Nutritional "quacks" and the food fad business are duping the American public out of $500 million per year.

This is the contention of Frederick J. Stare, chairman of the Department of Nutrition in the School of Public Health, as he expressed it in a new booklet, "Your Physician Looks at Family Health."

"This business is carefully nutured by a relatively small group of unscrupulous health charietans," Stare asserted. "It is built on nutritional myth, food nonsense, deception, fraud, and guilibility."

Honey and Vinegar

Stare decried quack contentions "about calories not counting, the therapeutic benefits of honey and vinegar... the wonders of natural foods and those fertilized organically, and of course, the nutritional nonsense over the radio and TV from people with no professional training in nutrition or any other area of health."

These nutritional con-men, Stare said, usually say that our foods are "Over-processed, devitalized and poisoned"; they promise quick and sure results; and they usually have something to sell.

Stare said food fads were not necessary for food health. "Good nutrition," he observed, "comes from good food available at any grocery store or supermarket. So-called health foods and nutritional supplements are not necessary to provide the best in good nutrition."

Stare also commented that one of the per targets of the health quacks is the "poisoning" of our water supply through flouridation. "Floride is a mineral nutrient," he said; the body must have sufficient flourine to construct a dental enamel strong enough to resist decay.

"Flouridation currently offers the only effective means to reduce dental decay by 50 per cent or more. A few people will have less decay if they drastically reduce the intake of sugar.

"Flourides can be given in pill or drop form, and there are flouridated tooth-pastes; but none of these methods begins to approach flouridation of water supplies in effectiveness and economy.