Do Lemons Cure Scurvy?In 1747 James Lind introduced citrus fruit to the British Navy as a dietary supplement to prevent scurvy. John Woodall, Surgeon General of the East Indies Company had previously identified the lack of fresh fruit as the cause of scurvy on ocean voyages. Before this, scurvy was a serious limitation on marine travel, killing large numbers if passengers and sailors on long voyages. It was not until 1932 that the connection between vitamin C and scurvy was identified, but people didn't wait for the cure to be proven in a laboratory or for a government agency to giove its approval before they started using it. Lemons worked. Lemons had also been safely consumed for hundreds of years.What if the FDA had existed back then, and had been stacked with people from the pharmaceutical industry as it is now? By the logic the FDA is currently using in its recent threats and attacks on family fruit growers, the information that lemons could prevent scurvy would have been kept from the public. For generations people in northern Michigan, where Montmorency tart cherries are grown by small family farmers, had sworn by tart cherry juice as a remedy for gout and arthritis. When the discovery was made by researchers at Michigan State University, Brunswick Labs, and the University of Texas that tart cherries contained very high levels of naturally occurring compounds that had anti-inflammatory properties, growers felt confident that this information could and should be given to the public. It helped sales of tart cherries somewhat, of course, but the public is bombarded daily by advertising making health claims for a variety of products so it seemed that no one could object to these growers benefiting from advertising their product by citing research that supported the folk lore about health benefits of tart cherries. Tart cherry sales have increased, not dramatically, but sales direct from the grower to the consumer grew and became an important component in grower's attempt to survive in a world where they have to compete in a global market with multi-national corporations and where the food supply is under monopolistic control of a few large corporations. As more and more people started drinking tart cherry juice, thousands of people reported that tart cherry juice had worked for them on gout, arthritis and fibromyalgia. It seemed to be ideal situation: the public was affordably and safely getting relief from debilitating inflammation and pain for which the prescribed pharmaceutical products were ineffective, expensive and dangerous , growers with initiative who were willing to take a risk were making a fair return by marketing their produce directly to consumers and so were able to buy more land and plant more cherry trees, and the government's various tax-payer supported programs encouraging people to eat more fresh fruit were being promoted and supported. Then cherry growers received a warning letter from the FDA saying that "claiming" health benefits for any product meant that the product was therefore a drug by their definition, and that drugs needed to be approved by the agency in order to be legal to sell. This approval process - which for some reason does not apply to the giant pharmaceutical corporations - would take as long as 10 years and cost millions of dollars. Never mind that the growers were not making "claims "- let alone false or misleading claims, which the FDA is not telling them in any case, although the FDA press releases and subsequent media reports say that the growers are making false claims in contradiction to what the FDA is telling the growers; never mind that the airwaves are awash in billions of dollars worth of advertising for all kinds of products of dubious benefit; the bureaucrats had spoken and "compliance," whatever that might be, would be enforced by seizures and arrests. Certainly there is a proper role for the FDA to play in safeguarding the public health. Ironically, while small family farmers are being threatened, the giant pharmaceutical corporations have no problem getting their often dangerous, ineffective and expensive products fast tracked for approval and rushed to market. Critics have pointed out recently that there have been almost no warnings from the FDA to any pharmaceutical companies despite the fact that several new drugs have been proven to be dangerous and have been misrepresented to the agency and to the public. Could this possibly have anything to do with the fact that FDA management has been populated with former lawyers and lobbyists from the very pharmaceutical companies for which the FDA is supposed to be the watchdog? Could it have anything to do with the massive amounts of money that pharmaceutical giants put into the pockets of government officials? The committee in congress looking at this issue has been given over $600,000 dollars this year alone by pharmaceutical companies. Certainly the FDA has a role in protecting the public from blatantly false and misleading claims by the nutritional supplement industry, but this must be done in such a way that the rights to due process, to the presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, freedom from prior restraint and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure are protected. All of these Constitutional protections are being threatened by the FDA's actions against fruit growers. Tart cherry growers are not selling some over-priced miracle blended health drink. They aren't selling it under some new trade-marked name. They aren't cashing in by commanding a premium for the juice based on a health fad. In fact, most consumers order directly from the growers and pay half the price they would for watered down fruit juices from the major corporate manufacturers in the supermarket. The growers aren't adulterating their product with imported juice of questionable quality. They aren't selling a blend that consists of mostly apple juice from China dumped on the US market with just a dab of the fruit juice featured in the product name and on the label, as many of the large corporate food producers are doing. They are selling an honest and pure product at a fair price that they themselves are growing right here in northern Michigan. That brings us back to the example of lemons and scurvy. People suffering from gout who drink tart cherry juice know that tart cherry juice works without researchers or government bureaucrats telling them that it does. While other fruit products, such as grape juice for example, contain nutrients that are associated with disease prevention, that is a different case. You could drink grape juice every day for the rest of your life, and while it certainly won't hurt you and could very well lead to better health, you will never experience the dramatic and unambiguous results that sailors enjoyed after they added lemons to their diets, or that gout sufferers enjoy from tart cherry juice. Tart cherries have been safely consumed for hundreds of years and tart cherry juice works. Not because the growers say so, not because some marketer says so, not because researchers say so, and not because some federal agency says so. also see:
Why is the FDA Picking on Cherry Growers? |