#2899: Ann Louise Gittleman

A.k.a. the First Lady of Nutrition (self-proclaimed)

 

Before the Food Babe and a slew of other silly fad diet and nutritional pseudoscience promoters, there was Ann Louise Gittleman and a slew of other silly fad diet and nutrional pseudoscience pomoters (there’s lots and have been lots of them for a long time and they won’t go away anytime soon even if the cast changes). Now, Gittleman is a general promoter of various kinds of woo and quackery, but fad diets have been her mainstay, and she has written more than two dozen books recommending nonsense based on nonsense – the most influential of which being probably The Fat Flush Plan, which recommended a much-criticized “detox” and exercise program. Gittleman considers herself a ‘nutritionist’ and can boast a Ph.D. in holistic nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health, an unaccredited and now defunct diploma mill – her degree is basically spam.

 

Gittleman apparently rose to general attention back in 1994 for her appearance in a campaign promoting Rejuvex, a quack dietary supplement for menopause symptoms that is not supported by scientific or clinical evidence. It was, however, her 2001 The Fat Flush Plan that really established her as a pseudoscience guru; the book was a New York Times best seller and landed her appearances on a variety of TV programs, such as 20/20, Dr. Phil, Good Morning America, and The Early Show. It is fraudulent garbage through and through, but its commercial success put Gittleman on her path, and loads of related nonsense followed in its wake.

 

Her 2010 book Zapped, for instance, tried to make a rather blunt case of alarm about electromagnetic radiation. It did so through frightening-sounding anecdotes about people who claim to find themselves battling unexplained ailments, some references to shoddy studies and pseudostudies, carefully avoiding mention of real science on the issues (which of course fails to support her case), and featuring the pronunciations of familiar pseudoscience promoters like George Carlo. Worst, as Gittleman sees it, is that “cell phone radiation has been associated with many types of cancer, the best known being brain tumors. The longer the hours of use, and years of use, the greater the risk,” a claim that is demonstratively false and, for someone who has written a book about it, tantamount to baldfaced lying. But she’s good at tapping into zeitgeist scares: “And a new condition is emerging in children called ‘digital dementia’  from overuse of RF-emitting technologies.” Even Gittleman has to admit that the condition is (always) ‘emerging’; digital dementia is not a real thing. Her claims about cell phones and radiation eventually got picked up by Goop, which is, we suppose, precisely where they belong.

 

Meanwhile, her otherwise fabulously nonsensical drivel book Get the Salt Out tried to distinguish good and bad salt, and even suggested a test: “Put the salt you now use to a test to determine its metabolic acceptability: add a spoonful to a glass of plain water, stir it several times, and let it stand overnight. If the salt collects in a thick layer on the bottom of the glass, your salt has failed the test: it is heavily processed and not very usable by the body. To give your body salt it can use, switch instead to an unrefined natural salt that will dissolve in a glass of water as well as in bodily fluids. This experiment gives you a visual example of what refined salt can do to your system: collect in body organs and clog up the circulatory system.” This is … incorrect; Gittleman evidently relies on her customers not actually performing the test.

 

More recently, Gittleman has tried to make a career on the bandwagon of altmed gurus claiming that we suffer from parasitic infections and that this is the cause of a lot of ailments and troubles. At the 2016 Microbiome Medicine Summit, for instance (a self-congratulatory quack orgy that had preciously little to do with medicine), she presented her findings in the talk Parasites May be the Hidden Cause of Your Health Issues, revealing for instance that although most real tests won’t usually detect said parasites, they’re nonetheless there (indeed you’ll most easily detect them yourself “4 days before and after a full moon”). But fret not! There is help to be found: If you visit her website, you can purchase “My Colon Cleansing Kit” – conveniently on sale at the time of the conference for just $96 (that’d be three jars of random herbs and probiotics). Does she have any evidence for any of her claims? Well – and this is really a fair illustration of how quacks work – according to her website, “a study in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found that 32% of a nationally representative sample of the US population tested positive for parasites”. Now, she doesn’t name the study in question, but it’s this one. Does it say, as Gittleman reports, that 32% of a representative sample of Americans tested positive for parasites, you think? According to the study, 32% of sick patients referred to testing because their doctors suspected parasitic infections tested positive for parasitic infections. That’s … not quite how Gittleman frames it, is it?

 

Diagnosis: To be a bit melodramatic: Yes, a lot of Americans are suffering from parasitic infections: shitfuck parasites like Ann Louise Gittleman preying on people who are genuinely suffering to sell them lies, fear and useless and expensive treatments and products. Gittleman is corrupt through and through, and she probably doesn’t even know it herself.