So you want to get whiter?

(First of 3-part series)

Are you part of the statistic?  According to an international survey, sales of whitening products flooding the market is highest in the Philippines among all Asian countries.  And in the Philippines, among all females who buy beauty products (who doesn’t?) 50% say they buy whitening beauty products.  Yup.  Many, if not most, Filipinas want to be “whiter”.  Many are possibly obsessed with the idea — not realizing the physiology behind being a member of the “brown race” — as the Chinese are yellow, the Africans, black and the Aryans, white. 

What with American actresses idolized by Hollywood fans the world over or Kris Aquino and Lucy Torres promoting that white is indeed a very attractive and head-turning quality and that, yes, even Filipinas can become “whiter”?  In fairness to Kris (or maybe even Lucy) she told me that she was glad she’d turn down one offer after another to endorse these whitening pill brands because, well, “I’m already white, so it isn’t credible to say I became whiter because of some product”.  Well said, Krissy. It is the smartest thing for celebrities to wear their sunglasses while the brand owners or agencies blind them with the millions of pesos they are paid to endorse.  And then wear the eyeglasses to read between the lines — or find out what you don’t get to read because the brands don’t tell you the truth.  A bottle of whitening pills cost an average of P1,500 per bottle of 30 pills — good for a month for a daily intake of one capsule.  Because you can’t overdose on food supplements some would probably want to get whiter sooner so they take as much as 2 or 3 capsules a day.  That’s P3,000 – P4,500/month.  So you want to get poorer by becoming whiter?  It’s your money.  But you have to make sure you swallow what the bottles say you’re taking in.  So hold on, and read on.

First of all, we’re brown. It really will be an uphill climb (with weights strapped on the ankles) for brown people to become white. Dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon Dra. MaryJane Valdecanas of the ZEN Institute says there should be a correction in terms, “You can’t say whitening.  You should say it is lightening.  Look at the lightest part of  skin on your body (armpits or bikini line) and that is the lightest you can expect to become, the natural way”.  But many Filipinas still want to believe they can become Kris or Lucy.  And this is the very foundation from where small business empires peddling food supplements have risen — the Third World countries where consumers are gullible, consumerism is, for all practical purposes, dead and government offices are corruptible. More on that later. 

In September 2007 the brand MET Tathione presented to me a complainant we will call alias Jane.  Jane wanted to get ‘whiter’. She ordered and bought the product Vaniderm from a Home TV Shopping channel. She consumed 4 bottles of Vaniderm before seeking desperate help from a dermatologist.  Upon investigation, we verified the authenticity of the circumstances.  While taking the pills daily Jane developed growths that erupted all over her face — like huge acne — which she never had before. 

It so happened that Jane went to a dermatologist who happens to be a consultant for MET Tathione, the closest rival in sales of the Lucida DS brand, sister brand of Vaniderm.  Both Lucida DS and Vaniderm are produced by the company United Shelter.  Because we wanted an unbiased study on what could have caused the eruptions on Jane’s face, we bought other samples of both vaniderma and MET in a leading drugstore and had it tested at The Philippine Institute of Pure and Applied Chemistry, a BFAD accredited lab affiliated and found on the Ateneo de Manila University grounds.  In September 2007, the PIPAC results showed MET Tathione passing on its claim of 500 mg glutathione content. The Vaniderm bottle showed only a little over 8 mg glutathione against its claim of 500 mg. 

The studies were inconclusive on what could have caused the eruptions on Jane’s face.  Even the MET consultant admitted, “Nothing on the label or the lack of glutathione should have caused those eruptions”.  As with laboratories, they won’t find something you aren’t looking for”, Dra. Raquel David of the White Beauty Derm Clinic said.   So if you don’t know what to look for, you won’t find it.  But what they did prove — that Vaniderm may be advertising false claims and selling substandard products — saw the birth of a whole new issue.  Substandard food supplement products — particularly glutathione-based capsules sold at exorbitant prices preying on desperately-seeking brown Filipinas — abound in the Philippine market.

 And thus began a string of evidence and the exposés that is the gateway to a whole world of corruption in a country where consumerism is, for all practical purposes, dead.  (To be continued)