Flowers in your food.
Recently there has been a stampede by food supplement manufacturers to add botanicals and medicinal herbs to their products. Can you imagine, juice with ginseng, soups containing St. John's Wort and the ever popular and nutritious, chips with Kava Kava?
This has been a rather contentious topic in the Food and Drug Administration circles of late. So much so that the Administration has sent letters containing warnings to 80 companies that are making such products. The warning states that adding botanicals to their products are neither approved food product additives nor recognized as safe.
It is one of the functions of the FDA to regulate claims made by manufacturers of such products and there are NO approved claims for botanicals. Structure/function claims are permitted to state the effect of a supplement on the body but cannot claim to prevent or treat a disease or condition.
a prime example of the above statement concerns Echinacea. It is sold to boost the immune system, a claim that is acceptable to the FDA, but it cannot be said to prevent colds. That's a no-no! By touting the botanical as an immune system booster, the companies avoid a health claim, thus circumvent FDA action. I can't imagine a less effective method of ingesting a botanical than in food. First, theres the matter of extra calories and, your dosage will never be the same two days consecutively.
Metabolism Boosters
Less than honest manufacturers have been selling pills and supplements to lose weight for years based on this claim. The truth is, there are no known foods that increase your metabolism! Actually, the only true method of increasing your metabolism (legally, that is) is with the use of exercise. You can also increase your metabolic rate by getting a fever or undergoing the stress of a surgery, but these are highly undesirable methods.
What one must remember is that one's body is very sensitive to changes within itself and automatically takes measures to correct those changes. In truth there are thermogenic foods (those that cause an increase in body temperature during the digestive process); mainly, carbohydrates. This doesn't mean, however, that a high carbohydrate diet will help you lose weight. To the contrary, despite the increase in body heat, there will likely be an accompanying weight gain. Oh, and the body will adjust the hear to normal shortly after the eating orgy.
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