The Quackometer

Barbara Nash is a nutritionist based near Oxford. Dawn Page was overweight and sought the advice of Nash. It is alleged she was put on a 'detox diet' which included drinking lots of water and consuming no salt. If true, the result was very predictable.

Mrs Page suffered 'uncontrolled vomiting and a fit' and was rushed to intensive care. The Oxford Mail now reports she has brain damage. Her husband sued Dawn Nash and her insurers have paid out £810,000 in a settlement for compensation.

It is worth noting that Nash's barrister said she was a.

"privately trained nutritionist", and emphasised she continued to deny she was in any way to blame for what happened.

Barbara Nash appears not just to offer detox diets but also sells on her web site kitchen smoothie makers, blenders and juicers that cost more than a thousand pounds.

Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. Only Dietitians are guaranteed by their training and professional memberships to be fully competent in what they do. Sadly, the proliferation of under trained and badly trained nutritionists is growing unchecked. Universities are in on the act taking money from students to train them as 'nutritional therapists'. Such degrees, from the likes of the University of Westminster School of Magic, are a disgrace. Privately owned colleges appear to offer legitimate diplomas, but their standard of training is unchecked.

But the TV and the Sunday supplements are full of the stupid and dangerous advice about detox and vitamin pills and superfoods and allergy tests. It is quack nutritionists, rather than medical dietitians, who own the media and the attention of the public. It is a handy commercial partnership of supermarkets, quacks, health shops and pharmacies selling pills and tonics and books and over prepared foods.

And the government is not helping. Their new Prince Charles sponsored body Ofquack intends to regulate nutritional therapists. It will give them a veneer of professionalism without protecting the public one little bit. Ofquack refuses to regulate the practice of their members (what they believe and do) and only certify that they have been trained by other quacks and carry insurance.

Personally, I think the British Dietetic Association cannot escape some blame here for the growing rise of nutriquacks. This is the proper organisation that regulates real dietitians. They should be as mad as hell that their turf has been invaded by anti-science know-nothings. I am sure their members have to deal with the catastrophic results of patients who have been misinformed by nutritionists everyday. Where is the noise they ought to be making? Why are they not telling the public and government that something is terribly wrong here with they way we view food and the self-appointed gurus who profit from our confusion?

Until this is sorted out, I expect we will be seeing an ever increasing number of stories just like this.

Labels: barbara nash, detox, Natural Healthcare Council, nutritionist, ofquack, the law

 

Le Canard Noir has a hectic international life, flitting around the world in luxury, from hotel to beach, from fine restaurants to top spas. And all I have to do is occasionally blog from wherever I can get WiFi access. Such are the benefits of being a Big Pharma shill. (Keep the cheques coming in - my stocks of champagne are getting low for Christmas).

However, yesterday was a little more mundane with a 4am foggy dash to Luton for the first easyJet flight to Edinburgh. A quick meeting there, and then back in the afternoon. So, in my caffeine starved, befuddled and yawning state, I had found myself flicking through the easyJet in-flight magazine. Something I usually avoid, but I was late and had to run past the magazine shop to board the plane. I was going to do my Xmas shopping in the duty free shop, but that will have to wait now til Saturday.

Now I was not expecting investigative journalism, insightful political analysis or even peer-reviewed papers. No, I would have been happy to read about some groovy bars in ski resorts, boutique hotels in city break destinations and even flick through the vanity surgery adverts and pictures of expensive villas in Mallorca (do I really need another one?) What I was confronted with was a shed load of quackery. Astonishing amounts for one small in-flight magazine.

Let me give you some highlights...

• Top tips on avoiding a cold. Dubious vitamin C advice, superfoods (aarrrggh), and my real pet hate - drink at least 2 litres of water per day.


• A new concept of 'Wine Therapy'. Apparently wine contains lots of essential 'pure essences' and 'natural ingredients'. A new spa has opened up to exploit the curative properties of wine - the Caudalie Vinotherapie Spa near Bilbao.


• A review of the 'Bliss Energy Mask'. Some sort of facial stuff that has vitamin C and a 'shot of oxygen'. Marvelous.


• Top tips for healthy skiing, including laying off the cheese (is that possible in the Haute Savoie?)


• One of those standard 'Surviving Christmas' articles including great advice from a Boots the Chemist nutriquack and a reflexologist.


• Stress relieving tips including taking herbal supplements and Bach Flower Remedies.


• Hangover remedies from around the world - placing parsley on your head and eating marinated fish is the thing, apparently.

and my favourite,

• The amazing benefits of inhaling copious amounts of smoke in an Estonian Smoke Sauna. Don't forget to thwack yourself with birch branches too.

So, is there any harm in this? Directly, I doubt it. At worst, a lot of the advice is pretty soulless and is just missing the point of having a good ski holiday or a weekend in a spa drinking wine. Even inhaling smoke in a sauna is unlikely to be that bad and the invigorating experience of the sauna is going to be stress relieving and fun. Indirectly though, the trotting out of old canards about drinking loads of water and the thinking that vitamins in cosmetics is a good idea, just adds to the noise of uncritical and lazy health advice in the media.

For me, what this represented was just the depressing reality of the mainstream acceptance of the views of reflexologists as being valuable, the acceptance of the pseudoscience of oxygen rich facial creams being unchallenged, and the need to subvert life affirming activities, such as skiing, spas and saunas with meaningless health advice.

It is just low cost journalism for a low cost airline. I guess with everything else on these low cost airlines, we mustn't grumble.

Labels: detox, diets, journalists, nutritionist

 

A regular comment to me is to ask "why have I got it in for Nutritionists?" Surely, these are dedicated health professionals who do wonders for peoples' health by improving their diets and making sure people take the right supplements, if required. Well maybe. The problem is that so many nutritionists are not doing this and often resort to pseudoscience and quackery. This week's Quack Word blog entry will argue that the Quackometer is quite right (most of the time) in scoring highly a web page with the word 'nutritionist' in it.

So, a quick definition of 'nutritionist'. Whilst one should always take wikipedea articles with a sceptical eye, their definition of nutritionist is a good starting point:

A nutritionist is a person who advises people on dietary matters relating to health, well-being and optimal nutrition. Nutritionists should not be confused with dietitians. Dietitians are health care professionals who have received specialised formal accredited tertiary education and training, and undertake internship in hospitals, and who are required to adhere to their regulatory body's code of conduct. They are also the only non-medically-trained health-care professionals permitted to practise clinically in hospitals or health-care facilities. Many "nutritionists" appear on television, in newspapers and magazines, and write bestselling nutritional books.

Self-identified nutritionists have varying levels of education, and can be someone with little education up to someone who may have the equivalent of a master's degree in Physiology or Biology.

• It's not just about eating healthily. Bad diet is promoted as being the root cause of almost all diseases and conditions. Eating in a certain way can restore the 'balance'.


• It is not possible to get all your vitamins and minerals from food today because of modern farming methods. The nutriquack can sell you the right supplements.


• Organic is healthier.


• Claiming that a simple change of diet or popping a vitamin cure complex social issues, like omega-3 fish oil pills helping poorly performing kids in schools,


• Promoting radical diets which usually involve cutting out entire food groups.


• Promoting the health benefits of consuming huge volumes of vitamins.


• Advocating 'superfoods' that allegedly have remarkable health benefits.


• Obsessions with discredited and weird diagnostic techniques, such as examining stools.


• They use pseudoscience to sound knowledgeable. Talk of 'detoxification' is common.


• Selling weird made up foods with remarkable properties such as this nonsense salt seller and shrouding it in ridiculous claims.
  

All these things have in common is their overstatements and lack of evidence. Making health claims in this way is quackery. From now on, I will call such people the nutriquacks.

I think the problem of the nutriquack arises from the simple fact that good nutritional advice (for most people) is quite simple - eat a balanced, varied diet with a low amount of fat and lots of green stuff. You are not going to make a fortune with that mantra - even though getting people to follow it is quite hard sometimes. By making the whole thing appear more complicated though, the nutriquack is creating a market for their services. You cannot get enough antioxidants - my superfood berries (available on my website) will do it for you though! Register with my site, complete my questionnaire and I will personally compose your optimum nutrition plan and supplement mix. And so on.

What is happening is that nutriquacks are fetishising food and bamboozling people. Rather than enjoying food for its own sake, many people are led down the path of analysing everything they put in their mouth, jumping to conclusions about why they might be overweight or unwell and fruitlessly giving money away to people who do not deserve it. The real heroes of healthy eating for me are those people who try to instill a love of good food into people. Chefs and writers who try to excite about the benefits of buying good ingredients, how to source fresh ingredients inexpensively, how to be creative in the kitchen without needing top-chef skills and basically try to impart a joy about food. That is surely the route to people having a good, healthy relationship with their food and so end up getting a more rounded, varied and balanced diet. People like Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson spring to mind, but there are many more. These people do not resort to pseudoscience in order to justify what they do.

When science does make some well researched discoveries about the food we eat, this is often drowned out in the swamp of nutriquack baloney. It is often impossible to tell good science from nonsense in the popular press and TV. All this does is make people despair of the 'scientists' with their constantly contradictory advice and silly discoveries. It undermines a reliable source of knowledge for society that genuinely could help improve peoples' lives.

Nutriquacks operate in a legal void. Selling food is not illegal after all and vitamins and minerals are just food. However, make medical claims and use ingredients that might be medicinal in nature and you might end up in hot water. At least this is a curb on the excesses of nutriquacks, although it is seldom invoked.

However, such is the fate of arch-nutriquack 'Dr' Gillian McKeith. Today, the MHRA (the British organisation that is supposed to control the use of medicines) has ordered that McKeith stop selling illegal products. McKeith has been capitalising on her TV fame by selling all sorts of expensive and silly 'superfoods' to her fans. At last, the law has caught up with her, at least in a little way and she will have to re-think how she goes about her business now.

Labels: Ben Goldacre, detox, diets, Gillian McKeith, minerals, nutritionist, Quack Words, vitamins