6 Trendy Health Foods That Are Being Sold (To Idiots)

6 Drink This Stupid Frog Juice, Genius

THINGS THAT ARE GREAT IN SMOOTHIES:

-Fruit

-Milk

-Chocolate

-Kale or something

-Smaller smoothies that include the above ingredients

THINGS THAT ARE NOT GREAT IN SMOOTHIES:

-An entire frog

Despite the centuries-old smoothie laws established by the Blendo Concordant of 1262, a number of places in Peru are selling frog smoothies, claiming that it has a number of health benefits. The frog is bludgeoned to death in front of the customer, then skinned and dropped into a blender, because the universe has run entirely out of fucks to give these days. Add some carrots, honey, and maca root to the mix, and you've got yourself a fresh glass of Jesus Christ Why.

Vendors claim that it ameliorates anemia, bronchitis, low sex drive, and presumably horrific childhood memories of playing Battletoads, claims that are echoed in an oddly similar manner by some of the customers. It seems like something so gross must be healthy, because we've found several images of people drinking frog juice and absolutely nobody is having a good time. Maybe they just now realized that a skinned frog would produce a muck-colored smoothie, and the green you're looking at is from extra kale.

But much to the surprise of nobody, there is no evidence that frog juice is healthy at all. According to Tomy Villanueva, dean of the Medical College Of Lima, "The frog juice has not met the standards of the FDA to be mentioned as medicine." This makes sense to us, since these miracle health frogs are actually an endangered species, instead of the immortal overlords of the planet.

5 Detox Your Baby, Dumbass

The detox industry is pretty big right now, so big that "detoxing" is recognized by our spellchecker, and that makes us very sad. It's not hard to convince people that their body is full of toxins. We spend all day inhaling automobile exhaust and stuffing garbage into our mouths; scientists have confirmed that human DNA is more closely related to Oscar The Grouch than chimpanzees. But according to more than one website, the problem is even worse than we thought: We should be detoxing not only ourselves but our kids.

One company, Dherbs, not to be confused with DERPS, has developed a liquid cleanse for children, to combat all of the horrible junk we're feeding our kids that's making them fat and ruining their sleep; it also improves their circulatory system and increases their concentration. And if you thought those claims were birdbrained, you should take a look at the Djehuty liquid cleanse, sold by DHealthStore.com (we're sensing a bit of a pattern here). This product claims to counteract the natural toxicity of most wombs, as well as the doctor-prescribed "harmful and poisonous pharmaceutical drugs" that are the "reason why so many babies are born with hepatitis and jaundice." Holy shit, how have we all managed to survive this long?

We probably don't need to explain this, but there isn't actually an epidemic of baby hepatitis. In fact, there isn't any sort of detox problem at all, anywhere. According to Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at Exeter, "There are two types of detox: One is respectable and the other isn't." One kind involves a major medical intervention for drug or alcohol addicts. The other involves shoving a hose up your butt to wash out your colon like it's a John Deere lawnmower. We'll let you guess which is which.

As it turns out, the human body is really good at getting rid of harmful shit; we have numerous organs that literally do nothing but that, like our kidneys and liver. And if there's anyone who really doesn't need toxins removed, it's a fresh-squeezed baby. Djehuty, on the other hand, claims the womb is so toxic from trash like prenatal vitamins and processed foods that newborns enter the world tired and with black circles under their eyes. They can literally think of no other reason why a newborn baby would be woozy after slaloming out of a giant's vagina.

4 Have Some Butter In Your Coffee, You Maniac

Hold on, what? Since when is adding butter to anything a healthy step? Isn't randomly adding butter to things the first step toward becoming the Michelin Man, but dead?

Inexplicably, butter coffee has been touted as an actual health product, and not a desperate cry for help from food addicts. A product line known as Bulletproof Coffee was introduced by a "biohacker" and entrepreneur known as Dave Asprey, who claims that it reduces weight, suppresses appetite, and helps you think more clearly. His line of coffee uses only unsalted, grass-fed butter; a couple tablespoons of an easily digestible fat; and coffee beans that go through a special process to remove their mycotoxins, which is a certain kind of hazardous mold that grows on coffee beans. All told, the drink is 450 calories, which seems like a lot, and it is because HOLY SHIT YOU PUT BUTTER IN YOUR COFFEE.

Your first instinct should be to think, "There's no way that's healthy," but as it turns out, you're actually completely right. Asprey claims that the drink helps you think more clearly, but carbohydrates are the thing that help your brain, and there isn't any of that in butter coffee (also, sorry to all the now-morons who went on the Atkins diet).

As for the mycotoxins, those are actually a thing, but it's also a thing that every coffee roaster on Earth has known about basically forever. Wet-processing, which removes almost all mycotoxins, has been a standard step in the coffee-making process for years, and it's quite heavily regulated. In fact, one study found that you could drink 200 cups of coffee in a single day, and there wouldn't be any mycotoxin-related side effects; you'd just have to pee so hard your bladder would rocket out of you and into the toilet. Unfortunately, even if the fact that butter coffee isn't good for you becomes common knowledge, it's likely that people will keep drinking it anyway, because it's fucking fatty caffeine.

3 Drink A Cup Of Bone Broth, You Sucker

We've already been adding buckets of sugar to our coffee for years, and now we're dumping butter into it. What's next, taking coffee and just dumping pure beef stock into it?

Nah, we're just kidding on that one. They don't add any coffee. It's just a cup of broth.

Brodo, a new food place in New York City, is selling people cups of broth en masse, made with chicken, turkey, or beef bones. It sort of makes sense as a health food, since people have been eating chicken soup to feel better for decades, but like Kim Jong Un, broth has mysteriously been acquiring magical properties over the years. Broth contains collagen and gelatin, both of which can strengthen hair and help skin age more slowly. Naturally, eating these things means that you automatically gain their health benefits, the same way you drink a cap of shampoo every morning in the shower.

As you have probably realized by now, any food that claims to cure all of your ailments is invariably full of shit. Drinking broth does have some health benefits, like recharging your body after a workout, but drinking collagen and gelatin doesn't mean that it'll automatically attach itself to your hair and work its magic; the stomach will break it down and turn it into all-purpose amino acids, much like any other food ever. On top of that, many of the vitamins and minerals found in broth start to weaken when you heat it, which you will recognize as an essential step of cooking basically anything ever. Basically, broth has a couple good uses, but you should mainly be using it to make a pot roast taste better, instead of drinking a cup of it every afternoon at $4.50 a pop.

If there's any good thing to take from this entry, it's that people are at least cooking their own food for once. Broth is pretty easy to make at home; just throw some animal bones, vegetables, and herbs into water and wait around until it becomes delicious. It's pretty cheap, too, since butchers don't have much use for animal bones and will let them go for a pretty low price. Actually, we think we figured out why Brodo is selling broth; charging $4.50 for a food that's comically easy and cheap to make is a pretty ingenious business model.

2 Have Some $6 Asparagus Water, You Failure

Just ... just look at this. Jesus Christ.

This last-minute-high-school-science-project of a drink is a Whole Foods product, and wow, that is the most literal interpretation of anything we've ever seen. And even though Whole Foods is well known at this point for their ridiculous price markups, to take something like this and charge $6 for it takes a truly legendary pair of all-organic balls.

This asparagus water was discovered by Marielle Wakim, associate editor at Los Angeles Magazine, in a California Whole Foods. She snapped a picture and put it on Instagram, and hilarity proceeded to ensue as the Internet went nuts over what was apparently known as "Asparagus Watergate," which is the only clever use of the "-gate" suffix in scandal history. After a while, Whole Foods responded by saying that the item had only ever made it to a single store and has since been removed.

Said a spokeswoman for the company, "It was meant to be water with the essence of vegetables and/or mushrooms to be used as broth (similar to a bone broth), which are typically made over a long period of time soaking in water. It was made incorrectly and has since been removed." We get the suspicion, though, that the asparagus water actually was made correctly, and this was just a test to see exactly how dumb Whole Foods shoppers could possibly be.

1 Drink Charcoal Juice, You Fucking Fool

Are you a bad parent eager for a psyche-shattering Christmas present that'll scar your hell-spawn for life? Well, here's some charcoal juice. Santa says drink your sins!

Companies like LuliTonix and Juice Generation have been taking normal, non-terrifying juices like lemonade and adding what's known as "activated charcoal," which sounds like charcoal whose detonation countdown has begun. These folks claim that these drinks can do all sorts of things, from curing your hangover to brightening your skin; they've apparently been inspired by the beauty industry, which has been including charcoal in some products for its (surprisingly real) cleansing properties.

You'd think that a substance primarily known for being lit on fire would turn your insides into a delicious steak, but the truth is a lot more boring: Eating activated charcoal doesn't do much of anything at all. It's been used in digestive supplements and biscuits for hundreds of years, so we'd know by now if it was particularly poisonous or not. In fact, it's sort of the opposite of poisonous: Because it absorbs even better than fancy clothes on a hyperactive child, doctors will often use it to treat poison in the stomach. On the flip side, it's possible that charcoal will absorb some of those sweet nutrients you're trying to get more of, and you'll ultimately piss them out.

When asked about the dubious health benefits of charcoal juice, manufacturer Juice Generation said, "If you have questions that skew in that direction, please consult medical professionals." We're not top-tier business people in the realm of health foods, but we feel like consulting medical professionals was your job, guys.

You can see Jim write angrily about video games at GeekNifty.com, or write angrily about everything else on his Twitter (@thesounddefense).

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