FlishFun.com

This last weekend Jess and I decided to visit the 1st Annual Omaha Health, Wellness, & Fitness Expo and I’m thinking the name should be changed to the Omaha Scam, Snake Oil, & Nonsense Expo. Really. First, here’s what the website had to say about it:

Over 10,000 attended the 1st Annual Omaha Health Expo. The Largest Health Expo in the Region expanded through both the Exhibition Hall and the Mancuso Cenvention Center with over 250 exhititors and 50 Seminars, 4 continous Seminar Rooms and 1 Keynote Speaker Stage where we heard from Experts on ways to improve our lifestyles, live longer, better, and happier. This Show again is positioned to kick off the Healthy Season next year on April 25th & 26th, 2009. Mark your Calandars to attend again and Participate in the Walk on Saturday and the Bikeride on Sunday.

Sounds pleasant, informative, and full of healthy stuff! So, what all did we see? Well… we had Crystal Healers:

Quantum Biofeedback:

Psychics (only $30 for a reading!):

Fortune Tellers (complete with crystal balls and tarot cards):

Aura Painting:

Hypno-Yoga (Yoga while Hypnotized, of course!):

Fairies (for some reason):

Homeopathic Remedies (of course that’d be here):

Cell phone “invisible radiation” protection through special “chips”:

And much more! Here’s just a small part of the expo floor… I took the liberty of highlighting the “non-scam” parts:

Can you make ‘em out? They are Avon, and American Family Insurance. Now, there were actual medial professionals there, but it was about 10 - 15 “non-traditional” healing booths for every one medical one. The worst part? Every booth that was sponsored by a hospital was empty, while the others promising everything from stress removal from conception (that’s what the Quantum Biofeedback people promised) to berries that cured all disease (I didn’t get a shot of that one) were packed.

I’ll have to go into some of these in more detail later (like I did with the whole Ion Cleanse thing), but I’m feeling wiped out at the moment. Let’s just say there was almost no health, wellness, or fitness here… it was very sad to see people in wheelchairs looking at some of these presentations with hope in their eyes. The people running the booths brought in quite a bit of money, and you just know they’re just feeding on the hope of the elderly and the sick. It was very sad to see, but what can you do about it? No matter what you tell them, hope will usually win out over facts and science. Oh well…