Please don’t. I’ve had to rant at a few people lately who credulously post these superficially cool memes that dissolve into absolutely unworkable nonsense when you think critically about them for even a moment, and they’re all coming from this persistent self-promoter named David Avocado Wolfe. Worst of all, I’m seeing these coming from atheist and skeptic groups, people I’d expect to put a little more thought into the evaluation of claims.
This guy is a cancer quack, and is marketing New Agey supplements that are supposed to do magical things for your body. For instance, he’s selling Himalayan Crystal Salt, which he claims contains 84 natural, essential elements (note that he’s careful not to call them “chemicals”, which are all bad). In addition to sodium and chloride, like the cheap stuff you buy at the grocery store, it also contains trace elements (also like any food grade product you buy at the store), which includes arsenic and plutonium.
Wolfe is a no-talent, incompetent, dishonest fraud: the one skill he has to an extreme degree is in marketing, and the only thing he markets is himself. If you push something at me from David Wolfe, I will cut you off completely.
Plus, he stole Eddie Vedder’s face.
84 elements!?!?!
everything but the “Rare Earths” I suppose. I wonder how he gets the Nobles to bond. One of the few missing elements better be Hg (Mercury), biology don’t work too good with Mercury. Also a problem with Pb.
I guess he could be claiming that all the elements we consider poison are only so due to dose; that in trace amounts are more healthy than lack thereof.
I’m a little worried about the source of that plutonium … random fall-out from old atmospheric H-bomb tests?
I’m reminded of Deepak Chopra’s online schlock, like his $128 “Dosha Harmonizing Necklace”* – but as scammy and woo-ey as that stuff is, it’s not aimed directly at the pockets of people with serious disease (or at least not _openly_ so). Wow, this Wolfe guy is something else.
*For the curious: The necklace is a “Collection of Blessed Gem Stones designed to Balance Pitta”. But we all knew that, right?
D. Avocado became a fruitcake
If it was uranium salt I would be interested. If you dissolve it in water, Richard Zubrin suggests you could use it to power a nuclear rocket engine.
But do not try that at home. NOT good for your Health.
defaithed
but…but … I LOVE pitta, even when it’s spelled ‘pita’….Mmmmmmmmmm delish!!!
(a click too soon) do you balance Humus on it??
re @6:
doesn’t eating Ur give one superpowers. Marvel doesn’t want you to try what they portray in their comics, donchanoe????
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/David_Wolfe
Wolfe believes “mushrooms are from space”, “chocolate is an octave of sun energy” and deer antler is “a cosmic substance”[7] (a product he promotes and sells). He is also a gravity denialist:[8]
Wolfe is also the co-founder of TheBestDayEver.com, an online so-called health magazine.[9]
Most of his material is unoriginal; taken from other sources. He frequently takes alternative medicine and food woo meme pictures from other questionable sites, puts his own watermark on them, and posts them to his Facebook page.
He holds pricey weekend getaways at substandard campsites, and has been accused of sexually harrassing at least one of the attendees.[10]
Himalayan salt is delicious. Don’t use it for biling your pasta, but do use it on fresh bread with butter or a steak.
It will not work miracles, but taste really good (unless you botched the steak)
There is a pink salt from Utah that is similar to Himalayan salt (and half the price), sold by Real Salt. It is quite tasty, and the company doesn’t make the woo nonsense claims that are usually associated with the Himalayan. I also imagine that Pakistani mining standards may not be quite as environmentally friendly as those in the states.
I’m safe from him…I can’t stand Avocados.
Gravity denier? For realz? I have used that term but only to mock.
Mr Carnivorous Avocado didn’t get that quite right. As the mildly deranged penguin points out, whilst MUSHROOMS! do migrate through space, they very definitely originated on assorted planets. Many planets, in fact, fungus might just be one of the things the evolution sky faerie has a fondness for, besides bugs.
Mr Carnivorous Avocado’s entry in The Encyclopedia of American Loons is, as usual, entertaining:
Caine @10:
Well, we all know that the trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss, after all.
funny I never heard of Himalayan Crystal Salt before today but was reading an instrustables page on how to make a perfect cup of coffee which used pink salt and eggshells, sorry but I am not going to add salt to my coffee though there are a few things that do enhance coffee.
a magic cure for everything ? he should use his cures to cure himself and then I “may listen” maybe a little bit (not!)
uncle frogy
@3 quotetheunquote — that may have been a PZ typo. Spectrometer analysis of Himalayan salt (which is from one of the world’s bigger salt mines in Pakistan) shows uranium and POLONIUM, not plutonium. And Giliel is right, it confers a rather nice sea-salt-plus-something snap to the Maillard browning effect on chicken and pork and beef. Not bad for dry-brining either,
For a laugh, do check out Daniel Guacamole Fox on Fb :)
Two things:
I am reminded of a juice bar that had advertisements for a product, “ionic colloidal minerals.” It, too, listed nearly the entire periodic table, claiming that you needed everything. The ones they knew would freak people out (mercury, uranium, plutonium) were not listed. But, on a lark, I decided to check out what the various biological effects of the elements are and, as I found out, most are toxic and/or have pretty nasty side effects (such as really nasty body odor).
Oh, and arsenic was one of the ones listed.
@10, Caine: Well, to be fair, there is a difference between inertial mass (F = ma) and gravitational mass (F = Gm1m2/r^2). They aren’t the same thing (if there were no such thing as gravity, you’d still be able to measure mass) and they don’t have to give identical results. It just so happens that as closely as we can measure, they do. It’s because they are the same that all objects fall at the same rate under gravity (ignoring resistance).
But let’s not pretend that he’s smart enough to know this and is trying to obfuscate the disconnect between inertia and gravity. Gravity is intrinsic to matter. It’s one of the defining properties.
In related news, Frontline on PBS tonight will be about the vitamin/supplement industry. Here’s a clip.
That makes sense. You should be able to see all the decay products from uranium to lead if you look hard enough, which includes polonium.
Other than sodium chloride, what I want in salt is some potassium iodide.
Ye gods, that sounds like a Beck lyric. Overfed electric comatose, riding in the air, invisible socks.
I thought I recognized the name. Orac over at Respectful Insolence did a nice job on him about 6-8 months ago.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/05/28/how-is-it-that-ive-never-heard-of-david-avocado-wolfe-before/
Wolfe is a dangerous quack in wolf’s clothing. But, PZ, I hope you don’t mean it when you say “If you push something at me from David Wolfe, I will cut you off completely.” The point of the #DontCryWolfe campaign isn’t to cut people off, but to take the time to start a dialogue, to explain why sharing Wolfe posts/graphics is harmful. There are plenty of well-meaning people who simply don’t know any better.