Products I Do Not Recommend

Splenda, An Artificial Sweetner
Watch this video and consider whether you want to use Spenda or any artificial sweetner.
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/posts/genetic-roulette-free-screening/

Dr. Mercola' s Way Healthier Full Spectrum Light Bulbs
I ordered a set of these for our office. The people that work with me complained that the lights were "cold, harsh, and reminded us of the horrible lights we remember in grade school." We returned them. The good news is Mercola's company reversed the charges on my credit card immediately.

I feel sorry for Dr. Mercola. Where he once was a champion of information about progressive health, he appears to have fallen into partnership with "direct-marketing" people, who use people with his credibility to deliver fear-based sales pitches and deceptive marketing to sell products. They have built his marketing up so that in 2010 mercola.com became the number one internet health web site, but at what cost to his credibility?

Dr. Mercola's Whole Foods Multi-Vitamins
Seeing this product being sold by Dr. Mercola was a grossly unhappy surprise. He has never gone so far in destroying his credibility before this. The top of the page greets you with -
"WARNING - YOUR MULTIVITAMIN MAY NOT BE ALL IT CLAIMS TO BE..."

Fear-Based Selling Usually Indicates Deception
As happens with many companies that sell "whole-foods-supplements" in health food stores, selling products based on creating an illusion that other types of vitamins are "toxic" is almost always a tip-off that the manufacturer is deceiving you to sell you products of less real value for a much higher cost while giving you only nutrient doses. If they truly have a superior product they don't have to resort to fear-based negative selling to garner a purchase from you.

While there are a few inferior multi-vitamin products being sold, the vast majority of multi-vitamin products you can buy in the over seven thousand health food stores in the United States have been tested and found to have exactly what their labels say.

Deficient Formulation And A Poor Value
Inspection of Mercola's vitamin formula shows that at $19.95 per month it is not a good value. For instance, it is not a "complete" multi-vitamin, multi-mineral formula. It contains no calcium, magnesium or vitamin D, so it doesn't supply the RDA of all the essential vitamins and minerals. Furthermore, in most cases, the nutrient potencies, including tiny RDA amounts of B-vitamins, are far too low to provide optimal benefits. (Click here to read my fully-referenced document on optimal vitamin dosing.)

Mercola is also selling Whole Food Vitamins + Vital Minerals, which contains important minerals, like calcium, but the doses are again too low to produce optimal effects.

As evidence of the lack of substance he shows in selling this product, he promotes his vitamin products with fear-based tactics saying, "Synthetic alternatives to whole foods are known as “isolates”. Your body will only absorb a small percentage of an isolate form of vitamins and minerals — and utilize even less (Your body absorbs much more of the whole food form.) On top of that, there may be side effects, depending on the quality of the isolate."

This statement is meant to scare people into buying his vitamin formula, but it is nonsensical. All of the over 200,000 studies that show the benefits, and the safety and effectiveness of taking vitamins as dietary supplements use the very same vitamins and minerals he describes in scary terms as "isolates."

This is doublespeak. Isolates are the best type of nutrients if you want optimal absorption. Except for calcium and vitamin C vitamins bound in foods do not absorb as well as isolated nutrients, because your intestines can only absorb nutrients in their "free" isolated state. (Click here to read my article with 46 medical journal references that details this.)

99.99 percent of the vitamin products sold in quality health foods stores, like Whole Foods Market, are isolated vitamins and minerals. Even the products sold as "food-grown-type," "bio-cultured," "food-state," and other "food" vitamins are actually isolated vitamins and minerals mixed into foods, in a deceptive attempt to make them more marketable. However, isolated vitamins and minerals are sold there because quality studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals over the last approximately fifty-plus years prove that they can work safely to make you healthier.

On inspecting the product he sells as "Whole Foods Multi-Vitamins" you will find that it contains small amounts of the very same isolated vitamins sold everywhere - along with some added food materials, so he can call them "Whole Food Vitamins."

This is nonsense.

"Homestatic-Type" Vitamins And Minerals.
Marketed as magically superior to other vitamins, the doses provided are also too low to provide optimal benefits. Unfounded claims are made that they have tremendous absorption and magical effects that are not verified by any independently published university studies. The company selling them makes many false claims, which should tell you something about their motive, which is only to make money, not to make you optimally healthy.

"Whole-Food-Probiotic-Type" Nutrients.
Including "bio-cultured-type" nutrients, "whole-food-probiotic-type" nutrients and "food-state-type" nutrients, which are also provided in doses too low to provide optimal benefits. Claims are made that the nutrients' absorption is many times better than the vitamins sold by all other companies (this should make you suspicious) and that they have magical effects that are not supported by any independently published university studies. They claim to have studies proving what they say, but the only studies available were paid for by the companies and conducted by one paid researcher. Almost all of the "studies" were not published in peer-reviewed medical journals. (The three that were published showed no significant advantage for USP-type isolated vitamins or "food-type" vitamins.)

The first problem is that if the small amounts of nutrients provided in these types of formulas were gleaned from the foods you eat, they would give you too small an amount of food to sustain you from day to day. These products give you tablet amounts of foods, like 1,000 milligrams. Mice might live with these amounts, but not humans who need amounts of food in the hundreds of thousands of milligrams (480,000 milligrams equals one pound - which is the amount of food on a plate called a meal.) Does this make some kind of sense?

The few studies that exist that look at these products are manufacturer-sponsored studies, not published by independent researchers. Only three of them have been published in peer-reviewed medical journals. However, even these studies do not support the claims of superior absorption that are made to sell these extremely high-priced products. Imagine spending $150 to $200 per pound for tabletted foods. Read more by clicking here.

Michael Mooney
www.michaelmooney.net