Behind
the Scenes at Natural Products Expo West - A "Brutally Honest" Review
Behind the Scenes at Natural Products Expo West - A "Brutally Honest" Review
By Mike Adams
News Target, 3/13/07
www.newstarget.com/z021694.html"> Straight to the Source
The Natural Products Expo West trade show was held last weekend in Anaheim,
California. I spent the show cruising the floor, interviewing vendors, sampling products and
digging up new information to pass along to NewsTarget readers. (By the way, thanks to all the
people who said hi to me at the show! It was nice to meet some NewsTarget readers in
person.)
If you read the mainstream media, everybody's
happy, happy, happy about the show and the industry as a whole, but if you go there yourself
and ask questions as an independent, skeptical journalist, you get the rest of the story. And
that's what I'll share with you here: A behind-the-scenes look at Expo West. Here's what
you'll never read in the mainstream media.
To get
started, however, I do have to compliment the New Hope staff and show organizers. Even with
some of the grumbling from vendors I'm about to reveal here, the show was, in my opinion, a
huge success. It really is a must-see event for anyone in the industry, and the crowds were
even thicker this year, meaning there's an increase in public interest in natural products.
So kudos to the New Hope folks who put this together. It's no small feat to make the show
work.
And now for the rest of the
story...
Ahh, the fragrant smell of... cigarettes? You
would think that a hall full of 45,000 people buying and selling natural health products
wouldn't smell like an ash try right outside the front door, but you'd be wrong. The
predominant smell of the show wasn't essential oils, or rosemary, or fragrance, but rather
cigarette smoke. You couldn't escape it.
Smokers
surrounded every building with an impenetrable wall of airborne carcinogens. Just walking out
of the Hilton hotel became an exercise in respiratory survival, and entering the Expo West
show itself required scrambling through a wall of smokers stationed just outside the main
entrance doors. Whether you were trying to eat lunch under the sun, catch a taxi or return to
your hotel, you were always fighting the cigarette smoke. It even wafted indoors any time
someone opened a door to enter or leave the show building.
I inhaled so much smoke at Expo West that I'm pretty sure visiting that trade
show was the single most hazardous health experience I've had since last year's show. Sorta
funny for a "health" show, huh? But it also just goes to show you how many people
are in the industry for the profit, not the health. Some folks will sell you cancer remedies
in between puffs on a cigarette.
The solution to all
this is simple. Ban smoking on all the sidewalks and walkways, create a designated smoking
room in the basement, and make people go there to light up. Now, I'm a big believer in
personal freedom, and I don't give a hoot if people go suck on burnt tobacco in their own
homes or cars, but when THEIR smoke gets in the way of MY lungs, then I'm going to say
something about it. Next year, I might bring a gas mask and have a picture taken in front of
the Expo West logo, surrounded by smokers. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand
words.
FDA censorship in full swing at Expo West Many
vendors were complaining to me about the FDA censorship at the show. The New Hope group that
organized the show actually invites an "FDA Enforcement Officer" to join the show,
and they run around the show sampling brochures and making sure nobody makes any
"unproven claims" about supplements, herbs, vitamins or even colloidal
silver.
The FDA "presence" at the show, of
course, is intended to make sure nobody can tell the truth about what natural supplements
actually do to prevent and even cure degenerative disease. The point of all this is to keep
the public ignorant and make sure there's a huge market for pharmaceuticals and
surgery.
Of course, the show organizers will say the
purpose of the FDA Enforcement Officer is to make sure nobody gets carried away with
outlandish health claims. Because outlandish health claims should be reserved for television
ads featuring FDA-approved prescription drugs, you see.
Is Horizon really organic? The top sponsor of the show was Horizon Organic, the
"organic" milk company. It's the same company now being boycotted by the Organic
Consumers Association for false labeling. Every time I asked a vendor, "What do you think
about the integrity of the show sponsors?" I got a huge laugh. Everybody on the show
floor knew the top sponsors were a joke. Of course, there were some decent sponsors like
Larabar, but they weren't the top-level sponsors with the deepest pockets and greatest
visibility.
Wow, look at all these crap products!
Another major complaint I heard from quality product vendors is that so many of the products
at the show are made of "crap." Filler, junk ingredients, contaminated raw
materials... you name it, I heard somebody mention it. The hoodia industry continues to be
largely run by con men (although there are at least four exceptions that will be listed here
on NewsTarget shortly), the superfruit juice products continue to be made largely with apple
juice (not goji or mangosteen as is loudly proclaimed on the label), and there's a long list
of companies with the word "Organic" in their company name who don't even use
organic ingredients in their products.
The level of
deception in the natural products industry has never been higher. Everybody, it seems, is
claiming "all natural" or "organic" even when they're not, and thanks to
corporate influence in Washington, the regulations are watered down so much that the terms
have practically lost all meaning. Folks like David Bronner at Dr. Bronner's soaps have been
fighting hard to eliminate fraudulent organic claims from the marketplace, but it's an
ongoing battle. (Isn't it funny how the FDA Enforcement Officer at the show will restrict
vendors from saying cherries treat arthritis, for example, but have no problem whatsoever with
fraudulent claims of organic ingredients? Enforcement is highly
selective.)
One solution to this is the upcoming
Naturally Occurring Standards Group, or NOSG which is working to certify companies as being
truly organic, fair trade, natural, etc. But that's another story altogether. Watch for that
later on NewsTarget.com.
But until there's a real
solution, it's very difficult for quality companies to compete with the huckster companies
who sell crap products at organics prices. And don't trust the advertising, either. It seems
that the more money a company has for advertising, the crappier their products are. (Which
makes sense, actually, because higher margins on crap products leave more money to spend on
advertising and sponsorship.)
Truly, some of the best
companies I found at the show do no advertising at all and couldn't afford it anyway because
they only have a 12% margin on their raw materials. Those are the companies I like to promote,
and you'll see me listing a lot of them here in upcoming reviews.
You stuck us in the basement? Some vendors were grumbling about being stuck in
the "basement" of the show -- Hall E, which is downstairs from the main floor. You
can't fault New Hope for this, however. The show has simply outgrown the available floor
space of the Anaheim Convention Center, and people who rent booths should first check the fine
map to see where the booth is before they sign the dotted line. Frankly, I enjoyed Hall E and
discovered quite a few outstanding companies there that will be covered in future articles on
NewsTarget.com.
What's with the parking problem? People
told me it took them literally two hours to find a parking spot for the show. And then they
had to walk two miles on top of that. Parking is a huge problem at Expo West, and there seems
to be no real effort to solve it anytime soon. My solution? Change the name to Eco-Expo West
and make everybody ride bicycles.
Flee! Flee! It's
3:15! The Expo West trade show ends at 4:00pm on Sunday. But anxious exhibitors began fleeing
the floor as early as 3:15. They started breaking down their booths, madly handing out
remaining samples to overloaded trick-or-treaters carrying five bags of goodies, and packing
up their literature. I, of course, was still trying to conduct some honest journalism, so I
stuck with the plan until closing time. But by 3:45 -- still fiften minutes until exhibitors
were supposed to close their booths -- I was stepping over booth parts like walking through a
minefield.
Collapsible towers littered the hallways,
piles of spilled grain samples were scattered about, and vendors were already stacking crates.
The Bob's Red Mill booth actually tied a large red ribbon around the entire 20 x 20 booth,
like some kind of police crime scene. The message was clear: Don't you dare step into this
space!
I wonder, why was everybody in such a hurry to
leave? Perhaps three days of eating lunch by gorging on decidedly NON-healthy food served at
the expo made people feel a bit queasy. Good food was so hard to find that I actually ended up
snarfing down a BBQ chicken sandwich on white bread. (Yuck!) Don't tell anybody, though. I'm
ashamed of the whole episode.
Can't wait for next year!
As crazy as this all sounds, I can't for next year's show. I have a once-a-year tobacco
habit known as, "Inhaling at Expo West" and I can't wait to breathe more cigarette
smoke into my lungs at next year's show.
And yet,
despite all the drawbacks, the show is still a real treat. I enjoy meeting the new vendors and
finding out about new products that I can pass along to readers. All the smoke, the taxis, the
disorganized Super Shuttle company and the crap products don't bring me down when I'm at
Expo West.
But maybe that's because I'm high on raw
cacao and maca the whole time, too. Superfoods really do work, and I found a chocolate bar
made of 92% cacao. Plus, I munched on Incan Berries the whole time, and brought my own organic
macadamia nuts from www.SouthKonaMacs.com (which wasn't at the show). I drank an egg protein
breakfast by snarfing down cups of Jay Robb's new egg protein product (www.JayRobb.com) and
even ate some dried yacon tuber over at Navitas Naturals.
So I can't complain, actually. I still had a good time, and I'm glad the show
exists. If you're in the health industry, don't miss it. Just try not to inhale.
organicconsumers.org
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