Snake Oil Cures of the 21st Century
I have been busily grading term papers, and in my Sociology of the Body class, a number of my students have chosen to write their final papers on supplements that make extraordinary health claims. When they do this, I always search the student product choices out online and scroll down to find the ingredients. Usually these are obfuscated by made-up names--"adaptogenic beta-pyridoxine" is just a heavily embroidered way to write "vitamin B6," or are pure nonsense--"non-transdermal X39" makes as much sense as "powdered unicorn horn." Scientific analysis of herbal supplements hawked online show that many contain little or none of the claimed ingredients in any case. Usually they just contain fillers like microcellulose (basically sawdust), but sometimes they contain ingredients like caffeine (to make the purchaser feel the pills give them a lift), or even ground-up expired prescription drugs (like ED medications added to pills that are supposed ...