Pseudoscience

Vani Hari, “Food Babe” and Quack: Where the Money Comes From

Vani Hari Food Babe

Via Virginia Postrel, just noticed an interesting investigative report in Ad Age (by E.J. Schultz and Maureen Morrison) on the financing of quackery. Vani Hari “Food Babe” is collecting large sums from marketers of fear-based foods and supplements. Taking advantage of innate aversion to “contamination,” her sponsors are hawking GMO-free foods and “natural” supplements for every ailment or problem. By raising paranoia and inflating reasons to fear GMOs and evil chemicals in food, she sets up her readers to buy expensive, sometimes useless, and sometimes harmful supplements, like Dr. Oz.

This is such a good read that it’s worth reading the whole thing, but here’s a few highlights:

… One thing is for sure: As she bashes mainstream food marketers, including Kraft Foods Group and Subway, Ms. Hari is emerging as a powerful brand herself, routinely appearing on national TV, where she is often presented as a food expert. In doing so, the Babe is positioned to capitalize on her growing fame with a burgeoning business model that includes making money by referring her loyal readers to several organic and GMO-free food brands via her website.

Under the program, known as affiliate marketing, she often posts editorial content praising these small brands, including links to their sites where readers can purchase the goods. She gets a cut of some of the transactions, according to the rules explained on some of her partners’ websites. Ms. Hari also sells “eating guides” for $17.99 a month and charges for speaking appearances.

…

Ms. Hari does not hold a nutrition or science degree, which leads some critics to label her an opportunist. “Historically, consumer advocacy has come from nonprofits,” said Maureen Ogle, an author and historian who has written about the food and beverage industry, in an email. “But the Babe isn’t an advocate. She’s an entrepreneur who clearly, obviously, is only in this for her own profit.”

…

Bloggers like her “know enough to sound credible, but they don’t know the real science [or] how to interpret peer-reviewed research to fully understand the issues that they might be preaching about,” said Julie Upton, a registered dietitian who runs a popular nutrition blog called Appetite for Health. “I stay awake at night worried that my profession is going to become a hobby because of these people.”

…

As Ms. Hari pursues her self-described mission of being “the person to carry the voice of millions,” she has also taken steps to form a viable business. She established Food Babe LLC on Aug. 1, 2011, according to filings with the North Carolina Secretary of State’s office. While her principal office is in Charlotte, her business is incorporated in Delaware, which is known for business-friendly regulations.

…

Part of her business model appears to be rooted in her affiliate-marketing partnerships. One of the companies she has recently plugged on her site is called Green Polka Dot Box, which sells home-delivered natural, organic and non-GMO foods. The company’s affiliate partners can earn 30% of the company’s annual $49.95 per-person membership fee for each person referred, plus $2 for every food purchase that person makes as long as they are a member, according to terms of the program listed on the company’s website.

…

The Federal Trade Commission requires that bloggers such as Ms. Hari disclose paid endorsements “clearly and conspicuously” on their websites.

Ms. Hari typically discloses her commercial partnerships at the tail end of her posts. Her disclosure states that “posts may contain affiliate links for products Food Babe has approved and researched herself. If you purchase a product through an affiliate link, your cost will be the same (or at a discount if a special code is offered) and Food Babe will automatically receive a small referral fee. Your support is crucial because it helps fund this blog and helps us continue to spread the word.”

An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment when asked if the disclosure met the “clear and conspicuous” threshold. Linda Goldstein, an ad lawyer and partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, said the rules are subjective and judged on a case-by-case basis. She said the FTC might favor a stand-alone message that does not include extraneous language, such as how the blog reader’s support is crucial.

Ms. Hari’s eating guides include meal calendars, recipes and grocery shopping lists with “approved brands.” Another revenue opportunity comes from speaking appearances, according to her website, which instructs viewers to inquire with her about availability and rates.

“I do have to support myself and I am very transparent about how I do that,” Ms. Hari said. “I don’t just put ads on my site to put ads. If I wanted to make a lot of money I could put a thousand ads on my site.” She added: “I can’t tell you how many people I turn away every single day. I only work with the brands I wholeheartedly support and they support my mission.”

Ms. Upton — whose site uses sponsored posts — did not disparage Ms. Hari for making money. “Running these blogs is not cheap … they have to be making some money somewhere,” she said.

But Ms. Hari gets more attention than most of her blogging peers as a result of her knack for drawing publicity (and page views) from her high-profile corporate takedowns. She often fires up her fan base, which she calls the “Food Babe Army,” on her Facebook page, which has more than 633,000 likes, and Twitter handle, which has more than 63,000 followers.

Traffic to her website is growing: Foodbabe.com averaged 310,000 unique monthly U.S. visitors in the first five months of 2014, up from 166,000 in the last five months of 2013, according to ComScore, which began tracking the site in August of 2013. By comparison, Ms. Upton’s Appetite for Health site — which according to her is among the top three for readership for dietitian-run sites — draws about 80,000 unique monthly views, she said.

Foodbabe.com’s web traffic surged in February and March, with 411,000 and 445,000 unique visits, respectively. The peak coincided with two posts she made: one about Subway in which she charged that the chain was using a dangerous chemical in its bread; and one in March, when she went after pizza chains with a variety of accusations.

Ms. Hari’s criticism of Subway focused on its use of azodicarbonamide, a chemical commonly used as a dough conditioner in bread baking. She described it as a “dangerous plastic chemical” that was also used to make yoga mats and shoe rubber and launched a petition for its removal on Feb. 4.

…

Is the chemical unsafe? Not according to the Food and Drug Administration’s website, which states that it is “not recommending that consumers change their diets because of exposure to [azodicarbonamide].” The agency notes that it approved the additive “based on a comprehensive review of safety studies, including multi-year feeding studies.”

John Coupland, a professor of food science at Penn State University, wrote in Popular Science magazine that to compare azodicarbonamide’s use in bread and yoga-mat production is not helpful. “To see the same chemical, particularly one with a scary name, in two such incongruous places is a sure way for a campaigner to trigger a disgust response but not a great way to decide if it’s safe,” he said.

Fergus Clydesdale, professor of food science at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said Ms. Hari is “very clever — she seems to know what buttons to hit” when it comes to stoking concern in consumers over what’s in their food. He noted, though, that many scary-sounding chemicals and ingredients occur in foods naturally. By her logic, Mr. Clydesdale said, one could argue that peaches are poisonous because they contain a high level of cyanide in the pit. He added that, in general, many of her claims contain “a misunderstanding of what dangerous levels are” in food. He cited a basic toxicology tenet popularized by scientist Paracelsus: the dose makes the poison.

In an interview, Ms. Hari countered that she is merely exposing issues that no one else is digging into. “The stuff that I am sharing is a lot about transparency and making sure people understand what is in their food and give them the choices,” she said. “I question what has happened because I was profoundly impacted by the way I was eating.”
She also expressed distrust of the FDA, alleging that “unfortunately the FDA approved a lot of these chemicals three decades ago or sometimes longer ago, and unfortunately we don’t know the [correct] dose.”

…

Mr. Clydesdale compared the responses by corporations to Ms. Hari and other activists bloggers to pleasing the mob. “The bloggers are the mob, and whatever it is they want, give it to them,” he said. “It’s bothersome because we’re dismissing science.”

…

She frequently uses her Facebook page to personalize the issues she covers. For example, on June 25 she posted about how she struggled with weight gain while in the corporate world. She then linked to an Oct. 2013 post from her website about how stress can cause weight gain. In that post she promoted and linked to a company called The Maca Team, which sells organic raw maca powder. On her site, Ms. Hari wrote that the Peruvian-grown plant can reduce stress and do everything from “improve mental clarity” to “treat PMS.”

According to The Maca Team’s affiliate program, partners can earn 20% on each sale they refer. Ms. Hari’s June 25 Facebook post drew 2,708 likes and 1,538 shares within 15 hours. One fan asked, “Can this be taken while breastfeeding?” Another fan wrote: “I just ordered some! Thank you also…for continuing to educate us.”

But some fans expressed concern about the post, including one person who wrote: “I love the exposure work of Food Babe so much, but if the direction is going to be the whole hearted advertisement of superfoods and supplements that actually have long histories of use by indigenous peoples to us western folks as universally good for everyone, sadly I shall have to be more judicious about my support.”

I’m also skeptical of the FDA’s regulation, but she clearly steps over the line recommending supplements for medical conditions without evidence and collecting money from their promoters for doing so. Free speech in commerce is limited to truthful speech, and untruthful speech to induce a commercial transaction is fraud; we have alphabet agencies supposedly policing such speech — the FDA, the FTC, the SEC, in areas of health, general commerce, and investments. Everyone should be free to express their thoughts on health-related issues, but when even cautious companies like 23andMe have had their truthful and disclaimer-laden speech limited by FDA threats, the ability of these quacks to bend the truth and make unfounded health claims for pay is distorting the public’s view of the science.

Rather than see her slapped down by the obtuse regulatory state, those of us who know better are countering her distortions by exposing her corrupt motivation. She may even believe everything she promotes is good, but being deluded is no excuse for promoting “natural” substances with unknown side effects and dangers to the general population with only the sketchiest warnings or proof of efficacy.

I’ve previously discussed the problem of the “Food Babe” here, and Dr. Oz here.

Bonus reading: Medical Student Wants to Bring Down Dr. Oz.

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

More on Quacks: “Dr. Oz” Testifies He’s a Victim!

Dr. Oz testifies

As a followup to my post on “Food Babe” Vani Hari’s quackery, media quack Dr. Oz was called up before Congress to explain how he could in good conscience promote 16 miracle fat loss solutions, none of which work. Consumerist excerpts:

Oprah’s favorite alternative medicine mouthpiece Dr. Oz got little love during Tuesday’s Senate subcommittee hearing on the misleading marketing of diet products, with the TV personality admitting that his use of terms like “miracle” for unproven treatments had provided fodder to scammers out to make a quick buck off people desperate to shed pounds. Last night, the Doc went on Facebook to give his fans his perspective on the issue.

“For years I felt that because I did not sell any products that I could be enthusiastic in my coverage,” wrote Doc Oz, who was chastised — most notably by Missouri Senator Clair McCaskill — for shows where he called certain weight-loss products “the number one miracle in a bottle” or “the magic weight-loss solution for every body type,” in spite of little to no peer-reviewed scientific evidence to back up such claims.

“I believe the research surrounding the products I cover has value,” writes Oz, without naming any particular studies. “I took part in the hearing because I am accountable for my role in the proliferation of these scams and I recognize that my enthusiastic language has made the problem worse at times.”

As he stated during the hearing, Dr. Oz defended his choice to air programs about these unproven products by saying that the discussion is going to happen anyway so it should happen on his show. “To not have the conversation about supplements at all, however, would be a disservice to the viewer,” he explains. “In addition to exercising an abundance of caution in discussing promising research and products in the future, I look forward to working with all those present yesterday in finding a way to deal with the problems of weight loss scams.”

A good chunk of the population wants to be believe there are easy solutions to medical problems being kept from them by evil drug and food companies. The primary solution to fat gain issues — cutting back on carbs — doesn’t require purchase of a magic substance and so can’t be marketed as profitably. Having been partially protected by the FDA from some quack medical claims, the population is far less skeptical than it should be. “How could they say that if it wasn’t true?” — quite profitably, it turns out.

Althouse blog comments on this, noting Senator McCaskill’s statement “I know you feel that you’re a victim… If you would be more careful, maybe you wouldn’t be victimized as frequently,” which conflicts with “don’t you dare assign any responsibility to the victim!” arguments about female victims.

“Pills and Starships” by Lydia Millet – Pseudo Science Fiction

Pills and Starships by Lydia Millet

As a reader of science fiction from age 6 (if Tom Swift books qualify, which they do), it pains me to see politicized and depressing stories for young people, promoted by a certain negative East Coast US mindset that believes technology and the future are bad things, that freedom of thought is dangerous, and that Progress is about appointing certain right-thinking types (the nomenklatura that are literate in the arts but not in the sciences) to direct everyone down the righteous path to equality and Utopia.

I also have a background in literary fiction: I have, for example, met John Updike at a Harvard writing class where he was a special guest, and experienced the joy of rejection slips with encouraging notes from the New Yorker. The New York/East Coast literary establishment — the academics, the publishers in Manhattan, the magazines that dictated tastes and high culture like the New Yorker — are in steep decline these days, and the damnable public insists on reading much more genre fiction, finding the literary novel less accessible and entertaining. Nothing makes a high-literary sort burn with resentment more than seeing self-published trash like 50 Shades of Gray and good science fiction like the Wool series route around the tasteful gatekeepers to make $millions for their authors.

Thus there is a temptation for literary authors whose sales are flagging to try to write in genres that might sell better. Unfortunately they sometimes try science fiction (which, if it is less technological but still projects a future society that runs on different principles, is sometimes called “speculative fiction.”) Being a futurist or technologist, or both, is not something most literary authors have the background for, and their lack of interest shows when they try it — generally they pick up the most hackneyed, uncreative current memes about the future and project them, mixed with their political biases, into a future world or society that is implausible to any student of technology or history.

A fine early example of this was Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which could only have been written by someone ignorant of the true American character. Somehow a people who are cantankerous and barely able to tolerate gun regulation are going to acquiesce to a fundamentalist religious dictatorship that enslaves women — really? Only an academic author would believe something so preposterous. The Wikipedia entry on the novel sets the scene:

Beginning with a staged terrorist attack (blamed on Islamic extremist terrorists) that kills the President and most of Congress, a movement calling itself the “Sons of Jacob” launches a revolution and suspends the United States Constitution under the pretext of restoring order. They are quickly able to take away all of women’s rights, largely attributed to financial records being stored electronically and labelled by gender. The new regime moves quickly to consolidate its power and reorganize society along a new militarized, hierarchical, compulsorily Christian regime of Old Testament-inspired social and religious ultra-conservatism among its newly created social classes. In this society, almost all women are forbidden to read.

This book became a bestseller and a movie, and the East Coast literati (with their paranoia about the feared Other, the fundamentalist religionists who were then getting headlines) were completely willing to believe that only one or two elections separated the US from a totalitarian religious state.

I was listening to NPR yesterday and heard an interview with author Lydia Millet about her new book, Pills and Starships. The book sounded like similar literati scare-mongering by someone of little or no scientific background, so I investigated further.

The PR blitzes legacy publishers can provide for a new book are still amazing. Not only is she getting a PR plug by those influence-peddlers at NPR for her crappy book, there are reviews in the Washington Post and the New York Journal of Books, as well as dozens of planted reviews at Goodreads. The book has climbed to around #2,000 on Amazon’s bestselling list but has only two reviews there so far, meaning the publisher was not able to game Amazon’s review system as effectively.

The world she proposes for the future (from the Amazon page):

Earth reached its ecological tipping point some years ago, and corporations now manage all aspects of life. No more babies are being born, the elderly must purchase contracts to die, and drugs (“pharma”) control a dwindling human population. Natalie’s parents have purchased a death contract, and they have one final week together. The 17-year-old must keep a journal, which she addresses to an unknown space traveler—the only place where starships come into the story. As the Bountiful Passing approaches, Nat and her rebellious younger brother, Sam, begin to make plans to save their parents, or, at the very least, to rescue themselves from the tyranny of the corps and their Death Math. A predictable plot and strained teen voice distract from the very beginning and with 90-plus pages of backstory, the real action doesn’t begin until well into the book. The ecological theme, clearly a passion of the author, unfortunately comes across as too heavy-handed and didactic in tone. An additional purchase only.—Katherine Koenig, The Ellis School, PA

Here’s her author bio from Amazon:

Lydia Millet is a novelist and short-story writer known for her dark humor, idiosyncratic characters and language, and strong interest in the relationship between humans and other animals. Born in Boston, she grew up in Toronto and now lives outside Tucson, Arizona with her two children, where she writes and works in wildlife conservation. Sometimes called a “novelist of ideas,” Millet won the PEN-USA award for fiction for her early novel My Happy Life (2002); in 2010, her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2008, 2011, and 2012 she published three novels in a critically acclaimed series about extinction and personal loss: How the Dead Dream, Ghost Lights, and Magnificence. June 2014 will see the publication of her first book for young-adult readers, Pills and Starships — an apocalyptic tale of death contracts and climate change set in the ruins of Hawaii.

She has no background in economics, history, or hard sciences, but with “feelings” and a literary sensibility, she is willing to project a stunningly unimaginative future designed to reinforce current public school emphasis on “climate change” and the depressing fate that awaits us all if we don’t follow “feelings” as a guide to policy. The widespread promotion of this kind of propaganda to young people might have been useful when the education establishment drenched them in optimistic technocratic futures, but now it is just piling on a Conventional Wisdom that discourages any kind of planning for a brighter future. A subversive work now would be technologically optimistic and recognize how much better the future will be than the past for most people.

There’s a place for dystopias in Young Adult fiction, for example the Hunger Games series. But they should be sharp and imaginative and realistic about how real people respond to conditions.

Here are some fragments from reviews less influenced by PR quid pro quos:

I didn’t love this book. The book is told as a journal, with the audience some unknown spacefarer on a ship somewhere out in the solar system. And for me, that’s where it doesn’t work. Okay, I understand the point of a journal, but I think Millet sticks a little too strictly to the format, telling us far more than she shows us. If anything, the beginning drags as she explains and explains the world where Nat and Sam live.

I did care about the characters, but it would have been more enjoyable for me to see things as they unfolded. Millet even describes the dialog in places, rather than recounting it — or trying to recount it — which comes across as a rookie mistake. Just when the plot was getting good, the book ended, too, which left me feeling like I’d missed something. — Dean Fetzer at LitReactor.com

… When, from beneath the glossy surface, a disturbing reality begins to emerge, Nat’s emotionally flat narration makes it hard to care. Passive and without affect, she accepts her parents’ choices and later abandons her brother during a horrendous storm with elegiac regret. Despite exposition that’s rarely interrupted by dialogue, this world’s puzzlingly out of focus, real places carelessly portrayed. The novel’s narrative conceit has Nat explaining her story to a hypothetical distant reader. Summarizing the action robs it of suspense and interest: Readers do not see the story unfold and watch characters act and interact, making it difficult for them to interpret their behavior for themselves.

Detail may be the lifeblood of fiction, but storytelling is its pumping heart; without it, this all-premise effort is DOA. — Kirkus Reviews

In other words, it’s bad fiction as well as bad science fiction. Yet it will be sold and pumped up by the ideologically-biased publishing industry, which is doing a fine job of destroying itself by promoting the dull and correct while blocking the novel and subversive works of much better authors.

For an update on this topic and the ongoing war in gaming see: YA Dystopias vs Heinlein et al: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again

For more on pop culture:

The Lessons of Walter White
“Blue Valentine”
“Mad Men”
The Morality of Glamour
“Mockingjay” Propaganda Posters
“Big Bang Theory” — Aspergers and Emotional/Social Intelligence
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
Reading “50 Shades of Grey” Gives You Anorexia and an Abusive Partner!
YA Dystopias vs Heinlein et al: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again
“Raising Arizona” — Dream of a Family

Vani Hari: “Food Babe” and Quack

Vani Hari Food Babe

Our goal here at JebKinnison.com is to give you reliable and useful information about living a high-quality life. Unfortunately others have made a good living providing misinformation designed to scare you into buying their products or giving them further attention to sell ad space; this is called “yellow journalism,” or in the health fields, quackery. While much myth and superstition is harmless, some has very real and dangerous consequences; we’re now seeing epidemics of childhood diseases like measles and whooping cough that had been almost eliminated by vaccination because some people created scare stories about vaccines and persuaded millions of parents to avoid vaccinations. Meanwhile, genetic engineering has been used to increase yields, reduce use of insecticides, and create wonderful new products like rice with natural Vitamin A, which could help end a type of Vitamin A deficiency-caused blindness among the very poor. Pseudoscience and alarmism have combined to produce a paranoid sect that, if widely followed, will turn the clock back to an era where starvation and disease were much more prevalent.

Quacks like Dr. Oz have made fortunes misleading the public. The latest example of this is Vani Hari, the “Food Babe,” who has made a career out of misleading scare stories about chemicals in common foods:

Like Mark Crislip, who recently wrote about her about her mind-numbingly stupid antivaccine post, until recently I had no idea who she was, but unfortunately, I do now. She’s photogenic and also has a talent and penchant for making her utter ignorance of chemistry and science work for her as a powerful P.R. tool that has catapulted her from an obscure food blogger to a guest on television shows such as The Doctors and that repository of all medical crankery and quackery, The Dr. Oz Show, where The Great and Powerful Oz himself praised her activities as part of the “Oz effect.” Her name is Vani Hari, but she is much better known by her blog name, The Food Babe. She’s been featured on this blog before, not surprisingly, both by Mark Crislip and Steve Novella, who dismantled her claims that microwaving food somehow destroys its nutritional value and renders it full of “toxins” and her attack on Subway for using azodicarbonamide, which she dubbed the “yoga mat chemical.”

Read the whole post for a flavorful deconstruction of Vani Hari, skillful propagandist and media manipulator.

Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations, available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

More on Vani Hari and other modern quacks:

Vani Hari, “Food Babe” and Quack: Where the Money Comes From
Vandana Shiva: Quack
More on Quacks: “Dr. Oz” Testifies He’s a Victim!
“Parallel Science Propaganda Machine”
Mike Adams: Quack Suggests Murdering Monsanto-supporting Scientists
Cleanses and Detox Diets: Quackery
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Quack
Progressive Neighborhoods: Low Vaccination Rates Create Epidemics

For more on healthy eating, diet, and weight loss:

Getting to Less Than 10% Body Fat Like the Models – Ask Me How!
Starbucks, Jamba Juice Make You Fat
Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat. Government Guidelines Did!
‘Fed Up’ Asks, Are All Calories Equal?
Fructose: The True Villain?
More on “Fed Up”, Sugar Subsidies, and Obesity
Another Study on Diet Drinks
LeBron James Cut Carbs for Lean Look
Why We’re Fat: In-Depth Studies Under Way
Almonds: Superfood, Eat Them Daily for Heart Health
Fish Oil Supplements Ward Off Dementia
More on Diet Drinks: Best Studies Show They Aid Weight Loss
Sugared Soft Drinks: Health Risk? (and What About Diet Soda?)
Gluten-Free Diets: The Nocebo Effect
Acidic Soft Drinks and Sodas: Demineralization Damages Teeth
Fish and Fish Oil for Better Brain Health
Salt: New Research Says Too Little May Be Unhealthy
Bulletproof Coffee: Coffee, Oil, and Butter for Breakfast?

For more on worthwhile supplements and life extension habits:

Supplements and Life Extension:

Getting to Less Than 10% Body Fat Like the Models – Ask Me How!
Low-Dose Aspirin Reduces Pancreatic Cancer
Daily Aspirin Regimen Reduces Cancer Rates
Almonds: Superfood, Eat Them Daily for Heart Health
Fish Oil Supplements Ward Off Dementia
Lower Back Pain: Acetaminophen (Tylenol, Paracetamol) Useless
Cleanses and Detox Diets: Quackery
Gluten-Free Diets: The Nocebo Effect
Scams: Multi-Level Marketing, Herbalife
Fish and Fish Oil for Better Brain Health
Vitamin D: Anti-Dementia?
Salt: New Research Says Too Little May Be Unhealthy

Jeb Kinnison

Writing About Life and Love

Pseudoscience

Vani Hari, “Food Babe” and Quack: Where the Money Comes From

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More on Quacks: “Dr. Oz” Testifies He’s a Victim!

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“Pills and Starships” by Lydia Millet – Pseudo Science Fiction

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Vani Hari: “Food Babe” and Quack

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