I really thought that grocery retailers in general and Sam’s Club in particular had hit bottom selling… the N-stuff… as some sort of cheery good-fer-ya food. Turns out there was another bottom.
SC has hucksters selling this crap like it’s the greatest health food to come down the pike since whatever came down the pike last week: Coconut Oil. I didn’t talk to the cheery cheerleader or read the hand-out sheet, but I did stop an aisle over and Google up both coconut oil info and the product. (On that last search, read as many entries as you like, noting the bullet points they shout and the nutrition information they ignore.)
Contrary to the many wonderful points the health-food sites list, WP’s section on nutrition begins with:
As well they should - while the palm oil used in N-----a is 49% saturated fat, coconut oil is a whopping 91%. It’s health food only compared to butter, and even then it’s got downsides.
Unless they’re advocating we top crackers with wedges of it or send our kids to school with coconut oil sandwiches, I’m not sure what the objection is. Sure, it ain’t health food, but it’s oil, which is, by definition, fat.
Read all the promo material. They are emphasizing trivialities and nonsense (gee, it’s COLD PRESSED from REAL COCONUTS and has NO GMO CONTENT and so forth) while omitting every single nutrition fact of real consequence and implying between every line that this is some wonderful new nutrition discovery.
They can sell it, just like they can sell bacon, Nutella and whatever. I object to the almost ludicrous level of razzle-dazzle and misdirection.
I do believe there’s some debate over whether or not the saturated fat in coconut oil is actually as bad as other saturated fat, or at all, or if saturated fat itself is actually bad. I think the “No, the saturated fat in coconut oil is not as bad as other saturared fats” argument is starting to tip the scales.
However you can use it on your hair and skin to your heart’s content, at no risk to your heart itself.
AB, while I respect your outrage over the continued fleecing of American consumers, I do really have to question you when it’s directed at SAMS CLUB for crying out loud.
They treat their employees like shit, their stores pander to the lowest common denominator, and their stated goal in life is to rake in buckets of cash for the least effort possible. If CRISCO could be made sexy, then there would be people with flash-fried lardballs at the end of every aisle handing them out to all and sundry.
If this were being perpetrated by Whole Foods or Trader Joes, I’d be with you all the way, but dude, you gotta understand, the people who shop at SAMS don’t really give a rats ass about health or truth in advertising or any of those hippy ideas - if they did, they wouldn’t be shopping there! I hate to say they deserve what they pay for, but really… they deserve what they pay for!
I call 'em like (and where) I see 'em, and I don’t see this degree of carnie hucksterism any other place. The rest of your points are valid, to a large degree, and were behind my outrage at Nutella: by deceptively promoting these products to fish in a barrel (all due apologies to fish who are smarter, and smaller than barrels) they are compounding the offense.
The defense against Nutella’s deception was basically that “everyone worth worrying about knows it’s candy-crap in a jar” and everyone else was somehow getting what they deserved for failing to be smart enough. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t think being perceptive enough to see through well-crafted deception represents a Darwinian break point. At least, not one we have to accept.
Have you ever seen an infomercial with Ron Popeil where he expounds all the uses and positive qualities of, say, his knife set, but for some reason he fails to include a section where he points out that they’re low-grade stamped pieces of shit?
As mentioned, it’s oil, and by definition oil is fat. There’s lots of misleading advertising in all stores:
LIGHT Olive Oil is sold there, referring to the taste rather than the calories though I’m sure many think they’re getting a reduced fat version; ditto with “Fat Free!” products that are indeed fat free but have 9,000 calories per serving. It’s only been a few years since some brands of fruits and vegetables stopped advertising as “Cholesterol Free!” (as if the Green Giant asparagus or the Dole pineapple bits were chock full of cholesterol). You really can’t be held responsible for the buyer’s ignorance of basic food facts, and the onus of self education is on the buyer.
I’m surprised more things aren’t flavored with antifreeze. Sure it has a few health drawbacks, but it’s so sweet! Anyway, only losers let “nutritionists” tell them what they should and shouldn’t do with their own bodies. They already want us to give up Red Bull and fried chicken and waffles. Is socialism far behind?
I think it’s the negative name. Maybe we could market it as “Ethyl-Lean Gee!”
Coconut oil is probably the single most amazing hair treatment you can do. Add in some honey and you’ll look like a hair model in a shampoo commercial after on treatment.
Seriously, I’ve been doing coconut oil and honey treatments for the last year and even my hair dresser commented on the fact that my color treated, fine, easy to break hair that I use heat on every single day suddenly had almost no split ends. She thought I was using some fancy pants product-- nope! $5 coconut oil.
heh - I started using coconut oil after a tasting at Trader Joes. They made cornbread using it - and it tasted amazing. I now use it for frying when I make various Indonesian / Thai inspired dishes.
Amateur Barbarian, in general I agree with you about misleading advertising and overpromotion of health aspects while downplaying real concerns.
I’m not sure how far over the line this advertising is. In particular, you point out coconut oil is 91% saturated fat. Yet the very wiki page you cite says
That paragraph right there suggests that as a saturated fat, it is more healthy than other saturated fats, and furthermore, virgin coconut oil is mostly medium-chain triglycerides, and possibly lower risk than other saturated fats.
So what do I see the promo material stating?
Matches what wiki says.
Furthermore, you state:
Actually, they have some very valid comments about the quality of their product and how they obtain it. From the wiki entry:
That sounds like some things people might be concerned about, like the use of hexane in the processing of something to be eaten. So they are emphasizing that their product is only manually extracted, not chemically extracted, and not subjected to extensive processes that might affect the quality of the oil in the name of recovering more oil. Those sound like fair observations.