A Plague of False and Misleading Information

The previous chapter discussed dietary supplements, including how they are marketed. That chapter stressed that much of this marketing is based on delivering false and misleading information to potential customers. This present chapter continues the subject of how the problem of false and misleading information is widespread across many areas of nutrition. This problem has a long history across many areas of the medical sciences. In Victorian times a common belief was that masturbation was a major cause of blindness and insanity. In the 1970s, a great many people believed that if they were always feeling irritable and lacking in energy, this was a sure sign of low blood sugar. This epidemic mysteriously disappeared only to be replaced by newer epidemics such as an allergy to gluten, an overload of toxins, and a yeast infection (Candida). The scope of the problem of false and misleading information is enormous and is continuously changing. It is clearly impossible, therefore, to cover all aspects of this problem. This chapter is intended only to present some illustrative examples of the problem. Physicians and other healthcare professionals need to be cognizant of this problem. This is because out of any random group of a dozen patients several will believe some of the false ideas that are being continually disseminated.