Target, Walmart Selling Fake Ginkgo, Garlic, Ginseng Thanks to Political Loophole

This week, the New York State Attorney General charged Walmart, Target, Walgreens and GNC with selling "mislabeled" and "adulterated" dietary supplements.  

No surprise, at least to Fake Food Watch readers.  (See below for my list of other dietary supplements that should also be investigated by authorities... ) 

Many health supplements are fakes. Most, actually. Frauds. Bogus, pricey bait for consumers.  Neither effective, nor worth the billions Americans waste annually in vain hopes of improving their health. 

That's because "These drugs are not subject to the F.D.A.’s approval because of a loophole in a 1994 federal law (spearheaded by Utah Sen Orrin G. Hatch who received funding from supplement makers), fraudulent products can easily reach consumers without accountability or oversight," per Salon.com.    

Republican Sen. Hatch berated 2012 proposed legislation created to force greater accountability in the lucrative dietary supplement industry. 

Sen. Hatch bitterly railed against an amendment that would ..."require facilities engaged in the manufacturing, processing, packing, or holding of dietary supplements to register with the FDA, provide a description with a list of all ingredients, as well as a copy of the labeling for each dietary supplement product.  Additionally, the facilities must also register with respect to new, reformulated, and discontinued dietary supplement products. 

While I appreciate my colleague’s commitment, his amendment is based on the misguided presumption that the current regulatory framework for dietary supplements is flawed..."  (Source - U.S. Senate website of Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah)

Findings of the New York State Attorney General?  Of 390 DNA barcoding tests performed on 78 samples of 24 generic products sold at the four retailers: 

• At Walmart, "4 percent actually contained the ingredients listed on the label."
• At Walgreens, 18 percent contained the listed ingredients.
• At GNC, 22 percent contained the listed ingredients.
• At Target, 44 percent contained the listed ingredients.
• (Source - Food Safety News)

Each sample was tested five times; samples were selected from all regions of New York state. The dietary supplements tested were garlic, ginseng, gingko biloba, St. John's wort, echinacea, valerian root, and saw palmetto.

Even I'm amazed at the incredible array of fake fillers found in these supplements in lieu of ingredients listed on the labels. "In many cases, the authorities said, the supplements contained little more than cheap fillers like rice and house plants, or substances that could be hazardous to people with food allergies," per the New York Times.

Specific ingredients found in supplements tested often included:

• Dracaena, a houseplant (right photo)
• Rice
• Wheat
• Spruce
• Pine
• Palm
• Wild carrot
• Grass
• Allium, from the garlic family
• Radish
• Daisy
• Mung bean

Friends, don't waste your hard-earned money on dietary supplements. The industry is barely regulated. And profiteers, of course, prey on this regulatory loophole to line their rich pockets at your expense and the expense of your health hopes.

Among other products I urge state and federal regulators to also investigate for misleading consumers about the health benefits and/or ingredients are:

Raspberry ketones - See "Raspberry Ketones: Another Industrial Food Quasi-Scam?"

Olive leaf extract - See "Olive Leaf Extract: Industrial Food Quasi-Scam with Clever Story"

Ensure - See "Ensure Drink: Sugary Fake Food Pseudo-Wonder Tonic by Vicodin Maker"

Coconut water  - See "The Coconut Water Fad: Hucksterism, Health Elixir or Quasi Fraud?"

Use This Food Policy Report Card for Congress to Force Change

Terrific news as Congress returns to work next week after summer break: a report card to grade U.S. Senate and House members on national food policies.  

American voters can use this handy tool to force Congress to change its unhealthy ways on food policy. 

The National Food Policy Scorecard is published by Food Policy Action, a nonprofit group that advocates for...

"...policies that support healthy diets, reduce hunger at home and abroad, improve food access and affordability, uphold the rights and dignity of food and farm workers, increase transparency, improve public health, reduce the risk of food-borne illness, support local and regional food systems, treat farm animals humanely and reduce the environmental impact of farming and food production."

Included on the Board of Food Policy Action, an outgrowth of the respected Environmental Working Group, are:

• Michael Jacobson, Executive Director, Center for Science in the Public Interest
• Ray Offenheiser, President, Oxfam America
• Rev. David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World
• Robin Schepper, former Executive Director, "Let's Move!"
• Tom Colicchio, Chef, Restauranteur, Head Judge of Top Chef
• Ken Cook, President, Environmental Working Group

Click the following links to use the National Food Policy Scorecard to view...

Congressional legislators, by state, each with a percentage rating on their voting records in support of food policies. "Click a state to see whether your legislators voted to keep food safe, healthy and affordable." Senators are rated on 18 votes and House members on 14 votes taken in the 112th Congress. 

Results of U.S. Senate votes on 18 food policy bills in 112th Congress. Also includes brief explanation of each bill. 

Results of U.S. House votes on 14 food policy bill in 112th Congress. Again, includes brief explanation of each bill. 

Pending Food Policy Legislation under consideration by Congress. Use this page to understand the issues, then contact your elected officials with your views.  Congress is considering issues such as...

• Antibiotics, Drugs - Halts use of antibiotics and other drugs in meat "unless the applicant can show that there is a reasonable certainty of no harm to human health."
• Arsenic - Requires that the FDA establish limits on the amount of arsenic allowable in rice. 
• Food Marketing  to Children - Mandates now-voluntary guidelines for industrial food corporations to stress healthy choices
• Food Safety - Forces Congress to fund and the White House to issue final regulations for the "Food Safety Modernization Act," which was passed into law in 2010. 

Our nation's disastrously unhealthy food policies clearly support industrial fake-food mega-corporations, their powerful lobbyists, and their highly processed products rife with additives, chemicals, fillers, emulsifiers, and artificial flavors and colors.. 

Only American voters can cause Congress to change its unhealthy ways on food policy. The power is in our hands to force political leaders to vote for healthy, real foods, not the fake chemical-laced processed foods sold by their wealthy political donors.  

Use the National Food Policy Scorecard to keep tabs on your elected representatives. Use it today and make your views known! 

Life Magazine on America's Bounty of Food: The Way We Were and Could Be Again

"Food, perhaps alone among the riches of the earth, pleases all the senses of man," exuded the November 22, 1962 Life magazine.  

"Taste, of course, and smell. Vision? Behold it. Sound? Who has not placed a crisp vegetable on a pine board and heard the delicious noise of a keen knife cleaving through leaf and stalk? And touch? In this picture, it is texture most of all that delights: the rough and smooth, soft and firm, all invite the hand."

"Could odor arise from these cold pages, how sweetly would they fill the air! The tang of apple, pear and such small fruit would drift above the smell of sun-warm strawberries, blending with the rich scent of melons."

Distinguished British historian and Oxford professor Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 - 1975) believed that the health of a nation is only as good as the health of its diet, and that a downward spiral in the quality of a nation's diet foretold a nation's cultural and political death spiral. Toynbee illustrated his hypothesis with innumerable examples of fallen countries throughout civilization and pre-civilization. 

In 1962, the United States was a robust and growing nation that enjoyed a healthy, balanced diet, much of it still grown by local family farmers (although food-chain industrialization and commercial pesticide use had begun in earnest). 

Observed Life editors, "After the lush variety of the modern American diet, as shown in this issue of Life, it is rather unsettling to see how the rest of mankind eats."

In the 50 years since this 1962 Life magazine, Americans have gullibly adapted the fake-food message of greedy U.S. industrial manufacturers that only real-food facsimiles oozing with fat, sugar, and salt are culinary nirvana.   (For details, click here for "Salt Sugar Fat" - Stunning Big Food Tactics to Hook, Trick, Harm Americans.)

The results have been truly disastrous for U.S. public health.  Many historians today detect Toynbee's cogent hypothesis to be sadly observable in 21st century America. Today, "it is rather unsettling" to see how America eats. 

It doesn't have to be this way, friends.  We can return to healthy, deeply delicious diets. And the U.S. can easily return to being the world's envy with "the miracle of our plenty" grown by American farmers.

Just yesterday, I picked up my family's weekly carton of freshly-picked produce from California family farms... a huge carton for the bargain price of $37, overflowing with:

• Three kinds of tomatoes: large red, cherry, and heirloom
• Four large cucumbers
• Half a dozen sweet peppers
• A watermelon
• Eight ears of sweet corn
• Two eggplants
• Two generous heads of romaine lettuce
• Four zucchini
• A plethora of the sweetest stone fruit imaginable: peaches, nectarines, apricots

My carton could have graced the cover of Life's 1962 "Bounty of Food" issue.  

One inexpensive trip to the grocery store, plus to the butcher for perhaps three nights' of better-quality meat, and my home is set for a week.  Both our budget and healthy eating habits are in top shape.  And we feel better! Much better... 

In 2013, the United States is not nearly the robust and growing nation it was in 1962, nor does it  universally enjoy either a healthy, balanced diet or even passably acceptable public health.  

According to Professor Toynbee's theories, we could start to return our great country to its former glory and world preeminence by first cleaning up our own lives and ways. 

That starts with each of us taking responsibility for our own personal health, and our food choices. 

That starts with ignoring the false message of industrial fake-food corporations that fatty, sugary, and salty highly-processed foods are the stuff of the good life. 

They're not. They're the stuff of bad personal and public health, bad federal food policies, and quite possibly, the implosion of great cultures and nations.