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From: sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.veg
Subject: Re: Is Pollen Any Good?
Message-ID: <733@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 31-Dec-85 10:34:52 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.733
Posted: Tue Dec 31 10:34:52 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Jan-86 05:11:57 EST
References: <197@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 37

There's a tech writer here who contacted me about Cernitin, fresh ablaze
with revivalist fervor after a marketing meeting.  Cynic that I am, I asked
him for some literature and any scientific references on their pollen
products he could get from the company.

All in all, for anyone with a reasonable background in biology and the
scientific method, their literature looked pretty dismal, full of that
funny mixture of pseudo-science and misleading facts designed to impress
the untrained and credulous.  For example, one brochure addresses the
components of the pollen found in their pills.  What follows is three pages
of names of chemical substances; various enzymes and coenzymes, minerals,
lipids, etc., without any indication of how much of each of these things is
found in pollen, and for that matter, what any of these things presumably
"does" to the body.  Indeed, the page of enzymes doesn't also indicate
that, when ingested, your stomach digests them like any other protein.  I
might also mention that the American Beef Council could do a similar
analysis of a T-bone steak and look equally impressive and be equally
meaningless.

Also, the one "technical" paper I received mentions many favorable studies,
but never cites them, preferring to concentrate on motifs like:
	"Yes, I used to be a cynic but now..."
	"the little guy vs. Big Medicine, David vs. Goliath"
Of course, these alone don't mean much, but when they're accompanied
by a conspicuous absence of referenced studies (in a literary genre which
calls for them), it should set a red flag off.

I also looked a bit at the "Dick Gregory Bahamian Diet".  As Jym says,
it doesn't contain any pollen.  It looks to be a pretty standard liquid
formula diet, very similar to the Cambridge Diet, with the difference that
you mix this with fruit juice, meaning that you get about 300 extra calories
each day in the form of (shudder) simple sugars.  As these kinds of diets go,
it seems OK.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.harvard.edu
harvard!dyer