Health

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Fake News Websites with Fake Celebrity Endorsements Begin Scamming Again

They’re back! Websites that impersonate TV news stations, popular magazines, or entertainment sites that disappeared about five years ago after being sued by the FTC are making a comeback.

For example, some websites suggest that Joy Behar is leaving ABC’s “The View” to devote more time to a new skincare line of cosmetics.

Here is one of them that is dressed up to look like an entertainment news site:

Juvalux website

Use scrollbar above on right to view.

 
There are many celebrity and non-celebrity endorsements on the website as well, such as this one from Rosie O’Donnell.

Rosie and Joy

There is only one problem. Rosie knows nothing about it. From her blog:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Rosie's blog

And worse, Joy does not have a skincare line of products, as she explains in the video below. She also reassures the audience that she is not leaving the program.

*MOUSE PRINT:



The website with her purported line of cosmetics is completely fake. It is not an entertainment news site. And it’s only purpose is to sell Juvalux face cream.

How do we know it’s fake? Here is their legal disclaimer — one of the most outrageous we have ever seen — which says in part:

*MOUSE PRINT:

This website is not a source of facts or real information. All the content featured on our website is artificial and falls under the umbrella of fiction. …

EntertainmentToday.Co is a fabricated web publication, which uses real names in a fictitious way. All news articles contained within EntertainmentToday.Co are fictional and should be presumed as fake news. Any mention of celebrities and public figures are used to pepper our stories, grab your attention and sensationalize our content. They are entirely inaccurate and should not be believed as fact.

And it goes on and on.

Sites like this are reminiscent of the fake sites that were designed to look like a TV station’s website reporting exciting news about Dr. Oz endorsing acai berry supplements for weight loss. The FTC went after nearly a dozen of these sites in 2011 asking a judge to shut them down.

While the endorsements on the face cream site are fake, sales of Juvalux cream on it are real. They offer a “free sample” for which you only pay $4.95 for shipping. However, buried in the “terms and conditions” is this:

*MOUSE PRINT:

If you do not cancel within 14 Days of your intial [sic] trial purchase, we will charge the same card you provided the full product cost of $89.95 and enroll you in our auto ship program, which will ship you a fresh monthly supply of the product, and charge your card $94.90[emphasis added] (including S&H) every 30 days.

You have been warned.

Incidentally, it is not just wrinkle cream being promoted this way, but sites pretending to be CNN, TMZ, and Vogue, for example, are pitching weight loss pills too.

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Breyers’ Ad Omits a Key Ingredient

A recent TV commercial from Breyers has some adorable kids discussing the company’s “Natural Vanilla” ice cream and its simple ingredients.

After emphasizing the vanilla beans in their Natural Vanilla ice cream, one little girl, as if reading from the label, declares “Breyers has fresh cream, sugar, and milk.”

We’ll have to give this girl an “F” in reading. Look at the product’s actual ingredients statement.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Tara gum

The first ingredient is milk and not cream, but they make it sound like cream is first and the predominant ingredient. Doing so could help sell more ice cream. And mysteriously, our little pitchwoman omitted “tara gum” in her recital.

Now turn back the clock about 20 years, when Breyers made fun of competing brands by asking kids to read their ingredients with unpronounceable additives:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWB2T_dDuUA

This kid can read all the ingredients on the Breyers package and did so in the order of predominance.

So should have today’s kids.

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Kind Nutrition Bars — A “Healthy” Choice?

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to Kind, LLC, a maker of supposedly “healthy” nutrition snack bars and similar foods.

The agency singled out four of their nutrition bars as making problematic claims not in compliance with FDA regulations: Kind Fruit & Nut Almond & Apricot, Kind Fruit & Nut Almond & Coconut, Kind Plus Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein, and Kind Plus Dark Chocolate Cherry Cashew + Antioxidants.

KIND box

Take the above dark chocolate peanut butter bar, for example. They say this bar is “misbranded” because the product labels bear nutrient content claims, but the products do not meet the requirements to make such claims. Specifically, the label makes the claim “Healthy and tasty, convenient and wholesome” in connection with statements such as: “good source of fiber,” “no trans fats,” and “7g protein.”

And their website says:

KIND Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein is a healthy & satisfying blend of peanuts and dark chocolate. Each bar contains 7 grams of protein, which promotes satiety and strengthens bones, muscles and skin.

*MOUSE PRINT:

The problem according to the FDA is that you can only use the term “healthy” as an implied nutrient content claim on the label or in the labeling of a food provided that the food, among other things, is “low saturated fat” [i.e., the food has a saturated fat content of 1 g or less per Reference Amount Customarily Consumed (RACC) and no more than 15 percent of the calories are from saturated fat]. But according to their nutrition label, the product fails this test, with three and half times the saturated fat and four times the calories allowed from saturated fat.

KIND

The product also cannot be called “anti-oxidant rich” because it does not contain at least 20% of the daily requirement of nutrients recognized for their anti-oxidant qualities. It only contains 15% of the Daily Value (DV) of vitamin E and 0% of vitamin C and vitamin A.

In addition, there are technical problems with their “no trans fat” and “good source of fiber claims.”

Virtually all of these violations are not obvious to purchasers who probably see this product as some sort of health or nutrition bar. And one has to wonder whether if this is all about the marketing of candy bars cloaked with seeming health benefits.

Fast forward to May 2016: The FDA seems to have had a change of heart and has told Kind that it can return the word “healthy” to its bars. In the meantime, the agency says it is going to re-evaluate its two-decade-old regulations governing the word “healthy” and may come out with new rules. That is sure kind of the FDA.