Washington Post staff writer January W. Payne looks into a new line of GenSpec brand vitamins that, their Florida-based maker says, are formulated differently for sex and ancestry, with lines for men, women, and for blacks, whites, and hispanics. Products for Asians are next. Reporter Payne, judging by the story, could find no well-qualified experts who are enthusiastic about such bespoke health products, but at least one admires the company’s marketing savvy. Men and women have clearly identified differences in nutritional and metabolic needs and, eventually, they suggest to Payne, more narrowly tailored products might well be suitable for people of some ancestral types. (full disclosure: your head tracker has a tough time with stories that seem to accept that big fuzzy “racial” categories like black, white, hispanic–which is not an ancestral category anyway–make biological sense. Smaller ancestral groups such as Icelanders, or African-Americans of West African descent, probably yes, but not white or, particularly, black which usually means mostly-African which means the most genetically diverse peoples in the world).
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