Detox on BBC - this evening

[Asolepius]

Don't miss this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/real_story/4847816.stm). Also it has at last kicked the MHRA into action, so I'm told.

[Zendal Darkman]

Taken from the feedback section of this BBC article
Detox's medical claims face probe by MHRA (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4848148.stm)


This is yet another cynical attack on natural health. We know that biochemistry is at least 20 years ahead of medicine and can explain the reasons for supplementing, detoxing etc. Natural products have a safer record than food itself, yet bodies such as the MHRA act as if they are protecting us whilst behind the double-speak they are in fact protecting the pharmaceutical industry which thrives on ill-health, and which is responsible, ironically, for thousands of deaths annually. Natural products are not medicines. The latter work by their toxicity, the former are what the body requires for life.
Jim Cooke, Newburgh

..does anyone else suspect Jim Cooke is hardcore woo?:)

[Matabiri]

Browsing a bookshop yesterday, in the cookery section, I noticed a sign for "vegetarian/natural cookery". What's "natural cookery"?

On the other hand I was pleased to notice that the River Cottage Meat Book and another tome called, simply, Burgers, were bang in the middle of the vegetarian books.

[brodski]

Browsing a bookshop yesterday, in the cookery section, I noticed a sign for "vegetarian/natural cookery". What's "natural cookery"?

A lightening strike on a mammoth? :p

[Hellbound]

natural cookery:

Sit still and silent at the edge of the plains.

Spot herd.

Pick out slow/weak/old members of herd.

Stalk until close to selected members. Spring from ambush and strangle victim to death.

Eat your fill. Remember to watch out for scavengers.

[Zendal Darkman]

It may or may not be similar, but a colleague at work was most offended when I questioned her claim that giving birth in a tub of water was a "natural birth, the way nature intended".

[wilks]

At least there was some criticism of the diets and products but the programme never tackled one point - that we don't need to use silly products or have a special diet in order to remove toxins from body.

[Capsid]

I watched this. It pretty much rubbished detox products. Some of them were making claims that would classify them as a medicinal product which would then mean they need a licence. The regulatory body in the UK will be following up on these products but some manufacturers had removed the medicinal claims from their packaging as a result of the programme.

Some of the detox diets were having beneficial effects in weight loss and lowering of cholesterol, but what does that have to do with removing toxins? The levels of specific toxins were not measured before or during the diet. So there was no real understanding of the detoxification process and no real hard question as to what these toxins really are and if they exist at all.