AVOID DIET SCAMS (12-2003)

It's late at night on the weekend and you've been watching your favorite re-run on cable TV.
You're about ready to flip the channel when your attention is caught by a man in a white lab coat
telling you that you can lose all those extra pounds and inches without having to go on a diet or
do any exercise whatsoever. 

You're skeptical, but you decide to give him a few moments to prove his point before turning the
channel. It turns out to be one of those program-length commercials, or infomercials, so it takes
the guy a little while to provide you with the proof you're waiting for.

All he does is spout some mumbo-jumbo about metabolism and how this little pill is guaranteed
to speed it up so that you don't have to do anything to lose weight other than to buy his product.
Then he brings in one fit-and-trim person after another, all claiming that they lost X number of
pounds by taking this pill. 

Yes, it's the dreaded testimonial portion of the program. All the infomercials have them. But if
you look carefully, right below the before-and-after images of someone who has lost 150 pounds
without dieting or exercising, you will notice the fine print: "Results not typical."

Well, you might start to wonder at this point, if all these great results being displayed on the
screen are not typical, then what is typical? What can you actually expect if you called the toll-
free number and forked over your hard-earned money for this stuff?

The Federal Trade Commission wants you to know the answer to that question. So they have
published a new guide to give consumers a clue to the various dieting scams and exaggerated
claims that are ubiquitous on the tube. Its goal is to prevent consumers from wasting their money,
and to get newspapers and broadcasters to reject advertisements that may be deceptive or
misleading.

What are some of the deceptive, misleading, or downright false claims made by some
advertisers?

Lose weight without dieting or exercise! Eat your way to a trimmer you! Block fat before your
body can absorb it! Now you can eat pie and cookies again even while on a low-carb diet! Just
wear this belt and get a trimmer figure!

Some commercials tout pills laced with the extract from grapefruit, calling it a "fat burner."
Others tell you that you don't have to avoid those fattening carbohydrates if you take a "carb
blocker" pill before each meal.

But guess what. That's right; none of these claims are legitimate. All those products with
exaggerated claims will lose you nothing but your cash.

Some of them may rob you of a considerable quantity of cash in one fell swoop. You know that
commercial that asks, "When is a diet pill worth 153 dollars a bottle"? And then it answers the
question by saying, "when it really works."

The pills contain a combination of aspirin, caffeine, and ephedra. Ephedra has been implicated in
numerous deaths and near deaths because it increases stress on the heart. In some people, it can
cause palpitations, nervousness, and heart arrhythmias.

And, although there is some evidence to indicate that this combination of drugs, known as the
stack, can produce weight loss in some people, the high price charged for this product is totally
unwarranted, since you can buy the same thing in many health food stores for far less.

The advice of the FTC is the same advice that real weight loss experts have always given. That is
to eat right and exercise. There are no panaceas when it comes to losing weight. We only wish
there were.