Two separate, but similar suits have been filed…

A report from entertainment and celebrity justice website TMZ.Com details that the “Biggest Loser” trainer is facing two lawsuits filed on back-to-back days that are nearly identical, according to the report.
 
Jillian Michaels Sued – Biggest Loser Trainer Served Twice.

The first lawsuit makes this claim: “According to documents filed in L.A. County Superior Court, the Jillian Michaels Maximum Strength Calorie Control dietary supplement is “worthless.”"  

…On the second action, “Stephanie Creer claims in her class action lawsuit she has struggled with weight loss her entire life and was “intrigued” into purchasing the product Calorie Control because Michaels was endorsing it,” the report notes. 

See more on her claims against the reality TV starlet and trainer here. TMZ writes: “The suit is almost a verbatim copy” of the first suit mentioned above, but they were filed by two different attorneys.

Looking at the product label, I can’t say I’m particularly impressed by it. It’s loaded to the gills with caffeine, but there’s little else that appears to be of value for appetite suppression. For what it’s worth, Paul reviewed Michaels’ “Exreme Maximum Strength Fat Burner,” and wasn’t too impressed by it, either.

Click here to read the court doc filed in the first case.  Naturally, Michaels’ insists she’ll prevail.  Perhaps she will, although I doubt the publicity will do much to promote sales of her product line.

In a way… From GlaxoSmithKline’s site for Alli:

break a bad pattern of eating

alli helps you change your approach to food by teaching you to recognize emotional eating and dismantle your external hunger triggers.  With the alli plan, you’ll learn how to control your cravings and still enjoy the foods you love. You’ll establish a healthier approach to food.

As Douglas Farrago, MD of the Placebo Journal put it:

The new slogan for the Alli diet plan goes like:

It’s called mindless eating. See how you can control it with Alli.

For those that don’t know how the drug works (fat absorption), if you are not mindful and overdo the fat in your diet you will, well, smudge yourself. So I guess this truly is a truth in advertising. Be mindful of what you eat or the next time you reach for the pork chops across the table it may look like you sat on a brownie when you change your draws later on. Okay, I think Larry the Cable Guy came up with that joke first.

Yeah, I guess the threat of “anal leakage*” will teach you to “dismantle your external hunger triggers” and “control your cravings” pretty quickly. But – at least in my mind – this isn’t exactly an ideal approach to the problem.

(h/t Placebo Journal Blog)

*GlaxoSmithKline delicately refers to this as a “treatment effect” on their consumer site.

You know the rest of the saying, of course.

What amazes me, however, is the number of people who apparently DON’T know it.  ‘Take this recent FTC case, against the marketers of “Chinese Green Diet Tea” and the “Bio-Slim Patch,” for example.

Continue Reading »

I was just over at the GNC web site, browsing through their list of popular new weight loss products when I came across Lipo 6 Black Hers. Since I’ve already completed a Lipo 6 Black review, I thought I’d take a quick look at the “just for women” version to see if it confirmed what I suspected…

… that it’s a “just-as-expensive-but-slightly-watered-down” version of the original formula. In the midst of my investigation, I reviewed the list of ingredients and while doing so, the “warning” label. Preceding the obligatory and standard warnings that accompany any stimulant-based product were these words…

“WARNING: NOT FOR USE BY SISSY GIRLS. NOT TO BE USED BY ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 21 OR THE UNDEDICATED AND/OR WEAK-HEARTED. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO EXPERIENCE EXTREME UNDERGROUND FAT-DESTROYING STIMULANTS, DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT.”

Continue Reading »

It’s a good thing I shave my head. Seriously. Because every time I see Kevin Trudeau on television I am seized by a powerful and compelling desire to tear my hair out. Alas, with my locks so closely shorn, all I can do instead is grit my teeth in frustration and plan my next workout in earnest.

Anyhow, I digress. Let me explain how this all came about…

Continue Reading »

And I don’t mean the pink mystery-meat made famous by Hormel, either.  It’s the e-mail kind… for weight loss products, in particular. According to this report on Psych Central:

Have you ever wondered who actually buys anything advertised via spam emails?

It turns out that when it comes to weight loss spam, the answer is simple — young adults.

New research has found that 41 percent of college students with weight problems opened and read spam e-mail advertising weight loss products.

The researchers found that those with weight problems were three times more likely to open/read and also three times more likely to purchase weight loss products from this spam e-mail, compared to those without weight problem. The study also found that increased psychological stress was associated with an increase in purchases of these weight loss products advertised in spam e-mail.

According to a related report in the NYT, Dr. Fogel was pretty surprised by the results:

“I was shocked by the results,” said Dr. Fogel, whose research focuses on the Internet and consumer behavior. “Even among those with no weight problems, 5.2 percent bought something. It may be that young adults are hypersensitive to weight issues and they think, ‘this can’t hurt.’ ”

Continue Reading »

Tara Parker-Pope has an appropriately skeptical post in the NYT about those Reebok “Easy Tone” shoes… here’s the money quote:

But the claim that the shoes offer muscle toning is backed by a single study involving just five people, not published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. In that study, done at the University of Delaware, five women walked on a treadmill for 500 steps wearing either the EasyTone or another Reebok walking shoe, and while barefoot. Using sensors that measure muscle activity, the researchers showed that wearing the EasyTone worked gluteal muscles an average of 28 percent more than regular walking shoes. Hamstring and calf muscles worked 11 percent harder.

Continue Reading »

I love commercials for fitness products… they come up with the darndest things, sometimes.  Take this “Crunchless Abs” ad, for example…

Now, the exercises don’t look half bad, from a noob perspective (there’s only so much you can accomplish with these types of bodyweight exercises), but the thing that made me guffaw was the “research” presented at approx. 16 seconds in.  It’s a paper entitled “Muscle Utilization During Standard Crunches Compared to new Abdominal Exercise Method” published in something called, “The Journal of Research.”

The Journal of Reseach???  There’s no such thing!  Scientific journal titles typically provide some idea of the subject matter covered within the pages, such as “Journal of Pathology”, “World Journal of Gastroenterology”, or – more simply – “Cell”.  The marketers are trying to pretend that this program has been “officially” studied and the data published in a peer-reviewed journal.

This should tell you something about the value of the product.  If it were really all it was cracked up to be, the marketers wouldn’t feel the need to create fake “scientific studies” to sell it.

This time, it’s the “Health Man” and associates, who were peddling the “7 Day Miracle Cleanse Program.”

The marketers of the 7 Day Miracle Cleanse Program, a purported herbal colon-cleansing program, have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they falsely claimed that their program would cure cancer and other serious diseases. Among other things, the settlements broadly ban them from involvement in future infomercials for any product, service, or program, except for infomercials for informational publications, and from advertising health-related products in the future in any medium.

According to the FTC’s complaint, one of the defendants, Paris DeAguero, appeared as “the Health Man” in nationally televised infomercials, claiming that his program cured him within weeks of skin and breast cancer without the need for surgery or other treatments. Advertising for the program allegedly claimed that it also effectively prevented, treated, and cured many other diseases, including AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and arthritis, and that it safely caused rapid and substantial weight loss. The defendants allegedly also claimed that their product, Parasine 2, was “clinically proven” to eliminate parasites and worms, including tapeworms. The FTC alleged that their claims were false or unsupported by reliable scientific studies, in violation of the FTC Act.

Continue Reading »

The Nov. 2 issue of TIME magazine has a great article on the latest report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity: “Sweet Spot: How Sugary Cereal Makers Target Kids.”

Rudd researchers just finished crunching Nielsen and comScore data — which track television and Internet marketing — to figure out exactly how much cereal advertising kids see. The result: obesity researchers for the first time have hard data proving that the least healthy cereals are the ones marketed most aggressively to children.

…The Rudd findings, which will be detailed at CerealFacts.org in time for the Obesity Society’s annual meeting in Washington on Oct. 26, show that each year preschoolers (ages 2 to 5) see an average of 507 cereal ads that are designed to appeal to kids. The report also details how sugary-cereal makers are interacting with young consumers online through video games like Lucky Charms Charmed Life and Cinnamon Toast Crunch Swirl. 

Continue Reading »

Introducing the RipTFusion, “the revolutionary torso enhancing undershirt.”

And no, I don’t believe in Spanx for wimmin, either.  What’s the point in pretending to have a better body than you really do? If you need “body shaping” undergarments to look good in clothes, then it’s time to hit the gym.

We haven’t visited Ye Olde Superfruit controversies in a while, so I thought I’d link to this recent Men’s Health article on acai by Bryan Smith.

The upshot, say experts, is that no one fruit or berry, no matter what its ORAC score, fires an antioxidant silver bullet. “What I tell people is that you need to eat all these types of compounds, in all different colors,” says Navindra P. Seeram, Ph. D., who studies the bioactivity of berries and other plants at the University of Rhode Island.

“Açai berries are wonderful, tasty, delightful fruit,” says Blumberg, “but I have never seen any report demonstrating that they are any better than apples and oranges and cranberries and blueberries and so on. Where is the evidence?”

Given the undertow of controversy pulling on açai, it might seem surprising that we’re so willing to brave the current for more. But for psychologist Ditto, it’s an all-too-familiar phenomenon among American consumers.

“There’s this long history of ‘just drink this and all your problems will be solved,’ ” he says. “That’s why these superfruit berries like açai are so successful. They’re sort of exotic, and they have the trappings of something that sounds good for you. It’s easy. It’s painless. So people tend to be kind of gullible — ‘Sure, I’ll give that a try.’ And they’ll spend a lot of money for it.”

Ouchie!  It’s a long (3 page) article, but Smith did his homework… it’s a good read.

As noted before, Chris Woolston’s ”Healthy Skeptic” column in the LA Times is pretty good.  Here he is on the subject of diet patches…

Some day, scientists might develop an effective weight-loss patch, says Dr. Howard Eisenson, executive director of the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, N.C. But, to his mind, that day is probably still far off. The patches on the market today “are beyond ridiculous,” he says. “The more hyperbolic the claims, the more people can quickly dismiss the product.”

Eisenson says there’s no evidence that bladderwrack, a common ingredient in weight loss patches, can encourage weight loss or suppress appetite. The seaweed hasn’t been thoroughly tested orally, let alone through the skin, he says.

So far, no diet patch has passed muster in a published, peer-reviewed study, says Dr. Michael Steelman, past president of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians.

Continue Reading »

My girlfriend and I were both stricken by the darn flu virus this week. Not surprising then, that we spent a good chunk of time huddled feverishly in blankets, sipping NeoCitran and watching T.V.

At one point during a commercial break, I became alarmed and had to scrabbled feverishly for my thermometer. What I  had just witnessed convinced me that I had descended into a state of delirium brought on by an upward-surging of my temperature. Surely I was seeing things? Drifting in and out of consciousness? Perhaps hovering in an altered state of consciousness, trapped somewhere between fever-inspired dreams and reality?

Nope.

Apparently, Kellog’s Fruit Loops are now an even more healthful way to start the morning, thanks to added fiber. Yep, it’s true. Fruit Loops are nutritious. Don’t believe me? See for yourself…

Paul has written extensively about various underhanded tricks that supplement companies use to manipulate the trust of their customers… in fact, he’s written an entire booklet about it, called “Dirty Rotten Tricks” (if you haven’t downloaded it yet, you should.  It’s excellent!).

As noted in the booklet (as well as in this video), one of the most common online scams is the so-called “free-trial” offer, wherein the supplement marketer charges only a small shipping and handling fee for a full month’s supply of the product.  It looks like a great deal… but there’s a catch.  One of the ”Terms and Conditions” you ”agree” to when you accept the free trial offer is enrollment in an ”autoship” program. Unless you cancel the “agreement” within a relatively short period after ordering the free trial, you’re on the hook.  Needless to state, a LOT of people never read the “Terms and Conditions” before signing up, and are shocked/angry to discover they’re receiving product shipments – and credit card charges – they didn’t expect (and often can’t stop).

Continue Reading »

Remember this?  Looks like the so-called “Smart Choices” labelling system is drawing critics with teeth.

Raising the stakes in the battle over nutritional claims for packaged foods, the Connecticut attorney general said on Wednesday that he was investigating a national labeling campaign that promotes products like Froot Loops and mayonnaise as nutritionally smart choices.

In letters to Kellogg’s, General Mills and PepsiCo, the attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, said he was concerned that the program, called Smart Choices, was “overly simplistic, inaccurate and ultimately misleading.” The three companies are among several food giants that participate in the program.

In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Blumenthal said he had discussed his investigation with attorneys general from other states and several had expressed interest in joining his effort. In other prominent consumer protection cases, states have worked together to pursue companies or industries, including cigarette makers and subprime lenders, over charges of deceptive marketing.

“As a matter of common sense, these sugar-laden or fat-saturated products seem very questionable as so-called ‘Smart Choices’ nutritionally,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “We’re ratcheting up pressure for truthful answers to these issues.”

The Connecticut investigation will seek to determine if the labeling campaign violates the state’s consumer protection law, which bars misleading or false product claims, he added.

Personally, I’d be delighted to see Mr. Blumenthal roast the industry over a sloooow fire for this one.  Stay tuned…

Evidently it’s “truth or consequences”…

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.

…the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

LOL – if the FTC follows through, maybe this will put a damper on some of the more outrageous and deceptive ad practices.  We’ll see…

It probably is. 

Although this lawsuit was filed back in May, it just made it across my radar screen… and it’s too good an illustration of this principle to pass up.

Claim to boost testosterone meets class-action lawsuit
Posted by Hugo Ottolenghi

The company says that its product will boost testosterone levels by 10,000%. The plaintiffs says the product is snake oil marked up to $70 a package. So begins a class-action lawsuit filed in California superior court May 6. The suit says that Musclemeds makes false advertising claims about Arimatest and that the product creates a false result when tested.

Scott J. Ferrell of Call Jensen & Ferrell of Newport Beach, Calif., represents two California men plus others who would qualify for class-action status. The suit seeks “to recover millions of dollars generated by defendants via the false and misleading claims.”

Continue Reading »

Paul sent me a link to this YouTube vid from skeptic, author and professor Michael Shermer.  No, it has nothing to do with supps, diet, exercise or health per se… but it IS relevant to those subjects.  Basically, the vid is about the kinds of questions people need to ask themselves when confronted by claims… so the mental steps Dr. Shermer discusses are quite applicable to the claims made in supp ads and other health-related info you find on the internet.

It’s a tad long, but worth every minute.  Enjoy!

Not too long ago, I received a query on the “Fat Loss Revealed” forum about quercetin. 

Article in 9/09 Men’s Journal suggests “Quercetin is the best energy supplement ever–research is now suggesting it works so well, it’s certain to get banned”.

Uh-huh.  I was politely skeptical, since - despite certain advertising claims - the existing research on quercetin and exercise just isn’t that stellar… for example, quercetin ingestion by athletes,

• does not protect against exercise-induced oxidative stress and inflammation
• does not affect ratings of perceived exertion
• does not enhance plasma antioxidant capacity or oxidative damage
• does not alter the production of inflammatory cytokines

On the flip side, there’s some positive animal data, along with a study on untrained individuals, but truth is, the picture isn’t nearly as glowing as the ads (and magazine “advertorials”) would have us believe.

Continue Reading »