Fairy Dusting – the Secret Way to Make Great Sounding Supplements Useless!

As we write this post in June 2009 – there are clearly some hot supplements on the market. The Acai Berry is very hot – the current #1 Superfood with incredible media buzz. Resveratrol is very hot, with pretty much every media outlet teasing viewers on the potential to live to be 120 and feel great. In the weight loss field, bauhinia, the new natural weight loss ingredient, is the hot ingredient.

“With Great Hotness Comes Great Potential to Deceive”

- Something Spiderman might have said??

Here is a riddle for you…

What do you do if you want to make a supplement with the new hot ingredient, but you don’t have the budget to include the hot ingredient in your formula?

Answer – You engage in “Fairy Dusting”

Fairy Dusting is the practice of adding a trace amount of a hot ingredient, just so you can say you have the hot ingredient in your formula.

Let’s look at the Acai Berry – one of the most popular super fruit ingredients on the market. Dave’s Dishonest Supplement’s (oh how I pray that is a fictitious name) has an antioxidant formula that currently does not have the Acai Berry. Marketing reports that Acai is hot and Dave’s Dishonest Supplements needs to add Acai to cash in on the popularity of the Acai Berry. The problem is their budget only allows them to add 5 mg of Acai (most respectful Acai Supplements have at least 500 mg of Acai).

Now, just adding 5 mg of Acai and having it at the bottom of your label would not look very impressive, so the clever folks at Dave’s Dishonest go the fairy dusting route. They add the trace, 5mg of Acai and list it on the label as “Proprietary Acai Blend”. The blend is 500mg and has things like apples and raspberries. The consumer will never know that the 500 mg Acai Blend is made with 495 mg of apples and raspberries and only 5mg of Acai. Dave’s Dishonest advertises all over they have a 500 mg Acai Blend!

You have been warned – beware of Fairy Dusting in supplements. We are seeing a great deal of fairy dusting when it comes to Acai and Resveratrol supplements – so be very careful when shopping for these supplements.

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Tagged as: acai, acai berry, Acai Berry Supplement, Antioxidant, fairy dusting, Resveratrol, scam, supplements, Weight Loss Supplements