Animal on the Street - Snake venom, germs, in homeopathic products for kids.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/fda-slams-homeopaths-for-uncontrolled-snake-venom-germs-in-kids-products/

Animal on the Street - Gwyneth Paltrow's "smoothie dust" claims.

https://consumerist.com/2016/08/09/ad-and-supplement-self-regulation-groups-have-issues-with-gwyneth-paltrows-smoothie-dusts/

Sunkist - Lemon and Water: Rich in lemons and water!

The ad reads "For Health - AVOID HARSH LAXATIVES!" One excellent way to avoid harsh laxatives is to drink lemon water, believing it is a laxative.

Since when is lemon a laxative? Since never. Drinking hot water with lemon in it is still promoted by magical-thinking celebrity health idiots like Gwyneth Paltrow, who, it must be said, also believes that steam-cleaning her vagina makes her magically more healthy. Maybe she's got a terrible wine spill she's trying to clean out?

Doing a Google search looking for actual evidence about lemon water brings a lot of hits from sites with names like "natural organic nature" and "treehumper health network". Very suspect.

Lifehack's article doesn't cite any sources or evidence at all, relying only on our steadfast faith in the wisdom of its author, Krissy Brady, who admittedly is a fully qualified "women's health + lifestyle writer". Nope.

ABC News' article cites as it's only source Michele Promaulayko ,the editor in chief of Yahoo! Health, which routinely promotes non-evidence-based, unscientific hand-waving woo as fact. Nope.

This Telegraph article references an actual nutritionist, along side Gwyneth and other celebrity geniuses. Fiona Smith, nutritionist, points out that lemons have vitamins, but there's no scientific evidence that drinking lemon water is better for you than tap water first thing in the morning.

Livestrong insists that drinking lemon water as soon as you get up increases your water intake. So, lemon water does contain water. Well spotted. Other than that, the article mentions vitamins and citric acid, which are nutrients. Their article has some actual sciencey sources, which is nice.

What's WebMD say? Citric acid helps prevent kidney stones. Lemon water helps reduce symptoms of Meniere's disease, if you have that. Lemon water will treat scurvy, if you're a pirate. Lemon water decreases swelling, if you're swollen. Lastly, lemon water increases your urine, because, once again, drinking water is drinking something.

Nobody ever found that lemon water helps you have a dump. However, that doesn't mean that Gwyneth won't put it in her next lifestyle book with her picture on the cover. How brave of her. Rest assured, though, that her vagina is steaming mad at dirt.

But hey, you can't blame Sunkist for trying to sell fruit on false pretenses, can you? I dunno. A lie is a lie. Also, good clip art is good clip art. Who wants some good clip art? I promise you that looking at this jpeg is every bit an effective laxative as drinking lemon water. Maybe if we tell her it will cure pelvic rabies and other imaginary problems, we can get Gwyneth to stick this file up her hoo-ha?

Camel Cigarettes - Smoke the straw man.

If you like your bullshit fruit to be of the low-hanging variety, you need to introduce yourself to a little friend of mine called Cigarette Advertising. You won't find anyone's fruit hanging much lower, with the rich, thick layers of misdirection and pseudoscience, all covered in a gooey frosting of we're perfectly-happy-to-get-rich-making-you-sick-and-dead. But let's take those lemons and make some Skeptical Lemonade, by drilling ourselves on a few of the most commonly seen logical fallacies. Let the skeptical self-drilling begin!

If you were to pry open your skull, throw your brain on the floor and stomp it into a puddle of gore (Somewhere in New York, an ad executive just leapt to his feet and shouted around his cigar "You mean we can do that now?"), you'd look at this ad and think "Hey! Camels are completely safe! Thanks! I need me some Camels!" This is thanks to a couple of misleading logical fallacies. Let's get to know their names!

I found three logical fallacies stretching their legs in this ad. Ambiguity, Argument From Authority, and Straw Man.

Ambiguity - This one is pretty general, but advertisers luv luv luuuuuuuuv ambiguity. They use the hell out of it... probably such that they don't even know they're doing it any more. Here, R. J. Reynolds is hoping you'll mistake "throat irritation" for "cancer", and assume Camels are the cancer-free cancer stick. Negative. Just because your throat feels buttery smooth doesn't mean you're kicking ass in the living-forever department.

Argument From Authority / Appeal to Authority - "A bunch of doctors smoke Camels. Therefore, they're super great and totally safe and you'll never die." This one has been nicely satirized by infomercials on The Simpsons, usually featuring Try McClure. "Don't believe me. Just ask this 'scientician'!"

Nowhere is it written that doctors have flawless judgment. Many doctors have drinking problems and may indulge in kiddie porn here and there. That is not an endorsement for the health-preserving effects of either. Here's another one: "Four out of five Josef Mengeles recommend joining ze Nazi party for their patients who chew gum." See? Easy!

Straw Man - Ah, the man of the hour. He's the life of this party. A Straw man argument is one where you set yourself up with an easily-defeated enemy so that you can claim a hollow victory... usually, while hoping no one notices the other, bigger, more important argument for which you have no answer. Here, RJR would like you to believe that "throat irritation" is the worst consequence of smoking, and if we could just come up with a non-irritating cigarette, everything would be great. They do this to distract you from the cancer elephant in the room. They would also be very happy if you would mistake one for the other (See "ambiguity").

Here are some other straw mans you can expect to see before you go to bed tonight:

-"Zero trans fat!" (Please don't check the amount of actual regular fat, found on the nutrition label.)

-"Yeah, but the man can dance!" (Routinely used to excuse the despicable or illegal behavior of celebrities and pop stars.)

-"Gluten free!" (Please be thrilled that this bottle of water has no gluten. Please do not be outraged that you're paying 1000% more than you should for the privilege of drinking water, when in reality the water from your tap is held to a higher standard of purity than bottled water shipped across state lines.)

-"New size!" (Please do not compare the amount of product in the new package to that in the old package, which was sold for the same price.)

The straw man argument is very popular with advertisers. It's a very effective way of distracting someone away from the truth while making it appear as though you're helping them. For more on straw man arguments and other logical fallacies, please turn on any media device in the world or walk out your front door.

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Pream - Patterns in the fog.

It's been a little while since we had a decent Graphic Gift, so today's ad comes at a fine time. This ad for Pream has a great clip art lady head.

Pream was (Google doesn't seem to think Pream is around any more.) a coffee creamer made from dairy products and other milk stuff. Quite unlike Coffee-Mate, which is famously a non-dairy creamer that continues to dominate the market, Pream wasn't okay to use if you were lactose intolerant. Maybe that made the difference that killed Pream? It sure wasn't for lack of a snappy name. "Pream" is way simpler and catcher than "Coffee-Mate".

My dad always had Coffee-Mate, which had a similar picture on the label - a steaming cup with the white product swirling and dissolving into the coffee. Here's the weird thing: as a single-digit-old kid, I studied this picture trying to figure out what was swimming in the coffee. It just wouldn't register as a random swirl of creamer. My brain demanded that it BE something.

This is a uniquely human psychological phenomena, called Pareidolia, that makes our brain want to see patterns in random stimuli. It's why we look at clouds and see Lincoln's head or hear voices in the wind. Pareidolia was an evolutionary advantage for us because it allowed us to learn why things happen, like migration of prey animals and predicting the seasons. It's a driving trait behind analysis that animals don't have. However, combine it with a little egocentrism or paranoia, and depending on who you ask, it can account for everything from the "face on Mars", religious phenomena, and pretty much every conspiracy theory there's ever been. We can't let Pareidolia make us think crazy shit. You know how, maybe twice in your life, a street light has gone out just when you drove past it? Believe it or not, you don't have some magical power that interferes with electrical systems. It was just random. When a street light reaches the end of it's functional life, odds are somebody will be driving past. How many times have you driven past a street light that has totally failed to go out at that moment? I'll bet lots.

As a kid, for some reason, despite the obvious presence of the spoon and cup, I couldn't see the random swirl of Coffee-Mate as it was. My leading theory was that there was a sea serpent in the coffee. I didn't' think my dad was drinking a sea serpent, maybe because watching the action of him stirring a spoon of powder into the coffee made everything clear. But the picture on the jar mostly looked like a something slithering in a brown pool, but I had other theories, depending on how late it was, how sleepy I was, and what I had for dinner. Weird.

Anyway, about that lady head. Sure, she's no candidate for the Disembodied Floating Head deathmatches, but she's easily perky enough to be useful as clip art. She has been lovingly pen tooled out of her background by our elite staff of old-world craftsmen so that we could present her to you, our loyal readers, in two sizes - big and less big. I know, you're endlessly grateful. But, try not to vote me into public office. I'm not running for anything and you wouldn't want someone in office who fails to see a threat in every random event. I'm not seven any more.

 You're welcome.

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Did someone say "gimme a friggin' Pream commercial? No? Well, here are some! Watch or don't!!!