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.

Comments

Re:Wrong

[s.petry]

Innocent until proven guilty is how our law works. Sorry you dislike it, but there is fundamental well established reasoning for that concept and codification.

Yes, it works the same way for selling crap as it does for any other crime. We don't arrest people for thought crimes, we arrest them for actions which are crimes.

CompanyA sells a product that claims it contains magic. You find it has none, you sue them for false advertising. Company has to pay you for court costs, loss of wealth in purchasing their good, and damages if any exist. CompanyA can go bankrupt in the process, and perhaps you end up owning CompanyA when all is said and done.

CompanyB sees that CompanyA did wrong, and suffered consequences for their actions. CompanyB advertises a product without magic, but instead what the product actually contains. CompanyB stays in business, and people buy their products as needed. Wow! We have just described a basic fundamental of Capitalism and how Western Law works! No need for the Department of Magic in Products which reduces the overall costs for goods. People can actually purchase _more_ of CompanyB's stuff and CompanyB can actually make more stuff, or even branch out into CompanyC.

Believe it or not, this works with things like *gasp* Medicine too! If you think that the FDA measures the contents of every single ingredient in every single pill hitting the market, you are wrong to the point of needing professional care. The FDA makes money to test _some_ of the products _some_ of the time. Which could be done privately by companies just as well as by Government, and a whole lot cheaper.

I realize that this extrapolation will hurt someone's head, but cognitive dissonance is never easy.