Already put a post about this in payday lending, the rise of the Instant Cash Loan machines.
This must be a prime target for a Shonky.
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One of our staff saw this advertised on the back of a bus today. Thoughts?
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There are some papers about this saffron standardised extract but they all appear to rely on self-reporting by participants on any perceived results, & small sample sizes of number of participants.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965229917300821#!
There are other papers on Saffron and the next link in it’s bibliography lists a few of those:
plus from the WebMD site:
https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-844/saffron
All in all inconclusive and needs more research but might hold promise.
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Saffron holds the record for the most expensive spice and the one most imitated. Cheating has been going on for 1000’s of years, in the middle ages in some places, the penalty for adulterating saffron was death! A little extreme perhaps.
Here we have another attempt to cash in on the mystique of saffron, which in my opinion is already highly overrated. There are much cheaper ways to get the colour and the flavour is so subtle that it is dominated very quickly. You could put $50 worth of saffron in a dish and few would notice unless there was nothing much else.
Regardless of the efficacy as a health remedy (pretty doubtful) how would you know if you were buying a bottle of water coloured with alizarin yellow and a little erothrycin?
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On the webpage, if one clicks read more below ‘Supported by Clinical trials’, a number of references are quoted. These may make (un)interesting reading if one can get them and has time.
Might be worth following up to see if these references are folly or fact.
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I couldn’t find out who did the study or who reviewed it.
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@phb & @syncretic The first link in my post above is to the paper that is referenced. The abstract lists all the names of those who did the study:
Graham Kell (a) Amanda Rao (b) Gavin Beccaria (a) Paul Clayton © Antonio Manuel Inarejos-García (d) Marin Prodanov (e)
a University of Southern Queensland, School of Psychology and Counselling, Toowoomba, Australia
b RDC Clinical, Brisbane, Australia
c Institute of Food, Brain and Behaviour, Oxford, UK
d Pharmactive Biotech Products S.L. Parque Científico de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
e Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Alimentación CIAL (CEI CSIC-UAM), C/Nicolás Cabrera, 9, E-28049 Madrid, Spain
It also listed the limitations of the study as: “The main weaknesses of this investigation were found in the self-reporting nature of both the screening and the testing.”
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There are a number of papers which are referenced on the website (use scroll arrows to scroll between them). A quick look at the abstracts indicates only one paper is about motional testing (the one in @grahroll post) . The others are about other attributes/hypotheses such as anti-cancer properties.
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I would like to make a joint Shonky nomination, but it doesn’t fit well with the Spot a Shonky web page.
My nominees are:
- PageUp recruitment, for its appalling handling of being hacked; and
- Alastair MacGibbon, Australia’s National Cyber Security Advisor - for ‘blaming decent laws’, implying that UK breach laws are too tough rather than Australian laws being too lax.
We still have no real idea about the full extent of the breach, as I write six weeks after its initial notification (and having just received another notification from a recruiter).
Based upon this debacle, I hereby nominate this pair for this year’s Shonkys.
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Thanks for the nomination, I’ll be sure flag it for consideration 
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Fair Dinkum?
So should the “Paul Newman’s” salad dressing include a little bit of Paul in every bottle? And you can also get a little bit of Jamie Oliver, Gabriel Gateau or many other ingredients if you look carefully!
I think the marketing guru’s would suggest not. So it is perfectly Ok to also leave the cherries or bananas out of the contents too!
Honesty - a label is just an impression. It does not need to be factual must be in the hand book of advertising as first principles.
In “Maple Flavoured Syrup” the real product is “ Flavoured Syrup”. This should be in bold with a smaller subscript to follow saying “ maple flavouring added”.
How do you single out any one product and not give the Industry a shonkey for all the errors and lies that are perpetuated in product labeling?
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In the past, CHOICE has given Shonkys to entire industries. There’s nothing saying it won’t happen again either. However, if there’s a partiuclarly bad or frivolous example that makes a point, we’d love to hear it (and thanks for the contributions so far).
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Indeed - not entirely sure what your point is. I stand by my view that the label is advertising and shouldn’t mislead - I’d scoff rather heartily at anyone who believed otherwise. I did mention there were likely plenty of examples otherwise.
Not with the apostrophe there it shouldn’t.
I see now that you write in jest 
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Spotted any lemons lately?
Nominate a Shonky and you could WIN membership for a year. Plus, we’ll announce a ‘People’s Shonky’ during the this year’s annual CHOICE Shonky Awards.
Enter in the comments below or visit http://spotashonky.choice.com.au to find full terms, conditions and prize details. We’ll also consider previous entries to this thread.
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I think this one has to qualify…
https://choice.community/t/zippay-payment-was-surcharged-7/15935?u=phbriggs2000
If this can be substantiated (which is appears it can from the reply on Google Reviews), it is a real shonky one.
Zippay is sold to those who may not be able to afford things and unable to have sufficient credit from banks or others providers. The additional 7% hit at the cash register (compared to <2% for a credit card) is the least that our fellow Aussies can afford and is an excessive charge that should be a warning to others.
Imagining paying a surcharge of say $70 at the cash resister for a $1000 refrigerator, just so that you can purchase it. hhhhmmmm!
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Then in 2018 it’s going to be a real fight between the banks, superannuation and politics (and yes, politics IS an industry)
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So it does not get lost,
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Our SpotAShonky winners for the first week!
Add your comments to the thread below for chance to win this week (previous comments will be considered too).
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Aldi’s Chocolate Energy Drink similar to Milo called NRG Maxx has 4.5 stars (with in small print about when made up as directed) and like Milo has lots of sugar.
Picture is from “Aldi Mum” Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/aldimum/photos
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