Has anyone heard anything good or bad about Reliv food supplement. I met someone with fibromyalgia last week who told me that after three weeks drinking their food supplement, she has been feeling so much better.
She told me that she had listened to one of their Testimony, apparently it can help with cancer. I got a bit suspicious when I saw their marketing techniques. I started searching the web for more info. There seems to be tons of complaints regarding their business model rather than their products. However most of the stuff I found is rather old.
Anyone familar with them?
I think you’re right to be suspicious and I’m a bit alarmed at the way they market it. Basically, it contains soy which is a phyto oestrogen. The jury seems to be out with regard to soy and breast cancer. Some studies show that substances in soy can cause breast cancer cell growth while there are other studies that suggest eating more soy can reduce risk.
From what I’ve read, the studies that show a reduced risk with soy are looking at Asian women who eat soy as part of their diet. This is probably unlikely to be the type of soy products we get over here in the West which tend to be very processed. There is currently a fair bit of research going on to look at soy and breast cancer. (If you want to see any of the research take a look on the diet and research thread you’ll see some of this discussed.)
Personally I only have minimal amounts of soy and certainly wouldn’t supplement soy in any shape or form including Reliv.
The research is stronger on all the nutritional benefits of vegetables so, in my opinion (and I’m not an expert by any means) if I were going to do anything I’d increase my veg intake having as much variety of colours as possible.
Hope that helps
Elinda x
I worked in a Japanese company for 10 years and the thing about the Asian diet is that it is very radically different to ours. My Japanese colleagues all used to complain about having all sorts of problems when they switched to a western diet - this was back in the 80s / 90s and Japanese food was not so easy to get here. It was mainly available in London and very expensive at that time. They would cite gut problems like constipation, bloating, water retention; also bad skin and hair. We used to get a lot of tofu and soy based products being brought to the office by Japanese visitors, they have a lot of little cake type things with bean curd in the middle and it comes as in a slab and is a bit like Turkish Delight. There would also be a lot of little snacky things wrapped in dried seaweed. hey didn’t have bread in their diet either. Green tea was also nothing like the stuff you get in the supermarkets now.I would also say my colleagues ate very little processed food at home and they would come to work with Japanese food in lunchboxes, often things like meat or vegetable tempura.