Mike Huckabee Half-Heartedly Defends His Cinnamon Pill Cure For Diabetes

Mike Huckabee Half-Heartedly Defends His Cinnamon Pill Cure For Diabetes

If you’re looking for garbage health advice, there are quite a few people to turn to: Dr Oz, The Food Babe and… Mike Huckabee? Yes, US Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has been peddling garbage supplements that are supposed to help cure diabetes. And he was on Face the Nation yesterday where he defended against critics of his online ads.

“Let me tell you, diabetes can be reversed,” Mr Huckabee says in the ads, which were filmed in 2014. “I should know because I did it. Today you can, too.”

As the New York Times pointed out back in March, the diabetes cure that Huckabee was hawking included something called the Diabetes Solution Kit — a $US20 booklet promoting diet and exercise changes, along with dietary supplements made up of cinnamon and chromium picolinate.

The big problem? The American Diabetes Association says that supplements like that are bullshit for reversing diabetes. The other problem? Huckabee didn’t reverse his diabetes with supplements.

You’ll notice in the video that Huckabee says, “Techniques just like you’re going to find in this kit worked for me.” Given his slippery wording, some people might easily be led to believe that he used the Diabetes Solution Kit that he’s peddling. His real techniques for reversing his diabetes, as he would admit at an event in Iowa back in March, included losing 100 pounds (45kg) by taking better care of his health.

“I’m not doing those infomercials obviously now as a candidate for president,” Huckabee said yesterday on Face the Nation. “But if that’s the worst thing someone can say to me, that I advocated for people who have diabetes to do something to reverse it and stop the incredible pain of that, then I’m going to make a heck of a good president.”

When Bob Schieffer, the host of Face the Nation, pushed Huckabee to explain why he was promoting a diabetes cure that included sketchy supplements, Huckabee contradicted himself.

“You were also selling pills of some sort, were you not?” Schieffer asks.

“No, no, there was not… that’s a misnomer,” Huckabee said. “One of the elements of the plan was dietary supplements. But it’s not the fundamental thing.”

So Huckabee wasn’t promoting pills, but he actually was promoting pills, but they just weren’t the “fundamental thing”? Well, I guess that settles that then. [Mediaite]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.