As a nutrition expert, I am horrified by the daily barrage of outrageous and unsubstantiated claims touting cures from everything from E. coli to Ebola. If you do a Web search on just about any disease, you will find carefully worded ads promoting unproven nutritional therapies. Worse, some of these can be harmful. For example, people have suffered liver damage from green tea extract that is so severe that they have needed a liver transplant. And the frequency of harm from dietary supplements is on the rise.
Dietary supplements are not miracle pills. Extremely few of the claims are supported by good science, even when the substance on the label is actually in the bottle (which we’ve learned we don’t know for sure), and many others have been proven ineffective.
Fortunately, some recent developments are heartening. The Federal Trade Commission won a settlement against NourishLife, LLC and its owner, Mark Nottoli, who shamefully claimed that the company’s dietary supplements, which are mostly fish oil, will treat speech problems in autistic children. The FTC also won a large settlement against Lindsey Duncan and Pure Health, LLC. This company is infamous for promoting its green tea product as a weight loss miracle by sending paid spokespeople disguised as objective experts to appear on “The Dr. Oz Show.”
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