The Slatest

Mike Huckabee, Paid Pitchman for a Diabetes “Fix” Involving Cinnamon, Still Wants to be President  

The Governor is here to help.

Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

Anyone who wants to be the next president needs a plan to address the problem of type 2 diabetes, a disease that afflicts more than 27 million Americans, and former diabetic Mike Huckabee has a bold approach that sets him apart from the rest of the 2016 field. He’ll let us in on the secret if we chip in $20 each.

The New York Times reports that Huckabee spent several months in 2014 and 2015 as a paid pitchman for the “Diabetes Solution Kit,” a book that promotes the use of cinnamon and other supplements as a way to keep diabetics from becoming what Huckabee calls “pill-popping, finger-pricking, insulin-shooting customers” beholden to “Big Pharma.” These tips, Huckabee says in a YouTube video, are based on “real science,” unlike the fake cures from “the mainstream medical community.”

The Daily Beast points out that the company responsible for the kit, Barton Publishing, is also known for telling old ladies to chug cans of Coke and offering to make impotent men NaturallyStiff.com. 

[Dr. Anna] Zisman discovered Barton’s work through a patient, who asked the doctor about the “Coca-Cola treatment,” a home remedy to combat kidney stones.

“My patient seemed very taken aback that I had not heard about it, so I figured that this was more common than I thought,” Zisman said of the treatment, which Barton has lauded as the inspiration behind his company.

The treatment requires kidney stone sufferers to drink 72 ounces of Coca-Cola as quickly as possible, followed by a half-pound of steamed and pureed asparagus.

Huckabee’s spokeswoman says that he recently ended the arrangement with Barton Publishing, but not before his voice popped up in radio ads for the diabetes plan, according to the Arkansas Times. What will the former governor use his name and his massive email list to peddle next? Maybe he’ll find a future tie-in to include cinnamon tablets with the Food 4 Patriots survivalist packages he’s been pushing!

The former governor might have reversed his own diabetes using techniques just like the ones in Barton’s helpful kit, but he still suffers from Early Cycle Hope Syndrome. Though common among sitting and former governors as presidential elections approach, this tends to be a transient condition that cures itself through the natural primary process.