Attack on supplements

[richag77]

I Have several points of criticism with a program on ABC TV Australia called "4 Corners "dated 16 May 2016. Firstly, the documentary shown was of the USA and not Australia. The focus was on the worst cases and does it follow that our situation is the same as the US?
Secondly, the program was reminiscent of the the Orwellian "four legs good and two legs bad". Pharmaceuticals good, Supplements bad. There was not one mention of the harm from Pharmaceutical drugs. Figures from the US show that every year there are 160,000 deaths from properly prescribed and taken-as-directed pharmaceutical drugs, and yet this information does not make it onto mainstream programs such as 4 Corners. This bias has the hallmarks of the pharmaceutical companies trying to claw back lost profits due to people moving away from their drugs and towards nutrition and alternative medicine.

Given the attacks on vitamin safety by doctors, the press and even the Government, you would expect that the safety of vitamins is correspondingly dire - hundreds of thousands of dead, maimed and injured every year at least. Worried?

Brace yourself......according to official Government statistics, vitamin safety is SO bad that the average number of people killed every year by vitamins is......

Are you sitting down?

Not even ONE! (American Association of Poison Control Centers' Toxic Exposure Surveillance System.)

Fact! Vitamins DO NOT KILL.


Faced with REAL competition for the first time, medics and their pharmaceutical partners combine to pile false accusations of ineffectiveness and danger on the therapies they don't control. Vitamin safety is collectively brought into question without sufficient evidence to support the accusations and consumers are deprived of the safe supplements they have taken for decades.

If these claims in your program are true, then what are we to do? Nutrition levels in food produced by modern agriculture has dropped significantly. In "New Scientist" magazine there was an article where a scientist stated that tests on the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables done in 1970 showed that nutrition levels had dropped by 12 to 17% compared to the same test done in 2009. Also, the balance of Omega 3 oils against Omega 6 oils in our diets has been reversed over the decades. Our diets used to be dominated by Omega 3 oils and now they are dominated by the less nutritious Omega 6 oils. The taking of supplements is obviously to bridge this gap in nutrition.

Perhaps there does need to be much stricter regulation of the supplements industry even with the expected increased costs of these supplements. The supplement proponents are rightfully fearful that if the big corporations get control of this industry, the supplements will be prescription only and have a price similar to their pharmaceutical drugs thus unobtainable for those on low incomes.

[taurmel]

Living in the US I didn't see this, but this is definitely something that sounds majorly funded by Big Pharma! An advert masquerading as a concerned television station warning against supplements! The only problem I've encountered is they're not regulated, but when you pay attention to who is regulating (and how much grease is on their wheels), it all comes down to the company and which fillers, if any, they use. Have you heard of the documentary Food Matters? Sounds like something you would enjoy :)

I do agree with your outrage as to the lack of nutrition in today's "food" as well, it's all unfortunately a money game and consumers are the ones who pay the price. Supplementing has become somewhat of a necessity for many people. B12 is a vitamin that used to be found richly in soils, but now is only found in animal products and almost negligible quantities in the soil, and you've mentioned the omega flip. It's sad, really, but I do my part by not supporting Big Pharma ;)