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No Evidence of Aloe Vera Found in the Aloe Vera at Wal-Mart, CVS
- roflchoppa 10y agoGo outside, find an aloe plant, take a cutting of it (make sure to ask the owner.....) and transplant it into a pot of soil. Water, and keep your friend alive. Succulents make good desk plants :)
- sosuke 10y agoThey are very prolific too. With a little space and the right conditions you'll have to be giving them away to everyone you meet.
- maxerickson 10y agoGo outside, no aloe to be found. It's still easy enough to get a plant or cutting though.
- roflchoppa 10y agoIf you come over I can give you some <:p, I've had the same plant for almost 10 years, Once my mother and I were deep frying some fish and she kicked the oil over into her shoe, that aloe plant was used to help sooth the burns... interestingly no scars on her feet from that incident.
- jrumbut 10y agoSo these products are made of Aloe Falsum then?
- diyseguy 10y agoPossibly Aloe Verum
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoverum is singular vera is plural
- droffel 10y agoWow.
- glup 10y agoMy first thought upon seeing the headline was well duh, there are 500+ species in that genus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloe#Species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloe#Species) But then in the article, "Aloe's three chemical markers—acemannan, malic acid, and glucose—were absent in the tests[...]." Yikes.
- VLM 10y agoThere was some humorous homeopathic reasoning in the article where a weasel claimed that the extensive processing cosmetic products require might remove the components that make aloe, aloe, but its still an aloe product, which is kind of like claiming I'm still drinking orange juice if I extensively process it to remove everything but the H2O molecules. Sure chemically speaking its distilled pure water now, but once upon a time it was orange juice.
- oasisbob 10y agoYou joke, but the fruit juice industry LOVES filtered white grape juice because it's clear, colorless, and essentially just sugar water.
- eric_h 10y agoReminds me of the "what's the color of your bits" article that came up again when the Illegal Primes wikipedia article made the front page. "What's the color of your molecules?".
- dbdr 10y agohttp://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
- adt2bt 10y agoWhenever I see an article like this, I lose another bit of faith in all of the products in these supermarkets, fair or not. I get the sense that all of our modern 'health products' are nothing more than shams that induce the placebo effect in people. Unless a doctor prescribes it, [edit] or it's an OTC drug [/edit], I tend to think it's bologna. Does anyone else feel that way or am I being unreasonable?
- relaytheurgency 10y agoAbout cosmetics/supplements? Sure. I think there's basically a 0% chance that I'm not buying Ibuprofen when I try to, though.
- adt2bt 10y agoGood point, I should have been more clear. I do trust OTC drugs to be labelled correctly.
- justinclift 10y agoThere have been occasions where manufacturers of generics turned out be making hmm... crap (best wording I can think of) instead of the medications in question. :(
- amitdeshwar 10y agoDo you have evidence that defective drugs made it to customers?
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoDo you have evidence that defective drugs made it to customers? I've ranted about this before on HN. The global pharmaceutical supply chain in a Cluster Fuck race to the bottom. Here are a few articles that Bloomberg wrote a few years ago: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/flies-found-by-fda-threaten-indian-town-built-on-generics http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-06/flies-foun... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-03/indian-labs-deleted-drug-test-results-documents-show http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-03/indian-lab... IMO you're being deliberately naïve if you don't think that those sorts of manufacturing practices don't result in "defective drugs" reaching consumers. Edit: here's a link to a Pfizer website. They make the claim that "VIAGRA is one of the most counterfeited drugs in the world." Do you expect us to believe that none of that counterfeit drug ever gets to consumers? https://www.viagra.com/getting/avoid-counterfeits https://www.viagra.com/getting/avoid-counterfeits
- pcunite 10y agoThere’s no watchdog assuring that aloe products are what they say they are. Start teaching honesty in universities along with "how to make money".
- freehunter 10y agoThey do. I had to take an ethics class in college. And every business class I took had a section on ethics as well. But you learn what you want out of everything that's taught to you. I know people who got an A in biology but still reject evolution and people who have majored in environmental science but don't believe in climate change.
- finid 10y agoIt's very rare that whatever you learn in school changes your consciousness. Very rare.
- Hydraulix989 10y agoYou mean "conscience"
- jdavis703 10y agoMy ethics class was basically "how to get away with unethical behaviour without getting in trouble." Perhaps most of them teach actual ethics?
- pritianka 10y agoI always suspected this! The products felt so different from when you break off an aloe leaf and use the goo. Feeling so vindicated right now :p
- ceejayoz 10y agoI don't know that that's a great test. Bread feels pretty different from wheat plants, but it's still the same thing.
- wehadfun 10y agoAre you sure?
- ceejayoz 10y agoBarring a bit of water and salt, yes. Bread's (generally) made of processed wheat. As with aloe vera gel, processing can change the texture a bit.
- zentiggr 10y agoNot a proper comparison... The beneficial chemicals in the aloe have no need to be processed at all, cracking a leaf and squeezing out the gel is sufficient. Crack wheat, sure the kernels are edible and quite healthy - but that's a far cry from bread.
- ceejayoz 10y agoThe article indicates aloe vera gel is typically produced by drying and powdering the aloe, which seems like it'd change the texture significantly. It may contain other stuff like a mild local anesthetic, colorants, preservatives, etc.
- pfranz 10y agoOften things need to be processed or treated to make better and more consistent products. Consumers are also fickle about appearance. You can make powdered sugar by grinding up confectioner's sugar, but the stuff you buy in the store has cornstarch added to prevent clumping. Shredded mozzarella has a powder coating to prevent it from sticking together. Fresh aloe from the plant doesn't need to worry about mold or spoilage. Something shoved into a bottle, shipped on a truck, and expected to consistently squeezed out of a tube (without drying out or getting gunky) probably needs additives or treatments that change it in order to be safe.
- derefr 10y agoI don't much care whether it's aloe. The real question, I think, is whether the substitute product (maltodextrin) works the way aloe works, to solve the same problem aloe solves. If it does, and it's cheaper to stick in a bottle, then I'm all for it. If it doesn't, then it's a problem. When you buy "aloe extract" in the cosmetics aisle, you're not buying it for its particular organochemical structure (unless you're planning to spread it on toast); you're buying it for the effect it has. You're looking for a chemical that supports aloe's API contract for its interaction with your own biophysiology. You're looking for, essentially, an "IAloe". This is the problem with a lot of organic->synthetic transitions: people know the effect by the name of the organic substance that produces it, and thus, to get any mind-share, you have to market the synthetic by making it appear similar to the organic. Pure synthetic capsaicin is still marketed as "Ghost Chili oil" or similar, because people don't know or expect "capsaicin" to be spicy, but they do expect chili peppers to be. Really, it's a miracle (of a mega-conglomerate marketing machine) that aspirin isn't just called "willow bark extract." --- ETA: okay, apparently people are really very upset by the idea that a company "lying" about a product could be okay. Every company that produces a product that isn't under government mandate to be a certain way, lies about everything they can get away with! That is the world we live in. 90% of products on the market are this way. You should not believe a single ingredients list if a product isn't in the FDA-regulated classes of "food" or "drugs." Most products outside of these categories don't even bother to have ingredients lists; this should tell you everything you need to know about the incentives that caused the products that do to put one on there anyway. When I say "I'm okay with this", I mean that "I can deal with this, because I was already dealing with this in every purchasing decision I make, and this doesn't change anything." Everything on a drug-store shelf other than the actual FDA-regulated "drugs" are unadulterated bullshit that you have to comb through yourself to verify claims. Guess what? That's the optimum! Empowering the FDA to fact-check the labelling claims of every single product would cost insane amounts of money, slow the whole economy down to the glacial FDA-approval pace of the pharmaceutical industry. I'm okay with the world being this way, because all alternative worlds (reachable via anything less than a complete restructuring of government and maybe the human psyche) are worse.
- lutorm 10y agoSo you're all for falsely stating that something is in the product if it's not, as long as the company thinks it's sorta the same thing? Or do you mean like generic drugs say "compare to the active ingredient in Tylenol(tm)"? I'm all for the latter, the former is just fraudulent.
- yarper 10y agoSo as it turns out regulation is good for us, and free market forces don't solve all problems.
- magila 10y agoI don't think you'll find too many people who oppose investigating and prosecuting fraudulent product labeling. This is not the sort of thing that's usually being debated when one talks about the cost/benefit of regulations.
- justin66 10y agoIn plenty of cases "they" don't need to debate or oppose anything, they just need to oppose any new funding of the agencies that would look into the fraud in question. Go look up the counterfeit olive oil articles from several years back and consider that things haven't improved at all on that front.
- xenadu02 10y ago> This is not the sort of thing that's usually being debated when one talks about the cost/benefit of regulations. Yes it is, at least when Conservative party leaders talk about it. You might have a different definition but it isn't the one that will be enacted in reality. For that matter how do you suppose product labeling regulations could be enforced? It would require tests and objective standards. And what happens with an entirely new substance that doesn't have a known safety profile or valid test criteria? tl;dr: Everyone likes regulations when they're buying safe and accurately labeled products. Everyone hates regulations when they're asked to prove their own claims. The circle cannot be squared.
- rodgerd 10y ago> I don't think you'll find too many people who oppose investigating and prosecuting fraudulent product labeling. The large number of ethusiasts for "tort reform" suggest that the idea of making companies immune to the consequence of malfeasance would suggest otherwise.
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- carsongross 10y agoYet more corporate erosion of the trust that makes society work. This is why restricting trade isn't as crazy as it sounds: when the aloe vera cream is made down the street, you can go beat the guy up if he defrauds you. And he knows that.
- ComputerGuru 10y agoNot really. It's not like they bought it thinking it was Aloe Vera, they either didn't verify and then claimed it was, or gave specific orders detailing its production and ingredients, wherever it was made. Good luck "beating up" the CEO or product development manager at CVS or Walgreens regardless of where they placed their factory, anyway.
- typetypetype 10y agoNo, this is an example of why government regulation is important.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoI was about to comment the same. It isn't like everyone in any one country or restricted area is honest nor does everyone have the means to verify the contents of every item they purchase.
- british_india 10y agoExactly. Regulation does not come out of thin air--but in response to abuses. Complaining about regulation in the abstract is akin to bank robbers complaining about the laws against bank robbery.
- givinguflac 10y ago"Complaining about regulation in the abstract is akin to bank robbers complaining about the laws against bank robbery." Amazing analogy, and unfortunately all too close to reality for many companies fighting reasonable regulations. Disclaimer: Not all companies fighting certain regulations are crooks.
- ekux44 10y agoI wonder if the products were always lacking Aloe Vera, or if this is an example of "quality fade"? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorly_Made_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorly_Made_in_China)
- dfar1 10y ago“You have to be very careful when you select and use aloe products,” said Tod Cooperman, president of White Plains, New York-based ConsumerLab.com, which has done aloe testing. -- And how am supposed to be careful? Should I run my own lab to test every product I use?
- thatcat 10y agoMuch easier to just grow an aloe plant in your bathroom
- puddintane 10y agoThis is exactly what I do, it's fairly easy compared to other plants. As well as it feels much more soothing without all the extra additives for keeping freshness.
- marcosdumay 10y ago> it's fairly easy compared to other plants For a few months, I've tried killing an Aloe Vera plant that shared a place with some other species. That is a hard task. In the end, after every other plant died, I dug it up, and made it into pieces with a saw, so I could move it. I gave 3 pieces to a friend, that now owns 3 fully healthy Aloe Vera plants.
- drvdevd 10y agoMy thoughts exactly. It's a fairly set and forget plant and looks pretty cool as well.
- riphay 10y agoI think that misses the point of the comment. You don't establish confidence in a system by just ignoring it and doing it yourself. If you take your logic to its natural conclusion, we should all just farm our own food as it's the only way to trust it.
- deleted 10y ago
- dschiptsov 10y agoWhere on Google Maps are these vast aloe vera plantations which are required to produce these millions of liters of products? There must be hectares and hectares, visible from the outer space.
- jpalomaki 10y agoNot sure about the locations, but you'll find images about quite big plantations if you do Google image search for: aloe vera plantations
- dschiptsov 10y agoThey should also try to find evidence of grapes is crappy wines to which a cork is too expensive.
- mrob 10y agoCrappy wine is made from crappy grapes, or good grapes handled poorly, not fake grapes. There is no reason to use fake grapes because there is so much supply of real grapes (see "wine lake"). And most wine is not meant to be aged for a long time so there is no reason to use a cork and risk cork taint.
- robocat 10y agoBetter wine comes with a screw cap because there is no risk of corkage. New Zealand makes some fantastic "new-world" whites, and NZ doesn't use corks. Crappy wine comes in a bladder or tetrapak.
- colordrops 10y agoIs there a third party that tests products for their legitimacy? Consumer Reports? The government? Seems like a market need.
- edgarlove 10y agoFalse advertising should be punished severely. The consequences are always bad.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoUnless your fraud involves dietary supplements, then there's almost always no consequences.
- perseusprime11 10y agoI buy the Aloe Vera leaf for $1 from my local grocery store and use it whenever I want. Don't rely on off the shelf products unless you know the founder is very passionate about the product and it's benefits.
- Johnny555 10y ago"Acemannan has been misinterpreted," Meadows said. "The cosmetics industry requires highly processed aloe. How that affects acemannan is anybody’s guess." Even the cosmetics industry admits that they don't have a clue (not even a guess) about what happens to Aloe after it's been processed for inclusion into their products, so it may not have any of the original properties. (acemannan makes up about 15% of aloe)
- Nition 10y agoAnd if it doesn't contain any after it's processed then it's not an Aloe product anymore.
- finid 10y agoWe’ve been in the business a long time and we know where the raw ingredients come from,’’ John Dondrea, Fruit of the Earth’s general counsel, said in a telephone interview. “We stand behind our products. Did I hear somebody say that regulating companies is bad for business? And the incoming administration have said that cutting regulation is a top priority.
- 5ilv3r 10y agoSome things don't work at scale. I guess squeezing leaves into bottles is one of them.
- mrfusion 10y agoWe've seen this same issue with supplements like St. John's wort, and products like honey. And then who knows what's going on with Amazon lately. I see a pattern. I think we're seeing a breakdown of the concept of brands. Every few generations society forgets important lessons it learned in the past and has to relearn them. I think the importance of brands is one of these concepts. If a company can build a rock solid brand that people really trust I believe they're going to be extremely sucessful. That's one reason Apple has done so well. You completely trust that Apple would never sell you garbage. (although they're also starting to forget this lesson.) I'm going to start looking for strong, loved brands as part of my investment strategy going forward. Unfortunately I'm having trouble thinking of any at the moment.
- delecti 10y ago> That's one reason Apple has done so well. You completely trust that Apple would never sell you garbage. (although they're also starting to forget this lesson.) Also word-for-word true about Amazon.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago... but Amazon is full of garbage, fakes, and counterfeit goods.
- delecti 10y agoYeah, now. They spent the first 10-15 years building a pretty fantastic reputation for customer trust, and then the floodgates of junk opened.
- jodrellblank 10y agoIf a company can build a rock solid brand that people really trust I believe they're going to be extremely sucessful. Well, yeah: Coca-Cola, Disney, Fererro (Nutella), McDonalds, isn't 'having a trusted brand' how big companies got big in the first place? What do you define as 'strong' and 'loved'? Because 'loved' -> 'popular' -> 'big' is the jump I'm making; small and loved brands are the kind of thing that get bought by Google and shut down, or only appeal to a niche audience and won't grow enough market share to be a worthy investment.
- ilaksh 10y agoTry the jars of "pesto sauce" they sell at Walmart. Its literally pickled basil stems with garlic.
- mast 10y agoThis article reminded me of the story about snake oil. At one time it was considered a traditional medicine. In the early 1900's products were sold claiming to contain snake oil but didn't. This lead to the modern usage of the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil
- wmeredith 10y agoThe term "blowing smoke" has a similar origin. There is an outdated and defunct medicinal practice of blowing smoke up one's rectum as a sort of cleanse. The of course turned to be of, uh, dubious effectiveness for curing ailments. Hence the modern term, blowing smoke, which means someone is bullshitting you.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoIn modern times smoke is replaced with coffee. And it can be deadly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_enema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_enema
- ilaksh 10y agoMaybe there could be a data format/protocol for reporting ingredients in products electronically so they could be easily analyzed. And make that open for the public (or companies) to view. This gets at the issue of externalities and the general inadequacy of trying to track everything with one number ($).
- joosters 10y agoThere already is a basic data format & protocol: the ingredients are listed, in order. The problem here is that the ingredients were lies. Being more precise isn't going stop the lies.
- finid 10y agoThis is just for Aloe. What's in that coconut water that you're drinking? After taking a sip of one brand of 100% coconut water a couple of years ago, my body complained bitterly, which is how my body tells me that what I just ate/drank contains an artificial ingredient. So now if I want to drink coconut water, I go buy the real thing itself.
- tehwebguy 10y ago> which is how my body tells me that what I just ate/drank contains an artificial ingredient This guy is the solution to all our product testing problems!
- finid 10y agoNope! That guy, moi, is his own solution to product testing.
- fuzzfactor 10y agoBetween two identical experimenters, each having the same harmless test material, the one participating as a willing guinea pig is much more likely to realize subtle effects compared to the one that does not. A carefully selected variety of Aloe is my only current gardening effort. The fresh gel of the living plant has benefits to the skin not possessed by lesser forms. Commercial formulations are (at the least) thousands of years less advanced than the natural plant.
- jdavis703 10y agoAloe Vera is very easy to grow at home. There's literally no reason to buy this at a store.
- fma 10y agoSay...you go on vacation to the beach and fall asleep to the soothing sounds of waves. You get sun burned. Then what.
- kazinator 10y agoGo to a beach vacation to a place where aloe plants grow all over the place; pick some tentacles and keep in your hotel room fridge.
- kazinator 10y agoAloe is tenacious; it will keep growing and growing. If you cut the sprouts, you can plant them and they will grow. I started with a tiny plant and now have four planters, not counting ones I have given away.
- 1_2__3 10y agoCombine this with an increasing trend in grocery and drug stores to only stock 1 "name brand" and everything else is house-branded and we're in for a rough time. For now you can still use brand loyalty, but what happens when the whole world is Wal-martified (we're on our way) and Safeway only sells Safeway brand, Costco only sells Kirkland, CVS only sells CVS products, etc.? You can say "go somewhere else" but selecting a different store isn't even a realistic option for many people in the US - there are no alternatives. We rely on retail establishments to provide choice as part of their value add. Now that that's disappearing in favor of the retailer controlling everything, what happens next? I honestly don't know.
- chrsstrm 10y agoI can say this as someone who knows for certain, most of the products on the shelves are the same, regardless of the label. They came off the same line from the same factory. Want to know how they are different? The line operator stopped for 10 minutes to change out the packaging. The amount of variety you see is an illusion. The generics are exactly the same as the expensive name brands. Walk into any store and compare the manufacturing codes on similar products. And before you get too pedantic, I'm not saying they are _all_ exactly the same. I'm saying a choice of 10 "brands" likely all come from 3 or less factories of origin.
- zaroth 10y agoPrice discrimination at its finest!
- unreal37 10y ago20 years ago I worked for a major gasoline refiner in Canada, who supplied the gasoline for all of the gas stations in Toronto. Esso, Shell, BP, Petro-Canada, Sunoco - all bought their gas from the same refinery. The whole WORLD is branding.
- loader 10y agoYou can still find this in small communities. I get my gas from a small community because it's cheaper on that side of the border. There's like 5-6 gas stations and one supply truck company. The locals all know to buy from the cheapest one and yet the Shell, Chevron, and others are still in business.
- joesmo 10y ago"That means suppliers are on an honor system" In other words, abuses will be rampant as having an honor system for corporations is like asking your cat not to eat that delicious fish or bird they just caught. Only idiots would think that could possibly work. That's why it's a dominant theory of economics in the US.
- bertiewhykovich 10y agoIt's terrible that the FDA is interfering with free association between these gigantic conglomerates and consumers. It's a sin.
- narrator 10y agoThey don't do aloe vera products, but http://www.labdoor.com http://www.labdoor.com is a great site that does chemical analysis of supplements and determines if their labels are actually accurate and if they contain any harmful impurities.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago> Tim Meadows, president of Concentrated Aloe Corp., said that nuclear magnetic resonance isn’t reliable for cosmetics because the presence of multiple ingredients can cause interference and there’s no way to test for aloe in finished products. This type of science is out of my scope of knowledge, but the skeptic in me thinks, "how convenient."
- dbl9 10y agoIn Germany and many places if not all of west and central Europe products get detailed labeling of ingredients. For instance if you buy what's supposedly a brand name syrup of plums and therefore should be 100% the result of cooking plums and nothing else except maybe conservatives, what you actually get according to the label is 99% various forms of industrialized sugar and then a little bit of plum flavor. This is great because I've also found such syrup which was what you'd expect and pretty much the same thing you get when you do at home, but it wasn't from the most famous brand in Germany, which is disturbing given the price you have to pay for the brand. Same with stuff that's supposed to be honey or all those fancy teas which have no trace of what the label says if you look into the ingredients list. Most people do not bother to read it, and I don't blame them, but if you do, you start to put many products on a personal blacklist of fakes. That said, do US products not carry detailed ingredient lists or is this product discussed in the article part of a group of products that are exempt?
- laretluval 10y ago> The products all listed aloe barbadensis leaf juice — another name for aloe vera — as either the No. 1 ingredient or No. 2 after water.
- dbl9 10y agoIn that case it's clear fraud and will be dealt with, I assume. Given the comments here about a liberal market, I assumed labeling requirements are less strict over there.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoThese products are required to list ingredients. The problem here is the ingredient lists is a straight up lie. "The products all listed aloe barbadensis leaf juice — another name for aloe vera — as either the No. 1 ingredient or No. 2 after water."
- silveira 10y agoContains post-truth Aloe Vera.
- rasz_pl 10y agoso its like Chocolate then? I guess all that evil EU regulatory burden serves some purpose after all http://www.thefoodieentourage.com/2011/10/should-bad-chocolate-be-illegal.html http://www.thefoodieentourage.com/2011/10/should-bad-chocola...
- known 10y agoYou can buy original aloe products from Tribals in India http://onlineshop.apgirijan.com/product/aloevera-soap/ http://onlineshop.apgirijan.com/product/aloevera-soap/
- toodlebunions 10y agoI wonder how many other products are completely fake.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoBlueberries are often fake! http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/01/20/133089144/fake-blueberries-often-masquerade-as-real-fruit http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/01/20/13308914...
- tripzilch 10y agoThis would be so illegal in the EU it's not even funny. Also, Aleo Vera is a plant. So "no Aloe Vera in the Aloe Vera" doesn't even make sense. Is it hand cream? Shampoo?