The nice folks at NPR have done us all a favor and taken some used Kinoki foot pads to be tested to see if they’d drawn anything out of a guinea pig reporter’s body. Guess what? They didn’t.
Reporter Sarah Varney bought some Kinoki foot pads and wore them to bed. She also subjected her husband to the (alleged) detox treatment. In the morning, they both awoke to the stinky brown mess that the advertisement had promised. Not convinced that the brown stuff had actually come from their bodies, our hero took the foot pads to a lab and had them analyzed and compared with unused pads.
“Compared to the blank that’s almost identical,” said the scientists. “It looks like three of the same sample, basically.”
A doctor from UC Berkeley confirms the scam diagnoses. Your body already eliminates “metabolic waste” and “toxins” through, um, other means…
“For many hundreds of thousands of years we’ve been successfully eliminating them through the usual means, which is urine and feces, and there has been no demonstrated need to accelerate that.”
So what is all that gunk in the pad? We’re not really sure, but it shows up if you hold the pad over a pot of boiling water. Who knew steam had “metabolic waste”?
Japanese Foot Pad Is Latest Health Fad [NPR]
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60 Minutes did a segment on this a few months ago, proving them to be fraudulent. Apparently, the brown gunky stuff is just moisture (from your foot) reacting with whatever’s in the pad itself – they dabbed water on a clean pad and it had the same result. Old newz.
I guess this means my 6 month supply of Kinoki Crotch Padsâ„¢ is a scam too. Damn.
We have friends that breed akitas, and they too use the Dremel for nail maintenance.
@johnva: Seems unfair it also applies to the real supplements. This crap makes to good stuff look bad. Melatonin is a great sleep aid for me, and I get sick less often with a multivitamin. I suspect it’s not the placebo effect, because they work better than other remedies I’ve tried.
I would guess the brown gunk that appears is a side-effect of all the bullshit surrounding this product.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, OK, I’ll stop. Hah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaa that was good for my mood.
WOW… then it must be something else causing my Enzyte pills not to work?!?!?!?
(eyeroll)
@bdgbill: “In the old mill town where I grew up there were old faded signs on some of the buildings for things like “Carters Liver Pills”. I remember asking my parents why they didn’t sell these old health remedies anymore. They told me that a law had been passed a long time ago to prevent companies from selling medical products that did not work.”
Actually, I think the law at that time (and still today) dictates that you can’t: a) claim health benefits unless they are proven and b) sell anything that can harm people (which those olden-time products often did).
They just repalce the toxins with more stupid.
Had a friend onetime…he talks me into helping his GF move. Well turns out she didn’t have to buy any boxes because she more QVC boxes then she new what to do with. And before you go thinking she put the QVC stuff in them…OOOOOH no…all the QVC stuff broke within days of her getting it, but she still swore by it. Selective memory is an amazing thing, as they say ‘a fool and his money will soon be parted’
@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: But but but the UPS advert says I can have an address like a real business and they’ll be there to pick up all the checks from the scammed customers for me!
Hi NPR, welcome to last year when every other news station in America revealed this as a scam (as if it wasn’t obvious).
Despite this being an obvious scam, the Walgreens near me (Belmont and Sheffield in Chicago) still features these very prominently near their checkout counters.
While the root of the issue is the scammers themselves, it pisses me off to no end that the retailers will continue to carry it regardless until it stops being profitable enough to justify its shelf space.
@Wormfather is Wormfather: The reaction of the journalists when she holds the pad over the steam was classic. I heard it on NPR last night too.
Given the analysis shown in the ad, I don’t understand how they managed to get by without a conviction for fraud. But then I don’t understand how anyone could fall for this type of come on anyway.
I credit this company for finding a great way to make money using some clever chemical manipulation.
Of course it MUST be working if it’s changed colors!
@TVarmy: What we’re facing with “supplements” is a failure of government to properly regulate. There needs to be a science-based critera for supplements just like anything else, and much stronger FDA power to regulate supplements. Otherwise that just becomes a loophole for allowing any fraud at all to be sold as some sort of health remedy (which is the entire reason the FDA was created in the first place…to crack down on rampant health product fraud that was ripping people off and endangering them as well). Science, not marketing or popularity, needs to drive what is legal to sell and what isn’t.
@bishophicks: I’m not sure whether the rules actually are that it just has to be harmless. I think they technically can prosecute people for selling fraudulent products, but they almost never do. I do know that a bunch of scam artists selling fake cancer “cures” were recently busted, though. So it must not be TOTALLY legal to just sell anything that doesn’t work at all. Like I said, I think the government could shut down this entire industry (at least as a non-black market business) but chooses not to because a lot of it is popular and because the quacks bribe Congress not to.
I don’t care what this says these things work, I wear them in my shoes. By the time my work day is over it’s like walking in encased diarrhea.
@cinlouwho: Maybe people that bought Kinoki foot pads can use them to detoxify their dogs? Then again, maybe Kinoki pads are great at stopping bleeding if you cut your dog’s nails past the quick.
{I keed!}
@Quietly: My coworkers are addicted to the offshoot of this one – the detoxing footbath (clear water goes black in five minutes, you get the idea.)
What p*sses me off most is the tricks – one of the gals is 5mo pregnant. When they arrived, she was told “Oh, you’re pregnant. This detox may be too strong for you and the baby.”
They then apparently examined her fingernails and said, “oh, wait, you baby’s doing very well!” and took her $30. B*stards.
@edicius: Cos nothing says “I love you” like “I told you so”
According to Women’s Health, most of these are filled with bamboo vinegar, which changes color when wet. The makers claim that the bamboo charcoal/vinegar itself has detox properties, but in reality it just changes color from your foot sweat.
These are akin to those “toxin-removing, all natural foot spas”. My aunty swears by them. You plug it in, dunk your feet and a couple minutes later there’s a ton of murk instead of clean clear water.
30 seconds online and you find the answer.
The current going through the electrodes in the water are sacrificial. They break down a layer of rust and oxidation leaving it in the water.
Anything your body can get rid of it will. Through your butt.
Anything that your body can’t filter out by itself i.e. heavy metals, etc. don’t come out of your foot just because you dunk them or 15 minutes in a “foot spa” of dubious quality.
I think I read that these also have green tea in them. Mmmmm, a tasty beverage!
Glad ya’ll posted this here. Tried to tell some of my friends that it was a scam and they tried to nay nay my warnings. I told them about the actors that were suing the kinoki people and how they said the company used make-up on their feet and they said all companies do that for commercials, the pads really do work. HAH! Some of my friends are dumb asses me thinks.
– gc3160
website: thegc.deviantart.com
email: gc3160@NOSPAMcharter.net –
To me, these days, the new snake oil trigger seems to be “toxins”. Anything that claims “toxins” are in everything, and that it can draw out said “toxins” is probably a load. I’m a natural skeptic, but anyone should be looking for specifics (“toxins” is too vague a term), clinical trials, and no “it’s too good to be true” claims.
Now, those who do swear by things like this are affected by placebo affects. While these aren’t doing anything for that person’s body, a placebo can be quite effective. You can wake up better by just willing yourself to do so, and if you need an material assistant, do so.
With that being said, I make fun of these kind of things, but they do have their place as a placebo for those who need it. I don’t care about it in that case as long as the person is not being totally swindled. ($5 a pack of these may be ok, $50 would not be.) Sure it’s not doing anything, and those people are throwing their money away in a sense, but if you need a placebo, it has its place.
so kinoki is claiming your feet poop. interesting.
Dateline or 20/20 or the other news show did a story on this month ago. They proved they did nothing. They had test subjects try them, they did all test and showed they are nothing but a scam but even after they ran the story during primetime on a major network that stupid TV spot keeps showing up and it seems people keep buying them.
They do not work, never have, never will. They are not FDA approved either. Just another way for someone to make money and nothing more. Most people complained about the horrible stink the pads caused the next morning.
If something is that great and works that well that is a product I can drive to any local store and get. No product that works that well is only sold via the TV. If it is that great and works that well they will want it in every single store they can get it in. If it is only available by a special TV offer, it’s a scam.
@backbroken:
You have a very dirty soul then!
Kidding aside…. DUH, these are fake.
@NotYou007:
Heh, you can buy these at Wallgreen’s now. I’d say anything that makes outlandish claims is a scam, but that’s just me.
These remind me of those ear candles my homeopathic friends tried to convince me were great for pulling out deeply embedded earwax and “toxins.” I lit one and held it out in the air while it burned down. The results were exactly the same yellowish waxy gunk as what my friend swore was extricated from her head. Maybe because it’s a candle…made of wax? An earlier commenter was spot on when s/he said to watch out anytime someone starts yammering on about “toxins.” Bunk!
I always figured the stuff on the after picture was just dead skin from the sole of the foot.
And besides, the true homeopathic remedy for toxins in the body is more toxins. I’ll go grab another beer.
My favorite part of the commercial for these pads is the “before” and “after” report that showed how level of asbestos that was migrating through the feet fell dramatically.
Interested in the FDA’s interpretation? Came across the following on Yahoo Answers.
________
Pads containing certain ingredients are placed on feet during sleep to allegedly pull toxins from the body. The amount of ‘soil’ that appears on the pad in the morning is cited as proof that toxins have been removed. Since the same effect can be created by dampening the pad with water, skeptics consider these pads a form of pseudoscience.
While there are significant claims of many Asian medical studies that prove the health benefits of detox foot patches, there are no known studies. On January 3, 2008, the FDA released an urgent warning [2] regarding the potential dangers of many imported pharmaceutical substances including several brands of detox foot patches. To date, no foot patch or pad product is approved for use in the United States by the FDA.
—-
[en.wikipedia.org]
So it is at best a pseudo-science and is NOT approved by the FDA. Still skeptic? Notice that Wikipedia uses FDA’s ALERT released on January 3rd 2008 as a reference, which talks about UNAPPROVED new drugs promoted in the US and their DETENTION WITHOUT EXAMINATION.
[www.fda.gov]
[updated] My understanding is the pads claim concerns toxic minerals and plain water contains minerals just like the body.
“Was the water distilled? The body has water in it too. I don’t have an agenda, I just don’t think the water test means anything unless it was steam distilled water.”