You may wonder why anything this obvious even needs to be reported as “news” in the first place. Yet that’s what’s happened this week over the issue of whether taking vitamin supplements can ward off cancer and other serious diseases better than eating healthy food does. Pitching this supplement claim is like a dream fantasy for legitimate supplement manufacturers and snake oil salesmen alike, so both groups will be disappointed by this “news”.
Sally Scroggs, health education manager at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Medical Center’s Cancer Prevention Center, has announced in a news release:
“Researchers are still unsure about whether or not minerals, herbs and other plants taken in pill, capsule, tablet or liquid form actually prevent cancer.”
Researchers may be unsure, but luckily for the supplement industry, a gullible public remains profitably convinced that not only should we all take expensive vitamins and supplements, but that it simply is not humanly possible to consume the nutrients that we need with mere food alone. Continue reading
Years ago, while working on a street outreach program feeding the homeless, I observed that virtually every one of our clients was a smoker. (In fact, researchers now estimate that about 94% of the North American homeless population smoke). These are men and women whose health is already severely compromised because of their living conditions, mental health issues, addictions or disease – not to mention lack of money for smokes.
Although 
