UPDATE 10/2/17: A month after TINA.org provided Goop with a list of URLs harboring illegal health claims, the company has removed a number of inappropriate health statements from its site. These include claims to prevent uterine prolapse (Better Sex Jade Eggs), as well as claims to treat acne, eczema and psoriasis (Black Rose Bar). However, the vast majority of problematic health statements catalogued by TINA.org on Goop.com remain at this time, with one claim to treat infertility now attributed to what “fans of the product” have to say. 
 
 Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness empire, Goop, approaches health … differently. 
 
 From the brand’s famous yoni eggs to its Shaman-inspired medicine bags and crystal therapy readings, to quirky supplement names like “Why Am I So Effing Tired?” and a mineral-infused oxygen bar that the company apparently breaks out at corporate events — it’s easy to get caught up in the world according to Goop. So easy, in fact, consumers may overlook the serious conditions for which Goop products — and the third-party products it promotes — are prescribed. 
 
 But a TINA.org investigation into Goop’s marketing has revealed more than 50 instances in which the company claims, either expressly or implicitly, that its products (or those it promotes) can treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms of, or reduce the risk of developing a number of ailments. These include crystal harmonics for infertility, rose flower essence tincture for depression, black rose bar for psoriasis, wearable stickers for anxiety, and vitamin D3 for cancer. The problem is that the company does not possess the competent and reliable scientific evidence required by law to make such claims. 
 
 Additional problematic health claims can be found in this passage in an article on Goop’s website titled, “Earthing: How Walking Barefoot Could Cure Your Insomnia & More”: 
 
 (Of note, while the speaker here, Clinton Ober, does not lay claim to any specialized medical training in the post, he does have an undisclosed material connection to Earthing — the company whose “grounded” bed sheets and patches are listed for sale in the article — as an inventor whose name appears on three of its patents.) 
 
 TINA.org warned Goop about its unsubstantiated, and therefore deceptive, health and disease-treatment claims in an Aug. 11 letter to the company and its celebrity founder and CEO. In the letter, TINA.org signaled its intent to alert government regulators if Goop did not take corrective action by Aug. 18. On Aug. 17, after communicating with Goop’s outside counsel, TINA.org provided the company with a list of Goop and Goop-promoted webpages containing illegal health claims. Despite being handed this information, Goop to date has only made limited changes to its marketing. 
 
 As a result, TINA.org on Tuesday filed a complaint with two California district attorneys, urging the regulators to investigate Goop’s marketing and take appropriate enforcement action. (The district attorneys are part of the California Food, Drug and Medical Device Task Force, which last October reached a $1 million agreement with MyPillow after TINA.org supplied the task force with the findings of a deceptive marketing investigation into the pillow company.) 
 
 TINA.org is not the first group or person to question the science behind Goop’s health claims. Everyone from “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert to a former chief scientist at NASA has accused Goop of promoting pseudoscience, while Paltrow has challenged anyone who seeks to criticize the brand she founded nine years ago to bring their A game. 
 
 TINA.org Executive Director Bonnie Patten said: 
 
 Marketing products as having the ability to treat diseases and disorders not only violates established law but is a terribly deceptive marketing ploy that is being used by Goop to exploit women for its own financial gain. Goop needs to stop its misleading profits-over-people marketing immediately. 
 
 TINA.org’s complaint comes one year after NAD opened an inquiry in which it requested that Goop provide substantiation for brain claims made in the marketing of Moon Juice dietary supplements sold on Goop.com. At the time, Goop said it would permanently discontinue the claims in question. But the inquiry made clear that Goop has an obligation as a marketer to verify the efficacy claims of all products it promotes. 
 
 From musings to millions to one helluva wellness summit 
 
 
 
 What began as a “homespun weekly newsletter” of Paltrow’s whimsical thoughts on everything from travel and cooking to health, fitness, and the psyche in the fall of 2008, Goop is now a wellness empire that markets a plethora of specialty items aimed at a variety of physical and mental health issues. 
 
 After reportedly raising $15-$20 million in venture capital in 2016, Goop entered the $37 billion supplement industry in March when it launched Goop Wellness, a line of supplements that sold more than $100,000 worth of product the day it debuted, according to Fast Company. 
 
 Then in June, Goop hosted its first-ever wellness summit, “In Goop Health,” in a lavishly decorated industrial warehouse outside Los Angeles. Attendees, which included a TINA.org staffer who went undercover, paid $500-$1,500 for the chance to sit in on panel discussions about leech facials, snack on “Kale cookies and cream” vegan ice cream, and get hooked up to a mineral-infused oxygen bar whose administer, clad in a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of the Goop summit, touted the purported cognitive benefits that the essential oils in the oxygen are said to deliver. 
 
 At the conference TINA.org also crossed paths with a barista rocking the same Goop-y tee who was serving cups of Bulletproof Coffee, a Goop partner. The barista claimed that the grass-fed butter in the coffee increases brain function. It also helps with cancer and weight loss but the brain, we were told, that’s “the moneymaker.” But when we asked how, exactly, brain function is improved, we got this garbled answer: 
 
 After two weeks you notice, like, your … increase of, like, perceptions of the world around you, you notice how you feel is a little bit different. 
 
 The response was reminiscent of one Paltrow herself gave in an interview with talk show host Jimmy Kimmel just a few days earlier, when she struggled mightily to come up with a coherent definition for “earthing.” The Academy Award-winning actress eventually conceded (at 1:17 in the video below) that at times “I don’t know what the [expletive] we talk about.” 
 
 Nevertheless, Goop proclaimed the inaugural summit a rousing success, pointing to media coverage like a Refinery29 article whose author allegedly gushed about the master of ceremonies, “Paltrow created the Disneyland of wellness summit.” But the blurb on Goop’s site is taken out of context and therefore quite misleading. The full quote shows the observation was not intended to be a compliment but a complaint: 
 
 And this comes after the author remarks higher in the article that “[i]t’s not hard to see why [Paltrow] has been criticized for promoting pseudo-science — some would even say misinformation…” 
 
 (TINA.org has notified Refinery29 about the deceptive use of the “Disneyland” quote on Goop’s site.) 
 
 Whose doctors? 
 
 
 
 Last month Goop issued a response to one of its harshest critics with a strongly worded post titled, “Uncensored: A Word from Our Doctors.” Among other things, the post suggested that maybe it’s not smart to trust evidence-based science all of the time: 
 
 Studies and beliefs that we held sacred even in the last decade have since been proven to be unequivocally false, and sometimes even harmful. Meanwhile, other advances in science and medicine continue to change and save lives. It is not a perfect system; it is a human system. 
 
 But not long after the post went up, one of the two doctors who Goop recruited to write open letters to feature in the piece, Dr. Aviva Romm, told STAT that she doesn’t actually see herself as one of Goop’s doctors at all. 
 
 “In fact,” STAT reported, “she said she’s advised Goop that if it wants to be more than a ‘caricature of everything alternative health for women,’ the editors need to do an audit of all their content, in consultation with physicians.” 
 
 TINA.org would agree that a site-wide audit is in order. 
 
 In addition to the ailments that TINA.org’s investigation found Goop deceptively markets products to treat, there are other conditions, which are not medically recognized, such as adrenal fatigue and postnatal depletion that the company claims its Goop Wellness supplements combat (“Why Am I So Effing Tired?” for adrenal fatigue and “The Mother Load” for postnatal depletion). Moreover, while product packaging indicates that supplements in general are needed because “the modern American diet often calls for extra vitamin and mineral support,” that message conflicts with scientific studies that say there’s “no overall benefit” from taking them. 
 
 Goop has two more wellness summits scheduled for next year, the first of which will take place in New York City in January. But before the company takes any more requests for tickets, Goop needs to shape up its marketing when it comes to being truthful about what its products and those it promotes are really capable of achieving. 
 
 Read more about TINA.org’s investigation into Goop here. ||||| Goop, the lifestyle brand founded by Gwyneth Paltrow, will offer refunds to California customers to settle a lawsuit filed by 10 state counties alleging the company did not have scientific backing for the touted health benefits of its line of vaginal eggs. 
 
 The eggs became the target of criticism from a multitude of medical professionals and consumer protection groups. 
 
 At issue were the company’s Jade Egg, the Rose Quartz Egg, and the Inner Judge Flower Essence Blend. Goop claimed the first two products — egg-shaped stones meant to be inserted vaginally and left in for varying lengths of time — could balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and increase bladder control. 
 
 The company claimed the blend — a mix of essential oils that could be consumed orally or added to bathwater — prevented depression. 
 
 The settlement was announced Tuesday by the involved counties — Santa Clara, Alameda, Marin, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Santa Cruz, Orange, Monterey and Shasta — that are part of the state’s Food Drug and Medical Device Task Force. 
 
 “We will vigilantly protect consumers against companies that promise health benefits without the support of good science…or any science,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. 
 
 Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley lauded the task force’s work and added that “false claims that assure consumers of specific health outcomes can put the public at risk.” 
 
 Paltrow’s company stood by its claims about the three products, stressing that the settlement was not an admission to the task force’s allegations, and that it had not received complaints about the items. 
 
 “While goop believes there is an honest disagreement about these claims, the company wanted to settle this matter quickly and amicably,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. 
 
 Goop chalked up the conflict as a chance to reconcile its practitioners’ “views and experiences with various products like the jade egg” with legal regulations that interpret such views as advertising claims. 
 
 “The Task Force assisted us in applying those laws to the content we published, and we appreciate their guidance in this matter as we move from a pioneer in this space to an established wellness authority,” Erica Moore, Goop’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. 
 
 Various news releases from the Cailfornia district attorneys who filed the suit stated that Goop and its legal counsel were cooperative during their settlement negotiations. In addition to the refund offers — the eggs retailed for $66 apiece — and $145,000 in civil fines, Goop is formally barred from making claims about its products’ effectiveness without requisite scientific evidence, and from selling misbranded, unapproved, or falsely advertised medical devices. 
 
 The company’s products and claims have been a running source of criticism by consumer groups and medical professionals. That includes Dr. Jennifer Gunter, an OB-GYN with Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco who famously lambasted the eggs in a series of online essays, and the nonprofit Truth in Advertising who last year called on the state task force to investigate how the Los Angeles-based company promotes its products. 
 
 Jennifer Deng, a Santa Clara County deputy district attorney in the office’s consumer protection unit, said the lawsuit was spurred in part by complaints from doctors, and that various experts were tapped to evaluate the substance of the Goop products’ touted benefits. She hopes that both consumers and companies take a lesson from the result. 
 
 “It was a good outcome to get restitution back for individuals who might have been taken by some of these claims,” Deng said. “Consumers should, when it comes to a health issue, really research whatever product they’re using. For companies, I hope the takeaway is they need to back up claims with scientific evidence, or stop making these claims.” 
 
 The refund offers announced Tuesday apply strictly to California customers who purchased any of the three affected products between Jan. 12, 2017 and Aug. 31, 2017. Refunds can be requested by contacting Goop customer service by calling 844-WTF-GOOP or emailing customerservice@goop.com. ||||| This article is over 4 months old 
 
 Gwyneth Paltrow’s company has agreed to pay $145,000 to settle allegations of unscientific claims 
 
 Goop to pay out over unproven health benefits of vaginal eggs 
 
 Goop, the new age lifestyle and publishing company founded by the actor Gwyneth Paltrow, has agreed to pay a substantial settlement over unproven claims about the health benefits of its infamous vaginal eggs. 
 
 Goop’s website still claims that inserting the eggs into the vagina helps “cultivate sexual energy, clear chi pathways in the body, intensify femininity, and invigorate our life force”. 
 
 Its $66 Jade Egg and $55 Rose Quartz egg are still offered for sale on the site, but the company has agreed to pay $145,000 to settle allegations that it previously made unscientific claims about the eggs, and a herbal essence that it had said helped tackle depression. 
 
 The vagina is self-cleaning – so why does the 'feminine hygiene' industry exist? Read more 
 
 It also agreed to refund customers who purchased the products from January to August last year. 
 
 During that period it claimed the eggs could balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and increase bladder control, according to officials in Santa Clara part of a group of California district attorneys who filed the lawsuit. 
 
 The Santa Clara district attorney, Jeff Rosen, said: “The health and money of Santa Clara County residents should never be put at risk by misleading advertising. We will vigilantly protect consumers against companies that promise health benefits without the support of good science … or any science.” 
 
 Gwyneth Paltrow didn't want Condé Nast to fact-check Goop articles Read more 
 
 Under the settlement Goop is banned from making any claims regarding the efficacy of its products without reliable scientific evidence. 
 
 Goop has defended unorthodox health practices in the face of legal challenges and concerns by consumer watchdogs about its products. But in July Paltrow announced that Goop had hired an in-house fact checker for its website. 
 
 In a statement to Bloomberg, Goop explained why it agreed to settle. Erica Moore, its chief financial officer, said: “Goop provides a forum for practitioners to present their views and experiences with various products like the Jade Egg. 
 
 “The law, though, sometimes views statement like this as advertising claims, which are subject to various legal requirements.” ||||| Dr. Jen Gunter, an obstetrician and gynecologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, didn't mean to pick on Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle and wellness e-commerce company. In fact, she's a fan of Paltrow's acting. 
 
 "'Shakespeare in Love' is one of my favorite movies," Gunter said. "She was so wonderful in that movie." 
 
 But she doesn't think much of the stories posted by Goop on health and sex. One that sent the doctor to her blog earlier this year was the suggestion in a Goop story that women insert jade eggs into their vaginas to improve their sex lives. 
 
 "I read the post on Goop, and all I can tell you is it is the biggest load of garbage I have read on your site since vaginal steaming," Gunter, 51, wrote on her personal blog, which carries the tagline "Wielding the Lasso of Truth." 
 
 Another Goop story that said bra-wearing may increase the chance of breast cancer also irked Gunter. "It's breast size that increases the risk of breast cancer," she wrote in retort. 
 
 Five nutrition lies ruining your health 
 
 What about another practice recommended by a doctor interviewed on Goop: cleansing the body with goat's milk as a hedge against parasites? 
 
 "I'd just write it off as crazy except some people are going to follow this advice and waste a lot of money," Gunter wrote, adding a certain modifier before "crazy." 
 
 Goop, which held the In Goop Health conference last month in Culver City, California, for acolytes who paid $500 to $1,500 a ticket, had 1.8 million unique U.S. visitors to its website in June, a 62 percent increase from the previous June, according to comScore, an analytics company. 
 
 Comparatively, Gunter's blog is small potatoes. It is hard to navigate and antiquated in design, and failing to meet comScore's threshold of about 50,000 unique visitors a month, its web traffic is too meager to be measured. 
 
 However, after posting a few viral essays in recent years, Gunter has emerged as the most ardent critic of Paltrow's website, routinely responding with snark and medical data to its pronouncements on diet and female genital health. 
 
 It may have been the lectins -- which are plant proteins that have been targeted on Goop by one of its contributors, Dr. Steven Gundry -- that finally got to Paltrow and the Goop team. After Gunter posted a sweeping rebuke of several of the alternative health trends promoted by Goop, including a diet low on lectins, Goop posted a retort, which Paltrow tweeted to her nearly 3 million followers, along with a line that alluded to a Michelle Obama speech: "When they go low, we go high." 
 
 The post was intended to take a stand for open discussion about alternative approaches to health and wellness, said Elise Loehnen, head of content for Goop. The doctors interviewed by Goop are "highly vetted" and offer advice based on "evidence from their own practices," Loehnen said, adding that Goop's wellness stories include a standard disclaimer. 
 
 Titled "Uncensored: A Word From Our Doctors," Goop's "we go high" post seemed to single out Gunter (without naming her but referring to her "wielding the lasso of truth" line) as looking to "critique Goop to leverage that interest and bring attention" to herself. In a section attributed to "Team Goop," it went on to note Gunter's "strangely confident assertion that putting a crystal in your vagina for pelvic-floor-strengthening exercises would put you in danger of getting toxic shock syndrome." 
 
 The rest of the post was written by two of Goop's featured doctors, including one who cited Gunter by name and castigated her for using swear words. "Now, it's fine to get into a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of lectins without throwing F-bombs," Gundry wrote. "Dr. Oz and I just had a friendly discussion on this topic -- you might learn something if you tune in." 
 
 The flame war continued with another post from Gunter titled "Goop's Misogynistic, Mansplaining Hit Job." 
 
 "I am not strangely confident about vaginal health; I am appropriately confident because I am the expert," Gunter wrote. She then cited her credentials, which include a medical degree from the University of Manitoba, a residency at the University of Western Ontario and a fellowship in infectious disease at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The post has generated 157,000 page views, Gunter said. Other medical professionals have written in support of her. 
 
 Gunter, who works as a gynecologist and obstetrician for Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, began to blog in 2010, around the time she published a book, "The Preemie Primer." She has long written about "snake oil," she said, focusing on trends and products marketed to women to better their sex lives or vaginal health. "Every single day I am talking to women about how you shouldn't use this product and why you shouldn't use that product," she said. 
 
 She said she doesn't check the Goop website every day. She usually ends up there after she has grown frustrated with political tweets. 
 
 "I try to shift my indignation to something I can do something about," Gunter said. 
 
 © New York Times ||||| Multiple sources have warned about the lack of proven medical benefits and the potential health risks associated with coffee enemas. 
 
 Actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s controversial lifestyle brand Goop is getting attention once again, thanks to the inclusion of a rather unusual product in its body detoxification package, a coffee enema kit sold for $135 on the company’s website. 
 
 The new controversy started earlier this week when the Goop website published an article listing several products as part of the company’s “Beauty and Wellness Detox Guide.” While most of the products didn’t look like the type that would immediately stick out in such a guide, many readers were piqued by the inclusion of the Implant O-Rama System At-Home coffee enema kit, which is priced at $135 and listed as detoxification specialist Dr. Alejandro Junger’s “pick for those who know what they’re doing.” 
 
 As explained by Forbes health news contributor Bruce Y. Lee, enemas are fluids that are injected into a person’s rectum up into the colon, thereby facilitating easier bowel movement by stimulating the intestines. They are typically recommended by doctors as a way to relieve constipation after dietary changes and other conventional remedies do not work, or to cleanse one’s colon ahead of a colonoscopy. While medical professionals have been known to prescribe a wide variety of enemas, including those that are made of sodium phosphate, mineral oil, and milk and molasses, Lee noted that coffee enemas have been gaining momentum as a popular colon cleansing method. 
 
 Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop is recommending a $135 DIY coffee enema kit – and one OBGYN is NOT happy about it https://t.co/CTyCoSGFpD — Daily Mail Femail (@Femail) January 5, 2018 
 
 Citing the Implant O-Rama website, Bustle wrote that the company touted its product as being capable of relieving symptoms associated with depression and allergies, easing confusion and nervous tension, and relieving “severe” pain. But just like Forbes’ Lee did in his op-ed, Bustle also warned that there are many reasons to stay away from coffee enemas, even if Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website merely recommended the dispensing machine and not the actual enema, and also posted a disclaimer cautioning that the product is not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. 
 
 Aside from stating that the human colon can normally clean itself without the aid of any medical devices, Bustle cited a paper posted in The American Journal of Gastroenterology, which stressed that coffee enemas do not have any proven medical benefits, and could result in proctocolitis, or inflammation of the rectum and colon. Similarly, Forbes contributor Lee warned that the use of any kind of enema could result in a number of side effects, such as dehydration and electrolyte imbalances that could sometimes be life-threatening. Infections may also occur if enema users accidentally end up injecting bacteria, he added. 
 
 Coffee enemas come with several medical risks, including inflammation of the colon and rectum. Nobuhiro Asada / Shutterstock 
 
 Further highlighting the potential danger of such detoxification methods, the Forbes op-ed also linked to several medical case studies involving the use of hot coffee in enemas, including multiple papers detailing cases of rectal burn, and one that focused on “deaths related to coffee enemas.” 
 
 The ongoing coffee enema issue comes almost a year after Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop business was in the headlines for advertising another supposedly risky product. In January 2017, Goop published an article that advised women to place golf ball-sized jade eggs in their vagina, due to the purported benefits of better sex and “feminine energy.” According to the Washington Post, San Francisco OB/GYN Dr. Jen Gunter referred to the ideas discussed in the article as the “biggest load of garbage” she’s read on the Goop website, adding that the porous qualities of jade could lead to bacterial vaginosis or, in severe cases, toxic shock syndrome. 
 
 Likewise, Gunter also took to her blog earlier this week to criticize Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop, referencing last year’s jade egg issue and suggesting that January is Paltrow’s “go-to-month for promoting dangerous things.” She referred to the coffee enema kit as a “f**ked up way to make money” and an example of “fake medicine,” stressing that even the board-certified doctor Alejandro Junger’s advice contains information that isn’t supported either by medical literature or by “human anatomy and physiology.”
– Goop is getting called out again. Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle site should be investigated by California regulators, according to the watchdog group Truth in Advertising. TINA announced on its website this week that it has compiled more than 50 instances of Goop claiming, directly or indirectly, that certain products "treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms of, or reduce the risk of developing a number of ailments," Fortune reports. Those products, of course, are either sold by or promoted by Goop, but Goop doesn't have the scientific evidence legally required to make such claims about the products, per TINA. The watchdog group has submitted a complaint letter to two of the California Food, Drug, and Medical Device Task Force's district attorneys requesting enforcement. A Goop spokesperson reached out to BuzzFeed (which has helpfully compiled some of the products TINA takes issue with, including a crystal said to treat infertility, hair treatments for depression, and a vaginal egg to prevent uterus slipping) to say that TINA's claims are "misleading ... unsubstantiated and unfounded." Goop was also recently called out by NASA over body stickers supposedly containing spacesuit material, and soon after, a San Francisco OB-GYN made headlines when she called out Goop for promoting the aforementioned vaginal eggs, among other things. In fact, Dr. Jen Gunter's posts about Goop spurred the website to issue a defense, with Team Goop writing: "As women, we chafe at the idea that we are not intelligent enough to read something and take what serves us, and leave what does not. We simply want information; we want autonomy over our health."