Health Canada’s oversight over the natural health products industry has slowly eroded: Nov. 21, 2015 CBC article

We’ve had quite a few posts about both scams and topics related to nutrition at this website. Over the years, posts about scams and scamming have been among the most widely read posts at the website, according to Google Analytics, which I check out every once in a while, maybe once a month or once every few months – whenever I feel it’s time to have a look, to get a sense of what topics are of particular interest to site visitors.

Some of my posts aren’t widely read but I like to write them anyway, because they serve as a way to organize my thinking. They form a useful archive, that I can refer to from time to time. I like to think that when my thinking is well organized, I do that much better a job on the posts that are more widely read. The latter posts often, but not invariably, include first-hand reports related to meetings and events.

For whatever reason, posts that I’ve written in the past about the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman who taught, and conducted his research, in the United States, have also been read by many site visitors.

Among the many topics that he studied in the course of his career, Goffman has shared some great insights about how scam artists go about their work. It’s a topic that clearly interested him as a student of impression management and as an observer of the passing scene. The Canadian writer Pierre Burton also liked to write, in detail and at length, about the scams that were enacted, by enterprising scam artists, when people used to travel across the county on passenger trains.

By way of an update related to scams and scamming,  a Nov. 21, 2015 CBC article is entitled:

“Health Canada says it will take ‘appropriate action’ after U.S. authorities this week announced a major crackdown on potentially dangerous dietary supplements.”

The opening paragraphs read:

In an emailed statement to CBC’s the fifth estate, Health Canada said it was working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to determine if any of the dangerous products are on the market here and will respond “based on the risk posed to the general public.”

This week, a fifth estate investigation revealed that Health Canada’s oversight over the natural health products industry has slowly eroded.

[End of excerpt]

Also of interest: A Dec. 26, 2017 Guardian article is entitled: “Protein hype: shoppers flushing money down the toilet, say experts: Consumers fuelling demand for high-protein products unlikely to see any benefits as people already eat more protein than they need, say dietitians.”