Huckabee infomercial raises questions about diabetes treatment

Says Mike Huckabee appeared in diabetes infomercials to endorse “cures and treatments that no health agency supports.”

— Ron Fournier on Sunday, May 10th, 2015 in a pundit panel on “Face the Nation”

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who shed about 100 pounds after being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, filmed TV and radio infomercials earlier this year advertising a program to “reverse” diabetes.

Huckabee also lent his email list to carry ads about a looming food shortage and a cancer cure found in the Bible.

CBS’ Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer tried to pin Huckabee down on his business dealings during a May 10 interview that followed a critical column about “Huckabee’s Hucksterism” by National Journal’s Ron Fournier.

Huckabee explained the program he endorsed is more about healthy eating than dietary supplements.

A bit later, Schieffer moved on to Fournier during a pundit panel discussion for a response.

“He — his endorsing — the infomercials that are endorsing cures and treatments that no health agency supports. He’s linking cancer to cures to the Bible verse.”

Did Huckabee shill for a shoddy diabetes “cure” that “no health agency supports”?

Fournier’s column references a March newspaper story about Huckabee’s “highly unconventional income streams.” .

In a video, Huckabee promises diabetes can be reversed and condemns “mainstream” treatment methods of insulin injections and prescriptions.

“Prescription drugs aren’t going to cure you,” Huckabee tells viewers. “They’re only going to keep you a loyal pill-popping, finger-pricking, insulin shooting customer so Big Pharma and the mainstream medical community can rake in over $100 billion a year annually.”

After explaining how he used “the same techniques” outlined in the Diabetes Solution Kit, Huckabee asks viewers to “sit tight, because in a moment a free presentation is coming up that’ll show you everything you need to know about the Diabetes Solution Kit so you can discover all the natural secrets that are backed by real science that really work.”

That free presentation lasts more than 30 minutes, kicking off with a spokesman named Lon showing a picture of cinnamon rolls that “contain a real ingredient that reverses diabetes” and going on to berate insulin, diabetes pills and other injectables as treatments. (We sat through it so you don’t have to.)

The kit turns out to be booklets offering tips for eating, exercise, and yes, formulating dietary supplements — for $19.97.

The video discusses at length the “Double C Diabetes Remedy” of cinnamon and chromium picolinate, which is described as a “weird, spice, kitchen cabinet cure” that “will allow you to live life just like when you didn’t have diabetes at all.” Lon the narrator calls this precise combination of cinnamon and chromium picolinate a “cornerstone” of the system.

So that’s the diabetes solution Huckabee was being paid to promote. Do health agencies say it works?

A New York Times story describes the American Diabetes Association and Canadian Diabetes Association as warning that dietary and herbal supplements “are ineffective for treating diabetes,” linking to a page of only the American group’s website.

The ADA’s Diabetes.org page is slightly more nuanced, but nowhere does it signal support for herbal remedies.

The Canadian Diabetes Association was more straight-forward: It “does not support the use of the dietary supplements advertised in these infomercials.”

Fahncke of Barton Publishing sent PunditFact links to various Web pages of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Diabetes Association, Mayo Clinic, and a journal called Nutrition Research. The links either talk about the importance of a healthy diet to control diabetes (and don’t mention herbal supplements at all) or discuss small studies in China and Pakistan that showed cinnamon supplements might reduce risk factors in patients with Type 2 diabetes.

Still, none of the links offer strong support for the cinnamon-chromium mixture recommended in the Diabetes Solution Kit — much less the endorsement of a reputable health agency.

Other expert opinions

Other endocrinologists we contacted were more blunt: The promised kitchen cabinet remedy does not work.

“The concoction of cinnamon and chromium has been sold for many years, and it’s pure quackery,” said Dr. Domenico Accili, Columbia University professor medicine and director of the Columbia University Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center.

Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick, a past president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and attending physician in the endocrinology, diabetes and bone disease division of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, said even though chromium and cinnamon are “associated with salutary effects on glucose and insulin physiology in animals and in vitro,” there are insufficient clinical data to back up a recommendation for the product.

Food and Drug Administration spokesman Eric Pahon said people who “rely on products which have not been reviewed by FDA for safety and efficacy” — e.g. Diabetes Solution Kit’s cinnamon and chromium picolinate recommendation — “may place themselves at increased risk of poorly controlled diabetes and other risks.”

Our ruling

Fournier said “no health agencies support” the “cures and treatments” that Huckabee endorsed in an infomercial promising diabetes reversal.

Health groups and physicians that specialize in diabetes told us they do not support the approach to “reversing diabetes” outlined in the Diabetes Solution Kit that Huckabee used to endorse.

We rate Fournier’s claim True.