***100 Days of Summer Reading 2023***
Reading Prompt: Book with a picture of food on the cover
Virtual 12 sided dice roll: 7
As P.T. Barnum once said, there's a sucker born every minute. We've probably all fallen for a health scam or two. This book was just the confusion clearing thing that I needed right now. There's nothing like a health problem to send you to the internet to research and all the modern Barnums are there waiting for you.
I read this author's book Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating three years ago and appreciated her realistic analysis of diet culture. In that book, she warned that the weight loss industry was trying to rebrand themselves as “wellness" purveyors. In this one, she helps us sort the wheat from the chaff within the wellness movement. Let me tell you, there is precious little wheat and a helluva lot of chaff!
When you have a health issue that you are trying to resolve, as I do, you tend to lose perspective. Thankfully the only unnecessary purchase that I made was a bottle of vitamin C tablets. Not a tremendous loss, but as a dietitian pointed out to me, that vitamin can be easily obtained through food. I guess I'll finish the tablets, but I won't be buying more. As the author points out, there are few regulations on the supplement industry. We don't know if we're getting what we paid for. I've always tried to buy brands made in Canada to hopefully avoid adulteration concerns, but why buy unnecessary things at all? The author also points out that many of the supplement producers are owned by pharmaceutical companies. So if you're trying to avoid “big pharma," good luck with that.
I think the take away message is to try to ask yourself, “Is someone asking me to pay for something?” A supplement, a program, hypnosis, a diet, a book, the list goes on. I try to remind myself that if the thing in question actually worked, it would be front page news, splashed all over. If it's a website with no news coverage, it's most likely snake oil. Even if something gets a lot of media coverage (I'm thinking of the South Beach Diet for example), if it isn't touted by the scientific arm of the medical establishment, be wary. Doctors presumably went into their profession because they care about their patients. They can be fooled by the scammers too, but their hearts are generally in the right place.
Pyramid schemes, bogus health claims, diets that get you started on your very own eating disorder, miracles promised by scammers galore. All of this complicated by the placebo effect that muddies the waters. Consumers must put their emotions on the backburner and engage their analytical abilities. It seems that we haven't progressed as far as we thought from the 19th century.
“Well-being doesn't require physical perfection or constant optimization. It doesn't necessitate being entirely symptom free or medication free. It's possible to be in a state of relative well-being even while living with chronic conditions, which are typically painted as barriers to wellness.”
I need to learn to be compassionate with myself and with those folks who are still ensnared by harmful ideas.
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