A Traveler’s Open Letter to Airborne Supplements

Oh Airborne, you nickel-sized fruit-flavored tablets that dissolve in water and promised to keep me healthy on long flights; you shrewdly marketed vitamins developed by a school teacher who, you say, studied the benefits of herbal therapies used in Eastern Medicine. I saw you displayed near the other vitamins in Trader Joe’s, in your neon-hued boxes. You called out to me and my yearning to stay healthy. I purchased you and drank you up, looking the other way when you left an unappealing algae-like film on the inside of my glass.

I took comfort in your claims that you would help ward off colds when all those around me were sneezing and wheezing and coughing.

And now, for $23 million, you have settled a lawsuit alleging false advertising.

Sure, you have admitted no wrongdoing. Yes, you maintain that you are an “immune booster.”

But this changes things. I will never feel the same way about you again. The green algae-like film you leave is no longer the only thing about you I find unappealing.

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