Stores with endless shelves of supposedly effective herbal supplements could soon be ginsenging a different tune. It will come as no surprise to most health practitioners that many of the supplements sold at your local pharmacy aren’t likely to do you much good. But it might surprise even the most skeptical observer to learn that the ingredients on the labels often bear little or no resemblance to what’s actually in the bottle. Supplements are like snake oil that contains no snake and no oil. According to the NYT, the New York state attorney general’s office is going after several large retailers for selling deliberately misleading products. The move comes after tests on top-selling herbal supplements found “that four out of five of the products did not contain any of the herbs on their labels.” These companies target you when you’re feeling your worst, and it’s about time they were punished for making promises that almost always turn out to be a complete load of ginkgo biloba (which after this investigation, we know is often “little more than powdered radish, houseplants and wheat — despite a claim on the label that the product was wheat and gluten-free.”)