Snake oil snacks

Functional foods are as old as iodized salt. They are as familiar and beneficial as orange juice with added calcium, vitamin D milk, enriched flour. The new generation – everyday foods laced with unregulated drugs and unproven promises – can be, at best, as ineffective as snake oil. At worst, as dangerous as venom.

The everyday foods are such items as juice, soup, cereal and chips. The unregulated drugs are herbs such as ginkgo biloba, ginseng, echinacea, kava kava. The promises range from better memory and sharper thinking to relief from depression and immunity from disease. The purveyors aren’t fly-by-night hucksters or backwoods folklorists, but many of the big names in the food industry. It’s a $10 billion-a-year business and growing nearly as fast as the baseless claims and the legitimate concerns about taking daily doses of substances that, despite their origin in nature, are drugs.

Last week, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Varro Tyler, a professor emeritus at Purdue University and an expert on herbs, joined together to urge the Food and Drug Administration to halt immediately the sale of 75 of these new functional foods that make the most outlandish claims and that have the greatest potential for causing harm. The manufacturers include Snapple, Ben & Jerry’s, Arizona, Procter & Gamble. It is a public stand long overdue; AG Blumenthal’s investigation and crackdown on deceptive products sold in his state should be emulated elsewhere.

The issue is not merely whether Snapple’s Moon Tea Drink containing kava kava actually will “enlighten your senses.” Or whether Arizona’s Rx Memory Elixer with ginkgo biloba is truly “mind-enhancing.” Beyond the vague claims, carefully worded to skirt truth-in-labeling law, are far more serious issues: dosages and purity are unknown, as are interactions with other drugs the user may be taking, the immediate and long-term health impacts, their effect on pregnant women, nursing mothers and children.

Echinacea supposedly improves resistance to colds. The few studies done find little evidence of that (perhaps a slight, subjective, reduction in severity), but there is evidence that prolonged use actually interferes with the immune system. There is no mention of that on the Ben & Jerry’s Tropic of Mango Smoothie label. Ginkgo does accelerate blood flow, it can heighten mental awareness. That’s because it acts as blood thinner. Heart patients on anticoagulant drugs who use it are at increased risk of stroke. The maker of Memory Elixir forgot to mention it. Kava kava certainly makes one feel relaxed – it is, after all a sedative. It has been a factor in several drunken driving arrests, kids have dozed off on playgrounds and in classrooms, and people being treated for clinical depression with prescription drugs have lost consciousness when taking it in combination.

Functional foods have come a long way from added iodine to avoid goiter, calcium and vitamin D for stronger bones, folate in flour to prevent birth defects. Herbs are, as Professor Varro says, drugs. Some consumers may approve of this marriage of pantry and medicine cabinet, but all consumers deserve at least accurate and informative labels and substantiated claims. The FDA should be given the authority and the funding to regulate these herbal substances the same way it regulates other supplements and additives. That authority and funding can come only from Congress, long reluctant to stand up to the food industry. Perhaps there’s a functional food for enhancing the backbone.