Fake Food Products Endorsed by Doctors: Bogus Claims, Empty Promises?

Be wary of food products endorsed by doctors. Very wary!

"When you see a product that's endorsed by a doctor, keep in mind that the doctor is probably being paid for that endorsement, just as if he were an athlete or an actor, so take it with a grain of salt," warned one local TV station. 

The medical establishment can be seduced by money to hawk all manner of questionable products, from dangerous prescription drugs to processed breakfast cereals, quasi-useless supplements, and genetically modified foods. Yes, even cigarettes, years ago. 

Not all in the medical establishment can be enticed by all-expenses-paid junkets, pricey speaking engagements, meals and gifts, scads of free samples, and various forms of direct payments.  

But sadly, far too many succumb to financial temptation from vendors with something to sell.

Ensure Drinks, Supplements
For example, take Ensure "nutrition drinks" and "meal supplements," which are manufactured by Abbott Nutrition, part of Big Pharma corporate giant Abbott Laboratories.   Abbott Labs  is the maker of addictive painkiller Vicodin and dozens of other highly profitable drugs.

"#1 doctor recommended brand" blares on the label of every bottle of Ensure's various nutrition drinks.  Yet, Ensure is formulated mainly of sugar and water, spiked with innumerable chemicals, and loaded with preservatives, additives, and artificial flavorings and colors. 

Writes the editor of NaturalNews.com of Ensure:

".. the top two ingredients in Ensure are almost identical to the top two ingredients in soft drinks! ... the top four ingredients (are): water, sugar, corn syrup and maltodextrin. That's basically three sweeteners and water. So if you were trying to be funny, you could call this product 'sugar-sugar-sugar-water,' because that is primarily what it's made of, according to the ingredients label... So essentially, what you have here with Ensure, is a predominantly sugar-water product that has been fortified with a few vitamins and minerals. 

"The phrase, 'Complete, balanced, nutrition,' in my personal opinion, is an outright lie. This product has nothing resembling complete, balanced nutrition..."

In 2012, sales of Ensure and Glucerna, its diabetic alternative to Ensure, were almost $2 billion.... thanks mainly to credibility lent to the products by many in the medical establishment. 

(Read Ensure Drink: Sugary Fake Food Pseudo-Wonder Tonic by Vicodin Maker for more.)

Wheaties Fuel Cereal

Another example is Wheaties Fuel cereal, introduced by General Mills in 2009, which based its appeal on endorsement by "Dr. John Ivy, a world-renowned expert on the role of nutrition and exercise performance." Commented Dr. Ivy, a professor at University of Texas, Austin who is associated with many consumer products:

"We’ve learned a lot about the bond between nutrition and performance over the years and as today’s athletes continue to get bigger, faster and stronger, it was important to develop a cereal that evolved along with them,”

Five years later, Wheaties Fuel is hard to find, and for good reason: this cereal aimed at athletes is more costly, and yet, is essentially no healthier than run-of-the-mill Wheaties cereal. Maybe less healthy for most people... 

Critiqued OutSports.com in 2010:

"As someone who is big on nutrition and an obsessive label-reader, one thing is obvious: Wheaties Fuel is basically Wheaties with more fat and sugar.

"Regular Wheaties is a pretty simple cereal with only five ingredients: Whole grain wheat, sugar, salt, corn syrup and trisodium phosphate. One serving (3/4 cup) has 100 calories, .5 grams of fat, 4 grams of sugar, 15 grams of other carbs, 3 grams of fiber and 3 grams of protein, along with some added vitamins. Wheaties Fuel, in contrast, loads up on the sugar, with some added fat.... Fourteen grams of sugar per serving is a lot for anyone who cares about their nutrition."

Miracle Foods from Obscure Ingredients
You've heard them hawked on infomercials and the internet, via multi-level marketing orgs... Acai berry, olive leaf extract, raspberry ketones... 

Here's another: Skyfruit, touted as...

"... only largely found in tropical areas in the South Pacific where its cleanest and unspoiled places like Solomon Islands. The people there have consumed Skyfruit internally for over 1000 years. It is known as the queen of plants and knowledge of its healthful properties has been handed down from generation to generation to the present day. Common in the South Pacific, Sky Fruit is also found in small quantity in other tropical areas of the world."

XKLWorldWide.com promotes  that its "Herb Food Concentrate is made from 100% natural Skyfruit that is being advanced bio-technologically processed and prepared. The quality of XKLCare?products has earned worldwide recognition.? 

Testimonials? Of course, with claims of relief from inflammation, hypertension, backache, skin peeling,  asthma, even diabetes. 

Doctor endorsements? Absolutely. Five, including glowing statements:

• "We desperately need XKLCare™ product. Instead of waiting for your health care ship to come in, with this product you're already aboard."
• "It is with joy and pride that I endorseXKLCare™ product, the world's most potent natural food supplement."
• ""If you think XKLCare™ product is expensive, try disease. Based on the preventive effect and strong antioxidant activity of XKLCare™ product, I would like to say that it is indeed the most incredible dietary supplement I have ever come across."

(Also read Raspberry Ketones: Another Industrial Food Quasi-Scam? and Olive Leaf Extract: Industrial Food Quasi-Scam with Clever Story.)

Be wary of products endorsed by doctors!  Don 't buy into the credibility lent to quasi-healthy fake-food products by doctors and other medical professionals seeking to fill their coffers.  

If tempted, do your homework. Check out both the medical professional and the product via a simple Google searches. And read the labels, friends. Be your own informed advocate. 

Dieters as Profitable Yo-yos: Corporate Lures, Bamboozles

Americans have been bamboozled by leading diet corporations. Hookwinked. Tricked. Lured into bleeding endless streams of cash into the coffers of companies who profess to help us become healthier.  

Turns out top diet conglomerates don't want you to become lean. At least, not for very long... After all, once you're slim, you no longer need their pricey services. They lose a paying customer. 

So what's a clever, profit-hungry corporation based, in part, on the diet industry to do to bring once-chubby customers back?   Believe it or not, if you answered "Make 'em chubby again," you're correct.   

If you responded "Trigger yo-yo dieting instincts by igniting cravings for salt, sugar, and fat," you win the prize. 

Seriously... the corporate owners of several huge diet companies quietly also control major makers of ice creams, candy bars, junky breakfast cereals, mayonnaise, margarine, sausages, frozen pizzas, and all manner of fake, industrial-made foods.    

Once you graduate from chubby to lean or grow from lean to chubby, industrial fake-food corporations don't want to lose your business.  So they cynically diversify their portfolios to include both diet companies and junk food companies, and constantly lure Americans into unhealthy yo-yo- dieting, hence a continuous flow of hefty corporate profits.

Take Jenny Craig Inc, owned since 2006 by Nestle, which reported worldwide sales of $92 billion and profits of $10.6 billion in 2012.  Besides "weight management" company Jenny Craig, Nestle owns or controls hordes of less-than-healthy foods including:

• Dreyer's, Haagen-Daz (in U.S.), Drumsticks, and six other ice cream makers
• Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, Nestle Crunch, KitKat, 100 Grand, and many more candy bars
• Hot Pockets, DiGiorno frozen pizzas, Stouffer frozen entrees, Lean Cusine
• Trix, Cheerios, Golden Nuggets (in U.K.), Nesquik powdered chocolate drink

Consider SlimFast, maker of "meal option" shakes, snacks, and packaged foods meant to help people better manage their weight.  SlimFast was quietly acquired by Unilever in 2000.  Other food companies owned or controlled by Unilever include:

• Ben & Jerry's, Breyer's, Klondike, Popsicles, Fudgsicles, and Heartland lines that dominate European ice cream sales
• Hellman's and Best Foods mayonnaise and other products
• Country Crock, Brummel & Brown, Imperial, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and many other margarines
• Many European makers of mayonnaise, mustard, catsup, other condiments.

Weight Watchers was sold in 1999 to wealthy private investors, and went public in 2001. Half of Weight Watchers shares are controlled by a stealthy private equity firm, The Invus Group. Five of nine Weight Watchers Board of Director members are also key leaders of The Invus Group.  

While little is publicly known about Invus' client list, its website also describes a successful investment in and turn-around of Keebler, which was later sold to Kellogg.  Keebler is the largest cookie and cracker manufacturer in the United States. Among Keebler highly processed products are Cheez-Its and Wheatables crackers and eight varieties of Chips Deluxe cookies. 

Yes, Americans (and Europeans, too) have been bamboozled by some leading "weight management" corporations into believing that they have our health at heart. 

Lured  by advertising and enticed by store shelves, newly-lean food aficionados again buy and feast on foods rich in sugar, salt, and fat.  First a little, then a lot.  Candy bars, ice cream, cookies, cheesy crackers, junky cereals, mayonnaise, margarine, sausages, highly processed frozen fare... 

(Read "Salt Sugar Fat" - Stunning Big Food Tactics to Hook, Trick, Harm Americans.")

And so the yo-yo dieting cycle continues. Lean, chubby, lean, chubby.  And the same industrial food mega-corporations profit handsomely from both unhealthy sides of the cycle.  

Only the consumer gets hurt... financially and personally.  Hurt by their own human weaknesses and natural reactions.  Lured like a hungry mouse to a cheese-laden trap.   Seduced into an endless culinary cycle of temptation and guilt, binge and purge, sin and redemption. 

It's a brilliant bamboozle, worthy of the sharpest flim-flam artists in American retail history.  A type of bait-and-switch trick that's engineered to be nearly irresistible to a public enamored of its junk food habits. 

And as long as consumers continue to take the fake-food diet-industry bait, this destructive, greedy cycle will continue to flourish. 

Olive Leaf Extract: Industrial Food Quasi-Scam with Clever Story

"Olive leaf...take olive leaf!" exuded a neighbor to my sniffing, coughing husband. "I take olive leaf extract whenever I feel a cold coming on. Cures it every time!" Smiling serenely, she added, "Olive trees can live 2,000 years. That's good enough testament for me!" 

Olive leaf extract?  What's this... another miracle-food fad placebo that the industrial food world is gearing up to make millions by cleverly hawking it to you and me?   (See Raspberry Ketones: Another Industrial Food Quasi-Scam?) 

But olive leaf extract? It sounds kind of bona fide. After all...

• Extra-virgin olive oil is proven to be laden with omega-3 fatty acids that can provide heart health benefits.   
• Olive trees hail from the Mediterranean. Isn't the Mediterranean diet good for us?
• Olive trees are so feel-good biblical... The Mount of Olives in Israel is mentioned often in the Old Testament. The Mount of Olives is where Jesus wept, prayed, taught, and from where he descended into heaven.  Olive trees feel vaguely holy by association. 

Olive Leaf Extracts and Supplements: The Claims

The cover of an Amazon-sold book, Olive Leaf Extract, by Morton Walker, a former podiatrist, boasts that olive leaf extract is "The Natural Way to Treat:

• Viral infections
• The common cold
• Arthritis
• Skin diseases
• Heart trouble
• And more!"

"We all live in the Hot Zone now," blares the book's intro, then scaremongers on:

"Antibiotics have failed. With the coming of exotic new viruses, and the evolution of microbes resistant to the drugs we've used for the last fifty years, we have never needed an alternative therapy more. 

"Olive Leaf Extract-- effective, natural, and nontoxic-- has been used as a folk remedy for thousands of years. Only now has scientific research shown that the active ingredient, oleuropein, has vast healing powers because it practically eliminates the viruses, fungi, bacteria, and other parasites that cause disease.

"From immune disorders to the common cold, from athlete's foot to malaria, olive leaf extract can be an adjunct to any program of healing, health, and wellness"

Alert the Gates Foundation! A cure for malaria has been found; Bill and Melinda can stop  wasting hundreds of millions in attempting to treat and prevent malaria in Africa and other developing countries. 

Not! These three ultra-slick, finely worded paragraphs are worthy of any slimy, All-American snake-oil pitch, including those for acai berry and raspberry ketones supplements.  

My brief internet perusal finds claims that olive leaf extract also lowers blood pressure, boosts bone health, eliminates yeast infections, and, of course, has been "shown to eliminate cancer tumors." 

Raspberry Ketones: Another Industrial Food Quasi-Scam?

Raspberry ketones are the newest miracle-food fad, and the industrial food world is gearing up to make millions by hawking it to you. 

The question is: are raspberry ketones just another health food quasi-scam, or is it really "the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat" per Dr. Mehmet Oz?

The Rise and Fall of Acai Berry
Remember acai berry, the ultra-hyped extract of a violet-hued berry from a Brazilian palm species? Marketers claimed that acai's antioxidants provided a near-endless plethora of wellness benefits including: 

• weight loss
• anti-aging properties
• lowered cholesterol and triglycerides
• killing cancer cells
• possible reversal of diabetes  

The Great Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Scam in America

Olive experts estimate that between 50% and 80% of extra virgin olive oil in U.S. grocery markets is not really extra virgin.  In fact, much of the olive oil sold to Americans isn't even produced from olives... and is purposely mislabelled.

Further, the USDA is fully aware of this ongoing fraud, yet has failed for years to notify the public and has done precious little to deter the great olive oil hoax.

Chris Kimball, founder of America's Test Kitchens, recently commented on his weekly radio show, "EVOO clearly doesn't mean anything since most EVOO in American markets are not extra virgin...." He added that buying olive oil in grocery stores is "a complete crapshoot."

Here's the deal in a nutshell: the U.S. retail market for olive oil is largely unregulated, thereby allowing European olive growers to freely dump their crummiest-quality crops in the U.S., usually in fancy, high-priced bottles with impressive labels to attract naive buyers.