The GLiMMER Initiative - My Collaboration with Dr. Oz and Deepak Chopra

If I had a top ten list of influential people who I felt used their status to prey upon a trusting public, both Dr. Oz and Deepak Chopra would at least be shortlisted for membership. And yet, it would seem, they're my collaborators.

You see the three of us are members of the Council of Directors of the GLiMMER Initiative True Health Initiative, a project spearheaded by Dr. David Katz. Now if there's guilt by association I take it there'll also be merit by association and I'll be standing alongside some of nutrition's true luminaries, but given the Council is so large it needs 6 separate links to explore its near 300 (and growing) members from over 20 countries, I think guilt or merit by association probably isn't going to be a slam dunk in either direction. While I'm not privy to the whys and hows of Council membership, influence was certainly one, and consequently there are definitely members whose practices challenge my sensibilities, but whose influence certainly can't be denied.

And so why would I join a group that would have Oz, Chopra, and some unsavoury others as members? Because the goal of the initiative is one I can strongly support, and that is the identification of common ground in nutrition and healthy living that regardless of where one might fall on the spectrum of science to seance, everyone agrees, and I'll let David Katz explain why that matters,

"Our culture fixates on competing diet claims and discord, while failing to see the consensus among experts about the reliable, common fundamentals that matter most. GLiMMER is pulling that consensus from the shadows, so that everyone knows what the world's experts know, and agree on. We can then, acknowledging at last that we know where "there" is, can devote our collective efforts and resources- to getting there from here!"

All this to say, I'm happy to throw my hat into this ring. If everyone on this list can agree, then together we can use our collective soapboxes to push away at least some of the cacophony of contradictions that serve to undermine the efforts of individuals who, depending on the news story of the week or the channel on their televisions, find themselves either confused, or chasing predatory nonsense.