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.

** 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 ==

* [[Kath and Kim]]. No, not the horrible American one, the Australian one.

{{quote|Its alright dear, I've used fat-free fat.}}

* Not exactly a parody, but an episode of ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'' has a doctor fraudulently selling something like this as a breast cancer cure,<ref>which was based on the already banned "cure," [[wikipedia:Amygdalin#Laetrile|Laetrile]]</ref> with the result that several of her patients die due to their cancer going untreated. When she's finally cornered, she engages in a self-righteous rant about how modern medicine is failing millions of women by disregarding and patronizing them and that she's at least researching to find a cure. McCoy then points out that she should have probably told the women she sold it to that she was ''looking'' for a cure, rather than that she'd ''found'' one.

* The whole bottled water thing was mocked in the ''Mother Nature's Son'' episode of [[Only Fools and Horses]], with the bottled water coming from the tap and being bottled in a production line through their kitchen. Referenced a lot in UK media at the exact time Coca Cola's Dasani brand was also found out to be purely tap water, and made slightly more funny when it turned out that the real life example also had something in the water supply.

* 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.