I don’t like the Daily Mail. There are a number of reasons. There’s their support for the fascists prior to the second world war. There’s their campaign against the MMR vaccine which led to a major public health problem. And there’s the general nastiness of their columnists. But I am also a bit worried that if I look at some of the pictures of very young female celebrities that they have on their sidebar all the time I might end up on the sex offenders register.
So I was ready to be very skeptical indeed when they came up with a font page news story about how you can give yourself a facelift from the contents of your fridge.
In fact it wasn’t actually that bad, certainly not by the Mail’s standards. The list was rather predictable. Use fruit as a source of fruit acid, use salt as an exfoliating scrub etc. These are the sorts of things people post every day on various places on the internet.
Most people most of the time are pretty robust in reality. We can cope with much worse abuses of the skin than you might imagine. So although there is the potential for risk if you go putting food on your face, it is a really really low risk. The kinds of considerations those of us who create and manufacture cosmetic products don’t really apply to someone who is just messing around in their kitchen. When you weigh up the risks of launching a product that you at least hope is going to sell in the millions you have to be a lot more careful. A one in a million chance is one you have to take seriously.
Which brings me to my beef with this article. It is all very well for most people to give these kinds of things a try. But when you are putting it on the front of a best selling newspaper you really need to apply the same one in a million thinking that a cosmetic product developer needs to use. We are not talking about a beauty blog that is read by a few hundred people here. There really should have been a warning that food is in fact quite rich in microbes which could be very damaging to the skin of some people. As I say, it is a pretty low chance but when you have a platform as wide as the Daily Mail’s you should take it into account. I saw no warnings at all when I read the article in the newspaper. I hope it doesn’t prove as bad as their ignorant coverage of the MMR story and that nobody comes to any harm.
In the meantime, just remember to be careful if you decide to follow the Daily Mail’s suggestions on your skincare. Or anything else, come to that.
So I don’t like the Daily Mail, but once in a while I will go to their website to look at pictures of celebrities who have lost weight because it’s so hard to lose weight, darn it!
I hate to admit it, but it is rather addictive isn’t it.