extract and they have posted a video of the good doctor, not only explaining exactly how this supplement works, but more importantly what to look for when you are buying it.  I am sure he performs this service for every supplement company because he is such a believer in this product, there isn’t a reason why he would be doing it just for Genesis today…  Mind you, that name does ring a bell…

Wait, wasn’t that part of the song in the self aggrandizing video he has of himself?  OMG, a quick search on LinkedIn and low and behold, he is CEO of Genesis Today.  He makes money (I would think lots of money) selling the same green coffee bean extract he was touting to Dr. Oz!!!  I am not making this up.  NOWHERE in the video does he admit this.  He does not state his clear conflict of interest in the interview with Dr. Oz, and true to form, the crack squad on that TV show failed to pick this up before broadcast.  In fact, nowhere on the website can you find the corporate information that would tell you that Lindsey Duncan is the CEO of this company.  Any real profession would at the least censure someone for such a clear failure to disclose your relationship with the product you are promoting.  No wonder he likes the green coffee beans… he is sitting on tons of them!  Oh, and by the way, this guy also likes the raspberry ketones at the end of this video, so rest assured he is probably selling that too.  I was wondering if there was a connection between himself and the girl from the raspberry ketone segment on Dr. Oz, Lisa Lynn, but I haven’t found one yet.   Mind you, she sells raspberry ketones too.  It appears that Dr. Oz is literally a shill….

If that was all, Lindsey Duncan, the Snake Oil Salesman of the Medicine industry  (by the way, so far as I can tell, he has been called that as many times as Indiana Jones), would have vaulted himself right into the Rogues Gallery,but there is more.  Lindsey Duncan has now gone into the Multilevel Marketing business with his green coffee bean extract leading the way.  Everyone knows that MLM’s are scams.  They are bad for everyone but the person who starts them.  What these guys are selling is the water filter or 2012.

Some of the crap they sell:

Cell Water?!?!? Come on… at least try!!  That is pathetic.  I love how the weight control formula addresses weight loss from seven critical angles…  7 huh?  Why not eight?  Well, that is trying at least.

It would take me another entry to go through the Genesis PURE website, but it appears to be a standard MLM scam with terrible products run by a guy who loves green coffee beans and climbing palm trees.

I love it when I get 2 inductees for the price of one.  Welcome to the Rogues Gallery Drs.  You will find yourself in good company.

The thing is though, Whole Foods has a problem.  They are part of the belief that Organic is Healthy.  I am not suggesting here that organic foods may not be healthier than non-organic foods, but that unhealthy foods are still unhealthy even when made from organic ingredients.  This seems obvious to everyone in general, but somehow, you end up in a Whole Foods and suddenly the organic candies at the end caps and the cash register just don’t look so bad.  Their candies scream of their benefits and their ingredients rarely contain any sugar…  just organic evaporated cane juice.

I hate how easily fooled people are by these things and how Whole Foods is happy to present itself as a healthy food store while pushing candy as much as any other store, but that isn’t the reason I am mad at them right now.  This is:

An Open Letter to Whole Foods:

Dear Margaret Wittenberg and Joe Rogoff,

First and foremost I want to commend you on all of the great things that you have done with your stores.  I was recently shopping in my local Whole Foods at Park Royal, a store which I enjoy very much when I happened to run into this end cap:

Worst End Cap Ever

This cute little summer beach display looks so harmless.  Full of toys and towels… what kind of cold hearted bastard would have a problem with it you are probably wondering?  Well, the thing is, as I was walking by I noticed the ‘Sharkies’ in the middle of the display.

Yes, right here under the cute octopus backpack:

I remembered having some sharkies in a pack that was given to me once before a running a long endurance event.  They were some sort of energy chew, kind of like a ‘GU’ but in gelatin form.  I actually tried them and found them nearly inedible, so the name stuck out fir ne when I was walking by.  Why in the world would you place a quick, salty energy source in a display of young children’s beach stuff?  Then I noticed the packaging.  These aren’t your ordinary energy replacement chews, these are specifically marketed to children!!!

To my shock and amazement, Whole Foods is actually selling candy to kids under the guise of sport chews!!  For the life of me, I cannot imagine what in the world a kid would be doing with sports chews.   What kind of exercise would  a young child be doing that they would need a large influx of sugar in their system?  I have taken energy gels before when running, but never at a distance less than a 1/2 marathon.  I can’t imagine the distance that a kid would have to run to deplete his or her glycogen stores, but it would have to be substantial.  I wonder, do you have anyone on your staff that would recommend these or find a legitimate need for them?

I don’t imagine that a kid who is playing with an octopus bucket would be up to that kind of distance, do you?  Kids shouldn’t be taking energy gels or gelatins except under the most extreme conditions.  These are not items that parents should be giving to kids at half time of a soccer game for example.  All of the exercise experts know this, you at Whole Foods should know this.

What may be more disturbing than the fact that you are selling energy gels marketed to children, is the fact that these aren’t even energy gels, they are straight candy.

According to allaboutrunning.net:

Gels provide a way for your body to take in energy during times of extreme endurance. Many forms of carbohydrate (e.g. glucose) can trigger an insulin production reaction in the body which can result in a feeling of energy loss – this is the mechanism behind the famous ‘two o’clock slump’ experienced after a big lunchtime meal. However, gels are mostly made up of maltodextrin or some other form of carbohydrate which breaks down very easily in the body and does not cause a sugar overload.

In face, GU the leading energy gel manufacturer agrees:

The maltodextrin, which makes up 70-80% of the carbohydrate blend (depending on flavor), takes several minutes longer. Because of this delay, your muscles enjoy a steady stream of energy instead of one gigantic sugar rush and a corresponding crash.

So, true energy supplements contain a high amount of maltodextrin, but not Sharkies for kids, no, they are all kinds of sugar:

Organic Sugar, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Organic White Grape Juice Concentrate…  All of the first 3 ingredients are all sugar.  We know better than to eat foods that have sugar listed in the first 3 ingredients and this one has all 3!  Although this is dressed up as a ‘Sport Chew’ it is nothing more than candy.

In fact, the salts usually present in sports chews and not surprisingly actually present in the adult version of this candy are even missing.  One of the most important ingredients in an actual sport chew/gel is the electrolytes that replace the electrolytes that your body sweats out.  The problem is, they taste like what they are, salt.  They make the sport gel taste rather unpleasant.  There is no reason to be removing the salts from the chews unless it is a tacit admission that these are a tasty treat, not a sport chew at all.  The thing is, there really is no reason why a child wouldn’t be able to run an endurance race such as a half marathon or a marathon.  After reading the differences in the ingredients for these I am not entirely sure they would be safe for that purpose given that the salt has not been added.

Shame on you Whole Foods!  I am not at all surprised by Sharkies by the way.  What they are doing is terrible, but there are no shortage of unethical companies that are trying to sell to our marketplace.  When you invite them in though, they become your problem.  You are vouching for them.  You have banned Red Listed Seafood and GMO foods because you understand that you have an obligation to the consumer.  This is an obligation that has come from the trust you have asked us to have in you and your products.  A trust I did have until recently.

I love being in a place that loves food and loves the feeling you get when you are around it at it simplest and purest forms.  My children and I were fortunate enough to get a seminar from a local beekeeper who had samples of his local, organic honey, real honey, which is apparently rarer than you would think.  I want to believe that you aren’t just ‘Greenwashing’.  That you believe you are making your consumers healthier.  I don’t expect you to not sell candy.  I don’t even expect you not to put it on end caps and at tills to make more money from our impulse buys (although to be honest with you I am a little disappointed every time I see this).  I do expect you to know candy when you see it and not allow it to be marketed in your store as otherwise and I really expect you not to make cute displays out of it.  If there were any value at all for kids sport chews, there is no world in which they should be marketed to parents of kids as young as the ones who would have been buying those products.  Don’t think that this is a little issue either.  We all know sports drinks are sold to children who believe that drinking them will help them become athletes and all they achieve is to help them become obese.  This is no different, in fact probably worse.

I expect more from you.  A lot more.

Sincerely,

Mark Vaughan