Public Is Aware of Diet Frauds
Billed as the beginning of a crackdown on diet programs, the Federal Trade Commission’s recent charges against Optifast, Ultrafast and Medifast liquid diet programs are actually just the most recent of such government actions.
Before the liquids, there were Fibre Trim, Fat-Magnet diet pills, the Ultimate Solution Diet Program, Dream Away diet pills, Le Patch, La Creme, even magic glasses to make food look unappealing.
Still, the stuff keeps coming--different product, same promise, same eager customers. It’s like easy money: Against their better judgment, victims turn right from one that’s banned to another offer.
But the FTC has a new wrinkle. Instead of emphasizing the dangers of the quick-loss, very low-calorie diets (VLCDs), agency criticism now focuses on the fact that dieters often regain the weight when they go off the diet. This, says Richard Kelly in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, despite promoters’ assertions that “they’ve found a way to deal with (that), and this is the last diet you’ll need.”
These must be thin regulators. Anyone who has battled weight is not surprised to regain it, and they don’t blame the diet for their relapse.
People spend a ton of money on losing weight--well more than $30 billion a year. Lots more probably could: The FTC estimates that 35 million people are overweight.
There’s also lots of “help” available, much of it flying right in the face of logic. Dream Away pills promised to sleep the fat away. Something called La Creme would “melt fatty deposits” when applied under layers of plastic food wrap. Chinese magic weight-loss earrings did God knows what, and Fat-Magnet Pills released thousands of tiny magnetic particles to attract, trap and flush fat particles “right out of your body.”
Some products were pseudo-medicines, resembling real medicines enough to be credible. Le Patch stuck on the skin like a seasickness disk, supposedly releasing an appetite suppressant. Starch blockers, impressively high-tech-sounding, promised (shades of tiny magnets) to inhibit absorption of carbohydrates.
A bigger problem yet, some therapies actually did something. Doses of guar gum, supposed to swell up in the stomach and provide a full feeling, could also swell up in the esophagus and choke the dieter.
Government agencies try to tackle some of this. The FDA moves, if slowly, against dangerous foods and drugs: It recently stopped the distribution of diet drugs containing guar gum and will ban 110 ineffective diet aid ingredients in six months. The FTC moves against false advertising, if infrequently, having found an average of only 1 1/4 diet claims a year worth challenging from 1926 to 1990.
In the wake of congressional hearings last year on the diet industry, both agencies promise more vigilance. Given this climate, the industry has formed a trade group, the American Weight Management Institute, whose members--naturally those with high stakes in the field--are already urging that diet plans provide a high “service component,” including post-diet weight management. “People should be told that taking it off and keeping it off are two different things,” says President Patricia Bailey; companies “should have programs that take you through the process.”
One might still ask whether the public needs the same amount of protection through all parts of the process and against all programs.
Really far-out promotion--tiny magnets, fat-melting creams--don’t seem worth much time. Although clearly false advertising, they’re not very dangerous, and a reasonable person would suspect their falsehood. Besides, prosecution isn’t very effective: As with get-rich-quick schemes, another diet pops up for each that is knocked down.
Expert protection is most needed with products whose legitimacy most people can’t judge (the diet patch, the starch-blockers) or whose dangers they can’t anticipate (the guar gum, the liquid protein). How many people know, for example, of the reported dangers of losing weight too fast, including increased risk of gallstones (ironically, a risk of obesity as well).
Some folks would rather that regulators go after these dangers than the danger of gaining it all back, whether they took it off with Optifast or with tiny magnets. Anyone drawn to a $2,000 liquid diet program, including weigh-ins and clinic visits, is sophisticated enough to know that the effects aren’t guaranteed forever, any more than hair stylings or face lifts. At least, as the FTC acknowledges, many programs teach “refeeding” and a proper post-diet “new attitude.”
It’s not enough, says the FTC: Those promising lasting benefit need statistical proof that most customers get it. “When they say ‘Our people are successful,’ ” Kelly says, they should also say “how many keep the weight off.” They should also provide a warning that “for many dieters, weight loss is only temporary.”
Well, maybe, but it does seem obvious: People may be fat, but they’re not stupid. Experts on the risks of refeeding, they know it’s up to them.
