A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a guy who sells a very well known brand of dietary supplements.  He isn’t a nutritionist, a nutritional therapist or a dietician. He is one of an army of people making a (very nice as it happens) living selling supplements to friends, family, and associates within a ‘network marketing’ business model. He is completely reliant on the sales messages fed to him by the company marketing the products.

The conversation went a little bit like this…

Him: “Oh great, you’re a nutritional therapist.  What do you think of [name withheld] products – you could recommend them to your clients?“

Me: “Well, I don’t know everything about your full range of products, but I suspect there will be some I’ll think are OK and others that I won’t think are OK.”

Him: “So what sort of things do you think are not OK in products like ours.”

Me: “Sugar. Lots of shakes like the ones you sell contain far too much sugar.”

Him (waving an orange at me): “Ah yes – but we’ve got that covered.  The sugar in our products is exactly what’s in here.  It’s all natural fruit sugars.“

Me: “You mean fructose?“

Him: “Is that what’s in fruit?“

Me: “Yes.”

Him: “So that’s good yes?“

Me: “Not necessarily.  Are you familiar with the recent research about the dangers of consuming too much fructose?“

Him: “What, you mean the sugar in fruit isn’t good for you?“

Me: “Take a look at what Robert Lustig is saying about fructose – you’ll find lots about it if you Google him.”

Him:”I can’t believe our stuff isn’t good for you.  Bloody hell, I use it all the time. Am I using something I shouldn’t?“

So here is what Robert Lustig had to say in the Guardian this weekend…click here.