Diet Industry Officials Defend Their Programs
Officials of the diet industry, which has been under scrutiny by a House subcommittee, defended their programs Monday, insisting they are medically supervised and based on sound nutritional guidelines.
“There are no quick fixes, no effortless miracle cures,” said Allen Stewart, president of The Diet Center Inc., of Rexburg, Ida. “Obesity is a chronic, recurring illness. One that cannot be cured, but one that . . . can be controlled through education, changes in lifestyle and food selection and preparation techniques.”
The diet industry has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the House Small Business subcommittee on regulation, business opportunities and energy, chaired by Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The panel has been exploring whether more federal regulation is needed for a largely unregulated industry, either through the Federal Trade Commission, which monitors advertising practices, or the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates many diet products.
“The diet industry has got to change,” Wyden said. “It’s high time some standards were put in place.”
Representatives from the $33-billion-a-year industry further stressed the dangers of obesity, calling it one of the country’s most serious health hazards. Responsible weight-loss programs are one effective way to attack it, said the officials from Weight Watchers Inc., Optifast, Nutri/System, Medifast, and Physicians Weight Loss Centers, among others.
“We hope that the committee’s quite valid concerns will not obscure the very real health problems associated with excessive weight, or create the false perception that all weight-loss programs are identical, when there are vast differences in approach,” said Ellen Destray, vice president of operations for Jenny Craig International, of Carlsbad, Calif. Nevertheless, Wyden said he was very upset over misleading advertising with exaggerated claims that frequently promised quick weight loss but failed to “tell people about the risks associated with dieting.”
Wyden cited several examples of advertisements that touted cases of extreme weight loss, which he criticized for not being representative of the losses experienced by the average dieter.
One Jenny Craig ad shows a woman claiming to have lost 95 pounds in about six months, an unusually fast weight loss. Destray conceded that such an ad was not indicative of the average progress of most clients in the program.
“We have shown varying amounts of weight loss in our ads . . ., “ Destray said. “We want to appeal to a variety of consumers. We do appeal to all different levels of weight loss.”
Wyden also said he was concerned about inadequate medical supervision and the apparent lack of control over many of the physicians who administer the diets.
For example, Wyden said, the Physicians Weight Loss Center only has a physician on duty three or four hours a week.
“There are no standards for training, and there is no effort to tell people about the risks associated with dieting,” Wyden said.
But Charles E. Sekeres, president of Physicians Weight Loss Centers, said the program was designed by a physician and a nutritionist, and that every center was required to have a licensed physician on its staff.
“It is the responsibility of these physicians to determine whether a potential client may enroll in our program,” he said.
Sandy Beach, of Clearwater, Fla., the former owner of a Formu-3 franchise, told the subcommittee that the company’s emphasis was on sales and promotion, rather than on the progress of its clients.
“I was harassed to produce a bigger bottom line,” she said.
But an official from the Canton, Ohio-based company, which was not invited to testify, contended in a telephone interview that Beach was “a disgruntled franchisee who had business problems” and whose franchise “was terminated” by the corporation.
