My partner and I usually spend a few hours each evening around dinner time watching the TV. We usually catch a bit of the news, Jeopardy, and then move on to something that is on our well-stocked DVR. Since most of our watching is from shows that we’ve previously recorded, and our DVR remote control has that handy “FF” button, we actually watch very few commercials from beginning to end. Well, we do usually stop and watch those talking baby financial services ads, they are funny, but, I digress.
We are also of an older generation, and both of us can recall seeing TV commercials where doctors promoted one brand of cigarette over another, and the back pages of every comic book had advertisements for hypno-coins and x-ray glasses. We learned long ago to be skeptical of advertisers, and cling fiercely to the age-old maxim “if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is”.
There seems to be a new surge in the advertisement of food products, wherein the manufacturer claims that their otherwise ordinary product either has natural health benefits we didn’t realize we needed, or that they have added something to the food product so that it has the health benefits we didn’t realize we needed.
Take, for example, the product “Vitamin Water.” Apparently there is something wrong with plain old water. It’s bad enough that most Americans purchase their drinking water in bottles at the supermarket, instead of just opening their kitchen tap, but now we think we need to add vitamins and coloring to make it more palatable.
Many major brands of bottled water are nothing more than the same tap water you get at your sink, or, if you buy an imported brand, the tap water from someone else’s sink, just farther away. The wastage is incomprehensible. All that plastic, all the shipping costs, and it’s been proven in study after study that a lot of bottled waters are less healthy than drinking your own tap water. Then there is the vitamin thing.
A recent study shows that most of the fancy and expensive little cups of yogurt that have “probiotics” added to them have no added benefits over just plain old regular yogurt. Yet, because of heavy advertising, many people now believe that our guts are broken unless we add these special bacteria from the fancy little yogurt cup. Saying something is true often, doesn’t mean that something untrue really is true, but it is a fundamental principle of advertising. Say it loud enough, often enough, and people will begin to think it is true. I suppose this is the same for politics, which may be why I dislike both advertising and politics.
Energy drinks containing stimulants, adding omega-3 fatty acids to bread, or fortifying sugary cereals with minerals and vitamins does not necessarily make them more healthy for you, but it does make them more expensive. As comedian Hal Sparks says in a wildly funny stand-up piece, most granola bars are nothing but candy bars, and those fancy coffees you get at high-priced “coffee houses” are nothing but milkshakes.
An article in Forbes magazine cites that since the European Food Safety Authority began reviewing health claims of food in 2006, it has rejected 80% of the claims by manufacturers, and only 9 of the most recent 416 claims have passed muster. Adding omega-3 to white bread doesn’t make it anything more than it already was, and a few bugs in yogurt doesn’t overcome all the extra sugar you find.
But, people are gullible, and if a pretty face on TV, perched atop a well toned and 3/4 naked body tells you that eating boiled tree bark wrapped in snake-skin made them that way, then you better post guards on the trees in your yard, and you can bet that snakes will soon be extinct.
If you eat a healthy, well-balanced and nutritional diet on a daily basis, all that money that you spend on those supplements that sit on your kitchen counter is just wasted. As any nutritionist will tell you, there is no added benefit to consuming more vitamins than your body needs, and in some cases, you can actually make yourself sick. Too much vitamin A or D will make you ill. A 2007 Journal of Medicine article cites a study that showed a 5% increase in death rates for people who took elevated levels of vitamin E, beta-carotene or Vitamin A.
Young people today who base their entire nutrition on energy drinks, vitamin water and granola bars run a real risk of overdose of some of these vitamins, and 
that doesn’t even count the amount of sugar they end up ingesting. Vitamin water “has no more sugar than soda” claims the manufacturer. Refined sugar has no health benefit whatsoever, and aside from the fact that it simply tastes good, there is no need for any of it in our diets, much less the quantity found in a single serving of todays carbonated beverages.
When I was a kid, the most common size of coca-cola was the 6.5oz bottle. We never thought it was too small, it was always “just right.” Later, one of my favorite snacks became an RC Cola with a 10 cent pack of peanuts poured into it. Now and then we were allowed to substitute a Moonpie for the peanuts, but in any case, it was always a rare treat, and I don’t recall being allowed to consume them more than once or twice a month.
Anytime you see an advertisement where something is claimed to be good for you, to improve your health simply by consuming this particular brand, you need to make sure you read the fine print on the label. It’s an almost sure bet that the only guaranteed benefit of the product is that the manufacturer will make money when you purchase it.