The key to glowing skin that's in every kitchen cupboard?

Baking Soda is the king of reinvention, and one of their latest incarnations has put this kitchen product square in the middle of at-home skin care.

Initially a seldom used product that non-the-less could be found in every kitchen cupboard, a household could buy one box of Arm & Hammer baking soda and have it last for years on end. In order to increase the frequency of sales, marketing geniuses began to promote the product as a way to keep your refrigerator odor-free. Sales sky-rocketed. 

Then, once every refrigerator in America had an open box of baking soda in it, sales flat-lined again. The marketing force then decided to advertise the product as a way to keep your freezer odor-free too, and sales again shot through the roof. 

Baking soda is a very inexpensive product, that can be utilized for a plethora of uses. In order to keep the company profitable, Arm & Hammer's marketing team has to constantly evolve and promote the different ways that baking soda can be useful to a wide variety of people.  

One of their most recent forays is currently being advertised amongst the glossy pages of In Style magazine, as a cheap, miraculous skin care product.

Apparently Secret #33 amongst the countless ways that Baking Soda can benefit you, is that Arm & Hammer Baking Soda can allow you to have healthy-looking glowing skin. By exfoliating your entire face and body with Arm & Hammer, you can allegedly remove your dead skin-cells and expose the healthier skin underneath, courtesy of baking soda. 

Their on-line description of this practice is as follows:

Are you a fan of the self-tan? Before applying products that give you a ‘glow’, give yourself an invigorating, yet gentle, facial and body scrub with ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda. Removing dead skin cells will leave your skin soft and smooth, perfect before application. Make a paste of 3 parts ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda to 1 part water. Rub in a gentle circular motion to exfoliate the skin. Rinse clean.

If anyone has tried using Arm & Hammer Baking Soda as an exfoliator,  please share your findings. From personal experience, baking soda is not abrasive enough to physically slough off skin cells, and all that will occur is a messy shower... with a need to buy* more baking soda for the kitchen.

*Ding, ding! The real reason Arm & Hammer wants you to cover your body with their product is revealed...!