How Goop and Infowars are selling you the exact same wellness products
Call it the horseshoe theory of lifestyle products, but Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness company, Goop, sells many of the same items as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars store, Quartz reports. Sure, they're packaged a little differently — one man's "Sun Potion" is another man's "Wake Up America Immune Support Blend Coffee" — but the same alternative, pseudoscience-y ingredients make up both (in this case, cordyceps mushrooms).
It's not exactly the kind of common ground you would expect to find — Paltrow's Goop is "a favorite of Hollywood celebrities and others who can afford things like $25 'activated cashews,'" Quartz points out, while Infowars "is a dark corner of the American right, heavy on guns, light on government intervention, and still very mad at Obama." Still, both agree an ancient Peruvian root belonging to the broccoli family can be used as an aphrodisiac — only at Goop, it is sold as "Sex Dust" by a company called Moon Juice, while at Infowars it is, of course, "Super Male Vitality."
Goop and Infowars also mutually support the powers of eyebright herb, colloidal silver, and bacopa, as well as many other roots, fungi, and powders. Learn more about what they are, and how they're packaged to rich hippies and conspiracy theorists alike, at Quartz.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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