Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Fooled by fruits


FOOLED BY FRUITS
By: Indrajeet, Vishakha, Aastha, Anjum.

“You are making my skin glow, your making my cheeks blush, it’s all a secret so baby hush hush, deep clean and rehydrate your skin with fruits”, says Lakme new fruit blast face wash and moisturiser range. How will a girl not get influenced to buy the product if the advertisement is loaded with images of fruits and it looks so natural and non-toxic? The advertisement is over exaggerated with the content of fruit in the product. Certainly, the product doesn’t contain that amount of fruit extracts, as it will get perished over a period of time. Moreover if you read the contents on the back of the tube, it mentions 20 chemicals and one fruit extract; leading to majority of chemicals.
The marketing department works smartly to target as many consumers as possible. Their research techniques aim at fooling you. Consumers started complaining about the number of chemicals a product contains, and how harmful it is. As a result, the cosmetic companies came up with the idea of using ‘real’ fruit extracts (or not) as a major content in their products, so that it doesn’t harm their skin or hair in the long term.
From many years companies like VICCO and Himalaya assure about adding natural things in the product and these companies do publish the amount of natural content on their products, while the recently developed products don’t. This makes it obvious that they don’t h­ave a real proof of the amount of natural ingredients in the content. The cosmetic industry sells dreams and the absurdity of the word ‘natural’ is evident more in this field than anywhere else. In the last 15 to 20 years it has become fashionable to incorporate a couple of plant ingredient in cosmetics and market it with a natural or herbal brand to make money. The consumer seeing all the marketing and promotional jargon invokes images of exotic plants and believes he has a better product than the one he is currently using.
It is quite possible that the final extract obtained from a dried herb will be completely different from what you are likely to get from a fresh herb. Or a picture of a flower or fruit leads the consumer to think that the jasmine scent must be from real jasmine. More often than not, this is simply not the case

There are many food products that claim ‘baked with real fruit’ or otherwise. But they themselves don’t contain it in reality. If the food doesn’t have real fruits, how can beauty products have real fruit extracts?
If you want to experience something natural on your body, go for real fruits. Crush some strawberries and apply on your face or cleanse your face with real dried orange peel. You will then feel the difference between fake fruit beauty products and real fruit effect.
Ancient civilisations have proven their skills to cure illness and enhance the  well being of consumers using herbal ingredients and this was possible without any help of modern science and technology we have now at our disposal. In most cases, “Products are selling only dreams!” and one should not rush to buy ­cosmetics only because it incorporates some herbal or natural materials!

It is for all of us, as consumers, to question and understand the rational behind its usage in a product, so that, in reality, it enables us lead a better quality of life.

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