[H] Limited to 13 vitamins and 15 min­erals?

[homeopathy-bounces@homeolist.com]

Don’t want to be limited to 13 vitamins and 15 min­erals?
Go to the following site and donate for their lawsuit.
http://www.alliance-natural-health.org

Roger Barr

Professional Homeopath
http://www.canhealyourself.com
Health Foods: Snake Oil
What do Sir Paul McCartney Sir Cliff Richard and Sir Elton John have in
common? Besides Knighthoods they also support “Save our Supplements” (SOS),
a British campaign that wants to protect food supplements based on vitamins,
minerals and herbs from European regula­tion. Last year, SOS collected more
than 1 M. signatures for a petition against the Euro­pean Commission s food
Supplements Directive, which is due to conic into effect in August 2005 On
January 30th. The cam­paign scored an unexpected victory a Brit­ish judge
ordered the referral of two law­suits over the directive to the European
court of Justice in Luxembourg.

It is not only Brits who are getting hot under the collar over what might
happen to their favorite supplements. In America, where some $19
billion-worth were sold last year the pharmaceutical industry says all such
pills and potions should meet the same strict standards as drugs.

The European case could delay the introduction of the new directive, which
would ban all but 13 vitamins and 15 min­erals. Britain, Sweden, Ireland and
the Netherlands at present have easy going rules. But Germany and France
impose tight restrictions on supplements, which arc sometimes called
“nutraceuticals”. These would have to be relaxed when the directive comes
into effect.

Some 300 substances used in some 5,000 products in Britain are not on the
di­rective’s list of permissible supplements. These products will have to be
removed from shops unless they pass a safety test. As the cost of testing is
often more than £80,000 ($145,000), only a handful of producers have even
begun to do this. The commission is also imposing detailed rules on labeling
and usage, and it plans to fix the maximum dosage of vitamins and minerals
at a level likely to be lower than what is recommended in Britain now. In
2007. another edict on essential fatty acids, plant and herbal extracts and
fiber is expected. This will provide a high level of protection for
consumers, claims David Byrne, the commissioner for health.

But do consumers need so much pro­tection? All vitamins and minerals are
safe in small doses, though some may do harm in large doses. Too much
vitamin C, for in­stance, may harden arteries, though not all researchers
agree. Whether supplements work and live up to their claims made on packages
is another matter. According to
Marion Nestle at New York University, the more research is done on
supplements, the less effective they turn out to be. “What they say it does
and is in the bottle is usu­ally not true,” she adds. There is, however, a
bit of a placebo effect. Four out of ten British consumers and six out of
ten Ameri­cans who take food supplements believe in their benefits.

At the start of this year America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
finally banned ephedra which accounted for about one-tenth of the industry’s
annual sales in America (Ephedrine, the herb’s ac­tive ingredient, can help
people lose weight and become more energetic) But it took the DA almost ten
years to impose its ban, despite reports of ephedra contribut­ing to more
than 155 deaths, including the death last year of Steve Bechler, a popular
Baltimore Orioles baseball player.

America has little regulation. The Clin­ton administration’s Dietary
Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 effec­tively deregulated the
industry. The busi­ness also has powerful political allies: Orin Hatch an
influential senator from Utah and one of the sponsors of the act has
con­sistently supported its cause. It is partly thanks to Senator Hatch that
Utah has be­come one of the big centres of supplement production.
America’s pharmaceutical industry argues that food supplements should be
safe and that, if products make health claims, they should be proven ones.
That is diffi­cult to argue against. But if supplements do have a
placebo-like effect theme might still he a bit of room for creativity.
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