Saturday, November 28, 2009

Everything you wanted to know about Zayn Al-Athat


A Lebanese scientist who does not want to be identified sent me this information on Zayn Al-Athat (the Lebanese quack/alleged crook who peddles his miraculous products in infomercials on Lebanese TV stations): "Regarding your inquiry about Zayn Athat. I remembered that around 2003-2004, Zayn and his brother contacted...at AUB to test some of his products. He needed a proof that they were natural to export them outside the Arab world. I remember the two medium plastic bags with some herbs. My boss was skeptical at that time since two bags are not representative of all his products. What if the samples he presented are different than what he is selling? I think with the samples he provided they had lots of natural ingredients but he wanted a written certificate from...where up to my knowledge she did not give it to him. At that time I had to leave to USA for my PhD but I can contact her and ask her for more details. I also heard (a rumor or fact) that there was a lawsuit against him in south of Lebanon where Randa Berri personally obstructed it. Apparently it is the only natural product that had the permission from ministry of health, No wonder?(the minister of health being a member in Amal movement). Another rumor...Later on if you visit his website he claimed that he learned it from his grandfather. Additional products you have not mentioned: a cream that hinders hair growth (esp for women) and a cream that turns the hair blonde (as a chemist I don't know how this can happen from natural products)...I don't know how far you want to go with this, but your posts made me curious. I went to his website and tried to check the ingredients it struck me that most of the products had a coded ingredient that is common to most of his products where only numbers differ, He calls it henkel formula, sometime it is writtem henkel formul other time it is written Henkil formul (no consistency at all). I 've never heard of it I checked with my roommate (she is a synthetic chemist, I am a physical chemist, so she knows better than me) she also did not hear about it, I googled it and came up with this website: for Henkel company specialized in cosmetics and known commercial brand names, definitely not natural. Here are two examples of many (anti dandruff shampoo, please read ingredients in english and then read what it says in arabic no match at all (salicylic I don't know salicylic what, but salycilic acid is...actually is a plant hormone and active ingredient in aspirin Aspirin) Example two: this is the slimming cream in addition to the Henkel Formula and other chemicals there is menthol (it is usually in medicines for throat irritation, and products like Halls, so it feels like burning and may be people think it is actually slimming them). I don't believe that this person is allowed to sell things to people as natural." (Laure provided the pictures posted).