Cosmetic Puffery Gets A Rare Wrist Slap from the FDA

From WSJ.com

The Food and Drug Administration warned Avon Products Inc. about the marketing of certain anti-wrinkle products in what appears to be a crackdown of claims being made on creams and serums sold by major cosmetics makers.

Last month the FDA warned L'Oréal SA's Lancome unit on claims made on some of its anti-wrinkle products.

This time the FDA is going after Avon for its marketing of some products primarily part of the firm's Anew skin care brand, which the company says on its website is a $1 billion brand. The agency sent Avon a warning letter dated Oct. 5. The letter was posted on FDA's website Tuesday.

Read the rest of the story at WSJ.com

Carston Oliver, Freeskiing His Way Into Wellness

Carston Oliver, the 24 year old professional freeskier, doesn't like sitting still. He's managed to buck the system of studying, testing and admissions--a source of near-ruin for so many twenty-somethings--carving out an enviable life that allows him to be, well, who he is. His renowned intense work ethic helps, as does a generous helping of athletic talent...and sheer guts.Carston Oliver-twisting it in Alta.

ESPN describes his days filming the movie Solitaire for Sweetgrass films: "At a lean 5-foot, 8-inches tall and 145 pounds, he was the guy who once carried a 130-pound generator on his back 2,000 vertical feet uphill in the middle of the night for a film shoot, and without complaint. And deep in the Andes, he's the guy who, on off days, would walk and take a bus to the only gym within 20 miles in order to get on an exercise bike."

Here, in a promotional video for sponsor Patagonia, Oliver shares his motivations, and we all get to enjoy the ride.

Rihanna's Case of Missing Glutes

Rihanna's been uncommonly open about her body battles of late, but this one takes the cake...or more to the point misses the cake. She complains she's losing too much weight.

The Barbadian wailer has been on some sort of mysterious physical odyssey over the past year. In October she cancelled a concert due to the flu, and then in May there was a major brouhaha over a missed Saturday Night Live rehearsal, reportedly due to another bout of the flu. The hard-edged singer was reduced to flaunting her vulnerability by tweeting photos of herself hospitalized and hooked up to an IV. Shortly after, she trumpeted her new-found resolve to be healthy and stick with the Five Factor Diet (which requires no less than 5 healthy meals a day, from 5 food groups, and 5 workouts per week.) Now she says she can't put the brakes on, telling Ryan Seacrest the diet's over but she's still dropping pounds. 

Now she complains to Harper's Bazaar that her famously copious glutes are disappearing. "Even though I'm losing weight, it's not where I want to be," she tells the magazine.  "I miss my ass. It just went away!" 

Pet-Peeves Over Dog Mansions

The New York Times has been taking a lot of heat for a "Home" section feature on high end pet-houses. The withering comments range from "Dogs don't give an arf about any of that" to "...we are, perhaps in North America, beyond repair."Photo: Drew Kelly for The New York Times

But Jane Mager, of Concord, California, opened a whole new realm of righteous indignation when she referenced her nonprofit miniature-pig rescue and sanctuary, Lil' Orphan Hammies. Mager is upset at the diminutive size of two pigs, Cherry and Abby, depicted in the article as having their own Victorian dollhouse inside their owners' Austin home. "If Cherry and Abby weigh just seven pounds, there is no way that they are already 6-month-old miniature pigs, unless they have been starved," Mager wrote in her letter to the Times' editors. She suggests the hapless owner may have been hoodwinked by an unscrupulous breeder.

Protecting tiny pigs from exploitation versus buying a $294 doghouse for a beloved pug...the mind-boggling myriad uses of freedom.

The Country that Ate the World

Jennifer Hudson: Now eating for one, with the help of Weight Watchers."Tackling population fatness" is the call to action that concludes an ingenious bit of number crunching by three European statisticians, including two from the World Health Organization.

Working on their own time British and Swiss mathematicians figured out how much the planet's population weighs (earth's biomass is 287 million tons); which citizenry tilts the biomass scales (the average North American weighs 177.8 pounds); and which nationalities are models of terrestrial muscle tone (the people of Asia weigh an average 127.2 pounds each.)

One sad stat: It takes 12.2 American adults to make a ton, versus 20.2 Bangladeshis.

We thought height might have something to do with North America's tonnage, but the researchers beat us to the punch; they looked at body mass index or BMI (the ratio of height to weight, a measure of fleshiness) and found once again that North America, specifically the U.S., tops the scales.  The average BMI in America was 28.7 (Japan's was 22.9). A BMI greater than 25 is considered overweight; greater than 30 is considered obese.

If everybody on the planet had the BMI of an average American there would be a global biomass increase of 20%; which would require food for an additional 473 million adults.

Perhaps most distressing is the amount of food required to maintain America's fatness. The researchers write, "In the United States alone, the energy required to maintain overweight biomass corresponds to the energy requirements of 23 million adults of world average body mass."

Which is to say that in order to stay fat Americans are eating enough food for an additional 23 million people. Perhaps the new Weight Watchers mantra should be...time to let someone else have a bite.

Click here for a list of the 5 heaviest countries, and average calories consumed.