"Panic in the Pantry" was written to help consumers become fully aware of the real facts behind news about the safety of our food supply. Whelan and Stare examine the power wielded by health food lobbyists who band together and exert political pressure to protect their profitable ventures. They discuss the concept of "relative risk" and why it should be used to place information about food additives and preservatives into proper perspective, as well as why the Delaney Clause - a law intended to protect us from cancer causing chemicals in our food - cannot fulfil the noble purpose for which it was drafted and therefore should be repealed. Also examined is the research behind the banning of cyclomates and the attacks on saccharin and aspartame that left many Americans wondering whether they are doomed to be chubby or develop cancer.A lengthy discussion of California's Proposition 65 provides insight into the chaos that can result when fearmongers are able to secure legislation based on panic about food supply. The authors also address the flight to "natural" products, which may lead to serious health problems as well as added consumer expense. The contemporary back-to-nature mania is rejected as a hoax perpetuated by opportunists intent on taking advantage of frightened and impressionable consumers.
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YA-- Whelan and Stare claim that even though we have the safest food supply in the world, consumers are being told that they are being poisoned and tainted. Topics covered include chemically treated versus natural foods, coloration, and additives. Ingredients in coffee, beef, and saccharine are also discussed. The Delaney law, part of which states that any cancer-causing additives should be banned, is presented. The authors strongly recommend that this law be repealed because in reality it strangles rather than protects people. They also discuss how "health" or "natural" foods do not mean chemical-free. They advise readers not to panic, and to demand more information from scientists and lawmakers. This is, indeed, food for thought.
- Mary I. Quinn, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Mary I. Quinn, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Brings its own set of panics and hysteria,
By
This review is from: Panic in the Pantry: Facts & Fallacies About the Food You Buy (Consumer Health Library) (Paperback)
In its various editions, this book has always been a jumble of mixed messages. It is intended partly to dispel myths propounded by food faddists. The authors hammer away at unscientific views on food additives, "natural" foods, over-the-top food supplement claims. This is not hard labor since the claims they attack are often ridiculous. However, it seems a bit odd that these "quackbusters" and "junk science" critics don't provide footnotes for their own assertions. They apparently fancy themselves such revered experts that readers are to take their declarations at face value. Or they are too lazy to provide documentation. These authors should know better.
To a disturbing extent, the book reads like a legal polemic. There are countless references to the legal plights of those who they consider to be quacks. Often these legal issues have nothing whatever to do with the merits of the scientific issues. Do we really learn anything about the value of, say, chelation therapy, by being told that one proponent has been prosecuted for tax evasion? Because of these frequent asides, the book has a sleazy, even authoritarian tone. The authors, and editor Barrett, are known to favor relentless government action, both legal and regulatory, against people with whom they disagree. Barrett has even advocated changing the laws so that consumers can sue publishers who publish articles with (what Barrett considers) erroneous and harmful health advice. So much for freedom of the press. The authors give us clues on how to recognize a "health quack." One of these clues is that quacks "display credentials not recognized by responsible scientists or educators." This is said to be the insight of editor Barrett. But Barrett, who is referred to by the patently unscientific term, "consumer activist," is actually a psychiatrist! Is that a recognized credential for expertise on nutrition or biochemistry? Not a few people would counter that psychiatry itself is the quintessential "junk science." Another quality of quacks, says Barrett, is that "They encourage patients to lend political support to their treatment methods." This is disingenuous in light of the fact that author Whelan is director of a group, The American Council on Science and Health, among whose purposes is to influence government policy. These self-styled experts are allowed to engage in politics, while "quacks" are not. The "quacks" are supposed to just lie there while the government gives it to them good and hard. But are these authors infallible? In the 1975 edition of this book, Stare and Whelan wrote that "an accumulation of lycopene following daily consumption of a half a gallon of tomato juice for several years can pose a hazard."Again the book is poorly referenced, so we cannot verify this claim. On its face it seems silly since few people would drink that much tomato juice. And now we know that lycopene is very likely a cancer preventive, so the authors were apparently wrong. The reference to lycopene is missing from the current edition. Are these authors quacks for making such an outlandish assertion? The authors have no sense of humor. They go about the business of attacking "quacks" with grim-faced determination, when a horse-laugh would often be more effective. It is obvious that the authors do not limit themselves to countering false ideas, they want those ideas, those who promote them, and those who sell "unproven" health products to be defenestrated. It never occurs to them that people have the right to sell and buy products without the approval of health experts or the government. Hence, there is a hint of Big Brother throughout the book. Like most "consumer advocates," they care nothing for the choices of consumers, they want to DICTATE to consumers. The authors are essentially Chicken Littles who think the sky will fall if Americans don't follow the health practices they endorse. So, the book does every bit as much to spread panic as to squelch it. Like so many health writers, they don't doubt that the most important value in life is GOOD HEALTH, and that anyone who gets in the way of that should be stamped out. Liberty is not accepted as a value of competing importance. Finally, I have personal knowledge that one example of "evidence" supplied in the book is completely false. The casual way that this false information is used casts doubt on the authors' powers of discernment.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Industry Propaganda,
This review is from: Panic in the Pantry: Facts & Fallacies About the Food You Buy (Consumer Health Library) (Paperback)
The Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch found that this book was authored by people working for the food industry. The book's authors are funded by Burger King, Coca Cola, DuPont, Exxon, Frito-Lay, General Mills and General Motors, to name a few. This book is and was a complete farce and that's why it costs 5 cents on amazon.
2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Why the corpse was orange,
By
This review is from: Panic in the Pantry: Facts & Fallacies About the Food You Buy (Consumer Health Library) (Paperback)
Evidently the first edition of 'Panic in the Pantry,' which was published in 1975, didn't have sufficient impact, since the new edition starts with a history of the 1989 Alar panic.
A lot of people thought the Alar-in-apples scare demonstrated the dangers of pesticides in our food supply. What it really showed is that most people don't know beans about nutrition. Fortunately, according to Elizabeth Whelan and Frederick Stare, they don't have to, since America's food is not only the most abundant but the safest in the world. 'Panic' is really aimed not only at people who don't understand anything about nutrition, but whose education is so defective they are incapable of understanding anything about it. Therefore, unless they are willing to study hard, they will continue to have to take somebody else's word for it. Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, and Stare, retired founder of Harvard University's Department of Nutrition, say you should take the word of scientists, like them. Of course, lots of habitues of the health food stores seem suspicious of scientists. They are right to be skeptical but are facing the wrong way. ACSH, for example, occasionally runs blind surveys of Healthfoodland (as Whelan and Stare call it) to find out what quality of advice is being given out. The results are appalling. In 1989, another group, the Consumer Health Education Council, called 41 Houston health food stores with a concocted story about a man with AIDS who was continuing to have sexual relations with his wife. The callers purported to seek nutritional advice for the couple. Thirty of the 41 nutritional counselors claimed their stores sold cures for AIDS, all 41 recommended vitamins and various 'counselors' recommended other nostrums from hydrogen peroxide to herbal baths. Not one counselor recommended either abstention from sex or condoms for the wife at risk. The quality of the advice from Healthfoodland is literally a matter of life and death, and not just from AIDS. I know health food quacks who are telling insulin-dependent diabetics to throw away their needles (which the diabetics are only too happy to hear) and replace them with Chinese herbs. That is a death sentence. But isn't it true that lax regulations and slovenly testing practices allow dangerous chemicals and adulterants into our food? No, say Whelan and Stare. The Food and Drug Administration 'testing process is so rigorous that many "natural" substances -- including vitamin A -- could not survive it.' That's because more people (one or two a year) die from vitamin A overdoses than have died in all history from dioxin (zero). These victims are readily identifiable because typically they get their vitamin A from drinking carrot juice -- up to a gallon a day -- and their corpses consequently are bright orange.
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