Slashdot Mirror
No Evidence of Aloe Vera Found in the Aloe Vera at Wal-Mart, CVS (bloomberg.com)
From a Bloomberg report:The aloe vera gel many Americans buy to soothe damaged skin contains no evidence of aloe vera at all. Samples of store-brand aloe gel purchased at national retailers Wal-Mart, Target and CVS showed no indication of the plant in various lab tests. The products all listed aloe barbadensis leaf juice -- another name for aloe vera -- as either the No. 1 ingredient or No. 2 after water. There's no watchdog assuring that aloe products are what they say they are. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't approve cosmetics before they're sold and has never levied a fine for selling fake aloe. That means suppliers are on an honor system, even as the total U.S. market for aloe products, including drinks and vitamins, has grown 11 percent in the past year to $146 million, according to Chicago-based market researcher SPINS LLC. "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. Aloe's three chemical markers -- acemannan, malic acid and glucose -- were absent in the tests for Wal-Mart, Target and CVS products conducted by a lab hired by Bloomberg News. The three samples contained a cheaper element called maltodextrin, a sugar sometimes used to imitate aloe. The gel that's sold at another retailer, Walgreens, contained one marker, malic acid, but not the other two.
How exactly are we supposed to be careful, as the summary suggests, if we cannot trust the ingredients list on the packaging to be accurate?
Well, I guess in this case, you should do an internet search for the report and check whether your chosen product has been found to be legit or not.
Frankly, I'd say if you trust the ingredients list "at face value" for almost any product, you're likely to be deceived. The ingredients list is often another place for advertising tactics. Take most "natural" products. Do you pay double for that "natural" soap? Chances are that some of the vague "vegetable and plant-sourced" gobbledygook listed in the "ingredients" list is basically the same chemicals you'd find in NORMAL ("bad chemical!") soap. Yes, there are exceptions, but I figured this out several years ago when a family member came home with some a few different cleaning products that cost 3 times the regular ones. In some cases, you didn't even have a complete ingredient list on the container, so I had to go to the product website to actually find out what some of it meant... and in most cases, it was the same old crap, just packaged with a bunch of "natural" and "vegetable" and "plant-based" in front of the words.
It doesn't surprise me at all that some manufacturers go the next step and don't even include those "natural" "plant-based" ingredients at all. And who would know in some cases? In the cases of the soaps I'm talking about, there's really no easy lab test to distinguish X chemical refined from plants vs. the same produced chemically in a lab.
Sorry to be the cynic here, but it wouldn't surprise me if many "natural" products are slightly diluted versions of the same chemical crap sold for a much different price, peppered with a little "grapefruit lavender" essence to make you feel all "earthy crunchy" when you spray it.
I loved this:
You have to be very careful when you select and use aloe products
...and have a degree in organic chemistry and access to an assay lab, he forgot to mention.
Someone had to do it.
In all likelihood, WalMart is buying this goo from some other company which is claiming that it contains aloe. WalMart is not a manufacturer; Walmart is a retailer. Should someone be suing WalMart, or suing the supplier? Should WalMart be suing the supplier? What is WalMart's due diligence responsibility?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Exactly!
Or you know, skip all that and get an actual Aloe plant and use the sap directly... of course, depending on the amount of lotion you're used to, you might need an entire garden. But if it's just for the occasional use, why not go to the source!
Since these are store brands Walmart (and the other stores) are going to a manufacturer with a specification and getting them to make the lotion. What we don't know in this case is Walmart specifying a lotion without aloe and still having it listed as one of the two main ingredients or is Walmart specifying a lotion with aloe and the company making the lotion substituting cheaper ingredients. In the second case Walmart has to put better tests in place before accepting orders.
Either way Walmart is going to get named in the lawsuit along with the company making the lotion. If Walmart wanted the aloe lotion without the aloe then the contract company probably gets away without paying anything since it was just doing what Walmart wanted. If the contract manufacturer was trying to cheat than I could see them being found 95% at fault and Walmart being 5% at fault because they weren't thorough enough with their testing and just because they had the ultimate responsibility as their name was on it.