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.

Do you want to learn more about how to lose weight and keep it off? I’ve just finished a new ebook on how you can get lasting weight loss results, “The 10 Step Permanent Weight Loss Formula”.

Download your FREE ebook here: Healthy Weight Loss Program

For more on healthy weight loss programs and products go to www.metamorphicweightloss.com

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Misleading Fact #4

Continuing my report on what the diet companies don’t want you to know, I look at the use of phrase “government aproved” when describing a particular weight loss plan. Just because the government allows it on the market doesn’t mean it’s safe or does what it claims.

There’s a misperception that the government wouldn’t allow a product to be marketed if it were bad for you, says Cleland. “People think these products have been pre-approved by the government before allowing it to be sold. That’s not the case.”

The majority of diet products on the market today are dietary supplements. Under the DSHEA, or Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act passed by Congress in 1994, the law doesn’t require the manufacturers of dietary supplements to demonstrate that their product is safe or efficacious before it goes on the market.

“It’s a totally post-market surveillance system. In terms of law enforcement, there are too many of them and not enough of us,” says Cleland.

In the last 10 years, the FTC has brought over 100 cases against manufacturers for false and misleading claims and advertising.

“Frankly,” laments Cleland, “it’s just a drop in the bucket of the cases we could have brought”. He says that despite the unprecedented level of FTC enforcement, misleading and deceptive ads continue to saturate the market.

I think the moral of this story is obvious… DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

Do you want to learn more about how to lose weight and keep it off? I’ve just finished a new ebook on how you can get lasting weight loss results, “The 10 Step Permanent Weight Loss Formula”.

Download your FREE ebook here: Healthy Weight Loss Program

For more on healthy weight loss programs and products go to www.metamorphicweightloss.com

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Misleading Facts 2 & 3

Today, I’m going to talk about 2 more concepts the weight loss companies don’t want you to know about - “doctor endorsed” and “client testimonials”.

‘Scientifically proven’ or ‘doctor-endorsed’ doesn’t mean it works. Many products claim to be tested at “respected,” “major” or “leading” medical centers or universities. Yet, rarely is the information provided on where the study was conducted, by whom or where it was published to help consumers assess the validity of such claims.

Plus, when a product claims to be “recommended” or “approved” or “discovered” by a health professional, what does that really mean?

“Often there’s no scientific evidence behind Dr. X’s claims,” notes Dr. George Blackburn, a member of the government-sponsored Partnership for Healthy Weight Management and assistant director of nutrition medicine at the Harvard Medical School.

And often the endorsements fail to disclose that the health professional doing the recommending has a financial interest in the product, or that he or she may not have reviewed the scientific evidence. Even if it was reviewed, he or she may not have used acceptable review standards.

And, says Cleland, “The ‘professionals’ can be fictitious.”

Testimonials are not a good indicator of a product’s success either.

Common on television, in print ads and on the Internet are the “before and after” testimonials — personal accounts of success — in support of a product or service, many with before and after photographs.

“Testimonials generally provide little reliable information about what consumers can expect from using the product,” says Cleland, the assistant director of the FTC’s division of advertising practices.

Typically, in the “before” photos, the person appears with poor posture, a neutral facial expression, unkempt hair, unfashionable clothes and washed-out skin tones. The “after” photos generally are better lit. The person stands with shoulders held back, tummy tucked in, wearing smarter-looking clothes and is carefully made up, coiffed and smiling.

More than 10 percent of the testimonials reviewed by the FTC claimed an amount of weight loss that was extremely unlikely — if not impossible. The rest claimed results that occurred in a very small percentage of users, says Cleland.

Adds Dr. Blackburn: “Sometimes companies take healthy people, make them overeat and the “after” picture shown is really what the person looked like before they began overeating.

Do you want to learn more about how to lose weight and keep it off? I’ve just finished a new ebook on how you can get lasting weight loss results, “The 10 Step Permanent Weight Loss Formula”.

Download your FREE ebook here: Healthy Weight Loss Program

For more on healthy weight loss programs and products go to www.metamorphicweightloss.com

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