All-Natural Snake Oil: Difference between revisions

In the foods and medical industries, this is one of the more common forms of [[Polish the Turd|turd polish.]] After all, there is nothing artificial in poison ivy or manure either.

 

 

It should also be borne in mind that in food, the difference between natural and artificial colours and flavourings refers to how the molecules were made, and not what those molecules actually are. In truth, natural and artificial flavours are exactly the same molecules - the only difference is that one is extracted from plants using a variety of chemicals, while the other is made by reacting chemicals together in a test tube. Food chemists will tell you that "all natural colors and flavorings" just means "we made them the hard way". Just remember that rattlesnake venom is all-natural too.

It may be interesting to note that, as a commercial trope, this is mostly a fairly recent invention, growing through the 1960s and 1970s. (Though if you look through really old newspaper ads from the early 1800s, you can find examples of this.) For most of ''the rest of human history'', "nature" was widely considered to be filthy, disgusting, and [[Everything Trying to Kill You|chock full of things that want to kill and/or eat you]]. Had marketing forces stayed on-track, modern products would be touting their ''complete absence'' of anything found in nature, and extolling the health benefits (and exciting taste sensations) found from making food and health products with Pure Science.

 

 

* Given the name, if you thought the Natural Confectionery Company was a notably bad offender, you would be right. One [[Egregious]] example had a man reassure his daughter that the (jelly) snakes they were going to eat had no artificial colours or preservatives, and so were totally non-venomous. Because, as everybody knows, snake venom is completely artificial.

* Yogurt companies such as Actimel and Yakult are fond of boasting about how the 'good bacteria' in their products help reinforce your body's natural defences. The touted health benefits have not yet been proven, so the advertisers have to be careful not to include too specific claims in their TV spots (many have been banned already as a result of this). There is no discernible difference between drinking "probiotic yogurt drinks" and eating regular yogurt; in addition, the concentration of sugar is unusually high at around 18-20%. As a result, nutritional authorities (notably the one within the European Union) are attempting to prevent the manufacturers boasting the health benefits, which are seemingly outweighed by the unhealthy ingredients.

** Not in North America, where almost all big-brand commercial yogurts are made by adding thickeners and acids to milk to get the right sourness and texture, then adding a smattering of bacteria to satisfy the feds. Because the mixture is shipped off to supermarkets almost immediately without being heated or held first, the bacteria never get the chance to convert the lactose into lactic acid. One can imagine the problems this causes people with lactose intolerance, who are told by doctors (who are not food chemists) that they are allowed yogurt - until they try the big corporate or supermarket brand and spend the afternoon on the toilet. "Natural" yogurts, the ones that cost more, are virtually the only brands that aren't made this way. It's true that "probiotic" yogurts are a scam, since the only requirement for a real yogurt is that it be made from milk inoculated with certain specific thermophilic strains of bacteria. But any yogurt that contains acids, gums, or starches (ie. every single cheap, brand-name yogurt) is basically nothing but sour, diluted milk.

** And it turns out that probiotic yogurts with high bacteria counts can kill you if you're a gastrointestinal patient. Dutch university doctors found this out the hard way.

** Not only that, but empty water bottles are a major source of litter and landfill waste. There's a reason why most environmentalists not only swear by tap water (or filtration if the tap is unsafe to drink), but push for stores and cafeterias to not sell bottled water.

** [[Cool, Clear Water|Spring water]] isn't even good for you. According to the Discovery Health show ''Dr. Know'', there are chemicals naturally found in water that can be harmful when regularly ingested. Those chemicals are filtered out of tap water, but not out of bottled spring water. The only real problem with tap water was that the chlorine tastes terrible if you're not used to it, otherwise it's better for you.

*** Actually, the situation is worse than that. Dasani was advertising as using ozone to purify the water; which they did. They took tap water, filtered it, added calcium chloride and bromide for taste, and pumped it full of ozone. All substances that occur commonly in nature. The problem was that the ozone reacted with the harmless bromide, converting it into highly carcinogenic bromate. The water was pulled because it contained double the legal maximum concentration of bromate.

** Just for fun, bottling the water at all automatically makes it worse for you; chemicals from the plastic leach out into the water. Also, the plastic is porous, which makes it a fantastic place for bacteria to breed.

* Speaking of water, check your shampoo bottle. Odds are, one of the ingredients listed will be "aqua", [[Altum Videtur|which is just another name for water]].

* [[wikipedia:HeadOn|HeadOn]]. Chemical analysis of the Migraine formulation has shown that the product consists almost entirely of wax.

* Splenda's "Made from sugar so it tastes like sugar", which makes as much sense as saying "Salt, made from [[Deadly Gas|chlorine]] and [[Made of Explodium|sodium]] so it's deadly."

** The tagline may be a sideways dig at Aspartame, which is a modified (asp-phe) dipeptide, while Splenda is a chlorinated sucrose, and is therefore a degree of separation closer from "natural" sugar.

*** [[Futurama|Uh-oh, I shouldn't have had seconds...]]

* The chemical used to approximate the taste of almonds comes in both natural and artificial. The natural-extract version is more expensive than the artificial one. The trick? The natural extract comes from peach pits and contains trace amounts of ''cyanide'' that the artificially-created version does not.

* One should also be careful, because "natural flavor" does not mean "made with what it sounds like it's made with". As [http://www.cracked.com/article_15982_5-horrifying-food-additives-youve-probably-eaten-today.html this ''Cracked'' article] sarcastically but correctly points out, if it says "natural flavor" on your orange candy, it wasn't made with oranges; if it had been, that would be a selling point. It also points out that natural flavor could be ''anything'' provided it wasn't made in a lab. Cat urine and goat jizz are two examples they list. They hasten to point out that these probably aren't in your foods (yet), but all the same, maybe it's time to start being horrified.

** Buttered popcorn is a bit better, where "natural flavor" usually means "we took the ingredients for butter, we just didn't turn them into actual butter".

** Juice blends also tend to slide into [[Asbestos-Free Cereal]] territory here. A common trick is to splash "Blueberry" or "Pomegranate" or a similar expensive juice on the label and add "100% juice." Which it is, but the bulk is a cheaper juice as a base, usually apple. The expensive juice merely provides a little flavor.

* Many manufacturers of snack chips (we're looking at you, Frito-Lay) like to point out that their products are "all natural." They do have a better claim than much of this list - most chips are just potato slices/batter or cornmeal, fried in plant oil and salted. The problem is that there's more than enough oil to be fattening - Fritos in particular are so soaked in it that they ''quick-burn''.

** Most oils use the hexane process to get as much out of the oil seeds as possible, to the point that "expeller pressed" is practically synonymous with natural oil.

* Played shamelessly straight in a commercial for Herbashine hair care products. "The only one made with bamboo extract. Bamboo, like naturally strong." Yeah, I'm fairly certain that's not how it works.

 

== Parodies ==

 

* Spoofed in a sketch on ''[[A Bit of Fry and Laurie]]'' in which a brand of cocoa is advertised as containing "nature's own barbiturates and heroin".

** Another sketch features a doctor prescribing cigarettes, reassuring his patient that tobacco is a herbal ingredient.

** Didn't the [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|name of the material]] kind of clue people in on its basic nature?

** Also [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] when Maria criticizes that just because it says organic, that automatically makes it alright.

* An episode of ''[[Eureka]]'' revealed that all the victims had eaten the chicken which came from a chicken farmer (who actually ''cloned'' the birds because it was less cruel that way) who fed the poultry a certain nutrient solution. She had no problem using the nutrient because it was natural, and therefore safe to use. At least until a doctor pointed out it was known to ''degrade people's brains''. Note that this was an ''organic'' chicken farmer who cloned only ''parts'' of the chickens for human consumption. Yes, ''organically'' cloned chicken parts.

** May have been done to spoof the KFC [http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/kfc.asp urban legend].

{{quote|''"It's organic."''

''"What do you mean?"''

** Many familiar chemicals are composed of the same basic building blocks: hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. Including riboflavin (vitamin B₂), LSD, heroin and atropine (extract of deadly nightshade). Their effects range from healthful, to...not so much.

** ''Cyanide'' qualifies as organic in a strictly chemical sense as it is made of carbon and nitrogen. That's natural, right?

* In ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'', one of the guests on the [[GTA Radio|PLR radio show]] ''Intelligent Agenda'' is Waylon Mason, who uses the show to promote his "home remedies" and attack the other two guests (a pharmaceutical company spokeswoman and an HMO spokesman) as shills of Big Pharma. The show ends with him giving [[Your Head Asplode|involuntary trepanations]] to the other two guests in order to remove the "demons that are controlling them."

* An episode of ''[[South Park]]'' has an New Age "healer" who buys various trinkets and concoctions from [[Cheech and Chong]] and passes them off as Native American remedies, including [[Squick|"tampons made from the hair of Cherokee."]] Things take a turn for the serious when Kyle starts suffering kidney failure and Mrs. Marsh recommends he sees said healer, who diagnoses his condition as "toxins" that need to be purged. When Stan tries to tell the healer that these treatments aren't working and needs to go to the hospital, he gets labeled a smart-ass and receives a bunk lecture on how Native American remedies are more in tune with nature than Western medicine, despite the fraud healer having no idea how these remedies work in the first place, let alone how to make them. It's not until C&C insist that Kyle needs to get to a hospital ASAP that anybody listens.

** The healer tells Stan that Western medicine is all about making money and not about healing, immediately turning to a customer, "That'll be $200."

 

== [[Truth in Television]]: [[Real Life]] examples that sound like parodies ==

** [[wikipedia:John R. Brinkley|John R. Brinkley]] became rich and infamous by transplanting tissue from goats (mainly testicles or ovaries) into men and women. He initially promoted these procedures as treatments for impotence and infertility, but later claimed that they cured dozens of ailments, ranging from flatulence to dementia.

** [[wikipedia:Serge Voronoff|Serge Abrahamovitch Voronoff]], after experimenting with injections of testicular tissue from dogs and guinea pigs, began treating patients by transplanting thyroid glands, testicles, and ovaries from simians such as chimpanzees and baboons.

* Homeopathic remedies claim to work on the principle of [[You Fail Pharmacology Forever|"like cures like"]]. The idea is that an active substance (arsenic, for example) has [[You Fail Physics Forever|"energy"]] that can be transferred to water by shaking a mixture vigorously (but homeopaths say that only they know how to do the proper kind of shaking), and the more times you repeat the mix-and-shake procedure (to the point that you'd be lucky<ref>or, in the case of arsenic, unlucky</ref> to get one molecule of the original substance in a swimming pool) the more powerful the energy gets. And water that's been energized by the arsenic that's been diluted out of it ''cures'' [[Insane Troll Logic|arsenic poisoning and any illness whose symptoms vaguely resemble arsenic poisoning.]]

** The whole deal sounds even less credible when one is told how this system was "discovered" and developed. It started out with a man having the idea of "fighting fire with fire" with his patients. They came in with say, symptom x, he prescribed them something which is supposed to cause symptom x (usually one poison or another—people don't seek medical aid for benevolent symptoms). He began experimenting with different doses of said poison, to find that the less he prescribed, the faster the person recovered, and so he began diluting his "medication" to a point there was little more then simple water left in it. As a side note, any time a homeopathic fan tells you that it's better than "modern Western medicine", point out that it was invented by a German in the 1800s. It tends to blow their minds.

 

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[[Category:Advertising Tropes]]

[[Category:Truth in Television]]