The National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) was a not-for-profit, US-based organization, that described itself as a "private nonprofit, voluntary health agency that focuses upon health misinformation, fraud, and quackery as public health problems."
A dietitian, medical dietitian, or dietician is an expert in identifying and treating disease-related malnutrition and in conducting medical nutrition therapy, for example designing an enteral tube feeding regimen or mitigating the effects of cancer cachexia. Many dietitians work in hospitals and usually see specific patients where a nutritional assessment and intervention has been requested by a doctor or nurse, for example if a patient has lost their ability to swallow or requires artificial nutrition due to intestinal failure. Dietitians are the only regulated healthcare professionals licensed to assess, diagnose, and treat such problems. In the United Kingdom, dietitian is a 'protected title', meaning identifying yourself as a dietitian without appropriate education and registration is prohibited by law.
The Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF), co-founded in 1999 by Sally Fallon (Morell) and nutritionist Mary G. Enig, is a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to "restoring nutrient-dense foods to the American diet through education, research and activism".
A nutritionist, dietitian-nutritionist, nutriologist, dietitian, or dietologist is a person who advises others on matters of food and nutrition and their impacts on health. Some people specialize in particular areas, such as sports nutrition, public health, or animal nutrition, among other disciplines. In many countries, a person can claim to be a nutritionist even without any training, education, or professional license, in contrast to a dietitian, who has a university degree, professional license, and certification for professional practice.
Stephen Joel Barrett is an American retired psychiatrist, author, co-founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), and the webmaster of Quackwatch. He runs a number of websites dealing with quackery and health fraud. He focuses on consumer protection, medical ethics, and scientific skepticism.
Quackwatch is a United States–based website, self-described as a "network of people" founded by Stephen Barrett, which aims to "combat health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct" and to focus on "quackery-related information that is difficult or impossible to get elsewhere". Since 1996 it has operated the alternative medicine watchdog website quackwatch.org, which advises the public on unproven or ineffective alternative medicine remedies. The site contains articles and other information criticizing many forms of alternative medicine.
The British Dietetic Association (BDA) is a professional association and trade union for dietitians in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1936 and became a certified union in 1982: it is affiliated to the Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Trades Union Congress.
Gillian McKeith is a Scottish television personality and writer, known for her promotion of various pseudoscientific ideas about health and nutrition. She is the former host of Channel 4's You Are What You Eat (2004–2007), Granada Television's Dr Gillian McKeith's Feel Fab Forever (2009–2010), and W Network's Eat Yourself Sexy (2010). In 2008, she regularly appeared on the E4 health show Supersize vs Superskinny, and in 2010, she was a contestant on the tenth series of the ITV show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!
Ben Michael Goldacre is a British physician, academic and science writer. As of March 2015, he is a senior clinical research fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, part of the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is a founder of the AllTrials campaign and OpenTrials to require open science practices in clinical trials.
Patrick Holford is a British author and entrepreneur who endorses a range of controversial vitamin tablets. As an advocate of alternative nutrition and diet methods, he appears regularly on television and radio in the UK and abroad. He has 36 books in print in 29 languages. His business career promotes a wide variety of alternative medical approaches such as orthomolecular medicine, many of which are considered pseudoscientific by mainstream science and medicine.
You Are What You Eat is a dieting programme aired in various forms between 2004 and 2007 on British broadcasting company Channel 4, and presented by Gillian McKeith. The fourth series was called You Are What You Eat: Gillian Moves In.
Earl Lawrence Mindell is a Canadian-American writer and nutritionist who is a strong advocate of nutrition as preventive medicine and homeopathy.
Weston Andrew Valleau Price was a Canadian dentist known primarily for his theories on the relationship between nutrition, dental health, and physical health. He founded the research institute National Dental Association, which became the research section of the American Dental Association, and was the NDA's chairman from 1914 to 1928.
Kurt Walter Donsbach is an unlicensed chiropractor and a controversial alternative medicine figure who has twice been convicted of practicing medicine without a license. He has faced charges of misbranding drugs for sale, unlawfully dispensing drugs as a cure for cancer, tax evasion, practicing medicine without a license, and falsely representing a cure for cancer.
John Stuart Garrow was a British nutritionist. He was the editor of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition from 1988 to 1999.
The Clayton College of Natural Health was a non-accredited American distance-learning natural health college based in Birmingham, Alabama, offering classes in various forms of alternative medicine. The school was founded in 1980 by Lloyd Clayton Jr. as the American College of Holistic Nutrition. According to its website, the school at one point had more than 25,000 students and graduates. The school and some of its more notable graduates have been the subject of controversy.
Nutritionism is a paradigm that assumes that it is the scientifically identified nutrients in foods that determine the value of individual food stuffs in the diet. In other words, it is the idea that the nutritional value of a food is the sum of all its individual nutrients, vitamins, and other components. Another aspect of the term is the implication that the only point of eating is to promote bodily health. The term is largely pejorative, implying that this way of viewing food is simplistic and harmful, and the term is usually used to label others' views. The concept's most prominent opponent, and popularizer of the term, journalist and professor of journalism Michael Pollan, argues that a food's nutritional value is "more than the sum of its parts."
Bad Science is a book by Ben Goldacre, criticising mainstream media reporting on health and science issues. It was published by Fourth Estate in September 2008. It has been positively reviewed by the British Medical Journal and the Daily Telegraph and has reached the Top 10 bestseller list for Amazon Books. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize. Bad Science or BadScience is also the title of Goldacre's column in The Guardian and his website.
Ann Louise Gittleman is an American author and proponent of alternative medicine, especially fad diets. She regards herself as a nutritionist. Gittleman has written more than two dozen books and is known for The Fat Flush Plan, a "detox" diet and exercise program that she developed into a series of books. Gittleman's ideas on health and nutrition are regarded as pseudoscience.
