Chuckleheads

In the Dallas News opinion section, Beverly Biehl wrote:

Acupuncture, through a specialized treatment called NAET, totally eliminated the lactose intolerance I had struggled with for more than 14 years, nearly all of my children’s food and environmental allergies, and has kept us antibiotic-free for four years. Acupuncture even fixed my hot flashes and PMS.

Emotional Freedom Technique is an offshoot of this ancient wisdom, and I’m even losing weight by simply tapping certain points while saying health-inducing affirmations.

I also made liberal use of homeopathy, high-frequency flower essences, aromatherapy, massage therapy, chiropractic, yoga, meditation, Electro-Dermal Screening, Quantum Energy Clearing, Reconnective Healing and detoxifying footbaths. All of these had some type of positive impact on my health, though some more noticeable than others.

On the Huffington Post, bloggers Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent wrote:

We are so weirded out by this - Dannon and some other companies are now adding laxatives to their yogurt. Dannon Activia contains Bifidus Regularis: "a natural probiotic culture that can help regulate your digestive system by helping reduce long intestinal transit time." Excuse us; did they say that it speeds up intestinal transit time? Oh, we get it - kind of like that Alli pill or Olean. If your personal transit time is too long, try eating real food with real fiber, like apples and nuts and spinach and berries and oatmeal. But mixing laxatives with yogurt is just gross.

What's the difference between the two?

Beverly Biehl was writing a humor piece on the need to believe in treatments to get them to work.

Lipper and Vincent try for a humorous tone in their over-the-top rants against fake food, but their facts are just as fake.

Reducing long transit time can mean helps with constipation rather than promotes diarrhea. And in any case that's not how either Alli or Olean work. (They reduce fat absoption and so don't contribute to calories. Diarrhea can be a side effect in some, although one study showed that diarrhea was a reported side effect in 28% of the people taking the placebo!)

I've written myself that commercial yogurts in America are often loaded with extra milk powder, sugar, and other nutritionally unnecessary additives. But you can say that without going off about "chemicals" - everything's a chemical, you chuckleheads! - and getting my science wrong.

Eating right doesn't mean writing stupid.