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Really? I've only had one or two things from them that weren't really good, at least as good as more expensive brands of similar products (if you can get them elsewhere!) But then, I also steer clear of the really weird things.
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I tried some of their, I guess less traditional flavors of tea before discovering that, for me, anything other than green tea is odd beyond all reason. I don't mind a cup of Earl Grey once and awhile, but, mostly Green. Chocolate or vanilla tea, not so much.
My cousin told me to go there to get a bottle of wine that she suggested I might like, a bottle of Hogue, so maybe I'll get that and some juice. To be fair, I don't go there very often. My mom says they have really nice, fairly priced flowers.
Maybe I just need to look around more when I go.
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Lyr, they also have chocolates that are teh delicious. Ask Boon (and her husband!) The chocolate orange sticks are seriously addictive. And they have all kinds of other great stuff, too. They have sandwich cookies that are BETTER THAN real Oreos (most don't come close) and are furthermore preservative-free and I think organic as well. (The same cookies also come in other flavors, too.) Their "Joe's Os" taste better than Cheerios, and again, preservative-free. They've got this incredible maple-pecan cluster cereal (think maple-pecan style Honey Bunches of Oats but SO MUCH BETTER) and their breads are great too, at least around here. They have some decent pre-packaged soups and meals, and much of their frozen stuff is yummers. Okay, I'm gonna stop before I go through the whole store or give myself a craving and end up dragging my mom there tomorrow after my appointment...
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Okay, I couldn't help it, one more thing. TJ's is THE place to go for dried fruits and nuts. Cheap, fresh, quality product like nowhere else.
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Ooo, I love Honey Bunches of Oats. I'm thinking about getting a bowl right now as a matter of fact. I'll take a look at it.
I'll take a look at their breads too. I've yet to find a sweet nine grain as good as the ones we have at work for a decent price.
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Their breads are made locally so they vary by region. They have a yummy sweet multigrain here but I don't know what you'll find at yours.
If you like the HBoO type cereal, they have other flavors too-- I think a vanilla almond flavor, and a toffee walnut or something... The maple pecan is our favorite, though. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I saw in the store today that Airborn also has children's version, which is essentially candy, and an Anti-Allergy version which "supports healthy histamine levels."
It doesn't look like they're too worried about losing a few million, they're just expanding their brand!
This is why we need better science education in America.
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I'll second all of the positive things that have been said about Trader Joe's--it's far and above my favorite grocery chain, and if the next place I live doesn't have one I'll be pretty disappointed.
I have almost a compulsion to try foods that are unlike things that I've had before, so I love the fact that Trader Joe's actively encourages their customers to return things that they don't like. I'd guess that I take advantage of this policy every couple of weeks or so. It works out well for me, since I can try stuff without feeling like I'm risking wasting my money, and it works out well for them because I end up liking and buying more of most of the things that I try.
Another nice thing about Trader Joe's is how well they treat their employees. They pay very, very well--a full time checker started at ~40k/year with some sort of health insurance the last time I checked (several years ago, now), and people higher in the food chain (so to speak) make dramatically more. Now, getting a full time job there isn't easy--there isn't a lot of turnover in those positions. The people I know at my local store who are full time employees all started out part time, and while their pay for part time workers isn't bad ($10 or 11/hr, I think), it isn't fantastic either.
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quote:"Homeopathic "remedies" enjoy a unique status in the health marketplace: They are the only category of quack products legally marketable as drugs. This situation is the result of two circumstances. First, the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which was shepherded through Congress by a homeopathic physician who was a senator, recognizes as drugs all substances included in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States. Second, the FDA has not held homeopathic products to the same standards as other drugs."
Notice this excerpt from an article on webmd.com about the refund Airborne has agreed to give people as part of a class-action lawsuit:
quote:The makers of Airborne have agreed to refund money to consumers as part of a $23.3 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit for false advertising. It does not admit wrongdoing or illegal conduct.
Products included are the Airborne Effervescent Health Formula, Airborne On-the-Go, Airborne Power Pixies, Airborne Nighttime, Airborne Jr., Airborne Gummi, and Airborne Seasonal (formerly sold as Airborne Seasonal Relief).
Airborne: The Road to the Lawsuit
Initially, Airborne ads touted its line of products as a way to prevent and treat colds; Airborne later toned down those claims and now calls the formulas immune boosters.
In February 2006, a report on national television questioned the validity of a clinical trial touted by Airborne as a study that offered proof that its products work. Soon after, the false advertising lawsuit was filed in 2006 by California law firms representing a consumer who protested that the formula did not work as advertised.
"One of their more outrageous claims is that you take it before entering a germy environment and you're instantly protected," David Schardt, senior nutritionist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), tells WebMD.
And, finally, It says on the Airborne box: "This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease." So what is it good for? Why are you buying it? They are saying this is NOT A COLD REMEDY OR PREVENTATIVE!
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Rivka, whether or not Airborne contains herbal extracts or not is irrelevant to whether it is marketed as a "homeopathic remedy."
True. However, it has a great deal to do with possible efficacy: homeopathy is extreme quackery, while herbal medicines are a mixed bag.
Calling herbals homeopathic and v.v. is something that bugs me.
As for the line on the box, even those herbals which have had reliable studies done (St. John's Wort, for example) must have that.
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quote:As long as your product is not demonstrably harmful, you can get it approved by the FDA to be marketed as anything in the world you claim for it, if you call it homeopathic, wink wink! That is how companies with absolutely worthless, totally ineffective products, can market them "with FDA approval."
First, calling something homeopathic is not enough to qualify it for the lower regulatory bar. A homeopathic drug is "Any drug labeled as being homeopathic which is listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States (HPUS), an addendum to it, or its supplements. The potencies of homeopathic drugs are specified in terms of dilution, i.e., 1x (1/10 dilution), 2x (1/100 dilution), etc. Homeopathic drug products must contain diluents commonly used in homeopathic pharmaceutics. Drug products containing homeopathic ingredients in combination with non-homeopathic active ingredients are not homeopathic drug products."
Second, certain homeopathic may only be dispensed by prescription.
Third, if "a homeopathic drug is being offered for use (or promoted) significantly beyond recognized or customary practice of homeopathy" then fraud regulations come into play.
Further, there are numerous other regulations associated with homeopathic drugs, including registration of manufacturers and labeling requirements.
There's no question they don't receive the same oversight as OTC or prescription drugs, but your summary was very inaccurate.
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BTW, Airborne is NOT marketed as a homeopathic remedy, but rather as an herbal supplement. Those calling it "homeopathic" are using a much-expanded definition of the word.
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"Second, certain homeopathic may only be dispensed by prescription."
Why? I thought homeopathy was essentially dissolving things in water dozens and dozens of times. Why would you need a prescription for water pills?
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Homeopathic treatments for certain diseases, such as cancer, can cause harm by not treating an otherwise treatable disease, so they at least want you to find a doctor willing to prescribe it. Since doctors have a host of regulations they have to deal with, this provides a regulatory check on dangerous uses of homeopathic drugs.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Rivka, whether or not Airborne contains herbal extracts or not is irrelevant to whether it is marketed as a "homeopathic remedy."
Notice this statement from The Spectrum, published by the University at Buffalo:
"Like Zicam, Airborne is an over-the-counter homeopathic cold remedy that claims to fortify the body's defenses against colds." (Emphasis supplied.)
It seems pretty clear to me that the authors of that article don't really know what "homeopathic" means—or even "herbal," for that matter, since most of the article is spent talking about Zicam. Not really surprising for a student publication. And that certainly doesn't mean that Airborne is actually marketed as a homeopathic drug.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Noemon: it's funny to read this thread and the In-N-Out thread in juxtaposition, and then think about my other favorite place, IKEA (also known for treating employees well, environmental and community responsibility, and happy, helpful people working in most locations.)
I think I'm beginning to sense a pattern about my favorite companies. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Orange juice is wonderful. I love it. Simply Orange is probably the best.
But for health benefits, it's better to just eat an orange. OJ is full of calories. So are oranges but you get the fibre benefit of the pulp. As a bonus, a perfectly ripe orange is one of the best tasting things on the planet.
If you DO drink OJ, drink the pulpiest one you can find. "Baleen style" as I like to call it. It's still not as good as an orange, though.
quote:Originally posted by Javert: Why? I thought homeopathy was essentially dissolving things in water dozens and dozens of times. Why would you need a prescription for water pills?
Potentially more than dozens even. There is a good visual demonstration of that in Richard Dawkin's show on alternative medicine. The relevant bit is 25 minutes into thisPosts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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In most homeopathic preparations, the dilution is such that there is less than a single part per MOLE of water. However, many also contain supposedly inactive ingredients, like alcohol.
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Rivka, I agree with you that many herbs have genuine medicinal properties. It has been observed, for example, that lobelia contains four different antibiotics listed in standard pharmacopeias. I personally regard garlic as the most effective medicine you can take to prevent or treat cold or flu. It's active ingredient, allycin, is both antibiotic and antiviral. I also take 2.5 grams of vitamin C daily.
But as for a product being "marketed as a homeopathic remedy," I am talking about the kind of approval the USFDA gave the company that allows them to market their product. Zicam and Airborne received approval only as homeopathic remedies. That is the only way they can legally be marketed. They cannot claim to be actual medicines, because then they would have to pass rigorous requirements, including multiple phase studies terminating in human lab studies that are scientifically controlled and subject to outside scrutiny. This costs millions of dollars and takes years. Rest assured, neither Zicam nor Airborne troubled themselves to jump through these hoops. So they just applied as homeopathic remedies (i.e. folk remedies). The requirements to get approval this way are far, far less demanding and expensive.
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Airborne contains herbal extracts, amino acids, antioxidants, electrolytes, synthetic vitamins, and other ingredients. It is not just herbal.
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Ron: The answer to that is "dietary supplement" (or "food supplement," as Rivka said above). "Homeopathy" does not mean "alternative medicine" or "folk remedy" or anything like that.
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Homeopathic "medicines" characteristically contain some very minute, super-diluted ingredient. The FDA does allow some very limited health claims to be made for them. You can quibble about whether Airborne contains any minute, super-diluted ingredient. But this at least was the case for Zicam. I remember back during the trials of Zicam before the FDA board to gain approval for marketing as a homeopathic product.
Specific claims backed up by a clinical study were originally the case with Airborne. Then it was learned that the clinical study involved a lab staffed by two men hired by Airborne, organized for the sole purpose of performing this study, and the company was told to quit making any claims for their product being able to remedy or prevent colds or flu.
You will find Zicam and Airborne side-by-side in drugstore shelves, apart from traditional cold remedies. They represent "alternative" medicine.
Homeopathy does mean folk remedy to anyone who really understands what it is about. There is no scientific basis for homeopathy. There is no homeopathic medicine on the face of the earth that works, because homeopathy is nonsense, and cannot ever work. People only believe in it because it is a folk remedy. Of course, there may be some folk remedies that work, so it is actually insulting to folk remedies to call homeopathic medicines a folk remedy.
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I've always been mad about Airborne. "Invented by a school teacher." Invented? How is it an invention? It's basically a vitamin supplement. If I put cod liver oil in an effervescent tablet, have I "invented" a new supplement? (Patent application already filed, suckers! )
Besides the bogus "invention" status I just felt like it was an extremely basic/ordinary product with nothing to distinguish it from the hundreds of other options on the vitamin shelf at the grocery store, other than Oprah Winfrey's blessing.
Between "a million little pieces", this Airborne lawsuit, and the other bogus memoir she recently endorsed, I can only hope that her ability to cause her minions to buy any product she endorses is diminished somewhat. Futilely, I'm sure.
(I'd gladly accept Oprah's endorsement for any book I write or my Sparkling Cod-ade invention, however. )
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quote:Airborne contains herbal extracts, amino acids, antioxidants, electrolytes, synthetic vitamins, and other ingredients. It is not just herbal.
Fine. But it's not AT ALL homeopathic. Even if it contains minute amounts of some ingredient, it's not homeopathic - especially in the context of the FDA, which is the context you've been using the word.
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I use the stuff. I'm well aware that I'm probably paying for the placebo effect. Yet, that effect, and any effects the stuff may or may not have had, have kept some cold-type stuff away from me long enough for me to at least finish out the week, and sometimes longer.
I say, that if they stop advertising it as a cure, then they should keep making it. And I'll keep buying it. I don't so much care that it works because it's 'herbal' or because of vitamins, just that it works.
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Human, the placebo effect is is something that you do within your own mind, that affects your body. If you could just get your mind to work that way without the crutch, you would be freer. I am not a member of the Christian Science "church," or whatever they call it. But they have built their whole religion around the idea of "mind cure."
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OK Dagonee, you win. In the context of FDA approval, Airborne is marketed as a dietary supplement. But none of the ingredients are proven effective against colds or flu; so it is still basically being regarded as a folk remedy by people who use it to cure or prevent colds and flu. Even though the makers of Airborne have ceased making any such claims. And Zicam does say on the label that it is a "homeopathic" medicine.
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That's true, Ron, they have. However, may I remind you of the fact that the Christian Scientist denomination has come under fire repeatedly for ignoring actual medical solutions in favor of "faith healing". For example, there was the Twitchell case in 1986, in which two Christian Scientists allowed their two year old child to die painfully of peritonitis because they refused to go see a doctor. [Link][Link]
Also, the AMA has done a study showing that Christian Scientists were more likely to die of cancer or of preventable causes than those who believed in medical science, and that on average, their lifespans were two to four years less than the control group they were compared to. [link]
No offense, but at least Airborne doesn't recommend that you refuse medical help in favor of the healing power of Jesus Christ.
EDIT: For clarity and grammar.
Posts: 3658 | Registered: Jan 2002
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I would argue that effective medicines are only effective because they assist the immune system built into your body by the Creator. Where the Christian Scientists are at fault, I believe, is in refusing the gifts of remedies the Creator has given us in the natural world. Virtually every medicine was first discovered in some plant or fungus. Even the active ingredient in aspirin comes from willow leaves. Also among those gifts through which the Creator mediates His grace to us, is the knowledge and skill of the surgeon, when you have a broken leg, or damage to internal organs caused in traffic accidents, etc. Even the lifestyle counsellor, who can advise you on how to eat a healthier diet, is a minister of God to those who receive them in faith and gratitude.
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Out of interest, what would you say about a medicine that was produced via biochemical means and did not reproduce anything known to exist on Earth?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Even the lifestyle counsellor, who can advise you on how to eat a healthier diet, is a minister of God to those who receive them in faith and gratitude.
*dryly* Somehow, I doubt you'd consider my counselor here to be a minister of God, seeing as she definitely doesn't have a problem with several things you find objectionable.
And while I'm grateful to her, I don't really receive her in faith. Should I still listen to her advice?
Also, then, if you found out a medicine that you were taking was completely constructed and had no natural basis, would you stop taking it? What about drugs that combat AIDS and HIV? How about birth control drugs? Then there's the vaccine against HPV, which is an STD. Is that a gift from God, too? Where do you draw the line between what is Godly and what isn't?
Posts: 3658 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: I would argue that effective medicines are only effective because they assist the immune system built into your body by the Creator.
I find that immune suppressants can be rather effective medicines Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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True, that. Not every medication assists the immune system, because not all medications treat infections.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Oooh, that's right. Anti-inflammatories, too, and blood pressure meds, not to mention steroids, painkillers, contraceptives, abortifacients, that stuff they use to induce labor, and psychoactives! None of those involve the immune system.
Though you could say that all of them are designed to control/fix something that does occur naturally.
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Even the medicines that are artificially constructed, are constructed either as analogs or modifications of natural compounds, or designed to conform to the designs we have first seen in nature. Ibuprophen (which is an anti-inflammatory) was not created out of the clear blue. Logical deduction along the lines of what was likely to work, guided the researchers.
And yes, sometimes our immune systems are faulty, and are part of the problem. Such as with allergies. But we are still doing the work of God when we seek to ameliorate such things. Antihistamines, respiratory stimulants and cardiovascular dilators, were first discovered in nature. Digitalis, which can regulate irregular heart beats, was found in the flower, foxglove.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Even the medicines that are artificially constructed, are constructed either as analogs or modifications of natural compounds, or designed to conform to the designs we have first seen in nature.
Again: what would you say about an effective medicine that had no natural analogue?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Well, yes, a number of medications are synthesized from natural compounds. You can make any number of organic molecules from a variety of feedstocks -- they don't pop into existence. I don't see what your point is there, though. Often, the end result of chemical synthesis is nothing like the starting ingredients. Take a look at the synthesis of Tamiflu, for instance.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Even the medicines that are artificially constructed, are constructed either as analogs or modifications of natural compounds, or designed to conform to the designs we have first seen in nature.
Again: what would you say about an effective medicine that had no natural analogue?
Childhood leukemia of the ALL type strikes 2000-2500 kids in the US yearly. It used to be a death sentence. Now, with medications that have no "natural" analogue, the cure rate is about 80%.
There are many other examples, but that is one of the most dramatic. I, for one, would not hold that those children shouldn't have their lives saved just because I was committed to using medications only based on things found "naturally" in the world.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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quote:designed to conform to the designs we have first seen in nature.
This statement is also untrue.
There are plenty of treatments that have no 'natural analogue' — I wonder what you think of stuff like radiation therapy.
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