In a previous post regarding Basic Research and the impact that they and other supplement companies are having on the health of Americans, I pointed out that Senators from Utah have pushed through laws that have benefited a very profitable industry in their state, laws that have done nothing to help most Americans, and a lot to hurt them. I have been quite reticent to make this post. Although this issue is of remarkable importance, I think knowing that people are out to screw us tends to make us more cynical as a whole. I would like to be positive and not cynical, but the fact is, people need to hear how a small group of business people and government officials are out to get your money and they don’t care how much they hurt you to do so.
Utah: the Silicon Valley of Supplements
In case you aren’t aware, the state of Utah is referred to as the Silicon Valley of Supplements. In fact according to Brent Wilhite:
“In the state of Utah, as far as I’m aware, the supplement industry is the second-largest revenue producer behind tourism,”says Dr. Shawn Talbott, a doctor of Nutrition and Supplements in the University of Utah’s Department of Nutrition as well as the editor of supplementWatch.com.
Quite a few Utah-based companies will continue riding the wave of supplement success, not just locally or even nationally, but worldwide. Of Utah’s top 20 publicly held companies, 25 percent are in the nutritional supplement industry. All of these companies distribute their products internationally through independent distributors or health and drugstore partners. The list includes Nu Skin Enterprises, Weider Nutrition International, Nature’s Sunshine Products Inc., USANA Health Sciences and Nutraceutical Corporation. Add to that list the mass of privately owned supplement providers, and you might say Utah is providing a significant boost to nutritional supplement consumption across the globe.
Americans spent nearly $18 billion on nutritional supplements in 2002, according to the Nutrition Business Journal. And the industry continues to grow. Sales from the nutritional supplement industry have experienced a 9 percent jump from 2000, with analysts forecasting a 3 to 5 percent increase through 2008.
There is some speculation as to why Utah has grown up to be the defacto center of the worldwide supplement industry, but this reason is at the top of the list:
Politics has also played a role in Utah’s crop of supplement companies. “From a political standpoint, there’s been a lot of support in Utah for the industry for a long time,” notes Baty. “Sen. Hatch has been a longtime supporter of the supplement industry and was actually proactively and heavily involved in the DSHEA [Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act] in 1994. You have to believe that was helpful in getting some supplement companies to establish their roots here,” he affirms.
Politicians are Selling Your Wellbeing
But as we are discovering more and more every day, politics is a business just like the supplement business. If a politician wants to get elected and take full advantage of all of the benefits we are giving politicians (make no mistake, the benefits that a politician gets are ridiculous, it is the next best thing to being a rockstar or celebrity and we all know it), they need to get money and how they get it doesn’t really matter to them as long as they follow the campaign donation laws. Why we would think that a politician from Utah for example could care less about the millions of people in Florida, or California, or New York or Texas is beyond me. I don’t think that they do. We generally think of politicians as people who go into office to make the world a better place. That simply isn’t the case (at least not in my experience). They are generally self aggrandizing egomaniacs looking to be given the best job on earth. So, should you be surprised that almost 50% of all of Rep. Jason Chaffetz campaign contributions in 2009? Matt Canham of the Salt Lake Tribune discovered exactly this:
Rep. Jason Chaffetz likes the dietary supplement industry and his latest campaign finance report shows the feeling is mutual.
Since the beginning of July, Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, collected about $30,500 from supplement makers and distributors, with about half coming from a company that has repeatedly locked horns with federal regulators.
The congressman received the maximum contribution — $2,400 — from six people involved in the leadership of Basic Research, just three weeks after the Salt Lake City-based company filed suit against the Federal Trade Commission over an advertising dispute.
Chaffetz said he is aware of the legal fight, but has not gotten involved and no one from Basic Research has asked him to.
“I’m vaguely familiar with it,” the House freshman said. “I haven’t read through any documents, I’ve just heard some of the anecdotal stories.”
He heard those stories because one of the principal members of the company is a neighbor. Chaffetz said that neighbor, Evan Bybee, set up the fund-raiser.
Calls to Basic Research on Monday were returned by a spokesman representing the company.
“Basic Research has no political giving program and company leadership was unaware of these contributions,” the spokesman said in a statement. “These individuals were making personal donations to the congressman.”
But Chaffetz’s campaign disclosure indicates that six of the company executives donated in the same amount on the same day — Sept. 29.
It would stretch even the most naive person’s credulity to believe that Basic Research was unaware of the 6 identical contributions on the same day, but don’t worry, they don’t have to tell you the truth. Their money giving habits are part of the public record for the most part and they don’t have to tell you why they are giving large amounts of money to the government. Speaking of stretching credulity, I am surprised that Rep Chavetz would claim that he is only ‘vaguely familiar’ with Basic Research’s legal problems with the FTC, but he really doesn’t have to tell us about his awareness of massive issues in his constituency. As well, the government of Utah doesn’t have to tell you why it loves the dietary supplement industry.
The executives at Basic Research and their family members have donated to Utah Republicans in the past, giving Sen. Orrin Hatch money in 2006 and contributing heavily to John Swallow’s unsuccessful bids to unseat Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson in 2002 and 2004.
A few of them gave to Chaffetz during his 2008 campaign, but not nearly in the amounts they contributed this go around. In all, Basic Research employees gave $14,400 to his campaign, nearly 17 percent of his total contributions since July.
Chaffetz attributes the donations to his friendship with Bybee and his strong ties to the supplement industry, which is heavily concentrated in the 3rd Congressional District.
“I talk their language,” he said. “Orrin Hatch has really been the superstar with that industry and I think they understand that they need continued help in the years to come.”
Hatch helped draft the federal regulations overseeing supplements and his son is a lobbyist for the industry. But Chaffetz has his own ties. He is the co-chairman of the dietary supplement caucus in Congress. Previously, he worked for more than a decade as a spokesman for Nu Skin, one of the state’s most prominent supplement makers.
Don’t think that there is any conflict of interest with the senator having worked for one of these donating companies before becoming a senator, which he is essentially working for now that he is a Senator. He had to work somewhere after all, and this just helps him ’speak their language’. In fact, that isn’t nearly as disturbing as the fact that many politicians end up going to work as high paid executives in companies that their acts in the senate and congress have been specifically designed to help.
Still, even without the donations, the government of Utah would still love the supplement industry. It is the states second largest industry. They will fight to keep the dollars flowing in. All of this is how your government works every day, in every state (different states have different interests, so they end up trading their votes with others for whatever interests them). For everyone who doesn’t live in Utah, they will try to keep your pockets open and the dollars flowing out of them. So, what did they do to help themselves to your money? Well, they drafted the DSHEA which removed all supplements from oversight by the Food and Drug Administration, which is to say that the government has no insight over supplements at all.
The DSHEA [Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act]
At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a bad thing. If supplements get treated like drugs, those people who want to take their vitamins might not be able to because the government might be influenced by the drug companies and restrict your access to them. This is at least what the supporters of the DSHEA want you to believe and you know, it might be true. The drug companies are no different from the supplement companies after all, they are just trying to get the money out of your pockets too and they don’t like competition, and don’t think that just because they are in the business of manufacturing things that help you live longer or healthier that they care about your health. It is unlikely that they do, they do care about their bottom line though. The thing is, the drafters of the DSHEA wanted you to believe that they were protecting your access to supplements. If you like or love supplements, if you actually believe in alternative medicine, you quite likely believe that the DSHEA is there to protect you. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If supplements work for specific purposes, that is fantastic. If they don’t then we are wasting money and potentially our health in taking them (you don’t want to take pills that don’t help you, the only outcome is possibly negative, and they could be keeping you from taking things that could help you). It isn’t hard to test to see if something does work. It is the obligation of the company making the claim typically to prove their claims. If I say that my product does x, I need to prove it. That is true for almost every product in the US. I would love to find out that supplements are helpful, that some herbs can help me live longer or have more energy. I would love that, but as long as the DSHEA exists you will never find that out. This is because the DSHEA was simply a way to open the floodgates to unscrupulous con artists and snake oil salespeople who want to make more ridiculous claims about your health and sell you products. According to the FDA:
Under DSHEA, a firm is responsible for determining that the dietary supplements it manufactures or distributes are safe and that any representations or claims made about them are substantiated by adequate evidence to show that they are not false or misleading. This means that dietary supplements do not need approval from FDA before they are marketed.
Yes, we have turned all responsibility for safety and efficacy claims over to the manufacturers…
By law (DSHEA), the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring that its dietary supplement products are safe before they are marketed. Unlike drug products that must be proven safe and effective for their intended use before marketing, there are no provisions in the law for FDA to “approve” dietary supplements for safety or effectiveness before they reach the consumer. Under DSHEA, once the product is marketed, FDA has the responsibility for showing that a dietary supplement is “unsafe,” before it can take action to restrict the product’s use or removal from the marketplace.
There is no provision in the law for companies to prove that their products are safe or effective before we start taking them…. In fact, they don’t even have to disclose the evidence that they have to back up the claims they are making!!!
Do manufacturers or distributors of dietary supplements have to tell FDA or consumers what evidence they have about their product’s safety or what evidence they have to back up the claims they are making for them?
No, except for rules described above that govern “new dietary ingredients,” there is no provision under any law or regulation that FDA enforces that requires a firm to disclose to FDA or consumers the information they have about the safety or purported benefits of their dietary supplement products.
Clearly the fox is guarding the hen house here. The real losers? Well all of us, but most specifically the people who actually believe in alternative medicine and the benefits of supplements. These companies are taking over 18 BILLION DOLLARS (that was back in 2003)!!! and in return they are adding nothing to the research of these supplements!! Think about it. It is quite likely that alternative medicine has a lot of truth in it. There is no doubt that botanical extracts have been found to be the foundation of many medicines. History has shown us that there is tremendous wisdom in these natural methods. So, now, when we stand on the threshold of proving the value of many of these methods (and the lack of value of others ineffective methods), which would only take a small portion of the revenues these companies are taking from these products, the people who have faith in these products are being robbed of the evidence to support them. It is criminal, but hey, I did warn you, your future, your health, your children’s future and health, in the US they are for sale. At least your future isn’t going cheap, the people who are buying it have crazy money!!
What Triggered This Discussion
Why am I bringing up this 16 year old travesty of American justice today? This morning I was looking online and I noticed that John Stossel was commenting on twitter, about the front page article of The Wall Street Journal. The gist of this article is that lawyers (and their families) from law firms that specialize in shareholder litigation are giving the maximum donation to politicians who are local officials with influence over the selection of legal counsel for shareholder lawsuits. The lawyers are actually giving money to county treasurers in a state not their own. According to the Wall Street Journal:
A Wall Street Journal analysis documented the extent of campaign giving by plaintiffs’ law firms specializing in shareholder litigation. It found that 25 leading firms, their lawyers and family members contributed a total of more than $21 million in the past decade to state-level candidates and party funds, as well as to national-party groups that work to elect state officials. Less than 40% went to candidates within the law firms’ home states.
Labaton Sucharow was among the donation leaders. The law firm, its lawyers and their family members made $612,000 in campaign contributions in 24 states outside its New York home base in the decade.
Some lawyers say widespread political giving by plaintiffs’ law firms, especially outside their home states and near the time when counsel are chosen, is evidence of a corrosive pay-to-play culture in the securities-litigation industry.
Yep, it is that vile. Whether or not people are actually influenced by these donations is immaterial. The fact that the system allows this complete and utter APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY is the problem. The fact that we have to depend on the internal motivations of these politicians to protect us from downright criminality is the problem. If you don’t see the connection with this and the supplements:
Most plaintiffs’ lawyers say they give simply to support like-minded officials. “We make sizable contributions to candidates we believe support investor causes,” said Stanley Bernstein, of the New York firm of Bernstein Liebhard LLP.
So here the money is going to politicians who support the causes of the few who are gaining the money at the cost of the rest of us. The special interest groups who are making millions are paying the politicians to create and maintain the system in which they are making money. This is true of the ‘investor causes’ as well as the DSHEA. I have no idea if the like-mined officials are supporting great legislation or not. It doesn’t matter because some times they will be supporting things that I believe in, and sometimes they won’t. Still, each time people who make money off of their decisions will be supporting their campaign. How do you think this effects government? Democracy? This is happening on all levels of government. Whatever influence these people have appears to be for sale, and even if it isn’t, it is buying campaigns.
Special Interests Groups
Don’t think it ends with paying off politicians either. These people need to keep the favorable business environment working for them. In the US there appears to be pressure to revise the DSHEA and the backlash by a small, well organized group to stop these changes is scary.
There is this group here who are asking you to Save our Supplements. They turn out to be:
a non-profit C-6 organization funded through donations from suppliers of dietary supplement products and services.
Of course, they don’t tell you who they are, but to be sure, a whole bunch of the donors are from Utah.
There is this group here who are are the Coalition to Preserve DSHEA which is made up of all of the usual suspects. If you check out the meet the Coalition page, you see the industry Association Members which is made up of six more coalitions who seek to preserve the DSHEA including the Utah Natural Products Alliance.
These are all lobby groups. They are all trying to keep unfettered access to the public market for products that don’t live up to their claims (at least in terms of scientific standards).
These small groups whip up public fear, suggesting that the government is looking to enter anyone’s house and confiscate their vitamins. They are saying that the revised legislation gives the government the right to limit the selling of your standard herbal teas… Obviously none of this is true, but we are so wary of government, and probably rightfully so, we believe these people, who are manipulating us to serve their financial needs. Again, think about how you are just a cog in these people’s machines and your needs, your health and welfare is TOTALLY immaterial to them. You think you are kindred spirits. You think that you both care equally for alternative medicine. You don’t. You believe in it as a source of healing, they believe in it as a source of revenue.
I am sick of people being duped out of their money for health products that don’t work and have no reasonable proof of working. Things are a lot worse than that. There are much worse possible outcomes (here).
I don’t take vitamins or supplements, so these companies aren’t risking my health or ripping me off. Read what Consumer Labs has to say about the industry and then ask yourself are these companies conspiring with government to put your health and your children’s health at
Unfortunately, in its latest review of multivitamins, ConsumerLab.com found defects in over 30% of the multivitamins that it selected for review. And many products exceeded tolerable upper limits for certain vitamins or minerals. Specific problems found in the multivitamin reviews include:
- Three of four popular children’s multivitamins reviewed were too high in vitamin A.
- One men’s multivitamin was contaminated with lead and another had too much folic acid — associated with more than doubling the risk of prostate cancer.
- One general multivitamin had no more than 50% of its folic acid. Another was missing 30% of its calcium.
- A senior’s, a prenatal, and a women’s multivitamin each had only 44.1%, 44.3%, and 66.1%, respectively, of their vitamin A.
- A vitamin water had 15 times its stated amount of folic acid, so drinking one bottle would exceed the tolerable limit for adults; less than half a bottle would put children over the limit.
- A pet multivitamin was contaminated with lead and another had only 46% of its vitamin A and 54.7% of its calcium.
In fact overall testing of supplements by Consumer Labs produces slightly better results:
ConsumerLab.com’s tests show that one in four supplements selected for testing lacks the promised ingredients or has other serious problems.
Ya, we don’t need any watchdogs…
It isn’t every day you get to use the word Shenanigans, but hey, without swearing it was the best word I could think of to describe the ludicrous and morally corrupt marketing for Ab Circle Pro that is being done on the internet. I was going to call this post, ‘I Hate Liars and their Lying Advice’, but then I realized it was a little too close to an earlier posting.
The thing that is annoying me most right now is the videos that Jennifer Nicole Lee is putting on YouTube. I am not sure if I can’t comment on them because they are ‘in her channel’ or if she is deleting them and re-adding them on a regular basis to clear out the comments… Either way, it is just another one of the continuing attempts by the Ab Circle Pro people to drown out the overwhelmingly negative press that their product is getting, like the Consumer Reports review:
But don’t expect weight loss results in just three minutes a day, as the advertisement claims. Our testers found that although the Ab Circle Pro does target your core abdominal muscles, the three-minute workout burns about the same amount of calories as a brisk three-minute walk. As for me, I can think of a simpler, more budget-friendly way to tone my abs and reduce my love handles: my $20.
And the video concludes:
You can save yourself a couple of hundred dollars and skip it.
Consumer reports is a pretty reliable source for information, so anyone out there who has some belief that this product will help you, now you know the truth.
Still, the Ab Circle people are trying to get you to buy their product. After removing the shocking video of Jennifer Nicole Lee honestly telling us how she really gets fit that was linked to by my earlier post about the Ab Circle (I have to be honest with you, it is one hell of an awesome and brutal workout-that woman has earned that body of hers), and the hilarious video of the CEO of the company trying out the Ab Circle Pro in the factory and nearly toppling off with the funniest scared expression on his face, I have stopped linking to the You Tube content that they put up. As well, I have stopped commenting on the videos as they either don’t approve them, or remove the video and re-add it sans negative comments…
Jennifer Nicole Lee’s Latest Video:
Still, there is a brilliantly funny video that ‘THE Jennifer Nicole Lee’ (yes, as her new first name she has an article instead of a name). I will give you the highlights of the video below (my internal monologue as I was watching this video is in blue) and provide a link, although I don’t know how long the video will be at the end of the link before being replaced with an ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-F3qLFG2cc):
The video opens with Jennifer Nicole Lee talking to the camera, standing in the gym she works out in.
JNL: So, you see all of my workouts here, but I’ve got the real secret weapon that gives the edge off my competion. Let’s go back into the parking lot and I am going to show you what I bring everywhere with me wherever I go, rain or shine. Seriously, she doesn’t keep her Ab Circle Pro in the gym where she works out all the time… WTF?!? Wait a minute, is she going outside? Is this some kind of a joke?
The camera follows her out across the parking lot to her Escalade parked at the curb. OMG! She seriously expects us to believe that she keeps a fully built Ab Circle Pro out in her car and when she is ready to do her workout, she actually goes out and gets it!? This is ridiculous. NOBODY ON EARTH WOULD DO THIS. Why isn’t the Ab Circle Pro in the gym? The gym looks pretty big and there is tons of crap lying around it, including massive truck tires, bosu balls, swedish balls, punching bags, a whole locker area stocked full of exercise crap… why wouldn’t she just have an Ab Circle in the gym???? I get it, the gym owners (and probably she herself) would be too embarrassed to have such a piece of crap in the gym. People would laugh at them.
JNL: Le’ts pop that trunk and see what we have here, this is what gives me an award winning body. This is my secret weapon that helps me fight the war on fat and win every time. I am confused, why would you have to win a war more than once? Isn’t winning the war a sort of final thing? Get a look into that, what is in my hatchback there? Wow, good thing she has an Escalade because that thing takes up her whole trunk. I hope she never needs to get groceries because she has no where to put them. Let me tell you what, I don’t travel without it, and I bring it into the gym, but I don’t like leaving it in the gym because it is too precious to me, I DON’T WANT SOMEONE TO TAKE IT. Okay, this is a joke right? Number one, you probably have hundreds of the things in your garage at home. You have so many you are probably propping up tables with them, so don’t act like you have one precious Ab Circle. The cost of manufacturing it is probably about $12 as well, so it is worth less than a single free weight. That makes me wonder though, what gym do you work out at? Is it full of thieves? What about all of that exercise crap I saw in the gym before? Why doesn’t that walk away if your Ab Circle Pro keeps walking away? Did you check the dumpster last time it went missing? I don’t want them to steal it from me. So I am going to bring this inside now and I am going to do some workouts with it. See how lightweight it is. It does look lightweight, eg CHEAP, but awkward as hell too.
She gets the Ab Circle Pro out of the back of the Escalade and carries it into the gym.
I love my Ab Circle Pro, I take it everywhere I go Thanks Dr. Suess and it really keeps me tight and toned, hits my abs in all different areas and it is so compact, convenient, I even take it to the football field sometimes when my sons go play their sports, mommy goes with it-Yah because running a few laps around the field or running up and down the stairs at the stadium are so damned inconvenient-and ummm it really does give me such an amazing burn in my abs, I whittle my middle, I carve up my core, you missed your calling as the Dr. Suess of children’s fitness writers-wheeeewww damn straight wheeewww it looks like you are carrying a wheelbarrow in front of you, not wheeling it but carrying it. It also looks like it is biting into your thighs pretty brutally and you have only walked about 20 feet. I would hate to see what you look like after carrying it further than 20 feet. You are really struggling with that thing, and you are really fit!! Wait a minute, that explains it, everyone is using the Ab Circle Pro wrong. Carry it, don’t sit on it…. & I can’t wait to show you my workout.
This whole video clip, from beginning to end (it goes on and it doesn’t get any better) is unbearably stupid. Nobody carries their fitness equipment with them to a gym. Nobody. If the gym won’t let you keep it there than get the hint, IT ISN’T AN EXERCISE DEVICE it is a cleverly marketed stamped plastic disc that is as effective as a brisk 3 minute walk. Nobody gets fit doing a 3 minute walk. It is a good start to be sure, but it isn’t going to get you a body that looks ANYTHING like Jennifer Nicole Lee’s no matter how much she claims it will.
If you think that she is seriously scared that of all of the items in that gym, the Ab Circle Pro is likely to get stolen, or that she is worried that it might, you have to seriously get your head checked. Jennifer Nicole Lee has no problem playing with the truth to make herself money. She had no problem letting people believe that she lost 80 pounds on the Ab Circle Pro. I have no idea if I can legally tell you what I think of Jennifer Nicole Lee or what she says, nor am I going to take a chance. If she would be willing to lie about the use of a product though, and she would be willing to lie about losing weight on it, why would you trust anything that this company says, especially when all other evidence, including impartial reviews point to this device being slightly more useful than getting up to change the channel on your TV. You will have to determine for yourself if you think she is lying though.
Damned Affiliate Marketers:
This brings to me some sons of bitches that I know are lying. The affiliate marketers. They are everywhere. There are at least a dozen tweets today from them. They look just like you and me, there really is no way to tell who they are. They ask questions like, ‘Does the Ab Circle Pro Work?’ and then include a link to their affiliate webpage, or ‘Get Ripped and Torn Abs’ with the same link… Sometimes you go right to the hardsell page, other times, you get a seemingly unbiased review which offers you a link to other reviews which are in fact, the hardsell page. The one that has me most pissed off today is this one: http://abcirclereviews.net/
Here is what the about me says in this free wordpress blog page:
Hi, my name is Justin Alenburg and I work in the IT industry in Mesa, AZ. Since I am a “computer guy” (that is what my wife calls me) she asked me to set up this blog for her.
So as any good husband would do to keep his beautiful wife happy… here is her blog about her favorite new machine she loves more than me (just kidding).If any one else is interested in telling their experience with the Ab Circle please feel free to leave a comment below!
I really wish this is Justin Alenburg’s real webpage for his affiliate marketing schemes and he was stupid enough to use his real name. If anyone knows Justin, drop me a line and tell me if that is he and his wife lovingly embracing in the image there on the webpage. Oh, and don’t bother trying to leave a comment, of course they don’t approve them and none of them are real anyways… He is actually pretty good at this as he even advertises one of his other affiliate marketing plans, the fatburningfurnace.com. It actually looks like someone is hijacking his comments. BRILLIANT!
That aside, this is the stupidest website I have ever seen. It reads like a commercial.
I visited my sister in Seattle last November during thanksgiving and as we sat for dinner this advert came up on the television featuring Jennifer Nicole advertising Ab Circle. I guess you must have seen the advert too. If not here is the site where you can see it:AbCirclePro.com….
I thought the worst that could happen was that I would use it for 30 days and if it does not work for me I will return it and get a full refund. So I purchased it online from there site hereand it arrived after a few days (because I paid for the expedited shipping I could hardly wait). It came with the machine itself, a nutritional guide and instructional DVD lasting 3 minutes, there are some other optional upgrades that comes with it too including a calorie-counter if you want it.
* The Ab Circle is extremely simple to set up and store, and didn’t take up a large amount of space.
* Backed by a full refund. If you are not happy with the product for any reason, you have thirty days to return it and get your money back.
The Ab Circle does work as advertised. It not only works your abs, but it also strengthens your back, shoulders and hip thanks to the patented design. It must be said that it does recommend you do other kinds of exercise as well combined with Ab Circle and eat right. Ab Circle is definitely worth trying out. It offers a free trial and if you feel it is not working for you, just simply return it. As with any exercise machine it is recommended you eat healthy (so stay away from the Twinkies). Stick to the instruction given in the Nutritional guide that comes with it (that’s all I did) and you will definitely see astonishing results!
If that isn’t offensive enough, here are some of the comments:
- i wish i had read this article before i purchased my abs machine. i purchased the ab rocker over two months ago and after steady use i had finally decided to give up on it. maybe i will give the ab circle a shot before i disregard the whole exercise thing.
- Good article, I made the right choice two months ago and bought the Ab Circle. I am glad I never purchased any other ab equipment as my results with the Ab circle have been tremendous. People are starting to comment that I must spend hours each day in the gym but I know my success is down to the wonderful Ab Circle.
- What a brilliant post, my daughter and I had been wanting to get fit, but did not have the time or money to go to the gym, and this seems to be our perfect solution!
- I wish I never found this page, I just ordered ab countour today. I will give it a try anyway but if if it doesn’t work I will try to get as much of my money back as possible on craigslist and get the Ab Circle Pro. Sounds like the real winner to me.
- It’s me again, reporting back with my experiences.So I have been using my Ab Circle for 6 weeks and WOW it really works. My tummy is flatter and my abs are a lot tighter and more toned. I’m going to continue using this ab circle machine and if the results I have gotten thus far are anything to go by I’m sure I am going to be happy in the future. -Jessica PS: Support is there 24/7 if you have any questions. I was worried at one point that they weren’t going to deliver it for weeks, but when I phoned up they were able to pinpoint exactly where my order was. Hope it is ok to share the site here. AbCirclePro.com
- thanks so much 2 everyone that has posted their true experiences. i’ve seen alot of reviews, both good & bad. my husband & i are both wanting 2 get in better shape..he just wanting 2 tone up & i’m wanting 2 both lose weight & tone up, trying 2 reconstruct my body after having 2 children one right after the other
after reading everyone’s stories my husband & i are both convinced…were going 2 purchase the ab circle pro!!
What an absolute pile of crap this website is. It probably took all of about 20 minutes to set up. The lure of the affiliate marketing world must be tremendous. There is a fortune in this. You just apply for a code, set up your websites and then include the code in your link, tweet your site and you make good money on every product sold. Hundreds of people do this, start writing fake reviews and fake comments in real reviews, trying to protect the products reputation, as they are making a mint of its sales as well, and next thing you know, we are drowning in lies and greed. Many of you affiliate marketers may be decent people who don’t have a lot of money trying to earn for your family. I am sure most of you aren’t bad people, just people trying to make a living. The thing is, you are making the world a much worse place by making egregious scams appear legitimate. I have $200 I could spend on this Ab Circle Pro and the worst thing that will happen is I will lose my pride when I end up not getting anything near six pack abs.
There are a lot of people out there, struggling to keep their heads above water. They are busy and stressed out and have no time to make their own meals. They are buying cheap fast food, not sure why they are getting fat and using their last dollars to buy an Ab Circle Pro because they are desperate and they are believing your lies about 3 minutes a day. You are taking so much from them. Their kids are going to watch their parents get taken advantage of, and the whole family may go without things they actually need, like real healthy food. Do you really want families growing up in this environment in our countries? Is this the world you want to live in? Is this the ‘Change’ you want to be?
A funny Ab Circle Tweet:
On a humorous note, I saw the funniest tweet about the Ab Circle Pro today from USER2155:
@THEJNL Hi Jen. In our college we’re all doing a newsletter and I’m going to do one on fitness tips which includes the Ab Circle Pro workout
@THEJNL Plus, if we can, we might include it in our gym. Goodbye Ab King Pro, hello Ab Circle Pro, that’s my motto. Bye XXX
What college has a newsletter that would include fitness tips from the Ab Circle Pro workout?!!? Should I begin to worry about the state of our higher education…. I am just imagining a school from one of those farces on TV where some kids start their own school, or maybe the tweet was from a ‘late night infomercial school’ and the Ab Circle Pro is an advanced degree… My favorite line is the Goodbye Ab King Pro, hello Ab Circle Pro that is my motto… OMG… I just checked out the Ab King Pro ad (which I will be doing a blog entry on shortly)… I am laughing my ass off… I have to wipe the tears out of my eyes to finish this post… If I had one of those I might have the same motto… Maybe this school is some sad 3rd world college right next to the dump and they get all of the old exercise devices that survive the recycling process… They just can’t wait until we start throwing out our Ab Circle Pros… don’t worry USER2155, judging from how many are available for resale, that won’t be long…
Ab Circle Pro and Good Morning America?!?!
Finally, earlier this month Jennifer Nicole Lee posted some tweets claiming that the ‘Ab Circle Pro’ was going to be on pronounced by Good Morning America to be the Exercise device of the year. This was supposed to happen on the morning of January 15th. I couldn’t believe this. It did seem a little impossible, and you can imagine you wouldn’t want to be anywhere around me when I feared that a mainstream, albeit pathetic news show was going to announce that this device was the exercise device of the year?!!?!?… (also, why would anyone announce anything being the best of the year on January 15th… a little late for end of the last year and a lot too early for this year). So I set my PVR and waited. Nothing. I have no idea if they are still going to make this announcement or not, and I can’t keep watching the show, so if anyone knows anything about this please drop me a line. I asked Jennifer Nicole Lee what happened, but I didn’t expect a response from her, well, because by now you know how much of a stand up person I think she is….
I am not a cynical person. In fact most people who know me would say that I was a pretty optimistic person. I am a little bit of a skeptic, true, but not a cynic. I say this because the diet and health industry has driven me to unyielding, unending cynicism. I think, I truly hope I am looking at the worst of general human commercial behavior here. From outright lies trying to profit from harmful activities by claiming they are healthy to slick marketing schemes that pitch useless advice, the abject greed at the cost of the health of fellow humans is so constant as to make even the most faithful of us lose all belief in humankind.
It is like a person has fallen in the water and is drowning and 40 people run to throw them a rope. Some ropes look stronger than others and the person in the water has to choose one. The problem for the drowning person is that maybe one or two of those ropes may actually be pulled in to safety, most of the others will just drag you around, but never get you out of the water. Some will ask you for money before they pull you out and just leave you there after you have paid. The ropes that look the strongest, those aren’t ever going to pull you to safety. The people who say it is going to be easy to pull you out of the water, they are lying, they don’t have a clue, nor a care what it would take. If rescue operations were performed this way, people wouldn’t stand for it, and not many people need rescued each year. Still, the food systems, government diet recommendations, diet industry, supplements industry, prescription drug industry and health industry are all competing to ‘throw you a line’ and most of us need this help.
Look, I don’t know if this is getting to me because of the weather, or if it is because I have just started looking into the state of this business, but what I am seeing is really bothering me. Maybe come summer I will be shaking off the greed of supplement sellers and the disturbing laziness of magazine editors with a ‘come on, it is so beautiful out, why let yourself worry about a couple of bad people’. Maybe. Still it is the middle of winter here in Vancouver and it is a little gray out and has been for months and I am sick of seeing people knowingly make the world a worse place just so they can earn several MORE million dollars.
This morning, I was getting some skim milk at 7-11 for my morning protein shake. If I can’t eat a healthy breakfast I always makes sure I get a piece of toast or a piece of fruit and a protein shake. If I don’t start my morning out right, I am guaranteed to mess up the entire day. If I get my morning right, I almost never screw up the rest of the day. So, I am buying my milk and I end up having to wait for a minute or two at the magazine stand. I figure while I am standing here, I should take a look at the magazines and see if something infuriates me. I should know better and stay away from these magazines, but for some reason I just want to make myself more angry today, sort of like when you were young and had a tooth falling out. You would keep playing with it even though it hurt, maybe because it hurt…
I Hate Men’s Health
In any case I wasn’t disappointed. Right away in the number one spot on the rack is Men’s Health. I hate Men’s Health. I used to think it was a good magazine but that was back in the 90’s when I was anything but healthy and didn’t really have much of a clue how to get healthy. In fact it was only when I was getting so annoyed at the fashion and women’s magazines for their absurd diet claims that I noticed the constant promise of FLAT ABS!! from Men’s Health (and in general how much Men’s Health began to look like a women’s beauty secret and fashion magazine). Normally accompanied with the claim that they were easy and or quick. I know that flat abs are neither easy or quick for anyone to get, so this pissed me off. Don’t promise me something that is hard and maybe even impossible and sell it as easy and quick. It only makes you look like a asshole for promising me things that you can’t deliver and me look like a loser for believing you. Really you are only doing everyone a disservice here.
Then I noticed month after month, the renewed promises of flat abs, quickly and easily. The irony of this was not lost on me as after the months passed I didn’t see many more people with flat abs, in fact, if anything I would go with the contrary. Although I must admit on magazine covers I was seeing more and more of these rare creatures, but in everyday life, they were still rather elusive. This is surprising because Men’s Health boasts a monthly circulation of an astounding 1.85 million magazines and a readership of 12 million people!! That is a few more than this blog gets to be sure, but I may be catching up to their staggering 40 million page views per months (okay, catching up might not be the right term given the substantial lead that they have, but I am thankful and appreciative of the new readers I am getting every day. Thank you!).
So, flat abs are easy and 12 million people read this issue. Of course those 12 million people have flat abs, because they picked up that issue and to reiterate, flat abs are easy and quick…. but wait, the next month’s issue also offered flat abs… Why would you need to offer more easy flat abs… I am confused… It was then that I read this quote from David Zinczenko, the editor of ‘Men’s Health Magazine’:
In survey after survey, men and women say a lean, muscular abdomen is the ultimate symbol of sex appeal.
David Zinczenko obviously didn’t miss the importance of these studies. Most people would have seen that and said:
yep, flat abs are hot. They would be great to promise people, but that would be totally unrealistic, irresponsible and unethical. After all you would have to be a total douchebag to sell people a diet based on the fact that the outcome is popular, not on any belief that it works. Instead, I will just spend my time and effort to help people start to lose weight, because that is a first step and very possible achievement, albeit it will be hard and take work.
But David Zinczenko isn’t most people. After seeing these results of these studies he figured, I will give people the Abs Diet, and he did just that. But that wasn’t enough, after seeing the remarkable marketing success of flat abs (it really is only a marketing success because no unfit people are getting flat abs from this book), he brought this offer to Men’s Health magazine (and Women’s health, but I will get into that a little later). Month after month he continues to offer the promise of flat abs, or six pack abs, easily, or quickly… Month after month circulation goes up and now it is the best selling man’s magazine on the newstands. In fact, some even more disturbing information as supplied by wikipedia includes:
Under Zinczenko’s leadership, Men’s Health has been nominated for eight National Magazine Awards. It won in the category of personal service in 2004, the first for the magazine, and for parent company Rodale. It was also named to Advertising Age’s “A List” multiple times, and to Adweek’s “Hot List.” In 2007, Capell’s Circulation Report named the magazine “Best Newsstand Performer of the Decade.” In March 2008, Adweek named Zinczenko “Editor of the Year.”
2 Magazines for the Price of One
Editor of the year… I am f@#$#ing floored!! Here I was this morning, looking at Men’s and Women’s Health magzines side by side and I am noticing something more disturbing than the monthly cry of ‘FLAT ABS’… Take a look for yourself:
Yes, this is the same magazine just packaged slightly differently for men and women!! Same tips, same flat/hard abs, some sex secrets, same tip from the book Eat This, Not That (the other book empire Zinczenko has helmed). Seriously, he is publishing 2 magazines for the price of one! This is the Editor of the Year!?!? This magazine has been nominated for 8 National Magazine Awards?!! WTF?!!? Seriously they sell the same Flat Ab Crap every month and they are winning awards with this laziness! They even have the same list of health tips each month, only changing the number. This is in both the women’s and the men’s magazine, each and every month!!?! Laziness on this level is unheard of in any other business. What, do they work a 2 hour work week!?? Do they come in and move a bunch of headlines around on the page and then go for lunch? And by the way, now that we are asking questions, how do they determine how many health tips? How about the number of sex tips? Do they use a random number generator? Do they roll dice?
Here is what I think happened… The creative director for the magazine went on vacation in 2001. He left the following image as instructions for the next magazine edition. He never returned from his vacation and was never reported missing (just for the record I am now reporting that the creative director for Men’s Health is missing, please somebody help find him). Ever since, the staff walk into his office, see the now faded magazine cover sketch on the desk and go to work. Magazines keep selling, they keep getting awards and no one cares.
To do my part to help find the creative director, I have sifted through covers of Men’s Health magazine to find when he went missing. I am concerned to have discovered it must have happened quite awhile ago. Turns out anyone can help out with this missing person conundrum by performing a google search. I have compiled a bunch of covers here, and you can see that, alas his disappearance may predate the rise of the internet as an image storage device as I cannot find the start of the activity of using the same cover design. See below:
Men’s Health Recycled Cover Controversy
Seriously the same magazine has been reissued for up to 10 years!! In fact, the very observant of you, and apparently one subscriber, has actually noticed that they don’t actually change the cover at all some months:
This issue has come up in the media and written about from several blogs. According to Gawker:
…putting the same cover lines on different magazines year after year is lazy at best, deceptive at worst. And Zinczenko’s defense that he’s merely repeating the cover lines on the newsstand version — the version of the cover that’s meant to convince someone to part with their money for whatever “New Plan” the cover’s touting — only underlines the point.
David Zinczenko’s defense to all of this is as follows:
Twenty years of Men’s Health has certainly produced several lines that have proven themselves effective at newsstand, which makes up about 20 percent of our print run. We plan to keep using the most effective marketing tools to reach the largest market we possibly can, and continue to reward readers with practical, positive, life-altering service information. And we’ll continue to break new stories as we do every issue – as reflected in these covers
So, he is just lying to us to get us to give him money so we can get the positive, life-altering service information that we wouldn’t have bought has we known what it was. Is it just me, or is he openly admitting to lying to us with that defense!! Apparently this whole controversy was cracked by Perez Hilton. You have to think that when Perez Hilton becomes the watchdog of ethical marketing in our society it is time to pull the plug!! To read more about this controversy, read here, here and here.
The Real Problem
One last thing to note. Jeff Bercovici of daily finance contacted Sid Holt, chief executive of the American Society of Magazine Editors, to find out if this behavior was acceptable to the society. Here is the response that he received:
ASME doesn’t comment on the editorial practices of its members (or nonmembers, for that matter), but everyone knows the first rule of journalism is, Tell the truth. And the second is, Make it interesting. We leave it to readers and media critics to determine when those rules have been broken.
Again, we really shouldn’t be surprised that no one cares about uneithical business practices. The government, the professions, no one. You are once again on your own. The real problem here is that you don’t own the media either. They do… You get to search and maybe find a blog that will talk about the lying in pop-culture magazines and David Zinczenko gets his magazines, books, the Today Show and Oprah….
Seriously, People we have to demand more and complain more often. Men’s Health and their ridiculous covers sell. We buy them. They are marketed very professionally, using buzzwords that apparently make us buy them but have no connection to the content within. This isn’t okay. Men’s Health magazine is a vapid, empty, worthless periodical. They can put lies on the cover and people don’t even notice because the content is meaningless. They publish over 12 billion pages of hollow advice every year. Pages that must be printed and shipped around the world. Forests are dying for this claptrap. This is just a case of excellent marketing. In fact, if you look into it, all of the awards that this magazine has received have been for marketing. David Zinczenko is a master of marketing magazines and diet books. So much so that nutritionists are listening to his tips (which are inconsistent and in some cases just plain wrong and I will tackle this issue in a future entry).
Selling False Hope
And this is why I am angry. I really don’t care if they are re-selling the same story lines on their magazine, and if they spend 2 minutes or 2 months developing their cover. What I care about is that they are selling false hope. The problem with people who sell false hope is that they think they are just taking your money. They will point out the 1% of people who actually got fit after reading their advice and say, if it worked for just 1 person than it is worth it. But it isn’t, because the 99% percent lost more than their money. They lost the belief that they can succeed. If you follow bad advice enough times, and continue to fail because of this, you will lose the belief that you can succeed. So people like David David Zinczenko are stealing your ability to succeed by giving you empty promises so he can sell magazines, something he openly admits to!
Where this goes from simply being infuriating to being alarming is that people know that he is the editor of a tremendously successful ‘Health’ magazine (after all it says health in the title), so he must be a health expert, right? Wrong. But now he is revered AS A HEALTH EXPERT and has been shown on the Today Show, Oprah Winfrey and other shows as exactly that. So we continue to reward a man who is making the world a worse, more difficult place for us unfit people, a person who repeatedly promises us an easy six pack, and we reward him because his marketing skills are making him rich.
The world doesn’t have to be this way. If we demand more they will give it to us. If we stop flocking to buy their lazy output, their mind bogglingly formulaic drivel, they will actually put in a real day at work.
What We Can Do
We have to stand up and call people liars when they are. Flat abs aren’t easy and anyone who says that they are and that they have a simple way to get them is a liar (don’t confuse saying something simply, such as ‘eat less and workout a lot’ with a simple action, because eating less and working out a lot is anything but simple). We have to stop confusing good marketers with health experts (as well as experts in other industries) and we have to stop rewarding people who take from us, even if they do it very effectively. Write to TV shows that confuse expert marketers with health experts, expert trainers with endocrinologists, etc. Tell them we aren’t stupid and we demand real expert. TV shows hate real experts because they don’t make absolute statements and rarely are involved in fear mongering…
We have made David Zinczenko an incredibly rich man. All he has done is assist in the raping of a number of forests to print his lazy, intelligence insulting crap and then god knows the amount of hydrocarbons he has used to ship this to us all the while writing on the cover claims of stories that may or may not be included in the magazine but certainly will make people buy it. He has done all of this just to get us to part with our money and shown no concern whatsoever about helping guys (and girls) lose weight.
So, if you were wondering what pisses me off, look no further, you have found it. Men’s Health, Women’s Health and David Zinczenko all piss me off. That said, I am not one to hold a grudge, so David, feel free to use that graphic that I made to train your new employees in continuing to produce such high quality output. It may cut down the workweek from 2 hours to 1.5. No need to drop me a line and thank me…
Summer can’t come soon enough for me…
This is part one of a many part series on my hatred of fashion, exercise, and pop culture magazines. These things aren’t worth the cheap paper they are printed on. We all know it. They distract us from everything important; they ask and answer the stupidest questions about things we wouldn’t even bother our minds to think about were it not for them; they put bald faced lies on their cover and end up giving us made up anecdotes from Christine in Pittsburg and Tom in Miami to ‘prove’ their idiotic claims.
Like soap operas, we all know how stupid they are, yet when we stop moving (in the case of magazines, as we wait in line at the cash register, or for soap operas when we sit on the couch), we are somehow caught in their tractor beams of pop culture drivel. I am surprised that the magazine industry hasn’t found a way to stop the self check outs at grocery stores. Those things will destroy the impulse magazine industry, which is to say, all pop culture magazines should be concerned… very concerned.
So, yesterday when I was standing in line getting hamburger buns, tomatoes and lettuce I came across this cover:
OKAY, A DISCLAIMER HERE: WHEN I SAW THE COVER I THOUGHT IT WAS HEIDI MONTAG. TURNS OUT THIS IS A PICTURE OF HEIDI KLUM!! APPARENTLY I AM A LITTLE OUT OF TOUCH WITH TODAYS CELEBRITIES! I EVEN LOADED UP A CURRENT PICTURE OF HEIDI MONTAG TO BE SURE THAT IT WAS HER.
I STILL CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. So the rest of this post is missing a little of its bite I think. FIRST I OWE INSTYLE A BIT OF AN APOLOGY BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T PUT A WOMAN FAMOUS FOR 10 PLASTIC SURGERIES ON THE COVER WITH THOSE HEADLINES. Still, it is only the smallest of apologies because they put a woman who is often considered the most beautiful woman in the world between those headlines. It would have been great had it been Heidi Montag, but it is still painfully good being Heidi Klum.
Even with my limited knowledge of who Heidi Montag is (my kids babysitter tried to get me up to speed on the Hills, but it was lost on me), I didn’t miss the recent buzz about her undergoing 10 plastic surgery procedures in one day. This is after having her breasts enlarged and a nose job 3 years ago. I didn’t know that she had these operations before, but I did think that she had an unnaturally amazonian beauty. None the less, she clearly was strikingly beautiful. To hear that she has been beyond obsessed for 3 years about ‘improving’ her looks is downright disturbing. If we need any warning signs that we have unrealistic expectations of beauty, this is one of them. These warning signs are disturbing because of unrealistic expectations placed on us by magazines such as InStyle magazine with digitally improved celebrities and ridiculous tips.
I am actually not annoyed that Heidi Klum is on the cover, but I am annoyed because of the headlines that they have chosen with their cover girl. Love Your Shape: Tricks to Play Up Your Best Assets and Look Better Naked: 10 Easy Tips…. Is this a satire magazine…. Am I looking at the Onion and I just haven’t realized it??? You have on the cover a girl who has was stunningly beautiful and then underwent a breast augmentation and In Style magazine is suggesting that they have some great tips to play up your assets…. Are they kidding?
So, In Style, what are you tricks? Some make-up? Maybe a push up bra? Do you not see the blindingly daft contrast between everything we know about supermodels and the supposed simplicity of that headline? How about the 10 easy tips… are they a list of ways to look like a supermodel. I have a tip for the readers of the magazine. If you want to be happier with your body naked, STOP LOOKING AT PICTURES OF HEIDI KLUM ON THE COVER OF THESE MAGAZINES!! In Style, Do you not realize that putting photographs of supermodels on your cover, photographs that have been unrealistically touched up to look even more perfect than the person in real life, and putting this between tips on how dress up our best assets is somewhat obscene. Your solution to all of our body image problems that you have helped create is to give us some tips on wearing our clothes a little differently??!?!?
Is it a case of the blind leading the blind, or in this case, the stupid leading the stupid? I don’t think so, but we need to start demanding more of our media sources or we will end up babbling idiots. To quote Bobby Kennedy Jr, “We are becoming the best entertained and worst educated society in history”.
In the lead up to my 10th tip for getting a little fitter, I figured I would round up all of the tips so far and put them in a list. This isn’t your standard list of tips, but instead, a list specifically designed for us unfit people. I will update this list later, when I add the 10th tip. In the meantime:
Tip #1: Smaller Plates and Bowls: If you are a truly unfit person, you will understand the ongoing search that I undertook for the perfect cereal/salad bowl. Something between a regular bowl and a mixing bowl. I now know that this was a symptom of a bigger problem with me. Eat less and wait between portions (or force yourself to work over and over to get more portions). It works. Tip Here
Tip #2: Substitutions: Turkey Sausage: Substitutions can be the difference between living a fit life and not. One of the keys to good substitutions is that it has to be an easy choice and it has to be something that you don’t mind doing for life. One of the other keys is that the item being substituted in has to have a healthy calorie count and density. You would have to be an idiot if you recommended eating a 2 scoop hot fudge sundae instead of a 2 scoop ice cream cone! For a substitution to work it has to be something you would put in your fridge instead of something you normally have in there. Tip Here.
Tip #3: Substition Ham: Breakfast is a typically difficult meal to find healthy choices for. The carbs are the worst, waffles, toast, cereal and pancakes (seriously it is a breakfast cake). The proteins are no better, with sausage and bacon being your go tos. That is why substitutions for breakfast are so important. Tip Here.
Tip #4: Portable Containers: Fit people are very organized. You probably aren’t. By being organized you will be able to avoid the consequences of lack of preparation, which invariably include eating out more often than you should. If the Eat This, Not That website has any value at all, it is that they have been showing that it is nearly impossible to eat out and be fit. By having the containers to put your leftovers in, you can have your lunch prepared the next day. Tip Here.
Tip #5: Use Your PVR: Odds are good you have a bunch of bad habits. Watching TV is probably near the top of the list. You aren’t about to give up your TV, so you have to find ways to make it work for you. TV gets you two ways. Your time is eaten up by sitting around all evening, so you can’t do more healthy choices like working out, and the networks control your schedule by giving you breaks every 15 minutes or so. These breaks include images of all of the unhealthy, irresistible foods you are currently not eating. With these constant breaks and reminders you are given so many pushes to the kitchen it is a miracle that you don’t weigh more than you do. Switch to the PVR and put TV on your own schedule. Use the time you gain back fast forwarding through ad breaks to fit in a workout. Tip Here.
Tip #6: Rethink Your Appetizers: Portion sizes are key to weightloss. Some people eat small portions, just because they do. I don’t and I can’t. I eat until I am full, if I can. The problem is, you are full up to 15 minutes before your body tells you you are full. This is 15 minutes of face stuffing that you don’t need to have. If you stopped on your own when you at a regular portion, you would be fine. If you can’t do this, try to eat a better appetizer and finish it 10 minutes before you start to eat your meal. Tip Here.
Tip #7: Take the Pressure off of your Meals: Do you remember that scene in ‘There is Something About Mary’ where Dom is advising Ted of not going out with a loaded gun (sound clip here, NSFW). That principle is doubly true when eating. Never sit down to a meal when you are hungry! You are just asking for trouble. To avoid this, eat 4 meals a day. Tip Here.
Tip #8: Grated Carrot: Some vegetables are sweeter than others. Carrot is one of those. When you grate carrot up you get a pretty sweet tasty product. If you can use this to get rid of the extra sweet, sugar added salad dressings, you are on your way to being a fit person. Reducing added sugar in your diet isn’t just a desire, but a necessity. There are so many ways that food manufactures are trying to get sugar into you, and this messes with your tastebuds. It raises up your sugar tolerance and makes natural flavors taste flat and bitter. You are required to eat more calories simply because your level of sweet has been raised unnaturally. Tip Here.
Tip #9: Lack of Exercise Inertia: Exercise is hard. It is even harder when your body is always fighting you. It always will. Your body naturally avoids things like exercise. The funny thing is that after you have committed to exercising and start working out, you feel awesome doing it and even better when you are done. You have to find ways to get over the initial feeling of not wanting to exercise. Tip Here.
The real question since this story broke has been “Are Jillian Michaels products being developed by Basic Research?”. I keep getting incredulous posts suggesting that it is impossible that Jillian Michaels would be connected to a product made by Basic Research. If you want to know more about Basic Research click here. She hasn’t answered any of the questions in the posts, nor questions in the tweets (from myself and from her fans) since her first angry response asking me to ‘research her product before commenting’. Ms. Michaels, I have done the research and I am deeply disturbed. I know it is in your best interest to not respond to this. You can’t win because any answer will acknowledge your role in this PR disaster. Still, it is intensely discouraging to see your fans continuing in the dark because you aren’t big enough as a person to respond.
So how did this happen. How can Jillian Michaels, who states that this is her product, actually be unclear about who her manufacturer is? I think that part of the answer lies in the set up of her company. In February 2008, Jillian Michaels partnered up with Giancarlo Chersich, a licensing agent, and made him CEO of her new company, Empowered Media LLC. His linked in profile shows that he has been a director of sales at Magna Global Licensing (currently ACI Licensing) as well as the Senior Manager of Licensing at Tommy Hilfiger. What does a Brand Licensor do? According to ACI:
Brand Licensing is a strategic relationship between a brand—an intellectual property, trademark, or celebrity—(“Licensor”) and a manufacturer or retailer (“Licensee”).
Why is this important? All that a brand licensor does is find products that aren’t selling (or are selling under a different name) and connects them to people who could, by putting their name on that product, move it in the market place. They are the people who put products into our movies, who take products with no value and make them appear good because someone we trust puts their good name behind them. All they do is essentially polish a turd and then sell it. They leverage the good name of the celebrity to make money for themselves, the celebrity and the product manufacturer, all that money from people who actually trusted the celebrity. This is the person she put in charge of her company and since that time, she has licensed numerous products and continues to state in her twitter feeds that she has many, many more products coming to market shortly. She is leveraging her name to sell products to her fans. Products as useless and shameful as her triple process detox and cleanse.
We can see from a news release dated June 29, 2009, that Jillian Michaels company Empowered Media partnered with Thincare International to produce the supplements. According to the press release:
“We are extremely happy to be working with Jillian Michaels,” says Gina Daines, spokesperson for ThinCare(TM) International, LLC. “Jillian is a true icon and we are excited to be able to help people reach their weight-loss goals.”
Who is Thincare international? That is a hard question to answer. A little research on Gina Daines confirms that not only is she from Utah (the home of Basic Research), but more importantly she is also the marketing director for Klein-Becker USA, as well as the spokesperson for Carter-Reed. These are both companies that are essentially Basic Research. As you can see from this ruling by the FTC, Basic Research trades under many, many names. In fact, what is more interesting is that these companies use the same employees regularly and interchangeably. So, how can we know that ThinCare International is just another company owned by the owners of Basic Research and operating out of the same business?
The smoking gun may very well be this webpage that claims that the trademarks owned by ThinCare International are actually owned by Western Holdings LLC. Western Holdings LLC is associated with Basic Research through many products here and here and acknowledged as being the same entity in several different government actions against them, here and here. In fact the Utah Courts refer to these companies as:
Defendants Basic Research LLC (“Basic Research”), Dynakor, Western Holdings, and Bydex are Utah limited liability companies (the “Corporate Defendants”). Basic Research develops, manufactures, and markets cosmetics, nutritional supplements, and dietary supplements through a variety of trade names, including Dynakor, NutraSport, Silver Sage, Klein-Becker USA, Urban Biologies, Alpha Gen Biotech, Sovage Dermalogic and Body Innoventions, AG Waterhouse, and BAN. This group of trade names is referred to as the “Basic Research Family of companies.” Often, the same product is marketed under different names,10 through different affiliates of Basic Research.
So, with Gina Daines and Dr. Nathalie Chevreau both confirmed to be on board, we can safely say that the employee at Basic Research who said that the company did develop the Jillian Michaels Cleanse has been independently confirmed (which is kind of cool, because it was the only investigative reporting I have done that involved questioning employees to get shockingly disturbing information. It was totally awesome, you could have knocked me over with a feather when the employee did indeed confirm that they developed the cleanse for Jillian Michaels).
Let me lay out what I think has happened. Giancarlo Chersich found Basic Research or vice versa. They probably sold themselves under the name of ‘Thincare international’. I am betting they sold Empowered Media on the doctors that they could bring to the table, at least on Dr. Arne Astrup (who Jillian Michaels still mistakenly thinks is from Harvard I believe). Still, I don’t think that anyone at Empowered Media did ANY due diligence (which in this case would have been the simplest google search). I don’t even think that due diligence in terms of quality of product was even on their minds, more likely concerns of how much product they could deliver and how fast, and how many exclusive product deals they could put together with GNC, Walmart and others.
So, where does this leave us? Clearly anyone who would knowingly hire a company that sold unresearched weightloss products to children, products that list ingredients that don’t exist, is either irresponsible, uncaring, greedy or plain dumb. So we are left truly unsatisfied here. Was Jillian Michaels even involved in this deal at all? Did she know who she was getting in bed with? Does she care? Was she involved in all aspects of this product as she claims? I don’t know if I would be more upset with the fact that Jillian Michaels knew who she was doing business with but didn’t care, or if it would bother me more that she didn’t do any due diligence and is just slapping her name on products that she is unaware of and then lying about it afterwards. Neither option is very appealing.
The problem is we may never know what happened, because any admission by Empowered Media, any discussion of this topic is a loser for them. After all, if they admit that they chose to work with a company that has such a checkered past would destroy any belief that Jillian Michaels cares about your well being.
As I said earlier, Jillian Michaels isn’t discussing the issues surrounding her relationship to Basic Research. I felt it was only fair for me to make a formal request to Jillian Michaels for comment, because although I am positive she is following this story through twitter, I am sure she will claim she hasn’t been. So, to make sure she had every opportunity to respond, I emailed Krupp Communications the official PR agent for Empowered Media. I received this response:
Hi Mark,
My colleague Jennifer Garbowski passed along your email below regarding Jillian Michaels supplement line.
It would be great if you could pass along further details about the report you’re publishing, the outlet the report is for and the questions you’re looking to have answered.
Thanks so much!
Kimberly
Kimberly Metzger
Krupp Kommunications
I promptly sent her the following explanation of my blog posts and questions:
No problem Kimberly,
This is the last in a series of exposés regarding the manufacturers of the Jillian Michaels supplement line. The other entries can be found at www.youarenotafitperson.com. Specifically:
http://youarenotafitperson.com/2009/10/27/jillian-michaels-doctors-dr-nathalie-chevreau-ph-d/
http://youarenotafitperson.com/2009/10/12/an-open-letter-to-jillian-michaels/
http://youarenotafitperson.com/2009/10/12/the-problems-with-detoxes-and-cleanses/
I have finally put together the connection between Basic Research and Jillian Michaels line of supplements, but I have some questions as to what exactly Jillian Michaels knew and when. As well, I don’t know if at the end of the day, even if she knows about the history of Basic Research if that in any way concerns her.
So, my questions are as follows:
1. Was Jillian Michaels aware (at any time before signing with them) that Thincare is a Basic Research Company?
2. She says that she has worked with these same doctors for 5 years. Is this true?
3. Which doctors (specifically)?
4. Was she aware of the products they were developing at the time?
5. Did she have any involvement or take any money for developing these products?
6. Was Jillian Michaels aware of the legal actions taken against Basic Research?
7. Jillian Michaels was aware that Dr. Nathalie Chevreau was involved in developing her products, as evidenced in her tweets. Was she aware that Dr. Chevreau role was ‘explaining the science’ behind such products as:
- Tummy Flattening Gel,
- Cutting Gel,
- Dermalin APg,
- as well as 2 ephedrine products, Leptoprin and Anorex and
- 1 fiber pill that is marketed to obese children: PediaLean!!
- Akavar
- Relacore
- Strivectin-SD’s
8. What is the current deal with Basic Research/Thincare regarding production of these products?
9. What is the quality control testing that is currently being done to confirm the quantities & qualities of ingredients in the products?
10. What role did Jillian Michaels play in developing all of these products?
11. Does Jillian Micheals feel that it undermines her credibility and the credibility of the fitness industry to work with companies that have had such a checkered past?
12. Was anyone at Empowered Media aware that Thincare is a Basic Research Company?
Thank you for your time and attention with regards to this issue. I will be publishing this last exposé early next week, so if possible a quick response would be greatly appreciated. If the timing is a problem, please send me an email and let me know if any answers are going to be forthcoming to the questions, and I will try to time my entry to give you fair time to answer any and all of these questions. The entry regarding the role of Dr. Arne Astrup will be published later this week.
Sincerely,
Mark Vaughan
So, no response from Jillian Michaels. Finally, it appears that the FTC is going to take on Basic Research again, and that may be the least of the problems facing Basic Research, as they are facing a class action lawsuit.
If you are a fan of Jillian Michaels, you might want to spare me the ‘leave her alone’ emails (or not, as long as your comment isn’t offensive I will approve it). Don’t forget that before this cleanse money grab, I was a huge fan of hers. She let me down and if she fails to answer these questions honestly, she continues to let you down. You have a right to know what she is thinking with these products. After all, she has stated publicly, on her facebook page and in twitter that she believes in these products, and that only the best people are involved with making them.
If you think none of this matters by the way, here is a little tidbit of information for you, there is no requirement in the supplement business for any quality control whatsoever from anyone but the manufacturer. So you are depending on a quality manufacturer to know that your product is made naturally, that your product contains the ingredients on the label, and in the amounts shown on the label. Jillian Michaels couldn’t even tell you how the unnaturally blue pills were made naturally to look so blue… I wonder, could Basic Research? You have read all about them, tell me, would you believe them? So tweet Jillian Michaels and ask her, what is the truth? Ask her to answer these questions
I have written many times about not listening to the things you read on the outside of a package. Ignore the bubbles and the big print. These messages are just there to cover up what they don’t want you to read. To quote the book, ‘You Are Not A Fit Person’:
This food is rich in…
You are going to hear claims all the time that this food is rich in this or full of that. That is normally a way to hide what it is saturated in and they don’t want you to see that. Don’t listen to what a food has a lot of. You don’t need any additional nutrients. You get too many. People talk about the healing qualities of this and the cancer fighting qualities of that, but there is little or no evidence to back any of this up. Certainly there are no silver bullets in any food. If something adds an advantage to long life, say blueberries for example, they don’t add a hell of a lot of an advantage. Think about it, if people who ate blueberries lived 10 years longer, 5 years longer or even 1 year longer on average than other people we would have known a long time ago. They interview tons of centurions about their food and exercise habits. There is no silver bullet. There is nothing that most of them say they do. The only thing that science even agrees on about living a long time is eating plenty of vegetables and getting regular exercise (and maybe drinking a glass of wine a day). So as you look at packaging, ignore the claims of what a food has. YOU DON’T CARE. I can’t stress this enough. Instead of looking at the package and saying, oh, this could be good for me, it has lycopene and lycopene may reduce my risk of cancer, imagine instead that these are ‘ropers’ in a con game to get your money. Each one of these is highlighting a positive so you will ignore the negatives.
Why I bring this up today is that after Christmas we have developed a bit of a candy cupboard. Candy cupboards are a guarantee of unfitness for the unfit. I can hear its siren song from anywhere in the house. My night after I get the kids to bed is relaxing, watching TV, working on this blog, reading a book, possibly exercising, and of course blocking out the constant calling of the candy cupboard. I am successful at many of these tasks, but not so good at ignoring the beckoning of the candy cupboard.
The problem is that we got so much chocolate for Christmas, the whole family did. We are doling out some to the kids, so we started out keeping theirs in this cupboard. Slowly though the amount of candy in the cupboard is growing. My wife is planning on using the extra chocolate for baking (she is an avid baker). I have a whole chocolate-coffee co-dependence thing going on in the evenings. Now that I have brought this up though, I will empty out the candy cupboard this evening and make sure all of the ‘baking chocolate’ is hidden from me. In any case, this isn’t the point of this blog. When I opened the candy cupboard, I came across these:
This bothered me on so many levels. First, I have a personal hate on for these fruit products that are marketed to kids as healthy snacks. Nothing could be further from the truth. I will get into this further in a second as this is the point of this entry, but there was something else bothering me.
My wife bought these for the kids. When I brought up how bad they were, she said that she knew they were bad, but at least they didn’t have any added sugar… First things first, I needed to point out to her that added sugar is the second ingredient in these candies right after fruit juice, and second, even if they didn’t have added sugar it still has tons of sugar (and see the image below of the actual fruit snack and tell me they can make something that candy like without adding sugar). You can read the nutritional infor to discover that each packet is 17 grams and contains 13 grams of sugar! They are over 75% sugar! It has a calorie density of 2.94! Sugar, straight sugar has a calorie density of 4…
As well, I was kind of confused as to why they were in the candy cupboard (They are ridiculously delicious by the way. They are as good as or better than swedish berries or fruit berries, certainly much sweeter. They might actually be too sweet…)? Why buy more candy for the kids if you know it is candy? If you didn’t think it was candy then why put it in the candy cupboard (where I would discover it and eat all of the strawberry flavored packets)?
The hate on…
So, here is the point of the blog entry, how in the world can people market candy to children and parent’s of children as a healthy snack alternative? Why would they do such a thing? Trying to deceive people who are only trying to give their families healthy food is so vile. It is so greedy, yet greed can only explain so much. Greed does not give you a free pass on morally reprehensible behaviors.
These products are designed to make you think they are healthy when they aren’t. To get a better appreciation of the tricks they use, lets look at the packaging:
- Note on the packaging they say made with 66% concentrated fruit juice in the big yellow colored dew drop shape. There are two points to be made about the dew drop, the first one is what I call the Fruit Appeal. This is a classic example of trying to make you think the product is healthy. Eating Fruit is healthy, so fruit juice must be healthy (it isn’t, don’t drink juice, it is as bad for you as pop in almost all cases). If fruit juice is healthy and these things are almost entirely made up of it, then they must be healthy. Concentrated fruit juice is at the end of the day, just sugar. These ‘Florida’s Natural’ people are drowning in fruit juice (they are a Florida growing co-op) and looking for ways to get rid of it. Especially from the fruits that aren’t healthy enough looking to go to market as fruits, and those that look or taste good enough to make it into the juice. Yep, the truly failing fruits make it into the candy. If you squeeze fruit to get the juice, then remove the water, you are essentially left with fructose, which is natural fruit sugar. Don’t be fooled, natural fruit sugar is just sugar, it isn’t better for you because it is natural (all sugar is natural) nor because it comes from fruits. So, when you have enough fruit juice, it is cost effective to distill it into sugar.
- The second point about the dew drop is what I call the ‘Almost All Appeal‘. 66% Fruit Juice. You see this most often with fruit juice. 80% fruit juice, 33% fruit juice, etc. The point of this appeal is to make you think it is made up almost entirely of a healthy item. For some reason when we see something like that, we think, ‘Oh Great, that is so healthy’ instead of the much more rational thought of, ‘Hmmm… I wonder what the other 33% is?’. Seriously, it doesn’t take much bad to make a healthy food unhealthy. I could add 5 grams of straight sugar to 12 grams of fruit juice and fit within these parameters.
- Almost as big in the bottom right hand corner is the message, “All Natural Flavors”. Marketers love the word, ‘Natural’. Somehow, someone has tricked people into thinking that natural is healthy. This might be true if natural were defined as raw, or unprocessed and could only be applied to a product as a whole, but it doesn’t. Again it is the same as fruit juice. People apply connotations to natural that are inappropriate and incorrect. You can make straight sugar in a natural fashion, ie, dehydrated cane juice but that sugar will make you just as fat as refined sugar. The energy systems of your body can’t tell the difference, your blood sugar level doesn’t know which source the sugar is from, the pancreas is equally as unaware, so when the insulin floods your body and stores this sugar as fat, your new fat cells have no more idea of the source of their creation as any other part of your body. You may be right to think that unnatural things carry with them other health risks, but this isn’t the same thing as thinking all natural things are healthy. They aren’t. If you see ‘all natural’ and immediately think ‘all healthy’ you are in for a tough road to fitness. I call this one the ‘All Natural Logic Trick‘. Finally, note that only the flavors are all natural in this product. Again, going back to point 2, that should actually be a warning, not an attraction.
- Fruit and Fruit Juice Snacks. Yep, under the word nugget, they claim this is a fruit snack…. I am sorry, but just because you began with the raw material of fruit before you processed all of the sugar out of it and mixed it with more sugar and then packaged it up, that does not make this a fruit snack. Had they done the opposite. Had they built these up from fructose, water, glucose (standard sugar) and natural fruit flavors, they could not put that label on this package, yet it would be the same product at the end of the day. Does this mean that I can start calling things made with beet sugar vegetable products? I could launch my new ‘vegetable snack’ line. Made with 20% real vegetable juice (evaporated sugar beet juice). Parent’s will be shocked at how easy it is to get kids to eat their servings of vegetables… I would laugh but seriously, this is so sad we should be crying for the North American Public. This is the ‘Processed Raw Material Scam‘.
- There are some missing items on this package but shown on other Florida’s Natural candies so I will include a couple of other package photos to get through the most egregious packaging scams. Along with all natural, you quite often see organic (the ‘If it’s Organic, it’s obviously good for you’ ploy). If you are looking for candy and you want organic candy, then pick the following version of this ‘fruit snack’, but don’t think that makes this healthy, it is still candy, plain and simple. Here are the nutritional facts on this product and it is truly disturbing, with 19 grams of ‘naturally occurring’ sugar and an additional 16 grams of added sugar, bringing the calorie density up to a whopping 3.33.
- The Servings Scam: 1 serving of fruit. Yep, the organic product above states that it has one serving of fruit. I discussed this issue in a previous post. I think I covered it there, but the idea is that you don’t want a serving of fruit in your candy, you want a serving of fruit instead of eating the candy. From crackers that state they have a serving of vegetables, to pastas that claim the same to candies that say they have servings of fruit, you would have to be blind not to see the problem here.
- The Vitamin trick: A great source of or a% of your daily vitamins and minerals. This is the same as point 6 above, just packaged a different way. Sugar cereals and these candy products are always suggesting that you should eat them to get your vitamins. How about eating fruit instead… Eating candy to get your vitamins is bad. Have we become so pathetic as people that we need a spoon full of sugar to get our vitamins down?
I can’t believe that Florida’s Natural has products to pick up all of the packaging scams. They are at the top of their game. Of course there is one thing about their packaging that I didn’t bring up…yet….
Did you notice how friendly those fruits are on the package? It is like they are begging kids to take them home and eat them. There is Ogilvie the orange, with his big droopy eyelids sometimes winking with a stem attachment thingy (no idea what this is called) as the eye, and sometimes as the nose(?). Who could resist Ogilvie’s dim witted appeal with his big open slobbering mouth? There is Stanley the strawberry with his pointy chin and massive happy smile. Of course his eyes are covered by his rascally big mop of green hair(?), yet you can always see his disturbing nose growth… Stanley is the life of the Florida’s Natural candy party. Don’t forget the supporting cast of the Blueberry Family. Always swarming the other fruits and smiling, ready to be gobbled up… (I am not sure if these fruits are already named, I would hate to give the impression that these are the ‘kid friendly’ names developed by Florida’s Natural. The names and personalities listed above, for the fruits on the packages of these products was dreamed up by me alone. I can just see the letter now from Florida’s Natural’s lawyers saying that I was diluting their trade characters by giving them the wrong names.)
Tell me that the company didn’t go to a graphic design company and say, ‘We want something friendly that appeals to kids’…. I just can’t believe that they aren’t directly marketing their addictive candy to children and misleading the public about the qualities of their food… Oh, wait a minute…. That reminds me of something… marketing addictive substances to children… A friendly looking cartoon on the package… intentionally misleading people as to the health qualities of a product…. nope, can’t quite put my finger on it. Oh well, maybe I can figure it out while I go outside and have a smoke…
All joking aside, it is wrong plain and simple to market candy to parents and children as healthy fruit snacks. How you people sleep at night is anyone’s guess. If you look at the TV at night and are shocked by the Bernie Madoffs of the world, if you watch the news and hear that obesity just overtook smoking as the number one deadly lifestyle choice, remember. The enemy is you.
I don’t mean to just pick on Florida’s Natural here, all of the following are just as bad or worse (in most cases much worse):
- Annie’s Homegrown Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks (nutrtional info)
- Fruit Gushers (nutritional Info) I forgot the low fat scam and gluten free scam, but they didn’t!!
- Fruit Roll ups (nutritional info)
- Fruit Shapes (nutritional info) Oh my god General Mills, to you I doff my cap!! I hadn’t even thought of licensing the product with friendly kids TV characters!! Brilliant. If kids can’t trust the characters from their friendly preschool TV shows then who can they trust!!
- Fruit by the foot (nutritional info) These last four are all brought to us by General Mills, cooked up by the loving hands of Betty Crocker….
- Welch’s Fruit Snacks Although I could not find the nutritional information, take note that they are an excellent lunchbox treat and they have a reduced sugar option that meets the ’stricter requirements for snacks sold in schools’. Thank god they can still get their products into the schools…
So, in closing I would just like to thank Florida’s Naturals, General Mills and Welch’s, specifically for making candy all the more a part of our children’s daily diet. Thank you for creating more vehicles for delivering sugar to our children. If I haven’t thanked the US, Canadian and UK Governments lately for bowing to the pressure of the sugar lobbies, please consider this a special thank you. I love the fact that the people we elect to government are concerned about our well being rather than a small subsection who earns Billions of dollars off of what is considered the worst health issue in the industrialized world. I got such a kick out of that Senator that tweeted Jillian Michaels after the finale of last seasons Biggest Loser to say something to the effect of ‘together we are beating this obesity epidemic…’.
I am betting they are setting up another Congress Sub-Committee to figure out why kids are obese even as we speak. I hope they can solve this canundrum… In the meantime, when you are in your grocery store, talk to the manager. Tell him or her that you don’t appreciate candy being in the snack aisle. Ask them to move it. If enough of us do so, we can at least get the product to the right aisle and that is a step in the right direction. Read some of these reviews and you will realize that although you may be aware these are candy, many people aren’t (here, here, here and here).
I love this cartoon from www.naturalnews.com by the way. Click on the image to see the article that they have written to accompany the cartoon. I would love to hear your opinion in the comments section as I feel this practice is genuinely disingenuous, but others may not.
Note: I have been holding onto this entry and the next one in this series because I have been waiting for responses from Dr. Astrup and Jillian Michaels. I haven’t had a response and I have given each of them over a month. So here are the final chapters.
Jillian Michaels,TV’s toughest trainer, the celebrity leader of the black team on The Biggest Loser, famous for saying, ‘there is no magic pill to lose weight’, has released not one, but three ‘magic’ pills. She has a ‘fat burner’, a ‘appetite suppressant’ and a’triple detox and cleanse’. Although I can’t recommend any of these pills for weight loss, I was especially bothered by the detox and cleanse. I was devastated to see someone that I trusted selling snake oil. You can read about about my feelings regarding detoxes here.
In any case, I was tweeting my feelings about detoxes and Jillian Michaels felt the need to tell me and her followers:
@URNotAFitPerson Read the ingredients & science behind products then comment. Cleanse is probiotics & herbs 4 liver & kidney support. No laxatives or fasting involved. Developed w/ 1 of best bariatrics doctors in the world named Arnold Astrup at Harvard.
I was startled when I received this tweet. It was strange because I was discussing this issue with several doctors and they said to me, there is no way that an actual MD would support this triple detox and cleanse as a way to lose weight. They were so sure of themselves that I figured something was wrong with what Jillian Michaels was saying. I did a google search for Dr. Arnold Astrup, but I figured he must be some questionable MD for hire, with a medical degree from a mail order medical school. When I couldn’t find anything on a Dr. Arnold Astrup through google, I became even more concerned.
Then I found Dr. Arne Astrup. Jillian Michaels could be forgiven for thinking his name was Arnold, as she probably thought that Arne, was short for Arnold. So, a little research into Dr. Arne Astrup turns out to be a doctor with quite a resume in the medical weight-loss industry. His resume can be found here. This resume is of vital importance to what will come later, but for know you can note his extremely long and illustrious list of jobs and awards. Clearly if he is willing to put his reputation on the line and support a ‘cleanse and detox’ then I am wrong in going after Jillian Michaels for this product. Instead I need to understand what Dr. Astrup thinks.
So, I contacted Dr. Astrup and wrote him the following email:
Dr. Astrup,
I was following up from a discussion I was having with Jillian Michaels in which she said that her cleanse was developed by a Dr. Arnold Astrup at Harvard. I believe she was referring to you. Is this correct? If so, could I get your opinion on the following claims that her product makes:
Formulated to Help:
- Reduce Belly Bloat*
- Reduce Body Waste Buildup Without Harsh Chemical Laxatives or Fasting*
- Support Colon and Digestive System*
- Support the Liver’s Natural Detoxification Process*
- Make You Feel Lighter and More Energized*
As well, do you feel that a cleanse such as this is good for weight loss? Thank you very much in advance for your time and attention.
Sincerely,
Mark Vaughan
About this time Jillian Michaels came forward with the claim that there was another doctor involved in her cleanse product,Dr. Nathalie Chevreau, PhD. I contacted Dr. Chevreau as well, but it really wasn’t important if she was involved with the cleanse or not, because she was the key to answering the riddle of who was making this product in the first place. The answer is, Basic Research. To recap, Basic Research is the company that ran afoul of the FTC for numerous issues and to quote Stephen Barrett, M.D:
A suit seeking class action status has been filed against Utah-based Basic Research, LLC; Dynakor Pharmacal, LLC; Western Holdings, LLC; Dennis Gay, Daniel B. Mowrey, Ph.D.; and Mitchell Friedlander. The complaint (shown below) charges that defendants “engaged in a deliberate campaign of widespread fraud and deception” and racketeering by marketing Akavar 20/50 with false claims that it could produce weight loss without dietary modification or increased exercise. It was also falsely claimed to have been “designed by a team of doctors working in a recognized university” and to have been validated by published research. Mowrey has been associated with herb-related schemes for more than 20 years. Friedlander is one of the most egregious mail-order health scammers of all time. During the early 1980s, doing business as the Robertson-Taylor Company and at least six other companies, he took in tens of millions of dollars for fraudulent weight-loss aids, hair restorers, sexual stimulants, impotence cures, arthritis remedies, and other vitamin products. The U.S. Postal Service ended these promotions with a series of cease-and-desist orders. In 2006, Mowrey, Gay, Friedlander, and Basic Research settled FTC charges that they had falsely advertised other weight-loss products. The claims for Akavar violate the FTC settlement agreement. In May 2008, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint that contains more details of the Akavar scheme.
This is a company so egregious it led to congressman Rep. James Greenwood, R-Pa., to call the Basic Research executives “scam artists”. Yes, scam artists. You can read the complaint about Basic Research here. It is worth the read, scroll down to Statement of Facts. This company and its activities are sickening. You can read more about this company and Dr. Nathalie Chevreau here.
So I was left wondering how deep does this behavior go. Did Dr. Astrup take money from Basic Research to develop the ‘Detox and Cleanse’? I didn’t have to wait long. I received this email from Dr. Astrup:
Dear Mark Vaughan,
Thank you for the enquiry. I have meet Jillian Michaels, and has a very good talk with her about her programmes. Concerning the scientific evidence to substantiate the claims of these products, I am simply not the right person to ask. However I have consulted with the company about the science supporting the ingredients in the Jillian Michaels calorie control product (YGD), but I understand that other experts were involved in developing the cleanse and other products.
I suggest you make a enquiry directly to Jillian Michaels to get the correct information
Kind regards
Arne Astrup
So, Dr. Astrup didn’t help develop the cleanse. It is official. Jillian Michaels was at the very least misinformed about who developed her cleanse and detox. It would be consistent to say that she was not telling the truth as well. It just comes down to a question of whether she knew what products Dr. Astrup was involved with or even what if any science is behind her product. The only thing that we appear to know is that Jillian has hired a company that has a history of such unethical and even illegal activity as to earn the moniker of ‘Scam Artists’ from congressman Rep. James Greenwood, R-Pa. She obviously doesn’t want to admit this to her fans, because this would make one disturbing fact crystal clear.
Remember the resume I said we would come back to, well now we will (here it is again). Researchers and professors at universities have to list their sources of income so that there is no unknown conflict of interest with their research. Under conflicts of interest there it is, ‘Basic Research’. Dr. Astrup works for Basic Research. I have contacted him regarding this article and his work with Basic Research and their reputation, and here is his response:.
Mr. Vaughn,
My department is having collaboration with more than 100 private companies at a global basis, and try to avoid working with companies that do not comply with standards in terms of ethics, child labour etc. We have been doing research projects with Basic Research over the last 5 years, and they have supported studies in the ethiology of obesity, and new potential options for prevention and treatment of obesity. Basic Research has always complied with all aspects of the contracts, and I regard the company as being a serious partner for doing research in this area.
My participation in such research is very much in line with my personal goal of developing our scientific knowledge regarding the causes of obesity, and methods for treating and preventing its development. I am sorry to say that it is beyond my expertise to go into the details of your criticism of the company.
Kind regards
Arne Astrup, Head
Professor, MD, Dr.Med.Sci.
Department of Human Nutrition
Faculty of Life Sciences. University of Copenhagen
Rolighedsvej 30, DK-1958 Frederiksberg C
Copenhagen – Denmark
I nearly fell over when I received this response. The thing that really got to me was: I am sorry to say that it is beyond my expertise to go into the details of your criticism of the company. Okay, if not you, Dr. Astrup then who? Who should be commenting on whether a company is pedaling real diet products or not? Who should be evaluating the products that they are selling?
Seriously, this is the biggest cop out that I have ever seen. Here Dr. Astrup and his department are taking money for research from a company that has had the problems that this company has, and are turning a blind eye to their antics because of this. Of course they have complied with all aspects of the contract, I am betting the contract reads: Basic Research is to pay all bills on time. Great job on complying with the contract Basic Research. I take back all of the things that I said about you, you must be a stand up group if you pay Dr. Astrup on time… Wow, again my prescience astounds me. In ‘You Are Not A Fit Person’ I said that everyone is out to screw you. I really thought that I didn’t mean it. I thought I was just exaggerating as I have a wont to do from time to time. How wrong I was!! Really if Arne Astrup is not going to call a company out like this one, and he is going to take money from them… wow. People, we are on our own here!
In closing then, I asked Dr. Astrup to answer these claims in the following email:
Dr. Astrup,
Thank you for your prompt reply. I am not concerned with the collaboration your department has with companies, but I am interested in your collaboration with Basic research.
(from your conflicts of interest in your resume):
Conflicts of interest
Salaried author for Ude & Hjemme. Salaried Editor-in-Chief of Obesity Reviews, Blackwell Science. Advisor or member of advisory boards for a number of food and pharmaceutical producers etc.: Arla, European Almond Advisory Board, Communications and Scientific Advisory Board of The Global Dairy Platform, 7TM Pharma, Novo, NeuroSearch, Basic Research, Merck, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development, L.L.C., and Reuters Insight, and recipient of honoraria as speaker for a wide range of Danish and international concerns.
Ownership, in accordance with the Danish University regulations, of inventions and patents where Arne Astrup is co-inventor.
Arne Astrup has bought shares in Mobile Fitness A/S.
Executive Board member of Obesity International Trading (London), Beer Knowlegde Institute (Amsterdam), Global Dairy Platform (Chicago), and Nordic Food Lab A/S (Copenhagen).
My interest in this issue is one of public concern.
You say that you avoid working with companies that do not comply with standards in terms of ethics, child labour, etc. I am curious, what due diligence do you do? Why I am curious is, Basic Research developed, sold and marketed a product to obese children in a manner so egregious that they were charged by the FTC:
According to this archived email, the most disturbing thing about PediaLean is this:
Basic Research criticism is apparently a case of the kettle calling the pot black, perhaps because of its competing product, PediaLean, containing an unidentified product “Pediatropin” derived from the P. rivieri root – all shrouded in mystery and scientific-sounding hype. A letter from the Committee on Energy and Commerce points out the deceptive nature of PediaLean advertising and notes the lack of safety or efficacy data. We found no genus to correlate with “P.” rivieri, but the plant in question may be Amorphophallus rivieri also known as Konjac Root.
By the way, when the FTC is saying they are making unsubstantiated claims, they aren’t saying that they are throwing out buzz phrases and claims without having any clinical research, but that they are throwing out claims of clinical research without having done any clinical research!!
Does PediaLean work? You bet it does! In a well-controlled double-blind clinical trial, each and every child who used PediaLean as directed lost a significant amount of excess body weight.. a success rate of 100%.”
PublIshed Medical Studies Don’t Lie…ClInically Proven Safe and Effective”
These studies were never published by the way, for all intents and purposes, no double-blind clinical trial took place.
Are you unaware of the PediaLean controversy?
This is just one example of the activities of this company. They are currently being sued in a class action suit for an equally unethical action. Additionally, the FTC has recently asked the Attorney General to bring an action against them. Finally, they have been found guilty of mail fraud in at least 2 states.
If you aren’t the expert to determine the ethical quality of a company, what process do you use to determine this? You say you don’t work for unethical companies, do you hire an expert to review the companies you work for? If so, could you tell me who this is, so I can follow up with them?
I am very impressed with the work that you have done in your field and the roles that you have played within your profession. I know that you are passionate about making the world better for those who suffer from obesity. I am not sure if you are aware, but a startling amount of people are using detoxes and cleanses for weightloss. As well, there is no evidence that the diet pills that reduce appetite or the thermogenics actually work for long term weightloss. People are spending more than $20 billion dollars on these cures and not losing weight that have no science to support them.
As a doctor and a scientist, don’t you feel that people who sell and promote these products, especially ones that claim that there is science behind these products when there isn’t, don’t you feel that working for people who do this is wrong?
Sincerely,
Mark Vaughan
So the final answer is, Dr Astrup is not associated with the cleanse and detox although he did consult on some portion of Jillian Michaels products. As well, Dr. Astrup won’t comment on cleanses and detoxes. Another hurdle then for us unfit people is the experts themselves. Even when they are experts and they can be trusted in their research, they still may not be reliable regarding other issues as they may be compromised by endorsing products that aren’t helpful or they may be paid by companies that produce unhelpful products.
I never did hear back from Dr. Astrup though. Stay tuned for the final chapter in this sordid tale. In this final chapter we will see the conclusion of whether Jillian Michaels company actually uses Basic Research.
I must admit my day was going quite well. I even braved heading over to the ‘Eat This Not That’ website. I figured I must have been a little hard on the website and its founder David Zinczenko. Maybe the fact that they suggest that you can lose weight switching from a 2 scoop French Vanilla and Peanut Butter n’ Chocolate sugar cone to a 2 scoop Hot Fudge Sundae at Baskin and Robbins isn’t as obscenely stupid as it sounds (food swap here)…
Why I mention this is because even after going to the website and seeing stupid health advice from what must be the king of the idiotic health tips really didn’t upset me. I wasn’t even going to write this blog entry, but then…
I took the kids to Pastameli of New York after family pottery night. We normally just pick up a some individual pizza slices and eat them at the counter or take them home, but we had a friend with us so we actually sat down for dinner. I ordered my usual favorite pizza of tomato, pepperoni and feta cheese and a salad with a house vinaigrette. The kids were exhausted and we didn’t have long for dinner. The kids meals arrived and a little while later the waitress told me my pizza was on the way… Turns out they made it without feta and with barbecued chicken. I hate barbecued chicken on my pizza. I have to be precise here, because I love barbecued chicken in general, but whenever they say barbecued chicken on a pizza, it is normally just roast chicken cut up and drowned in barbecue sauce. So it really isn’t barbecued chicken, just chicken and pizza drowned in barbecue sauce. I was asked if I wanted this pizza or if I wanted them to cook me up a new one. After figuring out that this wasn’t an actual barbecued chicken pizza but chicken drowned in barbecue sauce (I actually thought it might be the real deal as they make awesome pizza at Pastameli’s), I suggested that we were out of time and that they could just bring me the bill as the children had pretty much finished up their dinner. She said it would only take 10 minutes, I said I didn’t have that long. She came back to tell me they were going to do it in 2 minutes. I said, fine. Now I know what you are thinking, and that is they can’t cook a pizza in 2 minutes. I know that, and when my kids were suitably impressed with the idea of a 2 minute pizza, I pointed out to them that the physics of pizza demand that there is a set time to cook a pizza and we would still be waiting at least 10 minutes and probably 15, but given the batting average of this waitress, I certainly wouldn’t have cleared off the bill by then, so I said sure, just bring me the salad I ordered at the beginning of the night and put the pizza in a box to go.
The pizza arrived quickly and I had to drive home with the pizza sitting next to me, and I did already say how good this places pizza is, right? My mouth watered the whole way home and I was so excited to dig into the pizza. On top of being so good, it was cooling to perfection. Normally when the pizza arrives I am can’t help but dig in, no matter how hot, and I spend the first three slices burning the top of my mouth, but here I have been forced to wait until the pizza is perfect. I got home, opened the box and dug in…
You can imagine my surprise and anger when I discovered that the pizza had cold grated feta on top and was still bathed in BARBECUE SAUCE!!!! It appeared to me that they had taken about 10 minutes to pick off the chicken and grate some feta on top! I got on my phone and looked up the website for Pastamelli’s of New York, figuring that I could find the West Vancouver location from the website. I was shocked to discover that there is no ‘of New York’. I had actually mused on whether they were still paying franchise fees to Pastameli of New York after being in business for around a quarter of a century, only to discover that they had never paid franchise fees because there is no Pastameli’s in New York. Now I was fuming!!
So, I get a hold of someone at the restaurant and after explaining my predicament, they get the manager on the phone. I suggest that they may have just picked the chicken off of my pizza and re-given it to me. I was ready for an argument over this issue with me saying, yes there is barbecue sauce all over my pizza and him saying, no sir, you must be mistaken, we would never do that. To my shock, he says, yes, why would this be a problem… I am sputtering and beginning to flip out-really, you just don’t want to mess with my food, I get a little irrational and angry, even more so when I am really looking forward to my meal. Before I can get anything more out, the guy asks me for my phone number and name. I give it, and he tells me that on my next visit, I will get a FREE small pizza…
Now I am flabbergast. I don’t even know what to say. I ask him if he is joking… Apparently I had just paid for a pizza that I wanted to eat in the restaurant, but now, much later, I am finding out that I won’t be getting my pizza today, in fact I will have to go back to the restaurant and get my pizza on some future day… that is unless something goes wrong on that day, then who knows when I will be getting my pizza. I try to get this point across to the manager. He suggests that they could deliver me a pizza, which would have been a good offer if I could wait an hour for my pizza, or if they delivered pizza all the way to my house, but I have a historic aversion to getting pizza after a mistake has been made. That is a different story and about as long, so I will just link to it here (link to follow shortly) and get on with this discussion because I am trying to get to a point here (okay, very slowly, but still, trying to get to a point).
So, after sputtering and asking if the manager is serious… and he suggests what more could he do for me? I suggest he could offer me more than the future promise of a pizza I paid for already, and he says, nope, you can just maybe someday have the future pizza… I decide this isn’t going anywhere and because I want to eat at Pastameli’s again in the future, the pizza really is spectacular, I get the manager’s name and the owners name and suggest that I will take this up with him. Okay, I know that this is the hollowest of all hollow threats. He knows that I won’t call the owner and I know I won’t call theownerand I know that he knows I won’t call the owner. After all, I will have eaten something and my anger will go down. Further he knows that the owner probably doesn’t care about this incident and that there would probably be a stack of customer phone numbers and names for future pizzas sitting next to the cash register if they most likely didn’t lose them on a regular basis. The pizza is very good here, but I am figuring the staff, not so much.
So, why is all of this important. Well, as I said I was in a good mood when I was at ‘Eat This Not That’ earlier today. Now I am not in such a good mood. As well, I am thinking about Pizza right now. When I was at the ETNT website I checked out the list of best restaurants/worst restaurants. While browsing I clicked on ‘Little Caesar’s Pizza’:
Start with a few chicken wings to get some belly-filling protein in your system before moving on to pizza. Since Little Caesar’s isn’t selling thin crusts, you’ll have to settle for a regular cheese pizza. Just be sure to close the box after two slices.
I don’t know if I just had to think about this food recommendation for awhile before calling David Zinczenko out again for childishly stupid advice, or if I just needed to get angry, but seriously… did I read this right?!?! Is David Zinczenko seriously recommending that I eat chicken wings for my protein needs?!!? I looked once, I looked twice… and yes he is…. Okay, in his defense…. maybe he thought that because these are oven baked chicken wings they might be healthy, but look at the numbers:
For 1 barbecue oven baked wing you get 4 grams of protein, 4 grams of fat and 3 grams of carbohydrates… Yep, a 70 calorie wing has only 11 grams of food in it and half of the calories of that food are from fat. That sure sounds like a winning way to get your protein. At this rate you will weigh about 400 pounds getting your daily protein. There is no world that you will get fit eating chicken wings to lose weight. Don’t get me wrong, but fit people can eat chicken wings and be fit. You can too eventually, but not if you take the advice of eating chicken wings as a weightloss method. In fact, the baking versus deep frying doesn’t appear to make any difference in the calorie content or make up. As well, what are the odds of actually eating chicken wings without dip? I never have, at least willingly… That is another 250 calories or so. Depends on how much dipping you do. Finally, what are the odds that you are going to have just the right number of people to split the wings with so that you each get three and there are none left over. Odds are much better that you will order 12 wings (or however many you get in an order) with one other person and split them all. Always be careful about having the opportunity to eat more than you planned. This is one opportunity you won’t pass up.
So, after giving this winning advice for getting protein, instead of say recommending adding additional ham to your pizza (a better protein source than chicken wings) or skinless chicken meat (I don’t eat at Little Caesars, so this may not be an option), David Zinczenko then suggests you order the cheese pizza… If you are trying to lose weight and you are eating pizza (which is a terrible idea, but does happen), then eat a vegetable pizza. Pick the vegetables you like, add as many as you can. Follow this advice, especially if you don’t like vegetables. They taste good on pizza and it is an excellent opportunity to get used to vegetables. If you do like them then they add a lot of bulk to a piece of pizza. Next time you eat a pizza loaded with vegetables think about how big and heavy it is compared to a cheese pizza.
Still, the whole notion of swapping bad foods for worse foods is terrible, terrible advice. You can go from 400 pounds to 350 pounds that way, but you can’t get fit. You have to learn that these restaurant foods are terrible choices no matter what. You need to massively reduce your dependance on restaurants. The portion sizes are too large, the foods are way too calorie rich and it is way too easy to eat too much. As for Little Caesar’s, don’t eat pizza at a restaurant that doesn’t have an italian salad or even better a greek salad. It is impossible not to over eat without one of these. I can’t believe that David Zinczenko has moved on from making money on his plethora of ‘flat abs’ diet tips, and ‘keys to better sex’ and now is making money on bad diet advice…
The real point of this blog entry though is that I realize that my connection to food, my anger at getting my pizza wrong, all of these things point to an ongoing problem that I am always going to have with my love of food. I am clearly not a fit person, and I will always be fighting these temptations. Still, I refuse to let a someone offer such terrible advice without challenging it.
So the holidays are for the most part past for another season and I thought I would take this time to weigh in on all of the holiday fitness advice. There are literally millions of web pages offering advice on controlling your holiday eating and they offer for the most part excellent tips and advice. Plan to eat less, stay active, snack healthy before parties, avoid egg nog, etc. Really all tips that make sense. The thing is, I haven’t offered any of this advice because I don’t know if it will help.
Again, it isn’t that the advice isn’t good, it is. Certainly, part of the reason I am not offering advice is just that I have found that I am not very likely to follow good advice at the holidays so why would I expect that you would, but there is something much bigger. The truth is, if a holiday season is going to destroy your plan to get fit, then you really don’t have much of a plan. Worse, if you don’t have a plan to get and stay fit, then you aren’t going to get fit and stay fit. So, which is it? No plan or a bad plan?
Imagine if you will a graph of your weight as a measure of your fitness. It probably looks a lot like the graph below:
At some point in your life, your actual weight separated from your ideal weight. It probably started out quite slowly, where a year went by with only 2 or 3 pounds of weight gain. Now you are gaining weight faster and are a ways over your ideal weight. You may have tried diets and found that your weight went way down and then bounced right back up after coming off of the diet. This could have happened a number of times. The key point here though is that your weight is on a long term upward trend and your fitness is on a long term downward trend.
What makes this important is that a long term trend isn’t going to be changed by short term behavior or thoughts. If you haven’t changed your long term thinking by the time that the holidays role by, all of the tips and tricks to avoid sweets aren’t going to help you get fit and lose weight.
Below is a chart of your potential weight if you start a fitness plan:
Now that the holidays are over, read the first part of You Are Not A Fit Person (You can find the pdf in the You Are Not A Fit Person . If you are ready to start on a fitness plan, drop me a line. This could be the beginning of the reversal of your long term trend of gaining weight. It has nothing to do with avoiding egg nog, although you probably will do that when you are on your fitness plan, when you start to see the reversal of the trends of the past. Holidays are much easier and more enjoyable when you have an overall plan.
Follow Me On Twitter
Visit me at Stumbleupon
Visit me at Digg
