To me, the Zone diet is a fantastic health beneficial diet, whether you're overweight or not. His books present his theories and his clinical experience. I haven't read them to be honest because all the info is available online for free. However, I'll buy his last book because I feel obligated to. Now comes the delicate question of supplements Dr Sears sells. It is very legitimate for him to sell supplements and to advertise them, but there're ethical considerations involved. Some company are today providing very similar products in terms of quality and efficacy at lower price. Dr Sears' credibility is questionned when he, or the people around him selling his products, present false or unconvincing evidence that his products are superior. Dr Sears is an intelligent man and therefore tries to never discredit other companies' products. It's entirely to his credit. However, this does not at all apply to the "salesmen" around him. Dr Sears products, and fish oil to begin with, are expensive; this is a fact. Instead of liying deliberately, with the risk of losing credibility, it would be simpler and more profitable to simply tell people that Dr Sears produts are simply excellent without any consideration of prices. If people can afford them, then tell them to go for them. Otherwise tell them to chose other brands and preferably the best other ones for very similar results in terms of health. Honesty always pay off. I want also to acknowledge how democratic Dr Sears' forum is. Again, this is entirely to his credit. Thank you Dr Sears for having developped such a great health promoting diet!

:x :x :x Z-A: Your equation of one's scientific credibility with a socialist rejection of profit baffles me. Since when does making money on a product diminish that product's quality? Indeed, the profit motive is what drives most R & D in every industry. How many ground-breaking commercially successful drugs have been invented and patented in Canada? Dr. Sears has never made it a secret that he got into this biz to get rich. You may not 'feel obligated' to spend real money on Dr. Sears' dead-tree books, but his first one contains an enlightening story you won't find for free...uh, online: He and his brother set out to market a miracle pill that would contain GLA and EPA. They read the study on eicosanoids and got a great idea to get rich. They invested years of work and much money on farmland in Alberta, cornering the borage market, creating a feaseable way to extract and concentrate their snake oil and sell it to the public at a *gasp* profit. They failed, and Dr. Sears figured out it was just as easy to eat the right foods. Then he figured out a way to make money on that: Sell, not give away on the Internet, but [i:0cfa6ee9ac]sell[/i:0cfa6ee9ac] books. Then bars. Then shakes, vitamins, fish oil and meals. Then Dr. Sears invented pharm-grade FO. He invented it. He holds the patents on many products. (Capitalist countries protect inventors' right to own patents; communist countries don't, but confiscate the intellectual property for themselves.) Sears' PGFO enjoyed a monopoly for a few years, and was admittedly very expensive. He charged a lot for a superior product, because it was worth it to a lot of us to pay for it, because it cost a lot of money to produce it and he wanted to recover his costs as well as profit, and because, while there was no competition, he knew his monopoly would not last forever and he wanted to make money while he could. Today, there are competitors and there are probably less expensive methods to produce the oil. Sears' prices might fall. Henry Ford's automobile wasn't of less quality than his competitors', nor was he a man of higher morals; it was cheaper because he invented (and patented) a cheaper way of building it. My parents paid $100 for their first pocket calculator in 1973; today they are free with a subscription renewal. Have the folks at Texas Instruments undergone a miraculous journey of moral self-discovery? No, there are more companies producing the same product, and faster and cheaper. Forgive my rant, but the adage 'You get what you pay for', while perhaps cynical to you, is at work here.

A_H: What a funny answer! I said that Sears' products are undoubdedly excellent if not the best. So to me it doesn't mean "making money on a product diminish that product's quality." The 2 points I was trying to make are: 1) How can we make sure Dr Sears money making industry prevail health concerns? In other words, can we trust what he says (or any other famous doctor involved in health managing programs) if his goal is to deliberately make a lot of money. Fo example, there're gurus who wouldn't care about followers but only about their money. 2) Dr Sears' work appears to me very serious. His allegations are rationally and scientifically backed up. On the contrary, people on this board don't mind presenting untrue arguments just to sell Dr Sears' products. For example, about fish oil purity, it doesn't make sense to reach levels (and make people think this is crucial) that are 1 thousand times less than an average meal. If another brand have purity levels 10 times lower, it will still represent a neglectable amount of pollutants comparted to what we daily ingest through food. From a scientific perspective, this kind of presentation is called unacceptable. I trust Dr Sears (or anybody else I'm untrusting my health to) as long as what he says or sell is backed up with unbiased arguments, without any financial considerations. If there's a lie somewhere, I can no longer trust the person.

I too get nervous when science and captitalism come together. This is the reason why I get nervous when I read Sears and Hershey cutting a deal. I would not deny the pursuit of happiness through money deals, but I still am aprehensive that the diet I am following may not be right, even though I can feel better on it. Given the advanced technologies available today and specialization required to master a subject area, it can be too easy to overwhelm even those with less advanced science degrees and pull the wool over the eyes. This is the same problem with beating up drug companies for expensive drugs that have millions sunk into development costs where only a few products make it to market. At the same time, big money makes for backstabbing environments that can prevent better solutions from making it to market. At least the one test is still available...time. With time, the truth usually prevails. With time, theories can be proven, disproven and tested. With time, facts emerge and lies are exposed. With time, behavior and shady deals can be exposed. I'm afraid "buyer beware" is still the watch words and time still the tester.