Healthy Food Chart

That health food store employees are not the most reliable sources of information about nutrition won’t come as a surprise to many of you. But it’s always nice to be able to put a number on these things.

Canadian researchers sent a couple hundred student volunteers into health foods stores and pharmacies to ask for advice about health concerns and nutritional supplements.  Some asked the staff what to take for particular health problems. Others asked about specific supplements: Would they help treat a particular issue or produce a particular benefit?

The health food store employees scored rather poorly: Nine out of ten times, the information they dispensed had little scientific support or was completely contrary to scientific evidence.   The pharmacy staff did a good bit better: Two-thirds of the time, the advice they gave was at least in the ball-park (characterized in the study as “accurate” or “fairly accurate”).

As the researchers conclude: “Pharmacies are a far more reliable source of information, although they still have significant scope for improvement.”

With apologies to those rare health food store employees who actually know what they’re talking about, I’ve certainly had to bite my tongue at some of the wisdom I’ve heard dispensed–with a great deal of authority–in health food stores.

I know they usually mean well.  But it probably also ends up moving a lot of product–which is why advice given out by employees could reasonably be considered “marketing.”   The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act strictly limits health claims that can be made by those selling dietary supplements. Given that these restrictions have been interpreted to apply to literature for sale in a certain proximity to the supplements, it would seem that they would also encompass information being dispensed by employees–should anyone care to enforce it.

In the meantime: caveat emptor, folks!  Do your research, using reliable sources, before you get to the store!

Some resources:

Office of Dietary Supplements (NIH)

National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine

Medline Plus Directory of Drugs, Supplements and Herbs

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