Build Up Catch Up - 11/3/23

Costumes for WCK, ThanksForGiving, Nutrigenomics Nonsense, Word of the Day, November Subscriber deal, FREE CPEU and more!

World Central Kitchen (WCK) - Halloween Costume Photo Challenge

We asked our followers for their Halloween photos and ones of their kids and pets in costume and promised we’d donate to WCK $1 for every photo. We donated $50! If you’d like to learn more about WCK or donate on your own go here: World Central Kitchen (wck.org)

Here were a few of our favorite photos - to see more go to our Facebook page!

Sent in by Karen F. - “Spice Girls”

Sent in by Katie S.

Viome and Nutrigenomics Nonsense

Post by Rina Raphael, “Is This Microbiome Startup Selling a Wellness Fantasy”

“Medical experts say Viome draws in customers with scientific jargon while playing up its technology—a practice of the wellness industry known as science-washing. “We saw that with DTC [direct-to-consumer] genetic testing. Now it’s the microbiome,” says Timothy Caulfield, the Canada research chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta, who co-authored a paper on how microbiome science is misconstrued in overpromising health benefits. “There is very little evidence to support the use of this testing. No clear benefit and possible harm….”

Restrictive diets like Viome’s can have counterproductive outcomes, such as reducing the intake of vital nutrients, prompting eating disorders and, ironically, starving the microbiome of diversity, the marker of a healthy gut. Often the people buying these types of kits are either health-obsessed or battling an undiagnosed or chronic condition where there are few, if any, effective medical treatments.

“There is something a little bit insidious about capitalizing on people’s desperation, promising them solutions that are not founded in science,” says registered dietitian Tamara Duker Freuman,…“These are not benign tests.”

(For more on microbiome and “poop tests” see this previous issue of the ‘Build Up Catch Up’: Build Up Catch Up - 5/26/23 - Build Up Catch Up (substack.com). Click here for our Build Up Dietitians Gastro group

A THIRD year of #THANKSforGIVING

• by Nov 12th- nominate a local or regional food/nutrition non-profit that’s helping in YOUR community AND briefly tell us WHY in comments.

• Include their WEBSITE so we can look them up and contact them.

✅we'll pick FIVE non-profit organizations or groups, and each will receive $100 AND we'll let them know YOU nominated them!

✅ We’ll even give the non-profit a #shoutout on our Facebook page and include their link so more people can learn about them and the work they do!

Please post YOUR non-profit pick to our FACEBOOK page.

Become a PAID subscriber and get the rest of the content (the ‘5 Things You May Have Missed’) As an added incentive, for every new annual subscriber in November (by 11/30) we’ll donate $5 to World Central Kitchen (WCK)!