Craig Sams is the founder of Green and Blacks. He made his money from chocolates, ice cream, and biscuits, and he is very angry with me for questioning the science behind Dr Gillian McKeith PhD and their corporate world.

This gem is from Natural Products magazine, the in-house trade publication of the nutritionism industry. I’ve included the original advertising from the page it appeared on, so you didn’t miss out on the context. That’s correct, by the way, your eyes do not deceive you: a whole page of the leading trade publication from this billion pound industry is devoted to me.

My favourite part of his argument is the bit where he says “you’re either for our products, or you’re for thalidomide, vioxx, barbiturates, and burgers”.

“The strange case of Dr Ben Goldacre”

CRAIG SAMS – IN HIS OWN WORDS
“Craig Sams, Organic pioneer”
Craig Sams is president of Green & Black’s, author of The Little Food Book and chair of the Soil Association

Between them research scientists and doctors have condemned millions of people to a lifetime of prescription drug addiction, writes Craig Sams. But Ben Goldacre doesn’t want to write about that.

Perhaps Dr Ben Goldacre needs his head examined. The Guardian columnist appears obsessed with Gillian McKeith and “poo-poo” jokes. The anal-obsessive personality is fastidious about detail and unwilling to look at the bigger picture. Could this be our Ben?

Gillian’s TV series has dramatically raised awareness among the most hapless victims of junk food: adopting a diet based on grains, pulses, vegetables, salads and wholesome foods can be interesting, healthful and lead to dramatic weight loss that gives them a whole new lease on life. Never once has Dr Ben Goldacre, in all his repetitive attacks in The Guardian, been able to mention the beneficial “Gillian McKeith effect” (as health stores call it) on the nation’s eating habits. Yet this is the heart of the matter.

He completely overlooks the reasons for her massive popular success in his pettifogging quest for whether she has the qualifications that he and his fellow doctors flaunt as their passport to being a monopoly gateway between pharmaceutical companies and prescription drug addicts. Those addicts got their first dose of a painkiller, tranquiliser or steroid from a qualified doctor, all based on impeccable research from eminent scientists. Once hooked, they are condemned to a lifetime of repeat visits to their doctor/dealer.

[The image on the right, for your amusement, is the original advertising from the page which Craig Sams article originally appeared on.]

Dr Ben Goldacre’s current beef is with Gillian’s claim to scientific accuracy because her references are not from, what he calls, “proper academic journals”. Funny, isn’t it, how Dr Ben Goldacre has never written about the fact that the world’s leading medical journals banded together in 2005 to tell Big Pharma that they wouldn’t publish any more crap research unless the drug companies also owned up about who funded the research.

After mustering courage for that challenge, they had to do it again, this time to curtail the practice of doing research again and again until scientists got the “right” results, then not disclosing any of the research that had got the “wrong” ones. It’s only since mid-2006, that, for the first time, there are rules that restore trust in the research in “proper academic journals”.

Anyone who has followed the Vioxx scandal will wonder how prescription drugs with dicing-with-death risks continue to be marketed, even after the risks are known. The answer is that the medical establishment are willing accomplices. I had a quick read of Gillian’s book You Are What You Eat – all sensible stuff, the type I’ve applied myself for 40 years – and I don’t see any life-threatening risks to following her advice. I don’t have a degree in nutrition but I know what’s good for me and it isn’t what the peer-reviewed experts periodically recommend (before contradicting each other every now and then).

In Dr Ben’s latest column, he takes a pop at nutritionists like Gillian, who have “appeared out of nowhere, with a strong new-age bent” and laments that she is not one of the “sober professors” from august bodies such as the Medical Research Council.

Might these be the same breed of “sober professors” who, in the 1980s and 1990s, converted an entire generation from butter to hydrogenated margarines, significantly increasing Britain’s levels of obesity, diabetes and cancer? The same “sober professors”, who, when I advertised a non-hydrogenated alternative in 1993, pressured the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to ban my advertising?

M&S, Tesco and Sainsbury’s all now boast in far more strident terms than I ever did about their hydrogenated fat-free products, so I asked the ASA for an apology. It said it had no records going back before 1994. How convenient.

Or what about the “sober” Professor Arnold Bender, top 1970s nutritionist, who said white bread was better for you than wholemeal because it was more easily digestible? Or the peer-reviewed research that said pesticide residues in our food are harmless? Then the Government quietly bans Lindane, technazene and a host of other pesticides. Hello? Ben?

There is a book to be written about these and many more scandalous misapplications of scientific research in nutrition and medicine, but somehow I don’t think Dr Ben Goldacre will be the one to write it. He’s too busy obsessing over a female (and a blonde) who has dared to intrude on his and his mates’ patch. Ben, people who follow Gillian’s advice are taking the road to personal control over their health. Science and medicine have their uses, but it’s what works best that is important, even if it’s described in unscientific language.

Craig Sams

£££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

[coughs]

Now in an ideal world, where I cared more about being stylish than informative, I’d leave it there, because I don’t do ad hominem unless there’s plenty of science in it. But there is something about the confectionery industry that I find uniquely offensive.

Craig Sams is a businessman, the founder of Green and Blacks, and he made his money from chocolates, ice cream, and biscuits. Mmmm, yummy yummy.

The premium quality chocolate market has grown fast globally, and Green and Blacks has been the fastest growing confectionery brand, taking confectionery to new and wider audiences than before.

In 2005 Cadbury Schweppes bought Green and Blacks for an estimated £20 million. Very hip, very outsider. As CorporateWatch say:

www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=2296

Buying out ethical alternative businesses, for example Cadbury’s recent purchase of Green & Blacks, supermarket sales of organics, or Nestlé’s move into fairtrade coffee, is one way that companies are able to cement their market position, and also control profits from niche markets.

Good work. But Craig Sams didn’t walk away, in fact he has cheerfully stayed on as president and continued to work for Cadbury’s, whose own confectionery empire includes other familiar healthy brands like Dairy Milk, Roses, Flake, Double Decker, Turkish Delight and Boost.

Cadbury’s share Sams’ interest in promoting and rebranding confectionery, especially to children, distributing a teaching pack which claimed things like “chocolate is a wholesome food that tastes really good… [it] gives you energy and important nutrients that your body needs to work properly.”

They were also the company, you might remember, who famously offered school sports equipment through their ‘get active’ scheme, which was described by the Consumer Association as ‘an irresponsible ploy to encourage unhealthy eating among kids.’

The Food Commission weren’t very impressed either.

www.foodcomm.org.uk/cadbury_03.htm

To save up for the top item on offer – a set of volleyball net posts – a school will need to encourage pupils to spend over £2,000 on chocolate, consuming nearly one-and-a-quarter million chocolatey calories. If British school children purchase all of the 160 million tokens that Cadbury’s plan to issue, they would have to purchase nearly two million kilograms of fat.

A conservative estimate shows that a ten-year-old child consuming enough chocolate to earn a basketball through the Cadbury’s scheme would need to play basketball for 90 hours to burn off the calories.’

The confectionery industry is a menace to public health, even posh confectionery, although the overall effect of being berated for promoting some unspecified health-threatening hegemony by a corporate junk food millionaire is rather warming. I’m not saying his income stream makes Craig Sams a bad person, or that it invalidates his compelling argument that I am an anally retentive personality who should have written about some pesticides which were banned while I was a student (and which he mis-spells) in my column.

But you do have to earn the right to be quite so sanctimonious.

EDIT 18:30 17/4/07

From the comments, I didn’t realise this, but I’ve checked, and it’s true, only one of the 15 chocolate bars in the Green and Blacks range is even Fairtrade. What a hero!

EDIT 08:30 18/4/07

Rather brilliantly this article appears prominently on the website of leading nutrition researcher Dr Gillan McKeith PhD as her top “testimonial” (you have to click on Craig Sams’ name on that page and the text springs up). Still no response to any of my criticisms though. Triste.

www.drgillianmckeith.com/gillianmckeith.php

Dr Gillian McKeith’s Support

Gillian and McKeith Research Ltd would like to take this opportunity to express the utmost gratitude to the public for all their support. We receive so many wonderful emails from the public and health organizations.

If you would like to view some of the testimonials and support Dr Gillian McKeith has received, please click on the links below. The testimonials are particularly heart warming:

Dr Gillian McKeith Testimonials

Craig Sams – Organic Pioneer, Chair of the Soil Association and author of ‘The Little Food Book’

… Gillian’s [Dr Gillian McKeith] TV series has dramatically raised awareness among the most hapless victims of junk food: adopting a diet based on grains, pulses, vegetables, salads and wholesome foods can be interesting, healthful and lead to dramatic weight loss that gives them a whole new lease on life. Never once has Dr Ben Goldacre, in all his repetitive attacks in The Guardian, been able to mention the beneficial ‘Gillian McKeith effect’ (as health stores call it) on the nation’s eating habits. Yet this is the heart of the matter.

He completely overlooks the reasons for her [Dr Gillian McKeith] massive popular success in his pettifogging quest for whether she has the qualifications that he and his fellow doctors flaunt as their passport to being a monopoly gateway between pharmaceutical companies and prescription drug addicts. Those addicts got their first dose of a painkiller, tranquiliser or steroid from a qualified doctor, all based on impeccable research from eminent scientists. Once hooked, they are condemned to a lifetime of repeat visits to their doctor/dealer.

Dr Ben Goldacre’s current beef is with Gillian’s claim to scientific accuracy because her references are not from, what he calls, “proper academic journals”. Funny, isn’t it, how Dr Ben Goldacre has never written about the fact that the world’s leading medical journals banded together in 2005 to tell Big Pharma that they wouldn’t publish any more crap research unless the drug companies also owned up about who funded the research.

After mustering courage for that challenge, they had to do it again, this time to curtail the practice of doing research again and again until scientists got the ‘right’ results, then not disclosing any of the research that had got the ‘wrong’ ones. It’s only since mid-2006, that, for the first time, there are rules that restore trust in the research in “proper academic journals”.

Anyone who has followed the Vioxx scandal will wonder how prescription drugs with dicing-with-death risks continue to be marketed, even after the risks are known. The answer is that the medical establishment are willing accomplices. I had a quick read of Gillian’s book You Are What You Eat — all sensible stuff, the type I’ve applied myself for 40 years — and I don’t see any life-threatening risks to following her advice. I don’t have a degree in nutrition but I know what’s good for me and it isn’t what the peer-reviewed experts periodically recommend (before contradicting each other every now and then) … read more

Consumers for Health Choice (CHC)

Health Food Manufacturers Association (HFMA)

National Association of Health Stores (NAHS)

The Centre for Nutrition Education

Natural Products Magazine

Target Publishing