Burien Wellness Festival: The Woo is Strong!

[elfs]

We had a Saturday outing, the whole family and Lisakit as well, to run around and do errandy things. It being the start of the school year we had to go and get Yamaraashi-chan several items from the office supply shot, and Kouryou-chan needed new dance shoes. After we'd finished those tasks, we stopped at the library, where I picked up several business process books, including the big one by Guy Kawasaki.

Next to the library, the city was hosting a "Wellness Festival." When I see the word "wellness" used in this fashion, I immediately assume that we're going to get woo.

And boy did we ever. To be fair, the local hospitals and chiros-- both the good ones and the dubious ones-- had their booths set up along the broad, curving pathway that runs the length of the block through the town center. But they were only half the attendees. The other half consisted of dubious herbalists, acupuncturists, homeopaths, and more.

The standout professional hucksters were those selling supplements branded with the Beach Body line. I approve of Beach Body's pretty damn good collection of home-based workouts, but their heavy-duty upsell of dietary supplements, pills, and horrible green and brown liquids to "optimize" what is already a solid workout, makes me queasy. It would be nice if someone with the body and charisma of Tony Horton wouldn't try to maximize his profit by straying off the basic message and instead devolving to hustling marks who want their bodies as fast as possible and without all that sweating. When the woman at the Beach Body tent assured me that she had the best diet she could get but still used the foul stuff because a diet rich in vegetables, lean meats and fruits was still inadequate and our farms made sure of that, I begged off. That was enough.

We went home with our library books in hand. I think we'll stick to medicine, thank you.

Comments

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

XD

I had not seen that image before, thank you for sharing.

I needed a laugh.

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

Do yourself a huge favor and look up Tim Minchin's piece, "Storm". You'll love it.

Actually, I'll look it up for you: YouTube - Tim Minchin - Storm (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw)

(yes, it's relevant to your post.)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that was pretty cool. My favorite along the same lines in Open Mindedness (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI), by Qualia Soup. It provides an excellent toolkit of ideas, notions, and comebacks for dealing with people who accuse skeptics of being "close-minded."

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

If you haven't yet read Druin Burch's "Taking The Medicine", a history of medicine with a plea for more evidence based medicine, I highly recommend it. That, with a little critical looking at life expectancy stats, has convinced me that homeopathy's harm is, at best, passive: at least it's not actively doing bad.

'cause if you take the big advances: vaccines, hygiene, antibiotics, out of medicine, you'd be amazed at how badly doctors are generally doing.