8 Ways Companies Use Pseudoscience To Sell You Stuff

5. Invent Sciencey Ingredients

At the other end of the spectrum, some advertisers will crank the Science up to 11 to make their product sound more powerful.

For example, hyaluronic acid and pentapeptides, which are often used in anti-aging creams, certainly sound very impressive, but there is little evidence to suggest that they have any kind of significant impact on wrinkle appearance when taken in this form. Same goes for drinking collagen - the chances are that your stomach acid will just destroy it.

These days, you can't move for "techno-foods", food with supposedly potent active ingredients that will put you in a glowing state of health. Include an ingredient such as Bifidus digestivum or L. casei "imunitass" (neither of which, by the way, really mean anything), and you can hike the price to 30 times that of the non-technobabble version.

This "Sciencifying" of consumer products is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the medicalisation of everyday life.