[Theodores]

Even if you had some genuine snake oil with every step of the manufacturing process documented, with the product protected by the best anti-tamper technology and legal department, nobody today would buy snake oil. You could make it organic, fair trade and everything, but, due to the snake oil salesmen of times past, selling an adulterated product that contained no snake oil, the market for legitimate snake oil is not exactly massive.

Hence the problem with snake oil is not the product, it is how it has been sold.

There are many other products that are a whisker away from the same fate. For example, olive oil. Can anyone say they have had the pure and unadulterated stuff? There is no way of knowing unless you have pressed your own olives.

It is the same deal with honey. None of that honey in the supermarket could possibly be legitimate, at the price it is at.