Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle site Goop is doing consumers a disservice with its health products, an advertising watchdog group says.
In a complaint sent to two California district attorneys this week, the nonprofit Truth in Advertising, also known as TINA, says it conducted an investigation into Goop’s “inappropriate health claims” and “deceptive marketing” tactics, and it is calling on the lawmakers to make the site stop.
The group says it found 50 instances of the site promoting products that “can treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms of, or reduce the risk of developing a number of ailments, ranging from depression, anxiety, and insomnia, to infertility, uterine prolapse, and arthritis, just to name a few.”
Among the various products the group mentions as carrying “inappropriate health claims” are the vaginal jade eggs that made headlines this summer. The site promoted inserting the eggs into a woman’s vagina to balance hormones and improve sexual experiences.
“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,” Truth in Advertising executive director Bonnie Patten said in a statement. “Goop needs to stop its misleading profits-over-people marketing immediately.”
The group originally sent the letter to Goop with a deadline to change its materials. TINA said it filed a complaint because Goop had made only “limited changes,” to its marketing.
The site has has been criticized regularly for making questionable health claims in the past. In June, Goop removed a claim about “energy-balancing” body stickers after a NASA expert publicly debunked the theory in a Gizmodo article.
In response to the official complaint, a spokesperson for Goop told E! News, “While we believe that TINA’s description of our interactions is misleading and their claims unsubstantiated and unfounded, we will continue to evaluate our products and our content and make those improvements that we believe are reasonable and necessary in the interests of our community of users.”
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