I have been growing Aloe Vera – Sabila in Spanish – for a number of years now, since I learned about how truly remarkable this plant is for the body. I cut leaves and remove the gel and use them in my protein shakes, and I notice a real difference.
About 3 or so years ago, I noticed that Aloe Vera was replacing Coconut Water as the trendy health drink of choice in the US, and the changes filtered down to Costa Rica.
I was happy about this, because even though I love coconut water, it was great to be able to buy healthy Aloe Vera drinks when on the road.
At the time, I could only get one brand in CR – the OKF brand, the self-proclaimed #1 best selling brand in the world. And they probably were. At least their ingredients were natural.
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed some changes, and being a health-conscious person and a businessman, I saw right through what was happening.
Here’s how the increase in demand for Sabila drinks has led to stores selling total garbage with Aloe Vera on the label (an infographic would be great for this):
Step 1: Introduce Aloe Vera drinks to the populace in grocery stores. Put it with coconut water and juice. Make it prominently visible, although with small numbers of bottles.
Step 2: As sales increase, expand the number of bottles to both meet demand and get more attention for the product. Add little hand-written notes to the displays regarding salud (health).
Step 3: Media attention! Morning TV show hosts drink Aloe Vera on their show, leading to an explosion in demand from the masses to consume this healthy drink.
Step 4: Introduce new brands of Aloe Vera drink. This is the crux transition. These new brands are introduced in order of their level of actual Aloe Vera goodness, with the best first, followed quickly by lesser and lesser quality.
Step 5: Give shelf space preference to the garbage Aloe Vera drinks. The masses are too stupid to read the ingredients, so they see “Aloe” on the eye-catching label (now with new sexy fruit flavors), and they buy it! Nevermind that Aloe is now the last ingredient, preceeded by things like high fructose corn syrup and FD&C #40 artificial colorants (why the hell do you need RED coloring in a clear drink!? Oh, right, of course, to make it look like the strawberry flavors came from actual berries and not chemicals…).
These Aloe drinks are much much cheaper to produce, and cheaper for the grocery stores to buy, but they’re still selling at the same high price as the old healthy Aloe drinks made with natural ingredients and actual Aloe Vera gel.
Step 6: Take all that extra profit from selling cheap garbage at a high price, and buy massive BILLBOARDS all over the capital city advertising your new brands of “healthy” Aloe Vera drink. Voila! Deception complete.
Step 7 – 10: Rake in the cash selling your cheap garbage for a high price while poisoning the sheeple and ensuring they’re ever more dependent on big pharma while increasingly confused because they think they’re living healthy.
I got on my Galt soapbox with the manager at the local grocery store when I came into town the other day and discovered the transition was now complete. I ripped him a new one and he just nodded, as though he knew exactly what I was talking about. Maybe it’s not his call (probably not) but the fact is, it happened.
I’d been watching it the past year or more, but now – now they have COMPLETELY DISCONTINUED sales of the two good brands (OKF and ALO), and yet they have an ENTIRE WALL dedicated to the high fructose syrup / artificial colorants / fake syrupy fruity taste “aloe” drinks.
Really frustrating and angering to live in a world where:
A) most people are so stupid as to be the reason this evil can take place, and
B) some intelligent people are so evil as to take advantage of the stupidity of the masses and give them disease while selling it as health, and raking in extra profits on the back end.
I refuse to be a stupid sheep, and while I love business and the free market (and DON’T give me the argument this is the fault of capitalism, because that’s bullshit – the free market doesn’t exist in most of the world because of government interference, which leads to cronyism and ultimately fascism), I refuse to be evil and knowingly deceive anyone, especially to take advantage of their stupidity for profit.
I’m optimistic about my life, but sometimes it’s hard to live in such a twisted, evil, fucked up world (sorry Mom).
For maybe a couple cents extra per bottle, companies and grocery stores are knowingly poisoning the general populace and claiming that it makes the people healthy.
Morale of the story: READ THE INGREDIENTS and don’t trust the marketing of any product or its label!
For a very thorough guide to Aloe Vera, check out the ultimate aloe vera guide from Natural Healers.
