So, I was walking around CVS in the ville the other day while running some errands, when I stumbled across this:
They were being marketed as “Youth and Diet pills”, and they really got me thinking about the way scientific ideas are presented in the popular media. I’m an unashamed consumer of trashy magazines, and I’ve recently noticed an uptick in the amount of “scientific” coverage in a lot of womens magazines. Most often, these scientific articles are popular pieces reporting on the latest and greatest technological breakthrough that can help women get their hottest beach body ever.
With that in mind, I thought it was really interesting how the packaging for these pills highlighted the inclusion of collagen and amino acids, as if we should immediately be reassured of the pills’ efficacy by the presence of science-y sounding terms. I’m pretty fascinated by the science behind a lot of mundane items, such as shampoo and diet pills, but I’m not such a fan of the way scientific research is often portrayed by the media. It seems like either scientific concepts are a “black box” that normal people aren’t expected to understand, or science is the enemy (see: mass hysteria over “chemicals” in everyday products, even though everything is made up of chemicals).
Collagen is a term thrown around in the media a lot, usually in the form of celebrity plastic-surgery exposes. The pills shown above are capitalizing on the term’s popularity, although I’m skeptical about the “Youth and Diet” enhancing effects. But, who knows? We’ve been talking about collagen in class recently, but we haven’t quite discussed all of collagen’s functions in the body. I’m looking forward to learning more about the functions of fibrous-type proteins such as collagen; maybe there really is some effect (again, I doubt it).
I guess what I’m trying to convey is how excited I am that the concepts I’m learning in class are becoming more visible in my everyday life, even if they are coming in the form of cheap diet pills. I think it’s important to fight the way the media tends to portray scientific research, and biochem is helping me get there.
Couldn’t agree with this post more — there is a responsibility almost to make sure that we aren’t a) taking advantage of the “science” of everyday things and b) that we help educate other people so that they too can make more informed decisions! This is my opinion, at least.