Are glyconutrients a scam? Science?

Great Debates
1

An aunt of mine, who is a little manic and prone to pouring what little money she has into strange fads and scams, has recently decided to shell out 100$ for a month’s supply of something called glyconutrients: a supplement which promises, in no small terms to “cure everything” (i.e. clear up all sorts of minor ailments, make you feel better, etc.) It’s supposedly a mix of 8 different special sugars which we don’t get enough of in our modern diets.

I don’t know a heck of a lot about nutrition, but I was a little skeptical even with the huge claim aside, because as far as I know, sugars basically break down all through the same pathway: I have no idea how taking different sorts of sugars (most of which ARE found in products people eat, as far as I know) could help.

I was even more skeptical when all my searching on the internet turned up tons of poorly designed testimonial webpages, some slick corporates ones, and even a few “invest in this new supplement, it’s a great way to make money” ones.

But so far, I’ve not found a single scrap of info debunking these things. There are even a few books at Amazon that are given good glowing reviews by the editors (and no critical reviews by anyone), and references to tons of supporting evidence in studies.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345441079/qid=1039834740/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-3683529-9025662?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

What I don’t find are ANY critics of this supplement. Considering how suspect the supplement industry is, this was a little surprising to me. Even for stuff that IS legitimate, there are always tons of poo-pooers and critics: even insane ones.

I put this in Great Debates since I doubt there is any definative answer, just as there’s been plenty of debate over Atkins. But is this stuff really the scam it seems? Is it legit? Does the science make any sense at all? Has the supplement industry no shame? Is it ruining science?

My aunt is diabetic by the way, and obese. The idea of her taking a sugar pill is not exactly a winning idea, especially if it’s just a scam. But she’s convinced.

2

I’ve never even heard of this, but this:

is good enough for me. It’s a scam.

3

Well, it’s good enough for me too… but not exactly convincing for less cynical people.

And I am, of course, not being wholly fair about that claim. That’s what my aunt described it doing, but the less excitable claims I’ve seen are more like increased energy, weightloss, etc. etc. Of course, that too is a red light for me (cures diffuse and non-generalized symptoms, different effects in everyone, etc.). But that shouldn’t be enough to debunk it entirely.

Indeed, consider how messed up it would be if it really was a scam. Because then what’s going on is that scam artists are litterally selling people a very literal sugar pill… and they don’t even have to lie about what it is.

4

There’s no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. If there were such a thing, the nutritional biochemists would have rooted it out with diet studies and declared the discovery of a new vitamin 60 years ago. There’s no mention of that event, or anything that suggests the existence of “essential” sugars, other than vitamin C, (and that’s a sugar-acid), in modern biochemistry texts. I doubt that this is the result of a nutritional conspiracy.
The texts do tell us that the body has ample capacity to produce all of the sugars that may ever be required. This includes hundreds of saccharides like galactose, maltose, ribose, ribulose, gluconic acid, glucoronic acid, arabinose xylose trehelose etc. etc. that the linked book fails to mention. The books’s so-called “essential” saccharides mannose, glucose, xylose, fucose, N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylgalactosamine, and N-acetylneurminic acid are not nutritionally or biochemically “special” in any discernible way.
In other words: The book is a scam.
That same statement cannot be made regarding the Atkins diet, which btw, involves reducing carbohydrate intake. That reduction includes all 8 “essential saccharides”

saccharide = sugar = carbohydrate

5

An absolute scam!!

Marketed by a multi level marketing mob called Mannatech, one of their ‘associates’ (read sellers) recently attempted a foray into our local primary school special ed unit, only to be exposed as a deregistered medical practitioner who had been merrily marketing the extremely expensive and unproven formulas onto his unsuspecting patients before he was unceremoniously booted out.

A friend of mine was offered these ‘glyconutrients’ as a must have for her epileptic Aspergers syndrome child at $800 for 3 mths supply :mad:

http://www.mlmwatch.org/04C/Mannatech/raddatz.html
http://www.ds-health.com/ambr.htm
http://www.mlmsurvivor.com/mannatech.htm

And there are plenty more if you do a google search

6

—in modern biochemistry texts. I doubt that this is the result of a nutritional conspiracy.—

Of course, these people have started making their claims, and pushing their studies, only recently, so if it is a new discovery, it probably wouldn’t be mentioned in biochem books just yet. I had the same thought as you about the idea of an essential carbohydrate… but ideas about nutrition change all the time, and I can’t just write it off (or convince others) simply because biochem textbooks don’t talk about it.

The kicker is the studies they cite. Are they hack jobs? How can one tell? How can one debunk things like this quickly when they have hordes of industry-backed research into it?

—In other words: The book is a scam.—

Then how did they fool the Amazon editors and all reviewers? Why can’t I find any critics? Does Amazon have a “pay us for a good review” program? What’s going on, and what does this say about society’s ability to protect people from fads and scams with good, well-disseminated information?

I’m certainly leaning towards scam, which means what I said is true: they really are selling marketing sugar pills to people. Sugar pills. And saying that they are sugar pills.

And they’re making millions off these things already.

http://glycoinformation.com/

They count a Nobel Prize winner (for medicine) among their number, even though as far as I can tell, his work has nothing to do with their product other than the word “glyco.”
http://glycoinformation.com/nobel.html

—That same statement cannot be made regarding the Atkins diet, which btw, involves reducing carbohydrate intake.—

Easy there, killer. I didn’t even raise any questions about the Atkins diet here, just pointed out that because Atkins debates seemed to be a GD subject rather than a GQ one, I put this thread in GD (I wasn’t sure).

7

http://www.glycoscience.com/
Here’s more about what they’re claiming: “Recent scientific research has shown that eight simple dietary sugars (monosaccharides), most of which are no longer found in abundance in the standard modern diet, are actually the “code” by which the body communicates at the cellular level.”

Ok… but if that were all, that seems to be the old nutritional fallacy that just because the body uses some chemical, dumping a pill full of it down your throat will help. Maybe there’s more to it, but I’ve not sussed out exactly what.

Here’s a list of some studies they suggest
http://www.glycoscience.com/glycoscience/summary_display.wm?SECTION=MAIN&MAIN=productSpecific&CRITERIA=productSpecific

8

Just a gut call, not having delved into this yet, but it sounds like a fantastic breakthrough in marketing technology. Squink has said it all. If your body needs carbohydrates, it makes them.

Apos has a point, but only to a point, when he says this may be all too receent to have made it into biochem textbooks. However, if it is so revolutionary, I would expect to read about it in the current literature, as opposed to, say, Amazon reviews.

9

The bulk of what literature I’ve found so far comes from the Journal of American Nutraceuticals Association of something like that. “Nutraceuticals” seem as quacky as glyconutrients (indeed, glyconutrients ARE “nutraceuticals,” according to these people) though. The real question is how all this supports itself, and why the scientific community isn’t doing more to debunk it. I mean, the whole weight of the philosophy of science seems better focused on debunking things, not proving them. But there just isn’t a lot of money in debunking the money-makers of other companies. Seems like a pretty darn perverse situation: what good is science if junk-science can flourish and drown it out?

10

Leptins and other such carbohydrate signals have been known for ages. They are not something new. AFAIK, ground up crab shell, AKA poly n-acetylglucosamine has never been a significant part of the human diet.

-from your first link.

That means that they wrote a bunch of stuff up, put it on a web page and called it a “scientific journal” That makes them asshats.
I could easily conduct “scientific research” showing how assholes, or more technically, anuses, are essential to human life. Just try plugging yours up if you don’t believe me ! On the basis of that research I could open a small company “Anuses-R-Us”, and put up a website with an online journal in order to “publish” my results. On the basis of that publication I could legitimately claim that “new research” shows that “assholes are essential to the maintenance of homeostasis in the human alimentary canal.”
With such stunning and new “scientific” claims to back me up, it’d be easy to sell gullible consumers 50 and 100 mg capsules of freeze dried rat-anus powder as an “essential” dietary supplement. Two months supply would cost 49.95, and the placebo affect would ensure that I got positive feedback from lots of sphinctorally satisfied customers.

Scams multiply much faster than legitimate knowledge, and debunking bullshit has never paid as well as creating it.
If you are willing to pay someone to take a look at glycoscience’s claims, you might get the in-depth criticism you seem desire. Barring that, what I’m telling you here is the best that you are likely to get; at least until the scam gets big enough to annoy more people.

(Heaven forbid that there’s a sugar chemist from the national acadamey on board here. That last sentence was arrogant enough that I half expect a drubbing from a real expert. I hope I at least managed make a clear point there :slight_smile: )

11

—If you are willing to pay someone to take a look at glycoscience’s claims, you might get the in-depth criticism you seem desire.—

The thing is, I AM willing to pay for such things. I really would love to see an organization that had the time, money, and the manpower to debunk junk product claims and desseminate their findings. There are various resources scattered all over the place, but most are people pissed off by single scams, not in general trying to catch scammers at their game.

One real problem, I guess, is the laws that give people making crazy claims far more leverage than those debunking them. You’re allowed to claim that your body is dying from lack of rat-anus protiens, luring people into buying and using junk, but if you try to prove them wrong you get hit with all sorts of lawsuits.

I still think openly selling people sugar pills pretty much beats all.