Pop Science for Pop supplements

[KD]

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/

Visual graph with links to various studies.

[Dorothy]

Interesting. Notice how green tea is in both the "good" and the "conflicting" areas. Hmmmm.

I love these kinds of visual aids to understanding. Some of the most popular items are surprising.

[KD]

yeah its confusing. I think its whether they think it works for whichever goal or condition so some things appear more than once. I think alot of this stuff is likely nonsense, but its interesting how many of which they actually agree.

I do believe some supplemental things are potentially beneficial, particularly for people that will not change their diet, and some on healthy diets that might need tweaks here and there.

[Dorothy]

Many of the supplements are really just food and herbs. I think that in the modern world our diets have gotten very narrow. Monoculture big agribusiness has narrowed what we heat dramatically in the last 50 years especially. I mean - tumeric - It's just a root. Green tea - just a plant soaked in water. Hunter Gatherers probably ate 100 different things that did some of what tumeric can do. Many of the supplements are things taken out of foods that people have stopped eating. We also can now get things from around the world - and perhaps we're lucky since most people only eat maybe a dozen things at most all the time. When diets get so narrow and so poor - I guess swallowing a pill is better than nothing - but the problem is that people don't realize why it is that they need to swallow those pills. They look at the pills the way they would look at a pharmaceutical drug. They aren't thinking that they need to take the pills because their diet is poor.