[Reprinted from LCHN-25 Mar/Apr 2000 in “My Life & Rollercoaster Career pp. 378-380.”]
Whom should you believe? For years we have been told that salt is bad (high blood pressure!), coffee is bad (caffeine!), eggs may be worse (heart attack!), butter is bad (cholesterol!), margarine is good (no cholesterol!), estrogen is bad (and now good!), and “fiber” is good (prevents cancer! lowers cholesterol!), etc., etc. Now, one is not so sure!
In a recent article on fiber by a reporter of the Associated Press, reprinted in The Record of New Jersey,the title proclaims “Another magic bullet misses mark” followed by “Fiber, miracle food no more, one of many recent letdowns.” 2 This gives you the impression that we should no longer include fiber in our diet. But what is fiber in the first place? Unlike specific, well-defined chemicals or drugs such as caffeine, aspirin, or cocaine, fiber and other food substances being studied in humans are seldom clearly defined. Add to this the high variability of the complex human organism, you have many strikes against you in trying to obtain meaningful results. I can see the rationale behind the use of statistics to determine the validity or significance of a study using a pure chemical drug ON a complex human being, where at least the non-human part is constant. On the other hand, I can’t see the justification of using statistics to rationalize the results of studying complex variable natural materials ON an even more complex human organism. With the potential myriad of permutations among the countless variables, how scientific can these studies be and how valid their results? This is an aspect of clinical trials on natural materials that has always bothered me. Just imagine taking a relatively simple artificial mixture of ONLY caffeine, chlorogenic acid, theophylline, catechin, huperzine A, ginsenoside Rb1, cocaine, ephedrine, hypericin, ursolic acid, cimetidine, berberine, aspirin, and guar gum, and try to study the effect of caffeine in humans! This is simply out of control! This mixture is not even half as complex as a natural material like ginseng or eleuthero. Yet, can any researchers honestly say they have a controlled study under this kind of situation? Not unless they are totally ignorant in, or oblivious to, the non-human aspects of their study. By this I mean the natural materials (“drugs”) they are studying. Up to this day, many researchers (including pharmaceutical and medical) continue to regard natural materials (be it an herb or herbal extract) which they study, as pure chemicals, knowingly or unknowingly, 21 years after the publication of the infamous study of “ginseng” that resulted in the term “ginseng abuse syndrome!” In that study, the author considered any commercial product with a label of “ginseng” as ginseng, presumably Asian ginseng (Issue 18)!3 Without at least controlling the natural materials under study, no wonder there are so many controversial research findings. It is like the researchers have been comparing oranges with apples all these years! It is no wonder we keep getting conflicting health advises. Because there are no uniform criteria or standards for evaluating/selecting substances like fibers, coffees, teas, or ginsengs as materials to be studied (Issue 19), one researcher’s results may be positive while another’s negative. And when these reach the popular press, the results are frequently misinterpreted, exaggerated, suppressed, or manipulated, to suit its own agenda. The end result is a very confused public, even me, though I am more skeptical than confused! Take the case of fiber. The reporter of above article makes it sound like fiber is a single, chemically well-defined drug that is expected to produce a very specific pharmacological effect (hence he refers to it as “magic bullet”) that is supposed to prevent colon cancer. When 2 recent studies didn’t show such effect, he declared the “magic bullet misses mark.” But fiber is not a single-chemical drug like aspirin or morphine! Unless all scientists agree to clearly define what fiber is whenever it is being studied, the results would be different each time, no matter how many times “fiber” is being studied. The attitude we should assume concerning any kind of clinical trial with natural substances, especially with foods and food ingredients, is to consider any of their findings simply as potentially useful information to add to our collective traditional wisdom or common sense. They should never be taken as new definitive scientific wisdom, at least not until the scientific world agrees on what they are actually studying when it comes to natural food materials. For now, like always, moderation is the key to good health. I don’t know about you, but I continue to eat eggs whenever I want to, though not excessively. I prefer butter to margarine because I simply have never believed that margarine is better or even good for you, and I don’t eat that much butter anyway. Regarding fiber, I don’t have any regular diet regimen for that either, though I eat whatever fruits and vegetables that are available to me. All these plus a little (just a little) guilt feeling that I should eat more of this, or less of that, due to years of subconscious indoctrination by bad science, especially via the popular media.
(2) D.Q. Haney, “Why Healthy-Eating Rules Change So Much – Another Magic Bullet Misses Mark,” The Record, New Jersey, April 22, 2000, p. A-9; (3) R.K. Siegel, “Ginseng Abuse Syndrome,” JAMA, 241: 1614-1615(1979).