The Food Movement Co is an Illinois-based company manufacturing and distributing organic super foods and bioactive dietary supplements. Part of the Food Movement’s mission is also to donate to hunger relief groups.
In 2015, for the first time, the Food Movement decided to support both a local group (Chicago Food Depository) and Trees for Life, a group working globally to stop famine in Africa and other important locations. Every purchase you make from the Food Movement helps to support this mission.
This scientific study comes to us from the journal Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Disease, and it is an amazing validation of the ‘whole food’ approach to healing. To cut to the chase; this supplement consisted of equal parts (of 100 mg each per dosage) of Broccoli, Pomegranate, Turmeric and Green Tea taken 2x per day. To make it even more inspiring they didn’t use standardized Curcumin they used whole Turmeric (Curcuma longa) root as any self-respecting Hindu chef or Western herbalist would do.
The average age of the men in this study was 74, and the researchers concluded “This study found a significant short-term, favourable effect on the percentage rise in PSA in men managed with AS and WW following ingestion of this well-tolerated, specific blend of concentrated foods. Its influence on decision-making suggests that this intervention is clinically meaningful, but further trials will evaluate longer term clinical effects, and other makers of disease progression.”
In the meantime, as has been said so many times before, what in the world do you have to lose by including these amazingly healthful foods in your daily diet? Why would anyone over the age of 30 NOT be eating Broccoli, Turmeric, Pomegranates and drinking Green Tea (not to mention a long list of other health foods you can find easily sprinkled around this very blog). If you think they haven’t been proven as effective preventive measures then you just haven’t been reading the right stuff on the internet. Try going here instead.
If you’re biased against something, it is easy to make a one-sided attack. Simply bring up whatever negative points exist (don’t all of us have some?) and harp on those. However, when you can’t really find much negative to say and you have to really grasp at straws, that is when you come up with something that is the delightful combination of potentially really offensive and much less than accurate.
Such is the case with pseudo-blogger Michael Schulson’s pathetic stab at Whole Foods (and, assumedly, all they represent – meaning the organic movement and natural medicine in general) entitled “Whole Foods: America’s Temple of Pseudoscience”. To prove his point, that Whole Foods is the temple of pseudoscience, his over-arching point is a comparison to another bastion of “pseudo-science”, the creationist museum in Kentucky.
First of all, if you choose to believe in creationism, and to visit the museum in Kentucky – hats off to you. I don’t personally identify with those views represented there, but I’m not often in the business of making fun of other people’s beliefs. Mostly because I usually have better more constructive things to do with my time.
When it comes to implying that there is, like creationism, no science and only faith; in natural medicine, the organic movement and all the things this young blogger found in Whole Foods – I have to stop and school the little brother.
He makes a laundry list of things he finds in the aisles of Whole Foods that he believes are ‘pseudo-science’ — including probiotics. To skewer this valuable supplement (used in numerous double-blind placebo-controlled studies) what does he do? Does he search pub med or some other database for research to validate the claims made on Whole Foods shelves? No, he asks an anonymous friend who is a “biologist” (biology student?) who says they are “bulls&*%”. If this isn’t “psuedo-journalism” — I don’t know what is.
If he really wanted to gather scientific information on probiotics, he might have contacted Institut Rosell who have been doing award-winning research for over 70 years. Yet, instead of using the scientific method to combat ‘pseudo-science’ this blogger instead resorts to unsubstantiated conjecture and poppy cock. He says a bunch of other stuff that is basically a fairly well-worded version of what his biologist friend referred to, and a degree in science as well.
The internet is an amazing thing. It can open doors to new information, but only if we rationally ask the right questions and start to look outside of our own paradigms and assumptions. This is when the quest for actual intelligence begins.
For the thousands upon thousands who have come to Whole Foods, and other health food stores, seeking an alternative to the American processed way of life, and have found great health – they know that there is science for those who need it, and healing with foods for those who need it too. We human beings have been doing it since Hippocrates (and – truth be told – for thousands of years prior), and I don’t see it going the way of the Edsel any time soon.
