The alternative health con

[theshee]

When buying your vitamins, supplements, health foods etc where do you get them from?? Do you ever wonder if the stuff you are taking is truly healthy? What about the companies behind them, ever wonder about them?

Holland & Barret the biggest chain of health food stores within the UK was founded in 1920 as "Heath & Heather" and renamed to the more familiar Holland & Barrett in 1970. They say - “We are Europe's leading retailer of Vitamins, Minerals and Herbal Supplements. Our stores are a familiar sight in almost every major city and town across the United Kingdom and Ireland, where we operate over 550 outlets.”

There's a huge variety of products that are peddled by Holland & Barrett as well as other health food stores.

Whole foods. They sell a good selection of dried fruits, nuts, seeds, and other such stuff. Naturally, it's all "organic" and a lot of it is "fairtrade,". Let’s look into what ‘organic really means, which is completely different from you hand growing something in your own garden.

Let us have a wee look into both organic and fairtrade.

Organic – Two organically raised cows burp the same amount of methane as three conventionally fed cows. Methane is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2 and can have up to a quarter of their daily food from non-organic sources. All organic food can contain five per cent of conventional ingredients. The Canadian Food Safety Agency found pesticide residues in as many organic baby foods as conventional baby food and the highest pesticide level was in an organic food. Organic farmers spray crops with 'natural' pesticides such as the noxious microbe BT which kills bees, ladybirds and butterflies as well as pests by releasing the same toxin made by genetically modified plants. If inhaled, it can cause bronchitis and worsen asthma. They treat fungus with copper solutions which also poisons earthworms and friendly bacteria. Most modern pesticides are biodegradable, but 'natural' pesticides, like copper, stay in the soil forever. They also use Derris which can cause Parkinson's disease; pyrethroids, which cause tumours in mice; and potassium permanganate which kills fish. At least three dozen 'E' numbers are allowed as additives, preservatives, flavourings, binders, anti-caking agents, antioxidants and processing agents in 'organic' food. For cleaning and disinfection, organic farmers use the same substances as conventional farmers, including formaldehyde, caustic soda, nitric and phosphoric acid, quicklime, alcohol and other highly toxic chemicals that can contaminate food. You get where I’m going? Unless you grow it or rear it you don’t know what’s in it - fact!

Fairtrade - Favours certain farmers, NOT always the poorest, and draws trade away from those outside its ‘umbrella’. Those farmers it does help are forced to adopt a co-operative management system potentially open to corruption and resistant to rapid economic development. Its complex system of certification means that the farmers have to pay very high fees to take part, without a guarantee that they will sell any of their crop at the Fairtrade minimum price at all. So when you’re buying or eating your fair trade thinking you are helping some poor farmer in a far flung land, think again. Ask anyone who tries to sell you fair-trade goods ‘how exactly is it fair’ most can’t tell you the rest will lie.

But in saying it is either/both ‘organic’ or ‘fairtrade’ its giving them a big mark up on the price. In fact, a huge mark up!!!

Vitamin and Supplements are marketed as being "natural," - vitamins and minerals occur in foods so of course they're natural so why the need to tell people they are natural. The fact you are being told to take anything in pill form is as unnatural as it can get. Unless you're on a highly restrictive diet, you have no use for this stuff at all. Vitamins cannot be isolated from their complexes and still perform their specific life functions within the cells.

When isolated into artificial commercial forms, like ascorbic acid, these purified synthetics act as drugs in the body. They are no longer vitamins, and to call them such is totally inaccurate. Magnesium stearate is also known as stearic acid, and is used as a lubricant in over 90% of the vitamins and other nutritional supplements consumed today. This enables the manufacturers to run their machines more efficiently and save them money, but it creates many problems for the consumer: magnesium stearate which destroys Tcells (primary immune function). Therefore, the current thing going on with supplements does not matter as it is all poison anyway. Synthetic stuff may mask a deficiency but will actually make the deficiency worse in the long term. For example - ascorbic acid will block up take of real vitamin C. The reason these additives are there is quite simply to bulk out products, and to ensure that products move through manufacturing equipment at the quickest (and most cost effective) speed. They also ensure a uniform and "attractive" look.

Okay. So we've established that Holland & Barrett and indeed most if not all vitamins/supplement stores are quackery but guess who owns Holland & Barrett as well as another big health food store within the uk Julian Graves ?

NBTY Inc, or they did up until the 1st Ocotber 2010 when The Carlyle Group bought them out for almost 4 billion.

NBTY is a leading global vertically integrated manufacturer, marketer and distributor of a broad line of high-quality, value-priced nutritional supplements in the United States and throughout the world. Under a number of NBTY and third party brands, the Company offers over 22,000 products, including products marketed by the Company’s Nature's Bounty® (www.NaturesBounty.com), Vitamin World® (www.VitaminWorld.com), Puritan's Pride® (www.Puritan.com), Holland & Barrett® (www.HollandAndBarrett.com), Rexall® (www.RexallSundown.com), Sundown® (www.RexallSundown.com), MET-Rx® (www.MetRX.com), WORLDWIDE Sport Nutrition® (www.SportNutrition.com), American Health® (www.AmericanHealthUS.com), GNC (UK)® (www.GNC.co.uk), DeTuinen® (www.DeTuinen.nl), LeNaturiste™ (www.LeNaturiste.com), SISU® (www.SISU.com), Solgar® (www.Solgar.com), Flexamin® (www.Flexamin.com), Knox® (www.Knox.com) and Ester-C® (www.Ester-C.com) brands.
It also sells products through independent and chain pharmacies, supermarkets, health food stores, and wholesalers under the Nature's Bounty, Natural Wealth, American Health, and Good 'N Natural brand names.

Over the past 30years or more NBTY has been quietly purchasing, buying out any health supplement stores & simular companies.

The founder of NBTY, Inc was Arthur Rudolph. The company was formerly Arco Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Arthur Rudolph
Director at NBTY, Inc.
Bohemia, New York
HEALTHCARE / DRUG RELATED PRODUCTS
Director since 1971 Arthur Rudolph, Founded Arco Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Company's predecessor, in 1960 and founded the Company in 1971. He served as the Company's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board until his resignation in September 1993. He is the father of Scott Rudolph. He has been a consultant to the Company since 1997.
His son Scott is the present CEO/Chairman of the Board/Director at NBTY, Inc
Scott Rudolph
CEO/Chairman of the Board/Director at
NBTY, Inc.
Bohemia, New York
HEALTHCARE / DRUG RELATED PRODUCTS
Director since 1986
Scott Rudolph, The Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer and a more than 5% stockholder of the Company. He served as the Chairman of the Board of Dowling College, Long Island, New York from 1997 through 2000, and currently serves on its Board of Trustees. He joined the Company in 1986. He is the son of Arthur Rudolph.

A past company advertisement pictures a young boy looking up at a huge redwood tree with a caption that says, "Quietly, we've become a giant." No shit Sherlock!!!

Bristol-Myers Squibb fit into this picture too - (Yes - A pharma company involved with alternative health)

Apothecon (see Bristol-Myers Squibb)
Arco Pharmaceuticals, Inc
105 Orville Dr
Bohemia NY 11716
www.healthieryou.com/resource/manufact.html

(Apothecon delivers mainly generics, but also offer a solid selection of unique pharmaceuticals.)

(Bristol-Myers Squibb is a global BioPharma company firmly focused on its Mission to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases.)

And Novartis is a strategic partner of Bristol-Myers Squibb
Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb Announce Strategic Alliance
www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-18-2000/0001341339&EDATE=

Guys, like I have been saying for years. The supplement, natural health industry is as bent as big pharma. They are indeed big pharma. The lovely saleswoman who is very informative is making money, they all are, they don’t advise what you should be taking out of the goodness of their own heart.

Now back to The Carlyle Group who have recently bought out NBTY-

The Carlyle Group and NBTY, Inc., a leading global manufacturer and marketer of nutritional supplements, announced on 01/10/10 that Carlyle has completed its $4 billion acquisition of NBTY.
The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation's largest defence contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you've heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also works for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.

Here is some more info on the Carlyle Group.

www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html

The Iron Triangle - The Carlyle Group Exposed
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Vitamins, minerals, supplements and herbal pills you buy over the counter are useless. They also twist truth with fact on trying to sell them. It’s a multimillion pound business. People think because they are sold as natural, organic etc etc they are harmless. Most are synthetic, those that aren’t have been exposed (are tainted) with chemicals in some form or another. You will notice too that we are always being told we are vitamin deficient. Do you know how hard that would be for us? Even living off a junk food diet you would still get what your body needs.

Don’t be thinking that it’s all a conspiracy by big pharma or governments who want to stop people being healthy either. Its not, and as its shown, its these people who own these companies who manufacture or supply the supplement stores.

The supplement industry (or anyone employed in it) will tell you that Doctors do not know what they are doing, that they just make you sicker than what you already are. They never tell how their products don’t work nor tell you how sick you can get by taking their products, nor how light in the pocket you will be after buying them.

Sorry its a long post. I have cut it down massively to what it was. I have been employed in the alternative/complimentary health field for more than two decades. I have not only witnessed the arse up off it all but been investigating it over the years.

I have to thank Brill publicly for some of this research & info for me too, so thanks Brill your a star.

[brillbilly]

Vitamins, minerals, supplements and herbal pills you buy over the counter are useless. They also twist truth with fact on trying to sell them. It’s a multimillion pound business. People think because they are sold as natural, organic etc etc they are harmless. Most are synthetic, those that aren’t have been exposed (are tainted) with chemicals in some form or another. You will notice too that we are always being told we are vitamin deficient. Do you know how hard that would be for us? Even living off a junk food diet you would still get what your body needs.

Don’t be thinking that it’s all a conspiracy by big pharma or governments who want to stop people being healthy either. Its not, and as its shown, its these people who own these companies who manufacture or supply the supplement stores.

thanks hun and i agree with ya
go take out any VITS from holland n barret and look at whats actualy in them
I would need to eat thousands of so called vit d tablets each day to get anywere near the proper amount my body needs and poeple shouldnt go on the so called RDA its wrong,
yet they never promote 15 mins in the sun a day will give you all ther vit d ya body needs.
people should understand that suppliments are synthetic and what ya paying for is never close to natural,its basically TALC

[brillbilly]

Supplement Scams Supplement Manufacturers Don't Want You to Know About
Supplement Scam Alert! Read here about supplement scams the food supplement industry does not want you to know about (because if you did, they'd go broke and you'd make some gains!).

Think about it for a minute: If all those nutritional supplements worked, then why don't we all look like [insert hottest body on the planet right now - examples might be Dexter Jackson, Brad Pitt, or Megan Fox]?

Why don't food supplements work? Here's a key question in seeking out that answer: How could the supplement industry stay in business if they did?

Here's the lowdown on the supplement scams the food companies run on you every time you open up a fitness-, health-, or muscle-building magazine.

Did you know that all the fitness-related magazines were either controlled, owned, or heavily influenced by the supplement industry? Look it up. Advertising is big business and there's no bigger business in the health-related magazine industry than food supplements.

Muscle&Fitness sells nothing but supplement ads, many of which are promoting Joe Weider's own supplement line. Here's an excerpt from an ad in the July 2009 edition of Flex Magazine (another Weider publication):

New Super-Molecule is 2,000 Times More Potent Than Anything You've Ever Taken!
Is that hyperbole? Yes, absolutely. Does it sell? YES! ABSOLUTELY!!

You're not in this game to get 5 -10 percent gains. You want 2,000 percent gains!

SUPPLEMENT SCAM #1: If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Choking down a pill or mixing up a powder is far easier than hitting the gym, running up stairs, and eating healthy food. That's why people take supplements, for the most part. It's for the magic elixir, the instant gratification.

Don't get me wrong: Some supplements DO work. But they aren't miracle workers. None of them will do what anabolic steroids do, either. Some claim to have "anabolic effect." But so does steak and eggs, heavy weight training, and steroids.

The supplement companies have a vested interest in keeping you from reaching your peak. Think about it: If you "became" Ronnie Coleman by taking Supplement X, then, when you got there, wouldn't you stop?

If a drug cured you of cancer, you surely would stop taking it once your cancer was in remission.

If you got to your goal weight of 330 pounds of rock-solid monster muscle, would you keep taking your weight-gain powder?

If you lost 100 pounds and looked the best you ever looked, would losing 120 pounds make you happier? You'd have to keep taking the supplement forever and, soon, you'd be dead, weighing a whopping 37 pounds!

So, supplements have to give the appearance of working, yet they simply cannot deliver on their promise, or else they'd go out of business. Hence, the supplement scams!

In the latest edition of Flex, page 38 had the first "editorial content." Guess what was on the first 37 pages? Supplement advertisements. I'm not kidding.

SUPPLEMENT SCAM #2: If you have to "sell it" that strong, it's probably too good to be true!

Here's another trick the supplement industry uses to sell their "goods" (we should call them "bads" in this case): They take a bodybuilder, have him "bulk up" (i.e., get fat), then have him take their supplement while he works his arse off in the gym and eats like a concentration camp victim.

"Miraculously," the dude trims down, loses 10 percent body fat and gains 10 pounds of muscle, all in "less than 28 days!"

What a crock! First, they took somebody who had already "been there," and took him "back there." That's too easy. Give me ANY pro-caliber athlete and in 3 months' time, I can have him looking like he used to look. It's simple.

Arthur Jones did this 40 years ago with his Nautilus training machines. He took a young Casey Viator who had been in a car accident, after having been crowned the youngest Mr America ever, and "transformed" him using the Nautilus method (high intensity, single sets per body part, isolation exercises, training to failure, etc.).

Casey could start training today and get back to 80 percent of his best shape in 3 months!

SUPPLEMENT SCAM #3: Beware the "Before-After" photo scam.

The supplement guys also strategically place "testimonials" next to the "Before-After" photos (or outright lie about it) to imply that THOSE models gave the glowing review.

Also beware the "phony review," where an internet marketer is selling supplements by giving an "objective review" of a product. Most likely, he's getting paid for any sales of the product made through his page. It's called "affiliate marketing" and the FCC is about to crack down on this practice.

(By the way, I do the same thing here on these pages, but I only sell what I take myself and I only take what works.)

Another thing you may not be aware of: Nutritional supplements are not regulated or tested by any government entity. Manufacturers can claim nearly anything. Further, they can put just about ANYTHING in their products!

Did you know that? Here's a line for a product called "EPONOX."

NEW EPO Blood Building Technology for Extreme Muscle Growth
Does that sound a little scary to you? It certainly does to me! Basically, if this stuff does what it says it does (which it probably doesn't), you will be manipulating your body to build more red blood cells than it would naturally manufacture. Athletes call this "blood doping." Lance Armstrong, 7-time Tour de France winner, was accused of blood doping through use of drugs that boosted EPO output.

(My take, by the way: He did use drugs, but only while in cancer treatment, but not while competing. I have no proof of this, other than the fact that he never failed a drug test while competing, and he was placed under far more scrutiny than any of his competitors.)

Not only are the proposed benefits of such blood-boosting dubious, they can be harmful! Imagine more blood coursing through your veins. Your blood pressure will rise, more stress will be placed on your heart pumping all that blood around. Remember, you cannot compress a fluid, so what happens is, if taken to extremes, your blood vessel walls get thinner. Not a good thing!

However, it's highly doubtful that this supplement delivers on its "promise." But if it did, I'd run away from this supplement. Nothing long-term-good can come of it.

Finally, a word on ephedrine. Lots of "fat burners" have used this chemical compound, or a derivative, for years. A handful of people have died while taking supplements containing ephedrine. The FDA finally pulled it off the shelves. It's now a banned substance.

While I'm skeptical that the root cause of these deaths was due to ephedrine, I remain unconvinced that you cannot get similar results with -- get this -- HARD WORK.

I know, it's tough to get all excited about working in the gym and eating well. But it remains the best long-term method for building the body you want. It works. And it won't kill you.

Some of the stuff they put in food supplements is downright scary. Putting untested ingredients is not only part of the supplement scam, but it ought to be a crime.

As I alluded to before, there are supplements that work. You can find them here (it's a really short read).

You don't need fancy "blends" or "optimized" proportions. You certainly don't need the multi-color, multi-page "Special Advertisements" hawking such hyperbole.

And you certainly don't need the outrageous prices.

[theshee]

The whole industry is a crock of shit. I've seen it day in day out for years. Great follow up Brill thanks.

[brillbilly]

Nov 6, 2010 4:43:19 GMT 10 theshee said:

The whole industry is a crock of shit. I've seen it day in day out for years. Great follow up Brill thanks.

;)your welcome hun,all we are doing is trying to find out what the hell is going on.
We dont have all the answers but we have many questions