6 Things You Should Know About Essential Oils

WILX—you know, the breaking news and weather authority—did a two-part report on essential oils last week, titled Essential Oils: Hype or Help? I can compress Part One into a brief summary for you: essential oils are very popular right now, and many people will testify to their efficacy. Part Two features some lightly cautionary missives about liver damage from some doctors, and a couple more testimonials. In the meantime, I thought I'd take a break from my crusade to master the mind to splash about in some plant extracts. I thought the best approach would be presenting bite-sized chunks of related information, because readers and writers are finally in agreement that transitional sentences and linked paragraphs are a waste of time. So...(trumpets)

Things to Know About Essential Oils

There isn't much research on the efficacy of essential oils.

I don't mean to imply anything about their efficacy. Many people clearly love essential oils, and what is worthwhile, my friend, if not love? And they smell good. Whole businesses have been founded on the premise of good smells. There's simply not much clinical evidence about essential oils and their effects. What data does exist is largely subjective, or reliant on patient/user reporting. Patient reporting might be as good an indicator as any when it comes to mood enhancement, but less so when it comes to, say, combating ear infection. In other words, learning about essential oils (EO) is not like learning about aspirin. Everything is frustratingly vague. That said...

The premise for aromatherapy isn't as silly as (some people think) it sounds.

You have a brain. You have a nose, and some olfactory receptors connected to it. If you were to catch a whiff of the shoe-spray-and stale-cigarette-smoke melange from the bowling alley in which you spent your salad days, you may (briefly) experience a feeling of youthful exuberance. The brain's limbic system processes both memory and emotion, meaning that smells can create big feels. This doesn't seem entirely reliant on connotation and nostalgia, either. Some smells excite this physiological pathway almost universally. (As a rule, people like flowers and food, and tend to avoid raw sewage.) Is it possible that lavender, aside from smelling "nice," possesses a unique combination of terpenes, esters, oxides, phenols, alcohols, ketones, and aldehydes that has a calming effect on the mind? That seems entirely possible, but more research has to be done. What is firmly established, however, is that the placebo effect is powerful enough to conquer anxiety on its own. Moreover, the memory of feeling calm can itself generate more of the same. As far as aromatherapy is concerned, the risks are almost nonexistent. At worst, you're purchasing a nice scent, at best, soothing your core being.

No such thing as "certification" exists in the world of essential oil manufacture. Terms like "therapeutic grade" are arbitrary.

No regulatory body issues any sort of approval or rating regarding "purity" for an essential oil manufacturer. Many brands claim to be certified or therapeutic grade, but these distinctions are entirely at the discretion of the brand's marketing team. Like supplements, essential oils do not require any sort of FDA or other oversight. As a result, manufacturers' claims lay in the gray area of implying benefits without explicitly promising them. This is common to the entire supplement world, and shouldn't be considered an indictment of any sort. A bottle of calcium cannot promise to prevent osteopenia, either. 

Essential Oils and multilevel marketing are sometimes big buddies. 

Sometimes. Part of the reason for the recent visibility of EO is the tireless marketing efforts of multilevel marketing companies like doTERRA and Young Living. ("Multilevel marketing," or MLM, is the euphemistic term for those things that are not pyramid schemes, legally speaking, but seem exactly like pyramid schemes when your friends you haven't seen since high school call you up for "coffee" so they can try and sell you premium cutlery, or essential oils.) 

In order for MLM to work, the MLM company must convey the central idea that their product is the absolute cream of the crop. MLM requires an incredible amount of overhead to pay the pyramid network of people involved and market the product, so the price of said product is usually far greater than a store-bought counterpart. That's not to say these products are not top notch. Only that these companies must convince their customers—who are also vendors—that they are top notch. This creates a sense of fierce, unnuanced loyalty around said essential oils. It's why you often can't even suggest that any other brand might be comparable to a devotee of the MLM EO brands. 

There is a hot debate about whether to ingest essential oils, especially in the EO community.

It shouldn't be that confusing—do you drink 'em, or not? 

In an amazingly in-depth series of articles on EO, Tauna Meyer asks Paul Dean—owner of Native American Nutritionals—this very thing.  His answer: you can ingest them if you want, but there's no need, because smelling them is more potent. 

I'll be frank—I find this answer lacking. 

His main point, later in the interview, is that ingestion safety is largely a matter of adulteration. How common is "adulteration?" He says somewhere about around 95% of EO are adulterated. Did he discern this in his lab, or with a scrying glass? It turns out that... you can just tell, after accumulating enough experience. Hmmm. 

There is no straight answer about the ingestion issue. But most doctors and aromatherapists agree: just don't ingest them unless you know what you're doing. This implies that it is possible to know what you're doing in regard to EO. Is it?

You can become an "expert" without expertise, and develop expertise without becoming an "expert."

You can become a "certified" aromatherapist with many different organizations, including some that sell EO. This is much like how you could become an ordained minister online within the hour. Again, that's not to say that some of these sources aren't experts, but it's hard to separate the helpful from the...hype-full. 

The most common aromatherapy certification is issued by the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy. This organization is large and generally respected, but it's important to understand just how little applied science is involved in the process of certification. 

The Bottom Line

• Aromatherapy is great, but it's more art than science at this point. 
• Becoming serious about aromatherapy means wading through a lot of conjecture.
• You should buy all your essential oils at Foods For Living. FFL offers many brands, expert staff, and food-grade oils from Lansing's own LorAnn Oils, if you're into ingestion. 

 

It's Only Natural...and That Means Nothing!

The next time someone tells you something is "only natural," I suggest you say something like, "Do I look like the time of unthinking sheep that jumps on the 'me too' marketing bandwagon!? 'Natural' is a descriptor of parallel worth to 'fine,' 'new,' and 'fresh!' Heap your hype on the pyre, along with miracle cures, limited-time offers, and 'Now with Better Taste!'"

The above response is best suited to discussing "health food," as it is less versatile than you may expect. In the third installment of my Food Industry Information Battle Series (FIIBS), I want to look at what Natural means, why it's ubiquitous, and where we should go from here.

For the readership who enjoys moving pictures and sound, here's a clip which sums up the "Natural" marketing movement nicely:

A proper gander at the propaganda: This video is obviously a propaganda video. It's produced by onlyorganic.org. Who is that? It's a consortium of companies who produce organic products. The list includes Earthbound Farm, Rudi's Organic Bakery, Honest Tea, and many others. These are businesses who enjoy market share because they have gone through the proper channels to ensure their products are Certified Organic. It makes sense that they wouldn't want any old opportunistic company slapping a "Natural" label on its product and becoming a competitor. (Just like "real" doctors are so dismissive about the ones you find on Craigslist.) To their credit, many of these businesses are also run by the original owners and seem genuinely passionate about making food free of harmful additives, GMO, and pesticide. The above propaganda gets my seal of approval, sort of like smoke detector industry propaganda.

So, in the USA, "natural" has no enforceable, consistent definition:

The international Food and Agriculture Organization does not recognize the term "natural" as constituting anything specific in regard to food.

Nice try, SC. You're fooling no one.

The USDA and FDA have no enforceable guidelines for "natural" product labeling. In the USA, you can inject your chicken with lots of salt water, and this is not, by any meaningful definition, unnatural.

Since we know "natural" is a marketing ploy at best, it can't hold any weight over us as consumers, right? Of course not. American shoppers are smarter than that. It's not like pricing something at "$2.99" instead of "$3.00" is actually so effective that it is inescapable...  It's not like we "fall" for mail-in rebates, since we all mail them in, every time. We live in a postmodern, hyper-aware era of consumer agency, where we know every trick in the book. Now if I could just get hold of Kevin Trudeau to send that rebate he promised me...

Or maybe...there wouldn't need to be anti-"Natural" videos if "Natural" wasn't so effective.

We're not in a Kansas "all-natural" beef slaughterhouse anymore...

The resistance to over-processing and wanton additions to food has been going strong since the advent of the modern food industry, predating even the addition of synthetic pesticides to American agriculture in the 1940s. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides worried some folks in Europe, prompting the formation of such organizations as Demeter International of Germany in the 1920s. By the 1940s, there was a robust organization of farmers worldwide who were feeling Aggro about Big Agra's new practices.

20 years later, Silent Spring was published. The next decade saw the banning of DDT and the creation of Organic Certification in the US. Legitimate concerns were birthing an industry, as well as opening the door for marginally effective all-natural deodorant.

1979 gave us not only horror classic Alien, but also the first USDA-approved "natural" beef. One Mel Coleman of Coleman Natural Meat wanted to sell beef from cows raised without antibiotics, hormones, or a meat diet. The USDA said, "No problem, Mel." It is unknown whether Mel was provided with a certificate, or if the matter was resolved in a few minutes of chat over a rotary phone. Despite Coleman's good intentions, a precedent of meaninglessness was set.

A year later, the first Whole Foods opened with a staff of 19. It's hard to imagine WF as a team of anti-Big Agra guerrillas employing less people than the typical Whole Foods Deli. 

28 years later, Whole Foods is posting profits in the billions, with hundreds of stores nationwide, and a once niche industry is such a threat to mainstream grocery that they can't print the Natural labels fast enough.

A cliche about Newtonian physics goes here...

This Cheetah may soon be extinct.

That said, there is growing resistance to Naturalizing things willy-nilly. According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, many huge companies (such as PepsiCo) are jettisoning the Natural label. The resulting lawsuits and bad PR are simply too brand-damaging. Enough class action, action packed lawsuits alleging false advertising, and even the Matrix gets spooked.

"There's a boatload of litigation and that is going to continue until companies stop conning people,'' Stephen Gardner told the WSJ. Gardner is the litigation director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The same article tells us that the percentage of products launched using the "natural" label has fallen by 8% or 11% in the last 5 years for food and drink, respectively.

Looks like Natural Selection to me.

Natural Progression

So, as an average consumer, your preference for Certified Organic over Somewhat Natural is justified. Mother Natural is going to sort this whole thing out, Naturally. The Natural Bandwagon is a sinking ship, and the rats are accordingly jumping off. (Don't worry, they can still get a job as experiment "volunteers." Natch.) 

The War For Your Opinion on Sugar

Ah, the Internet: a forum for the free exchange of ideas. A place where you can learn that each year, Americans consume, per capita, the weight of boxer Sugar Ray Leonard in actual sugar. A place where a few keystrokes can bring you the straight dope on nearly anything. A place where many people have dedicated nine-to-five jobs writing technically and rhetorically erudite articles espousing mutually incompatible "truths." A place where some people will happily deceive you, because it is their job. A place where doctors, plumbers, and that guy from the cell phone kiosk at the mall all go after work to sift fact from fiction, for the pure pursuit of truth. A place where simply Googling "high fructose corn syrup" will expose you to kilos of "real truth" from one of three HFCS information camps: 1) The "HFCS is totally harmless" camp; 2) The "HFCS is the same as table sugar, which is not to say it's harmless" camp, or 3) The "HFCS is the main culprit in many health problems, and should be regulated, if not illegal" camp.

This should not be a metaphysical issue. We are not discussing what precisely would happen if Neo had put the red and blue pills into a smoothy and chugged it.

Meanwhile, Foods For Living does not carry any products which contain HFCS. I've never heard a customer question this decision, and I've heard many praise it. In the wake of reflecting on the Dr.Oz "scandal" and the role of a humble grocery store in a complex national dialogue, I thought it prudent to look a little closer at HFCS, and FFL's decision not to sell it. I mean, they sell alcohol, and that's literally poisonous, so what gives?

Jennifer K. Nelson is the Director of Clinical Nutrition/Dietetics at the Mayo Clinic. She has this to say on the Mayo Clinic website:

"Research has shown that high-fructose corn syrup is chemically similar to table sugar. Controversy exists, however, about whether or not the body handles high-fructose corn syrup differently than table sugar. At this time, there's insufficient evidence to say that high-fructose corn syrup is any less healthy than other types of sweeteners. We do know, however, that too much added sugar — not just high-fructose corn syrup — can contribute unwanted calories that are linked to health problems, such as weight gain, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and high triglyceride levels. All of these boost your risk of heart disease." Classic Camp 2.

I'd like to point out two things about the above statement. 1) Nelson clearly states the health dangers of a dietary sugar surplus. 2) Nelson is a scientist in high academic standing. This predisposes her to both couching her language in qualifiers—"At this time," "insufficient evidence"—and avoiding prematurely absolute proclamations that could later damage her reputation. This is in no way a criticism of Nelson—it's simply an examination of the tentative, evidence-based statements of presumably impartial health professionals. Having insufficient evidence is certainly not the same as stating that HFCS is simply dandy and nothing to worry about.

What's interesting about Nelson's statement is that it IS incompatible with any statement of certitude regarding HFCS' innocuousness or uniquely harmful effects. The only thing it asserts is that sugar, in excess, is bad.

So what's excessive?

Well, 160 pounds per year, per American is excessive. Since technology evolves much, much faster than biology, we have created a world where we can afford to do something pleasing (eat sugar all the time) that is metabolically destructive. Our bodies still closely resemble those of our ancestors for whom 20 teaspoons a year would have been typical.

But HFCS is delicious. That's why manufacturers put it not just in soda and candy, but bread, "juice," cereal, yogurt, salad dressing, "nutrition" bars, frozen pizza, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese... wait, what? That's right, even pizza and "pasta" aren't safe from the subsidized, sugary tentacles of HFCS.  

"But Greg," you might say,"lacing all those products with sugar in a transparent ploy to sidestep good

sense with deliciousness must be expensive!"
"Wrong, you poor sap!" I'd say. As a corn-derived product, HFCS enjoys the benefit federal subsidies for corn growers. What do the corn growers' associations do with all the that extra money?

Well, lobbying is always nice... though traditional sugar has lobbyists too.

But spiffy "informative" websites don't hurt either: Here's sweetsurprise.com.

If you like your corn info with a side of propaganda, that should do nicely. Meanwhile, here's an article from Princeton, espousing many ideas in radical opposition to the ideas at SweetSurprise.

But, you know, here's an article from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, stating the opposite conclusion of the Princeton article. The AJCN is not a Big Agriculture mouthpiece to my knowledge, so I think we can at very least take their conclusions as being genuine.

But here's another doctor claiming the opposite thesis, again. His presentational style makes me suspicious, but his points sound, to the layperson, valid. Which is the precisely the problem with scientific inquiry in the sphere of media. All reasonably well-stated cases sound equally plausible to the uneducated, myself included.

So what's a local health food store to do?

As dozens of sources from all corners of industry and medicine will tell you, Americans are obese and dying unnecessary deaths, and sugar is a key offender. (Do you really even need to click any of these links to know that?)

Let's imagine your objective was to get out of shape, destroy your body from the inside out, and die as quickly as possible. The only rule is that you must stick to common grocery items and common rates of consumption. Would you go for the wine right away, hoping to induce liver failure with a glass or two an evening? Or would you remember the fine people of Europe, and despair at their long, skinny, wine-sodden lives? Obviously, your best bet would be to do as your countrymen do now. Eat sugary foods, AKA "nearly any foods," constantly. Hope for diabetes. Even "reducing your sugar intake" to a level that is still many times higher than our biology is equipped to deal with will be catastrophic eventually, so don't worry.

Whether or not HFCS doesn't truly require digestion and therefore gets a metabolic wave-on-through from security, or is simply run of the mill sugar, it's not a good idea to consume it endlessly, in great quantities. Since cane sugar is much more expensive and precludes liberal inclusion in every last grocery item, sticking to cane sugar makes it easy to stop killing yourself sweetly. And since the jury is still conspicuously out, even in reputable scientific circles, it just makes sense for Foods For Living to draw a glycemic line in the sand. Whatever your conclusions on HFCS, I suggest looking before you leap (in a huge sugar pile).

I should say now that I come at this as an armchair epistemologist, and not as a member of a specific camp. As always, I express only my own views, and not those of FFL as a whole.

World's Most Controversial Food

So hungry you could eat a horse? You may be out of luck in the states, but your craving for equine cuisine would not be out of place in parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, or South America. Horses are plentiful, sustainable, and available in every state in the Union. And, for most people, eating them is unthinkable.

Horse

Concerns: cruelty, pet-category animal, health 

Thinking about horse meat may be somewhere between unpleasant and flat-out disgusting for you (as, frankly, it is for me). But horse meat has been in the news (and some beef) as of late. In February, a scandal involving the presence of horse meat in processed beef came to light. This came on the heels of federal legislation legalizing horse slaughter and meat for animal consumption in the states. (If all this seems like not-so-subtle propaganda for sticking to local, free-range meat, I'll concede it crossed my mind.)

Horses are a high profile addition to a growing history of controversial foods. If something is precious, rare, or taboo, the chance is that someone, somewhere, wants to eat it. (See edible gold for further proof.)

Foie Gras

Concerns: cruelty

Not known for their compassion, the ancient Egyptians weren't just slavery enthusiasts and adept architects—they knew how to force-feed a bird. They were the first on record to force-feed animals for sheerly culinary concerns. Since then, France has taken up the mantle of championing  the controversial practice of gavage, or tube-feeding.
Foie Gras ("fatty liver") is the fatty, buttery liver of a duck or goose who has been tube fed. The "delicate flavor and consistency" is a sought-after part of the French gastronomic tradition. That said, there is considerable controversy surrounding the production of foie gras.

Animal rights groups are uniformly against foie gras production. Less inevitably, many others have been vocally anti-foie gras, including then-NYS Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and celebrity chefs Wolfgang Puck and Albert Roux.

Foie Gras production and product are illegal in California. Chicago passed a similar ban in 2006, during which year 46,000 pounds of the stuff was sold. The city overturned the ban in 2008.

Foie Gras is illegal in Israel, and Argentina. It is illegal to produce, but not to consume, in most European countries, with the exceptions of Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain, France and Hungary.

Shark Fin

Concerns: cruelty, sustainability

Shark fin soup is a classic Chinese delicacy, with cultural connotations of wealth and success. Critics object to the use of shark fins in cooking due to both declining shark populations and the cruelty of obtaining the fins. (The fin is often removed and the shark released, finless, back into the ocean.)   

The fin is nearly tasteless; it is added to soup for its textural virtues. Much like snake oil, shark fins have a litany of fantastical medical benefits associated with them. None of these has been validated by science. Shark fin consumption is on the decline, but China still consumes literal boatloads every year. Suitable shark fin substitutes are gaining ground in many restaurants that still wish to offer the traditional dish. Regardless of how you feel about the practice of finning, try imagining "Jaws" without that iconic slice of terror protruding from the waves.
  
Dolphin meat

Concerns: cruelty, health, sustainability, intelligence

Dolphin can hardly be considered a controversial food any longer, as eating dolphins is decidedly not in vogue in the West these days. But a traditional dolphin-slaughtering event in Japan has brought the issue back into global visibility. As dolphin populations decline, and concerns about their intelligence mount (some studies equate dolphin intellect to that of a three-year old child), "tradition" seems to be the last line of defense for dolphin slaughter.

Ortolan

Concerns: sustainability, cruelty

"Ortolan." That's a moutful—literally! (Sorry.) The Ortolan Bunting is a small songbird, plentiful in France, that is traditionally consumed in a single bite. Another entry in fine French tradition of avian force-feeding, the Ortolan is usually kept in a dark box filled with millet, where it eats continuously in an attempt to escape.

The capture or killing of Ortolans has been illegal in any European Union state since 1999, with an unknown degree of enforcement.

Polar Bears

Concerns: sustainability, intelligence

As with many other foods on the list, polar bear hunting was a sustainable, natural practice of many peoples indigenous to the earth's coldest climes for thousands of years. Technology, poaching, and trophy hunting have taken their toll. Polar bears are in serious danger, and their habitats continue to melt beneath their paws. That said, you won't see polar bears on any menus, which makes them unique on this list.