Healthy Weight Loss Advice: 10 Things The Weight Loss Companies Don’t Want You To Know Part 4

Misleading Facts #’s 5 & 6

The blatant use of misleading statements continue to pour out of the weight loss industry. Here’s the opinion and warnings from health care professionals close to the situation on two very common misleading statements…

Don’t believe everything you hear.
Mark Nutritionals Inc., a Texas-based company selling the Body Solutions Evening Weight Formula, advertised on the radio that you could shed unwanted pounds in your sleep without having to change your diet or exercise.

In 2002, it was heard on more than 650 radio stations with over 700 endorsers in 110 U.S. cities, making it one of the largest radio advertisers in the country.

“They picked DJs to endorse the product who commanded and controlled their audience,” says Tom Carter, senior attorney in the FTC’s southwest regional office in Dallas, who successfully brought suit against Mark Nutritionals, as did the states of Illinois, Texas and Pennsylvania.

“It wasn’t just misleading advertising, it was false,” adds Carter, who just settled the case against the company and its two principal owners. In only three years of operation, Mark Nutritionals amassed $155 million in revenue, most of it lost to the millions of consumers who believed you could “lose weight while you sleep.” Mark Nutritionals is no longer operational.

Natural’ or ‘herbal’ doesn’t guarantee safety.
“We don’t have a good definition of ‘natural,’ ” laments Dr. Blackburn of the Harvard Medical School.

Consumers assume that because a product is natural, it couldn’t possibly be harmful, says a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman. “It’s a buyer-beware industry. Consumers don’t realize this,” she explains.

The manufacturer is responsible for ensuring the safety of their products before putting them out in the marketplace. Until the FDA receives evidence that a product is harmful, the manufacturers are free to put their products out in the marketplace.

One “natural” diet supplement in the news lately is ephedra. It’s an amphetamine-like diet supplement derived from the Chinese herb ma huang and has been found to constrict the blood vessels, speed the heart rate and raise blood pressure.

The FDA received more than 16,000 complaints of adverse reactions to the herb, which is found in more than 200 dietary supplements sold over the counter. It has been linked to 155 deaths from heart attacks and strokes. Hundreds of ephedra victims have filed suit.
Recently, after more than six years of study, the FDA announced plans to ban the “fat-burning” herb ephedra, declaring it a hazard even for healthy adults.

But ephedra is not the only “natural” product on the FDA’s watch list. It has issued warnings of “possible health hazards” against herb-supplement products containing chaparral, comfrey, willow bark and wormwood. Additional items on the watch list include supplements and so-called dieter’s teas that contain senna, cascara, aloe, buckthorn and other plant-derived laxatives.

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